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had already departed. Of the original allied commissioners, only Harry Parkes was still there for the final ceremony which included a tri-national group of Chinese, French, and British dignitaries.
If the allied occupation of Canton was not as uneventful as some historical accounts record, it nevertheless had very successful elements to it and may have had an influential impact on future Sino-European relations. At least two employees of the Allied Commission, Robert Hart and Prosper Giquel, both young men at the time, went on to play major roles in future Sino-European co-operative ventures later in the century, Robert Hart as the famous director of the Chinese Maritime Customs Service and Prosper Giquel as the future European Director of the Foochow Dockyard and eventually head of several Sino-European Educational Missions of the 1870s and 1880s. That their earlier experiences had been in the somewhat more co-operative world of the Sino-European police forces and the Sino-European coolie emigration inspection teams is certainly likely to have proved significant in the careers of these two men who were later so much more able than most of their countrymen to work with the Chinese on an equal basis.
NOTES
Abbreviations
AE Archives de la Ministère des Affaires Etrangères
CCC Correspondence consulaire et commerciale
CP Correspondence politique, Chine
Armee Les Archives de l'Armee de Terre, Vincennes
FO British Foreign Office
PRO British Public Record Office
SHM Service Historique de la Marine, Vincennes
AN Archives Nationales
Ranbir Vohra, China's Path To Modernization: A Historical Review from 1800 to the Present (New Jersey, Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1987) citing Christopher Hibbert, The Dragon Awakes. China and the West 1793-1911 (N.Y., Harper and Row, 1970), p. 229.
2 Douglas Hurd, The Arrow War, Anglo-Chinese Confusion 1856-1860 (New York: Macmillan Company, 1967), pp. 121-125 and Immanuel C.Y. Hsu, The Rise of Modern China, 3rd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), p. 121-125.