AS WE HAVE SEEN, the expansion of contraband opium imports to China progressed without the Chinese government managing to take effective countermeasures. Wherever the British considered such steps hostile to their own ends, they immediately responded with armed force.
On 8 October 1856 the British used the so-called Arrow Incident to bolster their position in China. The Arrow was a Chinese ship registered in Hong Kong and flying the British flag. Chinese authorities had reason to suspect that the ship was smuggling opium into China. When the Arrow sailed to the Pearl River headed for Canton, the Chinese coastguard intercepted it and detained the twelve-man Chinese crew. At the time the British consul in Canton, Rutherford Alcock, was absent and was represented by Harry Parkes as acting consul. Parkes had travelled to England in 1841 to work there as a translator. That year he was appointed first secretary and translator to Sir Henry Pottinger, the British plenipotentiary for trade with China.
With the First Opium War having already broken out, Parkes quickly became involved in the hostilities. He changed positions to work as translator for Alcock in Fuzhou and survived an attack by stone-throwing Chinese soldiers. This coincided with negotiations with the provincial government over restitution for damages that a local revolt had caused to British property in the port city. In 1848 Parkes accompanied the vice consul in Shanghai to Nanjing to set the terms of punishment for Chinese who had attacked three British missionaries in Qingpu. After a period back in Britain Parkes began work in 1851 as an interpreter in the port city of Amoy. That same year he was transferred to Canton and, as British consul in Canton, was again sent to Amoy. After negotiating a treaty between Britain and Siam in 1855 Parkes returned to Canton, where he became involved in the Arrow Incident.
Parkes had remained in close contact with the Chinese for years and was thoroughly versed in Sino-British relations. He spoke fluent Chinese (and Japanese) and regularly communicated with the Chinese governor-general of Canton, Ye Mingchen. The outbreak of the Second Opium War resulted from deliberate British manipulation of an incident that could have been resolved with far less effort – had the British side not been looking for an excuse to commence hostilities and pursue its interests in China even more intensively.
After the Chinese crew of the Arrow had been arrested, Parkes sent the Chinese governor-general a letter of protest, pointing out that the hauling in of the British flag by Chinese troops constituted an insult. Ye Mingchen replied that the Arrow was Chinese-owned and was not even flying the British flag at the time. Parkes then reported the incident to the British governor of Hong Kong, Sir John Bowring, portraying it as a violation of the rights guaranteed to the British by the Treaty of Nanjing, including respect for the British flag. As Ye Mingchen refused to apologize or make amendments, on 29 October 1856 the Royal Navy bombarded the city walls of Canton. Parkes entered the city with the commanding admiral and occupied Ye Mingcheis office building. Soon afterwards Chinese forces torched European representations outside Canton. As the available British forces were inadequate to permanently occupy Canton, they retreated. Reinforcements for the main campaign arrived in November 1857. The British also secured the support of France, the U.S. and Russia. Only the French, however, were willing to send troops.
The death of a French missionary, Auguste Chapdelaine, gave the French a plausible reason to take up arms. Born in La-Rochelle-Normande in 1814, Chapdelaine came to China in 1852. Two years later, in December 1854, he was arrested within days of arriving in a small town in Guangxi province, where he and some 300 Chinese converts celebrated a Catholic mass. He was released three weeks later and left the region after receiving threats. Only a year later did he return to Guangxi. There he was reported by a relative of a newly converted Chinese person, arrested, severely beaten and then locked inside an iron cage that hung at the entrance to the local prison. He died inside the cage and was posthumously beheaded. In 2000 Pope John Paul II canonized Chapdelaine, together with Chinese martyrs who had been killed because of their faith.
Chapdelaine’s fate caused the outrage required in France for that country to support the British in the Second Opium War, as it became known. In 1857 the allied troops took Canton without notable resistance. They were helped by the civil war in the country that tied up the government’s forces. The campaign was set in motion on 12 December 1857 by a delegation that issued an ultimatum to the officials of the governor-general of Canton. When no response was forthcoming, the British commenced bombarding Canton on 28 December. The next day they breached the city walls. On 5 January reinforced units penetrated inside the city. Parkes personally led a unit of marines who took Ye Mingchen prisoner. Four days later, on 9 January, the Chinese consul was reinstated to his office, but actual power rested with two Europeans, Parkes and a French marine officer. As only Parkes could speak Chinese, the administration of Canton was effectively solely in his hands. The two European states established a court, founded a police unit and opened the port on 10 February, thereby attaining the first goal of the campaign.
After the opening of Canton the British and French forces moved north, taking the Dagu Forts near Tianjin in 1858. During preparations to march on the capital, Beijing, the Chinese side dispatched negotiators who eventually produced the Treaty of Tianjin, in which the U.S. and Russia were also included. The treaty’s key provision was the opening of (initially) ten additional ‘treaty ports’ to foreign trade. The Treaty of Nanjing, the first ‘Unequal Treaty’ that ended the First Opium War, had secured the opening of five ports – Fuzhou, Canton, Ningbo, Shanghai and Amoy – to trade with foreigners. Now, after the Second Opium War, this second Unequal Treaty created ten additional treaty ports, including Nanjing on the mainland and Taiwan.
When hunting pirates, British ships would now be permitted to enter any Chinese port. Foreigners’ freedom of movement was extended to within a 50-km radius of each treaty port. And finally, from the British viewpoint, the Chinese government legalized the importation of opium under the irrelevant conditions that it be sold exclusively in port areas and with a certain import tariff included in the price.
The British also made sure that their standard weights and measures would be used in the ports and customs offices, and that English was introduced as the official language of commerce. Insulting or condescending characterizations of the British would be banned in Chinese documents. Diplomatic relations were officially established and Christian missionary work permitted without restrictions. A large financial indemnity paid to Britain and France rounded off the treaty’s terms.10 The British pledged in return to pull their troops out of Tianjin and evacuate the destroyed Dagu Forts.
For a time the Chinese government refused to ratify the document, after which the British and their French allies again bombarded the Dagu Forts. The Chinese resistance was stiffer than expected and caused heavy casualties among the allied troops, making reinforcements necessary. A British-Indian force of 11,000 and 6,700 French troops assembled at Hong Kong and sailed north. On 1 August they landed near Peitang. The fortifications there had been abandoned and the force advanced on the Dagu Forts.
Parkes led the capitulation talks with the quickly defeated Chinese in Dagu and, on 24 August, reached Tianjin, where he opened talks with Chinese representatives. When it became clear that these did not have the expected authority of the emperor, the allied troops continued their advance. Parkes raced ahead of them to negotiate with the authorities in Tongzhou. The two sides agreed to meet in an area where the British were to set up their camp, about 8 km outside the city. Parkes had himself led to the spot and saw that, in violation of the just-agreed terms, Chinese troops were assembling there. A second round of talks in Tongzhou ended without result and Parkes set out to return to the British headquarters with his delegation.
Although the group flew the appropriate flags to identify itself as a negotiating team, it was captured and taken to the Manchu general, who ordered Parkes, a private secretary of Lord Elgin called Henry Loch and three others (two Frenchmen and a Sikh) to be handed over to Beijing. There they were brought before a criminal court, placed in shackles and tortured. Several days later, one of the emperor’s sons, a Prince Gong, had Parkes and Loch taken to more comfortable quarters. There he pressured them to support Chinese interests among the British commanders. Parkes refused to make any pledges. On 8 October the Chinese set Parkes free. The emperor’s order to execute him and his delegation arrived shortly afterwards, too late. The Chinese placed a large bounty on his capture but there would be no more opportunities. Parkes took part in other campaigns in China and in talks with the Taiping rebels. He ended his career in Japan, where he survived several assassination attempts after drawing the ire of conservative elements for uncompromisingly supporting reformers during the Meiji Period.
After Parkes’s fortunate release the allied forces advanced on Beijing, which they captured on 6 October. Ever since the Treaty of Tianjin had been signed, a corps of 30 British and French envoys had been stationed in the Chinese capital to pave the way for the establishment of diplomatic relations. Emperor Xianfeng ordered that these men should also be arrested and tortured. Thirteen Britons and seven French were killed. This atrocity prompted the Anglo-French force to move on the Old Summer Palace northeast of Beijing. The British commander, Lord Elgin, ordered that one of the biggest and most impressive complexes of buildings from China’s later imperial period be pillaged and then razed to the ground.
Construction of the complex had begun in 1709. All subsequent emperors had expanded the site. Their designs were the first example of attempts to blend European and Chinese design elements on an increasingly vast scale. At its peak the palace consisted of 140 buildings on 350 hectares (more than 860 acres). Inspiration had come from the Jesuit priests, the painter Castiglione and other European scientists and artists who stayed in Beijing over the shorter or longer term. Exquisite gardens and an extraordinarily well-endowed library were attached to this huge complex. The destruction wrought by Elgin’s troops and the irretrievable loss of cultural treasures cannot be adequately described in words. One notable fact was that the French co-commander General Montauban, disgusted by what he saw, refused to take part in the orgy of destruction.
As a trophy from his plunder, Elgin returned to Britain the precious clocks that Lord Macartney had given to the Emperor Qianlong as a gift from George III. The extent of public approval of this utterly imperialist war was shown by the name of the Pekinese dog presented as a gift to Queen Victoria from an officer who, having found it running stray in the Summer Palace, surmised it had been the emperor’s lapdog. Delighted, the queen accepted the gift and named the animal ‘Looty’.11
The Chinese Emperor Xianfeng had fled north ahead of Elgin’s advancing forces. There he had little choice but to agree to the new peace conditions. The British had taken advantage of China’s helpless position to expand the ‘Convention of Beijing’ from 18 October 1860 to include the opening of an eleventh treaty port, Tianjin, additional war reparations payments and territorial concessions in favour of Britain on the Kowloon Peninsula. The British and French secured the right to use Chinese workers in their colonies. The reparations, previously totalling 6 million taels, were expanded to 8 million silver taels each for Britain and France. When the Chinese consented to these conditions, the British and French pulled out of Beijing.12
Eight years later, voices were raised in Britain that sought to place the country’s dealings with China on more equitable foundations. A British emissary, Rutherford Alcock, negotiated a modification of the 1858 treaty with the Chinese. Yet Parliament saw little sense in such gestures and refused to approve the text.