100
Meanwhile two abortive attempts had been made to establish official relations with China-by Lord Macartney in 1793 and by Lord Amherst in 1816. The separate trends which British intercourse with China had hitherto taken-the activity of the East India Company, whose monopoly expired. in 1831, and the unsuccessful official missions-were united in 1834 by the arrival of Lord Napier in Canton as His Majesty's Chief Superintendent of Trade.
Lord Napier's efforts at improving relations with the Chinese authorities for the benefit of British trade resulted in conspicuous failure and he died in Macao in October, 1834. Captain Elliot, R.N., succeeded him as Chief Superintendent and for five years negotiations were intermittently continued while the position of the British merchants became more and more difficult. The ultimate result of this protracted period of undeclared hostilities was the withdrawal of British mer- chant ships to Hong Kong Bay, a blockade of the Canton River in 1840 and the peaceful occupation of Hong Kong Island in January, 1841.
The cession of the island to the British Crown was con- firmed by the Treaty of Nanking in August, 1842. The Convention of Peking of 1860 added the Kowloon Peninsula and Stonecutters Island to the Crown Colony and under a further Convention of Peking, signed in 1898, the area known as the New Territories, including Mirs Bay and Deep Bay, was leased to Great Britain for a period of ninety-nine years.
a
Almost a century of uninterrupted peaceful development followed the Treaty of Nanking. One of the world's greatest harbours grew up naturally in the Colony's enclosed waters; the freedom of the port and the freedom of entrance and egress for all persons of Chinese race were preserved in accordance with a policy which ensured for the Colony the role of entrepôt both for the trade and for the labour of China's southern provinces; reclamation, afforestation, network of motor roads cut into the hills, public health administration and anti-malarial measures combined with the steady and natural growth of the city itself to present to the ocean-going ships which lay in the harbour in 1941 a picture very different from that which met the first reluctant pioneers when they explored the inhospitable hills in peril from the indigenous pirates. The rich interior of China was connected by railway with the wharves and warehouses built for the world's shipping; schools and a university were established; Chinese, European and American air lines met in the Colony's airport; shipyards which could build the hulls of 10,000 ton ships and docks able to accommodate the world's largest liners were constructed; light industries were born and thrived. Less tangible, the Colony became known as an impartial refuge during the internecine strife which ensued in China after the inauguration of the Chinese Republic in 1911 and, later, when China was attacked by Japan.