Part 135

The great Ming dynasty was now at an end, though not destined wholly to pass away. A large part of it may be said to remain in the literary monuments which were executed during its three centuries of existence. The dress of the period survives upon the modern Chinese stage; and when occasionally the present alien yoke is found to gall, seditious whispers of 'restoration' are not altogether unheard. … The age of the Ch'ings is the age in which we live; but it is not so familiar to some persons as it ought to be, that a Tartar, and not a Chinese sovereign, is now seated upon the throne of China. For some time after the accession of the first Manchu Emperor there was considerable friction between the two races, due, among other natural causes, to the enforced adoption of the peculiar coiffure in vogue among the Manchus—i. e., the tail, or plaited queue of hair, which now hangs down every Chinaman's back. This fashion was for a long time vigorously resisted by the inhabitants of southern China, though now regarded by all alike as one of the most sacred characteristics of the 'black-haired people.' … The subjugation of the empire by the Manchus was followed by a military occupation of the country, which has survived the original necessity, and is part of the system of government at the present day. Garrisons of Tartar troops were stationed at various important centres of population. … Those Tartar garrisons still occupy the same positions; and the descendants of the first battalions, with occasional reinforcements from Peking, live side by side and in perfect harmony with the strictly Chinese populations. These Bannermen, as they are called, may be known by their square, heavy faces, which contrast strongly with the sharper and more astute physiognomies of the Chinese. They speak the dialect of Peking, now recognised as the official language par excellence. They do not use their family or surnames—which belong rather to the clan than to the individual—but in order to conform to the requirements of Chinese life, the personal name is substituted. Their women do not compress their feet, and the female coiffure and dress are wholly Tartar in character. Intermarriage between the two races is not considered desirable, though instances are not unknown. In other respects, it is the old story of 'vida victrix;' the conquering Tartars have been themselves conquered by the people over whom they set themselves to rule. They have adopted the language, written and colloquial, of China. … Manchu, the language of the conquerors, is still kept alive at the Court of Peking. By a State fiction, it is supposed to be the language of the sovereign. … Eight emperors of this line have already occupied the throne, and 'become guests on high;' the ninth is yet [in 1882] a boy less than ten years of age. Of these eight, the second in every way fills the largest space in Chinese history. K'ang Hsi (or Kang Hi) reigned for sixty-one years. … Under the third Manchu Emperor, Yung Cheng [A. D. 1723-1736], began that violent persecution of the Catholics which has continued almost to the present day. The various sects—Jesuits, Dominicans, Franciscans—had been unable to agree about the Chinese equivalent for God, and the matter had been finally referred to the Pope. Another difficulty had arisen as to the toleration of ancestral worship by Chinese converts professing the Catholic faith. … As the Pope refused to permit the embodiment of this ancient custom with the ceremonies of the Catholic church, the new religion ceased to advance, and by-and-by fell into disrepute."

_H. A. Giles, Historic China, chapters 5-6._

ALSO IN _S. W. Williams, The Middle Kingdom, chapters 17, and 19-20 (volume 2)._

_C. Gutzlaff, Sketch of Chinese History, volume 1, chapter 16, volume 2._

_J. Ross, The Manchus._

_Abbé Hue, Christianity in China, volumes 2-3._

CHINA: A. D. 1839-1842. The Opium War with England. Treaty of Nanking. Opening of the Five Ports.

"The first Chinese war [of England] was in one sense directly attributable to the altered position of the East India Company after 1833. [See INDIA: A. D. 1823-1833.] Up to that year trade between England and China had been conducted in both countries on principles of strict monopoly. The Chinese trade was secured to the East India Company, and the English trade was confined to a company of merchants specially nominated for the purpose by the Emperor. The change of thought which produced the destruction of monopolies in England did not penetrate to the conservative atmosphere of the Celestial Empire, and, while the trade in one country was thrown open to everyone, trade in the other was still exclusively confined to the merchants nominated by the Chinese Government. These merchants, Hong merchants as they were called, traded separately, but were mutually liable for the dues to the Chinese Government and for their debts to the foreigners. Such conditions neither promoted the growth of trade nor the solvency of the traders; and, out of the thirteen Hong merchants in 1837, three or four were avowedly insolvent. (State Papers, volume 27, page 1310.) Such were the general conditions on which the trade was conducted. The most important article of trade was opium. The importation of opium into China had, indeed, been illegal since 1796. But the Chinese Government had made no stringent efforts to prohibit the trade, and a Select Committee of the House of Commons had declared that it was inadvisable to abandon an important source of revenue to the East India Company. (State Papers, volume 29, page 1020.) The opium trade consequently throve, and grew from 4,100 chests in 1796 to 30,000 chests in 1837, and the Chinese connived at or ignored the growing trade. (Ibid., p. 1019). … In 1837 the Chinese Government adopted a fresh policy. {422} It decided on rigourously stopping the trade at which it had previously tacitly connived. … Whether the Chinese Government was really shocked at the growing use of the drug and the consequences of its use, or whether it was alarmed at a drain of silver from China which disturbed what the political arithmeticians of England a hundred years before would have called the balance of trade, it undoubtedly determined to check the traffic by every means at its disposal. With this object it strengthened its force on the coast and sent Lin, a man of great energy, to Canton [March, 1839] with supreme authority. (State Papers, volume 29, page 934, and Autobiography of Sir H. Taylor, volume 1, appendix, page 343.) Before Lin's arrival cargoes of opium had been seized by the Custom House authorities. On his arrival Lin required both the Hong merchants and the Chinese merchants to deliver up all the opium in their possession in order that it might be destroyed. (State Papers, volume 29, page 936.) The interests of England in China were at that time entrusted to Charles Elliot. … But Elliot occupied a very difficult position in China. The Chinese placed on their communications to him the Chinese word 'Yu,' and wished him to place on his despatches to them the Chinese word 'Pin.' But Yu signifies a command, and Pin a humble address, and a British Plenipotentiary could not receive commands from, or humble himself before, Chinese officials. (State Papers, volume 29, pages 881, 886, 888.) And hence the communications between him and the Chinese Government were unable to follow a direct course, but were frequently or usually sent through the Hong merchants. Such was the state of things in China when Lin, arriving in Canton, insisted on the surrender and destruction of all the opium there. Elliot was at Macao. He at once decided on returning to the post of difficulty and danger; and, though Canton was blockaded by Chinese forces and its river guarded by Chinese batteries, he made his way up in a boat of H. M. S. 'Larne,' and threw himself among his imprisoned countrymen. After his arrival he took the responsibility of demanding the surrender into his own hands, for the service of his Government, of all the British opium in China, and he surrendered the opium which he thus obtained, amounting to 20,283 chests, to the Chinese authorities, by whom it was destroyed. (Ibid., pages 945, 967.) The imminent danger to the lives and properties of a large number of British subjects was undoubtedly removed by Elliot's action. Though some difficulty arose in connection with the surrender, Lin undertook gradually to relax the stringency of the measures which he had adopted (ibid., page 977), and Elliot hoped that his own zealous efforts to carry out the arrangement which he had made would lead to the raising of the blockade. He was, however, soon undeceived. On the 4th of April Lin required him, in conjunction with the merchants, to enter into a bond under which all vessels hereafter engaged in the opium traffic would have been confiscated to the Chinese Government, and all persons connected with the trade would 'suffer death at the hands of the Celestial Court.' (Ibid., page 989.) This bond Elliot steadily refused to sign (ibid., page 992); and feeling that 'all sense of security was broken to pieces' (ibid., page 978), he ordered all British subjects to leave Canton (ibid., page 1004), he himself withdrew to the Portuguese settlement at Macao (ibid., page 1007), and he wrote to Auckland, the Governor-General of India, for armed assistance. (Ibid., page 1009.) These grave events naturally created profound anxiety. A Select Committee of the House of Commons had formally declined to interfere with the trade. The opium monopoly at that time was worth some £1,000,000 or £1,500,000 a year to British India (ibid., page 1020); and India, engaged in war with Afghanistan and already involved in a serious deficit, could not afford to part with so large an amount of its revenue (ibid., page 1020). Nine-tenths of the British merchants in China were engaged in the illegal trade (ibid., page 1030), while Elliot, in enforcing the surrender of the opium, had given the merchants bonds on the British Government for its value, and the 20,000 chests surrendered were supposed to be worth from 600 to 1,200 dollars a chest (ibid., page 987), or say from £2,400,000 to £4,800,000. … As the summer advanced, moreover, a fresh outrage increased the intensity of the crisis. On the 7th July some British seamen landed near Hong Kong, and engaged in a serious riot. A native was unfortunately killed on the occasion, and though Elliot, at his own risk, gave the relations of the victim a large pecuniary compensation, and placed the men engaged in the riot on their trial, Lin was not satisfied. He moved down to the coast, cut off the supplies of British subjects, and threatened to stop the supplies to Macao if the Portuguese continued to assist the British. (Ibid., pages 1037-1039.) The British were in consequence forced to leave Macao; and about the same time a small schooner, the 'Black Joke,' was attacked by the Chinese, and a British subject on board of her seriously wounded. Soon afterwards, however, the arrival of a ship of war, the 'Volage,' in Chinese waters enabled Elliot to assume a bolder front. He returned to Macao; he even attempted to procure supplies from the mainland. But, though he succeeded in purchasing food, 'the Mandarin runners approached and obliged the natives to take back their provisions,' and Elliot, exasperated at their conduct, fired on some war junks of the Chinese, which returned the fire. A week afterwards Elliot declared the port and river of Canton to be in a state of blockade. (Ibid., page 1066.) The commencement of the blockade, however, did not lead to immediate war. On the contrary, the Chinese showed considerable desire to avert hostilities. They insisted, indeed, that some British sailor must be surrendered to them to suffer for the death of the Chinaman who had fallen in the riot of Hong Kong. But they showed so much anxiety to conclude an arrangement on this point that they endeavoured to induce Elliot to declare that a sailor who was accidentally drowned in Chinese waters, and whose body they had found, was the actual murderer. (State Papers, volume 30, page 27.) And in the meanwhile the trade which Lin had intended to destroy went on at least as actively as ever. Lin's proceedings had, indeed, the effect of stimulating it to an unprecedented degree. The destruction of vast stores of opium led to a rise in the price of opium in China. The rise in price produced the natural consequence of an increased speculation; and, though British shipping was excluded from Chinese waters, and the contents of British vessels had to be transferred to American bottoms for conveyance into Chinese ports, British trade had never been so large or so advantageous as in the period which succeeded Lin's arbitrary proceedings. {423} Elliot was, of course, unable to prevent war either by the surrender of a British sailor to the Chinese, or by even assuming that a drowned man was the murderer; and war in consequence became daily more probable. In January, 1840, operations actually commenced. Elliot was instructed to make an armed demonstration on the northern coasts of China, to take possession of some island on the coast, and to obtain reparation and indemnity, if possible by a mere display of force, but otherwise to proceed with the squadron and thence send an ultimatum to Pekin. In accordance with these orders the Island of Chusan was occupied in July, and the fleet was sent to the mouth of the Peiho with orders to transmit a letter to Pekin. But the sea off the Peiho is shallow, the ships could not approach the coasts, and the Chinese naturally refused to yield to an empty demonstration. The expedition was forced to return to Chusan, where it found that the troops whom they had left behind were smitten by disease, that one out of every four men were dead, and that more than one-half of the survivors were invalided. Thus, throughout 1840, the Chinese war was only attended with disaster and distress. Things commenced a little more prosperously in 1841 by the capture of the Chinese position at the mouth of the Canton river. Elliot, after this success, was even able to conclude a preliminary treaty with the Chinese authorities. But this treaty did not prove satisfactory either to the British Government or to the Chinese. The British saw with dismay that the treaty made no mention of the trade in opium which had been the ostensible cause of the war. The Whig Government accordingly decided on superseding Elliot. He was recalled and replaced by Henry Pottinger. Before news of his recall reached him, however, the treaty which had led to his supersession had been disavowed by the Chinese authorities, and Elliot had commenced a fresh attack on the Chinese force which guarded the road to Canton. British sailors and British troops, under the command of Bremer and Gough, won a victory which placed Canton at their mercy. But Elliot, shrinking from exposing a great town to the horrors of an assault, stopped the advance of the troops and admitted the city to a ransom of £1,250,000. (Sir H. Taylor's Autobiography, volume 1, appendix, pages 353-363.) His moderation was naturally unacceptable to the troops and not entirely approved by the British Government. It constituted, however, Elliot's last action as agent in China. The subsequent operations were conducted under Pottinger's advice."

_S. Walpole, History of England from 1815, Note, volume 5, pages 287-291._

"Sir Henry Pottinger, who arrived as Plenipotentiary on the 10th of August, took the chief direction of the affairs. … To the end of 1841 there were various successes achieved by the land and naval forces, which gave the British possession of many large fortified towns, amongst which were Amoy, Ting-hai, Chin-hai, Ning-po, and Shang-hai. The Chinese were nevertheless persevering in their resistance, and in most cases evinced a bravery which showed how mistaken were the views which regarded the subjection of this extraordinary people as an easy task. … The British fleet on the 13th of June [1842] entered the great river Kiang, and on the 6th of July advanced up the river, and cut off its communication with the Grand Canal, by which Nanking, the ancient capital of China, was supplied with grain. The point where the river intersects the canal is the city of Chin-Kiang-foo. … On the morning of the 21st the city was stormed by the British, in three brigades. The resistance of the Tartar troops was most desperate. Our troops fought under a burning sun, whose overpowering heat caused some to fall dead. The obstinate defence of the place prevented its being taken till six o'clock in the evening. When the streets were entered, the houses were found almost deserted. They were filled with ghastly corpses, many of the Tartar soldiers having destroyed their families and then committed suicide. The city, from the number of the dead, had become uninhabitable."

_C. Knight, Popular History of England, volume 8, chapter 25._

"The destruction of life was appalling. … Every Manchu preferred resistance, death, suicide, or flight, to surrender. Out of a Manchu population of 4,000, it was estimated that not more than 500 survived, the greater part having perished by their own hands. … Within twenty-four hours after the troops landed, the city and suburbs of Chinkiang were a mass of ruin and destruction. … The total loss of the English was 37 killed and 131 wounded. … Some of the large ships were towed up to Nanking, and the whole fleet reached it August 9th, at which time preparations had been made for the assault. … Everything was ready for the assault by daylight of August 15th;" but on the night of the 14th the Chinese made overtures for the negotiation of peace, and the important Treaty of Nanking was soon afterwards concluded. Its terms were as follows: "1. Lasting peace between the two nations. 2. The ports of Canton, Amoy, Fuhchau, Ningpo, and Shanghai [known afterwards as the Treaty Ports] to be opened to British trade and residence, and trade conducted according to a well-understood tariff. 3. 'It being obviously necessary and desirable that British subjects should have some port whereat they may careen and refit their ships when required,' the island of Hongkong to be ceded to her Majesty. 4. Six millions of dollars to be paid as the value of the opium which was delivered up 'as a ransom for the lives of H. B. M. Superintendent and subjects,' in March, 1839. 5. Three millions of dollars to be paid for the debts due to British merchants. 6. Twelve millions to be paid for the expenses incurred in the expedition sent out 'to obtain redress for the violent and unjust proceedings of the Chinese high authorities.' 7. The entire amount of $21,000,000 to be paid before December 31, 1845. 8. All prisoners of war to be immediately released by the Chinese. 9. The Emperor to grant full and entire amnesty to those of his subjects who had aided the British." Articles 10 to 13 related to the tariff of export and import dues that should be levied at the open ports; to future terms of official correspondence, etc. The Treaty was signed by the Commissioners on the 29th of August, 1842, and the Emperor's ratification was received September 15th.

_S. W. Williams, The Middle Kingdom, chapters 22-23._

ALSO IN _D. C. Boulger, History of China, volume 3, chapters 5-7._

_E. H. Parker, Chinese Account of the Opium War._

{424}

CHINA: A. D. 1850-1864. The Taiping Rebellion.

"The phrase 'Taiping Rebellion is wholly of foreign manufacture; at Peking and everywhere among those loyal to the government the insurgents were styled 'Chang-mao tseh,' or 'Long-haired rebels,' while on their side, by a whimsical resemblance to English slang, the imperialists were dubbed 'imps.' When the chiefs assumed to be aiming at independence in 1850, in order to identify their followers with their cause they took the term 'Ping Chao,' or 'Peace Dynasty,' as the style of their sway, to distinguish it from the 'Tsing Chao,' or 'Pure Dynasty' of the Manchus. Each of them prefixed the adjective 'Ta' (or 'Tai,' in Cantonese), 'Great,' as is the Chinese custom with regard to dynasties and nations; thus the name Tai-ping became known to foreigners."

_S. W. Williams, The Middle Kingdom, chapter 24 (volume 2)._