Charles Elliot

Charles Elliot (around 1855)

Captain Charles Elliot (date unknown)

Elliot's residence in Macau

Sir Charles Elliot (* 1801 in Dresden ; † September 9, 1875 with Withycombe ) was a British Navy officer , diplomat and colonial administrator. Born the son of British diplomat Hugh Elliot, he came into contact with the British Empire at a young age . He entered the Royal Navy early and served for many years under various commanders as he gradually rose in the nautical hierarchy. After quitting active duty, he went through several stations as a colonial official until he finally concentrated on the Pacific region . In 1841 he was appointed first administrator of the British colony of Hong Kong in the course of the First Opium War and contributed significantly to the handover of the city. He achieved particular importance through his resolutions that brought the economic base to flourish. After his time in Hong Kong, he served as envoy of the Crown in Texas and other bases before finally turning his back on politics in 1869 and retiring to his country estate, where he died in 1875.

Life

Origin and youth

Charles Elliot was born in Dresden in 1801 as the son of Hugh Elliot and his second wife Margaret Jones, one of nine children. The exact date of birth is not known. His father was His Majesty's diplomatic agent in Dresden. Elliot's uncle was Gilbert, who later became the Earl of Minto . After years of service, his father and his family moved to India, while Charles remained in England as one of two family members and attended school there until 1814.

Advancement within the Navy

Elliot entered the Royal Navy on May 26, 1815 and, as a midshipman , witnessed the bombing of Algiers in 1816 . Elliot then served under Sir Richard King in the East Indies Station for four years . In 1820 he finally left the naval association and was hired for some time with the West African squadron . This fleet was responsible for suppressing the slave trade in the British Empire at the beginning of the 19th century . With the Slave Trade Act , signed in 1807, the British Parliament had banned the trade in slaves throughout the Empire, but bargaining was continued. In 1821 Elliot sailed on the HMS Iphigenia and was in the service of Captain Henry John Leeke when he was promoted to lieutenant on June 11, 1822 .

After numerous services on several other ships of the Royal Navy in the Pacific area, Elliot was appointed captain on August 28, 1828 during a stopover in Jamaica and was now allowed to sail under his own command. But shortly afterwards he resigned and left the Navy after 14 years.

Political career

After retiring from active service, Elliot worked in both the Foreign and Colonial Offices . From 1830 to 1833 he held the post of "Protectors of Slaves" in British Guiana , where he tried to enforce the slave trade ban. In 1833 he was ordered back to England to take part in the social anti-slavery debate. The result of this discussion was the Slavery Abolition Act , which was passed on July 26, 1833 and made slavery itself, not just trade, a serious criminal offense.

After the debate and his return from England, Elliot was assigned to Lord Napier that same year and subsequently oversaw several ships that operated between Macau and the Chinese canton . Trade between China and the British colonies experienced an enormous boom in these years, especially since the British East India Company had lost its trade monopoly in 1833 and the Asian trade market could be re-opened. Elliot moved with his family to Macau in 1834 and rose very quickly in the chain of command. In 1836 he was proposed as a deputy.

Organizing trade from Macau became increasingly difficult over time and Elliot was looking for a new base to better monitor the routes. When the political situation between the Empire and the Chinese Empire began to worsen, Elliot tried to keep trade with China going despite the noticeable tension. Only when there was open hostility did the exchange of goods begin to stall.

Hong Kong

In order to defuse the situation on the ground, Elliot began negotiations with the Chinese officials in Canton. The imperial envoy Lin Zexu , however, followed an uncompromising course in his fight against opium imported into China by British traders . So all negotiations failed and Elliot ordered the transfer of the required British opium supplies in Canton in order to protect the British traders on site. He himself was very critical of the opium trade anyway, because he saw it as a significant threat to bilateral trade between England and China. The supplies were completely destroyed by the Chinese officials and the British government took this as an open provocation. When the British empire spontaneously declared war on the Chinese imperial court, his fears were to come true.

Elliot tried to use the conflict situation for his commercial interests. During the first opium war resulting from the disputes , he concluded an agreement with another imperial plenipotentiary, Qishan (also called Keshen in documents ), which awarded the Hong Kong region to the British Empire. As a result of this decision, the peninsula was annexed by British troops on January 26, 1841.

The ongoing conflict between the Empire and China also drew Elliot actively back into the fighting. In order to sensitively hit the Chinese forces, Charles and his cousin, Rear Admiral George Elliot, prepared an expedition into the Chinese hinterland, the aim of which was to seal off the Yangtze . This move was intended to move the Chinese Empire into negotiations, but the company did not achieve the desired results and was therefore abandoned. On the trip to Hong Kong, George fell seriously ill and had to return to the British Isles. This made Charles Elliot the sole agent for Hong Kong.

In order to regulate the coexistence peacefully, Elliot put all non-Chinese under British law, while the Chinese residents could continue to live according to Chinese law. The British government, contrary to Elliot's assessment, was not very happy about this development in Hong Kong, since it failed to recognize the possible potential of the base. Elliot hoped that China trade would continue to be concentrated in the Canton Delta after the war. This would give the Hong Kong peninsula an important key position that could give British retailers decisive advantages. Ultimately, however, the British government itself undermined these plans by opening several treaty ports in the subsequent Treaty of Nanking after the Opium War . European trade with China began to be divided into several stations and Shanghai took over the key position planned by Elliot for Hong Kong. However, due to its favorable location, Hong Kong developed into the center of illegal trade in the mid-19th century, and opium in particular was shipped from here to China. Especially the commodity against which Elliot had wanted to defend himself vehemently. But at the time of Nanking's contract, Elliot was no longer in Hong Kong.

He had been dismissed from his post in the summer of that year because his superior, Lord Palmerston , disapproved of Elliot's work in Southeast Asia . Elliot's time as governor of Hong Kong ended on August 10, 1841, and two weeks later he and his family left Southeast Asia for England. He was replaced as governor by Henry Pottinger , who in the following months largely maintained the course taken by Elliot, which made the city more important.

Later career

Elliot was finally sent to Texas, where he had from 1842 to 1846 the post of Chargé occupied. The Free Republic of Texas was a difficult region at the time and was on the verge of problematic annexation with the United States . After this connection was completed in late 1845, Elliot quickly turned his back on the American continent and traveled to Bermuda . There he was appointed governor from 1846 to 1854 . In the following years, Elliot also took over the post of governor of Trinidad (1854-1856) and finally of Saint Helena (1863-1869). In addition to his administrative career, he rose in the nautical ranking: in 1855 he was promoted to rear admiral , in 1862 to vice admiral and finally in 1865 to admiral . In 1856 he was also accepted into the Order of the Bath as Knight Commander . As a result, he entered the nobility and was henceforth allowed to carry the sir in his name. In 1869 he finally resigned and retired to his residence at Withycombe in south-west England, where he died on September 9, 1875.

family

During a stay in Haiti, Elliot met Clara Genevieve Windsor (1806–1885), who lived and grew up there. They married in 1828 and had five children, two daughters and three sons:

• Harriet Agnes Elliot (1829-1896)
• Hugh Hislop Elliot (1831-?)
• Gilbert Wray Elliot (1833-?), Father of the British weightlifter and Olympic champion Launceston Elliot
• Frederick Eden Elluit (1837-1916)
• Emma Clara Elliot (1842-1865)

Trivia

Elliot's life inspired one of Henry Taylor's characters in Edwin the Fair (1842). Earl Athulf , the king's cousin, is loosely oriented towards Elliot's person. The playwright Taylor was a colleague of Elliot's brother Thomas Frederick in the Colonial Office and was acquainted with Charles Elliot.

literature

• Blake Clagette: Charles Elliot RN 1801-1875. A servant of Britain overseas . Cleaver-Hume Press, London 1960.
• Wai Kwan Chan: The Making of Hong Kong Society. Three studies of class formation in early Hong Kong . Clarendon, Oxford 1991, ISBN 978-0-19-827320-2 .
• George B. Endacott: A History of Hong Kong . Oxford University Press, Oxford 1973, ISBN 978-0-19-638264-7 .
• Susanna Hoe: The Private Life of Old Hong Kong. Western women in the British colony 1841-1941 . Oxford University Press, Oxford 1991, ISBN 0-19-582797-X .
• Ng Lun Ngai-ha: Interactions of East and West. Development of Public Education in Early Hong Kong . Chinese University Press, Hong Kong 1984, ISBN 962-201-291-4 .

Web links

Commons : Category: Charles Elliot  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ↑ C. Blake: Charles Elliot RN 1801-1875 ; P. 5.
2. ↑ C. Blake: Charles Elliot RN 1801-1875 ; P. 11.
3. ^ S. Hoe: The Private Life of Old Hong Kong ; P. 3.
4. ↑ C. Blake: Charles Elliot RN 1801-1875 ; P. 34f.
5. ^ GB Endacott: A History of Hong Kong ; Pp. 11-13.
6. ^ WK Chan: The Making of Hong Kong Society ; P. 22.
7. ^ GB Endacott: A History of Hong Kong ; P. 15f.
8. ^ S. Hoe: The Private Life of Old Hong Kong ; P. 27f.
9. ^ GB Endacott: A History of Hong Kong ; P. 29f.
10. ^ GB Endacott: A History of Hong Kong ; P. 72.
11. ^ S. Hoe: The Private Life of Old Hong Kong ; P. 30.
12. ↑ C. Blake: Charles Elliot RN 1801-1875 ; Pp. 64-67.
13. ^ Sir Henry Taylor: Edwin the Fair. Retrieved May 22, 2014 . 

predecessor	Office	successor
-	Administrator of Hong Kong 1841	Henry Pottinger