this stage Hong Kong was only one of several suggested sites (among them Taiwan). Hong Kong was ultimately chosen because it was so close to Canton, and became in effect the British base during the Opium War. It was also an exceptionally good
e during typhoons.
Since the central role of opium in Britain's general aggression against the people of China and in the seizure of Hong Kong specifically tends to be glossed over as some kind of picturesque irrelevancy, aberrant and short-lived (it is frequently al- leged), it is perhaps worth insisting on it. Already by 1830 the export of opium to China from warehouses belonging to the East Company of India paid both for England's tea imports from China and for English cotton exports sold to India, as well as for a considerable part of the Indian administration. In 1830 the Audi- tor General of the East India Company stated flatly: "India does entirely depend on the profits of the China trade". Suggestions that Britain was somehow offici- ally against the opium trade are quite untenable. The opium business was crucial to the economy of British colonialism in Asia. Official participation in the Shang- hai Opium Combine until 1917 and the fact that the opium trade in British Bor- neo, as in Hong Kong, was run by the colonial régime before the Second World War would indicate at least a lack of dynamism on London's part in eliminating traffic in this particular commodity."
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The small island acquired by Britain in 1842 was of little intrinsic value. But it was a good naval and trading base for lucrative operations and, above all, it was British-controlled. During the early years of British rule over Hong Kong, while the silk and tea trade remained at Canton, a Treaty Port (i.e. a port where non- Chinese were allowed to engage in certain commercial activities), Hong Kong at- tracted only limited business, mostly in the opium sector. In 1845 80 opium clip- pers unloaded in Hong Kong harbour where the greater security of the warehous- ing lowered insurance costs considerably.
The second part of the colony was acquired in 1860 after a British force under Lord Elgin had invaded Peking, looted the Forbidden City and burnt down the Summer Palace. At the time the Chinese central government, under the Manchu monarchy, was severely strained resisting a major revolutionary uprising, the Taiping Rebellion. The new area acquired by Britain was made up of the tip of the mainland opposite Hong Kong, Kowloon Peninsula and the main island adja- cent to the peninsula, Stonecutters' Island. In spite of some ambiguity in the wording, it seems that Kowloon Peninsula and Stonecutters' Island were,
like Hong Kong, ceded outright.
The third stage of the seizure came in the wake of the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95. Japan's victory in the war helped accelerate a new scramble for con- cessions in China. Britain at this point secured a dɔminant position in the richest part of China, the Yangtze Valley, plus a 99-year lease on the hinterland of Kowloon in Sun On County of Kwangtung Province - the area now known as the New Territories. A number of surrounding islands were also acquired at the same time under the same terms. The lease on the New Territories expires in 1997, covering 366 of the Crown Colony's 400 square miles. Within the area leased in 1898 China technically retained sovereignty over one small enclave, the walled city of Kowloon.
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