The Treaty Ports of China and the British Empire

The treaty-port system was, for the century between 1842 and 1943, the constitutional foundation of the British commercial presence in China. The system was established by force in the First Opium War (1839–42), refined by force in the Second Opium War (1856–60), and dismantled in the conditions of the Second World War. The 1943 Sino-British Treaty, signed in Chongqing on 11 January 1943, formally relinquished the British extraterritorial rights. The 1949 Communist victory completed the political withdrawal. Robert Bickers’s The Scramble for China (2011) is the indispensable single-volume account. Henrietta Harrison’s The Perils of Interpreting (2021) and Bryna Goodman’s Native Place, City, and Nation (1995) provide the social and political history. Hans van de Ven’s Breaking with the Past (1991) describes the wartime conditions of the treaty-port system.

The Canton System

The British commercial presence in China was, between 1757 and 1842, conducted through the Canton system. The system required that all foreign trade with China be conducted at the single port of Canton (Guangzhou), and only through the Cohong, a guild of Chinese merchants licensed by the imperial government. The system was, in formal terms, a system of European exclusion: the 1757 edict of the Qianlong Emperor restricted European trade to the single port of Canton, and the 1760 regulations of the Canton authorities restricted the European merchants to the Thirteen Factories (十三行) of the Cohong quarter. The system was, in commercial terms, a system of substantial European dependence on the Chinese mercantile and credit system: the European merchants could not trade except through the Cohong brokers, and the Cohong brokers could not extend credit to the Europeans except through the Hong merchants.

The British did not break the system. They worked around it. The British East India Company, the principal European trader in the Canton market, exported tea, silk, and porcelain to Britain; the Company imported to China British manufactures, Indian cotton, and — increasingly — opium from the Bengal poppy. The 1773 monopoly of the British East India Company over the Bengal opium, the 1797 East India Company monopoly over the Malwa opium, and the 1820s expansion of the opium trade to the private British traders after the 1813 Charter Act produced the conditions for the Opium Wars. The 1833 Charter Act, which ended the East India Company’s monopoly on the British trade with China, was the institutional moment the British private opium traders took over the trade.

The First Opium War and the Treaty of Nanking

The 1839 First Opium War was, in the conventional British historiography, the moment the British state used military force to compel the Qing government to relax the Canton system. The 1839 appointment of Lin Zexu as Imperial Commissioner, the 1839 confiscation of British opium at Canton, the 1839 declaration of war, the 1840 British naval expedition, the 1840 capture of the Zhoushan Islands, and the 1841 capture of the Bogue forts were the military moments. The 1842 Treaty of Nanking, signed on 29 August 1842 aboard HMS Cornwallis in the Yangtze, was the political moment.

The Treaty of Nanking opened five Chinese ports to British trade — Canton, Amoy (Xiamen), Foochow (Fuzhou), Ningpo (Ningbo), and Shanghai — and ceded Hong Kong Island to the British Crown “in perpetuity.” The Treaty established the principle of extraterritoriality, by which British subjects accused of crimes in China were tried in British consular courts under British law. The Treaty imposed an indemnity of $21 million on the Qing government, of which $6 million was for the confiscated opium. The 1843 supplementary Treaty of the Bogue established the most-favoured-nation principle, by which any commercial privilege the Qing granted to a third power would be automatically extended to the British. The 1844 Treaty of Whampoa, between France and the Qing, applied the most-favoured-nation principle to the French. The 1844 Treaty of Wanghia, between the United States and the Qing, applied the principle to the Americans. By 1844, the treaty-port system was the system of Western relations with China.

The Shanghai International Settlement

The Shanghai International Settlement, established in 1843 as a British settlement, was the principal British commercial enclave in China. The 1843 Land Regulations, the 1844 opening of the settlement to American residence, the 1854 establishment of the Shanghai Municipal Council, and the 1863 merger of the British and American settlements into the International Settlement were the institutional moments. The Settlement covered some 22 square kilometres by 1900, with a population of 345,000 Chinese and 6,000 foreigners. The Settlement was governed by the Shanghai Municipal Council, a body of foreign residents elected by the ratepayers, with the British maintaining the dominant position through the 1930s. The Settlement’s police force, the Shanghai Municipal Police, was the largest foreign-controlled police force in the world.

The Settlement was the commercial core of the British presence in China. The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC), founded in 1865 by the British merchant Thomas Sutherland, was the principal British bank in the Settlement. The British trading houses — Jardine Matheson, Swire, Butterfield & Swire, and the American firm of Russell & Co. — were the principal British commercial actors. The Settlement’s commercial life is the subject of the political economy of the 1930s and 1940s, and of the post-1949 retrospective histories. The Japanese 1937 occupation of the Settlement, the 1941 occupation of the International Settlement after Pearl Harbor, and the 1943 surrender of the Settlement to the Wang Jingwei government completed the wartime dispossession. The 1943 Sino-British Treaty, signed in Chongqing in January 1943, formally relinquished the British extraterritorial rights in China. The 1946 American and French renunciations completed the Western withdrawal.

The Second Opium War and the Treaty of Tientsin

The 1856 Second Opium War was, in the British historiography, the moment the British state used military force to extend the treaty-port system. The 1856 Arrow incident, the 1856 French alliance, the 1857 capture of Canton, the 1858 capture of the Taku Forts, and the 1858 Treaty of Tientsin were the moments. The 1858 Treaty, signed on 26 June 1858, opened eleven more Chinese ports to British trade, established the right of British diplomatic representatives to reside in Beijing, and legalised the opium trade. The 1860 Convention of Peking, signed on 24 October 1860, ceded the Kowloon Peninsula to the British Crown, and imposed an indemnity of $8 million. The 1860 burning of the Summer Palace, by the British and French forces, was the symbolic moment of the European punitive expedition.

The 1860 settlement, the 1895 Treaty of Shimonoseki, the 1895 Japanese takeover of the Korean tributary relationship, and the 1898 British lease of the New Territories of Hong Kong extended the treaty-port system. The 1900 Boxer Rebellion, in which the anti-foreign movement laid siege to the Beijing Legation Quarter and threatened the foreign settlements at Tianjin and other cities, was the moment the system was defended. The 1901 Boxer Protocol, signed on 7 September 1901, imposed an indemnity of $333 million, of which the British share was 11.25 per cent, established the right of foreign troops to be stationed in Beijing, and confirmed the right of foreign powers to maintain their treaty-port settlements. The 1943 Sino-British Treaty, by which the British government formally relinquished its extraterritorial rights in China, was the political settlement of the system.

A Primary Source: The 1842 Treaty of Nanking

The 1842 Treaty of Nanking contains the following provision on the opening of treaty ports: “The Island of Hong Kong to be possessed in perpetuity by Her Britannic Majesty, Her heirs and successors, and to be governed by such laws and regulations as Her Majesty the Queen of Great Britain and Ireland shall, from time to time, see fit to direct. … The five ports of Canton, Amoy, Foochow, Ningpo, and Shanghai shall be thrown open to British commerce, and British merchants shall be allowed to reside and trade at the said ports, under such regulations as shall be hereafter agreed upon.” The passage is the founding document of the modern British commercial presence in China.

Historiographical Note

The historiography of the treaty-port system has been transformed, since the 1960s, by three interventions. John King Fairbank’s Trade and Diplomacy on the China Coast (1953) and Albert Feuerwerker’s The Foreign Establishment in China in the Early 19th Century (1976) produced the classical diplomatic history. Robert Bickers’s The Scramble for China (2011) and his Empire Made Me (2003) re-framed the period as a story of the political, social, and cultural construction of the foreign presence. Henrietta Harrison, Bryna Goodman, and Hans van de Ven produced the social history. The unresolved question is the weight to assign to the British commercial interest and to the Chinese political conditions in explaining the 1842–1943 system. The present generation of historians has, on the whole, declined to give the British Empire’s commercial legacy a clean bill of health.

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