HISTORY
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where the British community could live free from the pressure Lin had used.
An expeditionary force arrived in June 1840 with orders to support these demands by the enforcement of measures directed against China's economy. Negotiations between Elliot, the British plenipotentiary, and the Keshen, the Manchu commissioner who replaced Lin after the latter had been exiled in disgrace, resulted in an agreement over the preliminaries of a treaty, the Convention of Chuenpi, on January 20, 1841. By it Hong Kong was to be ceded, and on the 26th January the island was formally occupied by a naval party, and a few days later Elliot proclaimed it a British Colony.
THE ISLAND COLONY, 1841-60
Neither side accepted the Chuenpi terms. The cession of an island aroused shame and anger among the Cantonese, and the strength of the war party at Court forced the Emperor to continue hostilities. The unfortunate Keshen was arrested and sent to Peking in chains. Palmerston was equally annoyed and recalled Elliot for accepting terms which were more lenient than he had been told to demand. Palmerston was in any case dissatisfied with Hong Kong, which he contemptuously described as a 'barren island with hardly a house upon it', and refused to accept it as the island station which was to be demanded as an alternative to a com- mercial treaty. Elliot's successor, Sir Henry Pottinger, who arrived at Macau in August 1841, renewed hostilities with resolution and by the following August, when British troops were threatening to assault Nanking, brought the war to a close by the Treaty of Nanking. Under it Hong Kong was ceded to the British Crown, 'it being obviously necessary and desirable that British subjects should have some port whereat they may careen and refit their ships....', and four additional ports on the mainland were opened to trade.
Pottinger had visited the island during the winter of 1841-42 and found so much evidence of progress since its occupation that he determined to retain it in spite of Palmerston's strictures. In June 1843, after the Treaty had been ratified by both countries, Hong Kong was declared a British Colony, and the name 'Victoria' was conferred upon the settlement; the main thoroughfare on the