ENG-1971 — Page 308

226

HISTORY

safety, took refuge on board ship in Hong Kong harbour in the summer of 1839.

Lord Palmerston, the Foreign Secretary, decided that the time had come for a settlement of Sino-British commercial relations. Arguing that, in surrendering the opium, the British in Canton had been forced to ransom their lives, he demanded either a commercial treaty which would put trade relations on a satisfactory footing, or the cession of a small island where the British could live free from threats under their own flag. An expeditionary force arrived in June 1840 to back these demands and thus began the so-called First Opium War, 1840-2. Hostilities alternated with negotiations until agreement was reached between Elliot and Keshen, the new Manchu Commissioner who had replaced Lin after the latter's exile in dis- grace, over the preliminaries of a treaty. Under the convention of Chuenpi, on January 20, 1841, Hong Kong Island was ceded to Britain. A naval landing party hoisted the flag at Possession Point on January 26, 1841, and Elliot proclaimed Hong Kong a British Colony; in June he sold plots of land and settlement began.

Neither side accepted the Chuenpi terms. The cession of a part of China aroused shame and anger among the Chinese, and the unfortunate Keshen was ordered to Peking in chains. Palmerston was equally 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 had been demanded as an alternative to a commercial treaty. 'You have treated my instructions as if they were waste paper' he told Elliot in a magisterial rebuke, and replaced him by Sir Henry Pottinger who arrived in August 1841. The latter conducted hostilities with determination. Twelve months later, in August 1842, after pushing up the Yangtze River and threatening to assault Nanking, he brought the hostilities to an end by the Treaty of Nanking on August 29, 1842. In the mean- time, the Whig Government in England had fallen and in 1841 the new Tory Foreign Secretary, Lord Aberdeen, issued revised instruc- tions to Pottinger, dropping the demand for an island. Pottinger, who had returned to Hong Kong during the winter lull in the campaign, was pleased with the progress of the new settlement and, in the Treaty of Nanking, deviated from his instructions by success- fully demanding both a treaty and an island, thus securing Hong Kong. In addition, five Chinese ports, including Canton, were opened for trade. The commercial treaty was embodied in the supplementary Treaty of the Bogue in October 1843 by which the Chinese were allowed free access to the island for trading purposes.