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concerning the Opium Question and have come to the conclusion that we have no right to date the present eruption to that cause, as we have been insulted, our Trade interfered with, and British subjects have been maltreated long before Opium was mentioned and we have only been too tardy in seeking redress.” Letter of August 21st 1840 from Chusan, from “An Artillery Officer in China, 1840-1842”, Blackwood's, 1964, p. 80.
"The Cree Journals, The Voyages of Edward H. Cree, Surgeon R.N., as Related in his Private Journals, 1837-1856 Edited and with an Introduction by Michael Levien. (Exeter, Webb & Bower, 1981), p. 117.
12
As, e.g. in Bingham, op.cit., Vol.I, p. 187: "Captain Elliot assured the Chinese, by proclamations in their language, that no harm was intended to the peaceable inhabitants by the present expedition; that it was caused by Lin's bad treatment of the English; and that the force would only act against the mandarins, officers, and soldiers of the government."
13 Bingham, Vol.II, p.171, and Jack Beeching, The Chinese Opium Wars (Hutchinson of London, 1975), p.129.
14 Beeching, p.149. They had done the same in Lower Burma in 1824-26 (George Bruce, The Burma Wars 1824-1886 (London, Hart-Davis, MacGibbon, 1973) pp.33-35.
15 See Michael Howard, George J. Andreopoulos and Mark R. Sheridan (Eds), The Laws of War, Constraints on Warfare in the Western World (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1994), chapter 6, "The Age of Napoleon”, in which Gunther Rothenberg wrote (p.97) that "Professional soldiers were well aware of the laws and customs of war between civilized states, and by and large observed them,” and that despite atrocities and violations, their "basic existence and validity” were never challenged.
16 The most notable example being the firing of a salute of minute guns by the flagship, HMS Blenheim, when Admiral Kuan's body was recovered by his family after the battle of the Bogue in January 1841: see Bingham, Vol.II, p. 151, and Beeching, p. 128.
18
Beeching, pp. 147, 151. Wyndham Baker in Blackwood's p.79. By way of comment he added, “The