Treaty of Nanking

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Signing of the contract from Nanking on board HMS Cornwallis

The Treaty of Nanking ( Chinese  南京 條約  /  南京 条约 , Pinyin Nánjīng Tiáoyuē ) ended the First Opium War between Great Britain and Qing China in August 1842.

With the conclusion of the treaty, Great Britain was able to almost completely achieve its war goals formulated before the beginning of the war. The treaty regulated the annexation of Hong Kong , the payment of a large sum as compensation, the abolition of the previous legal practice in trade and diplomacy, the release of all British citizens in China, and an amnesty for Chinese collaborators. The treaty was the first of the Unequal Treaties and marks the beginning of a crisis-ridden century for the Chinese state.

graduation

HMS Cornwallis and fleet in Nanking

The emperor began the first negotiations by commissioning the governor of Zhapu Yilibu ( 伊里布 ) through subordinate intermediaries in May 1842. He also sent Qiying ( 耆英 ) as the Imperial Plenipotentiary and Governor General of Lianguang. He acted in the negotiating team with Yilibu and Niu Jian ( 牛 鑑 ) as the highest ranking and was authorized by Emperor Daoguang to accept a contract without further consultation. Qiying initially also conducted preliminary negotiations at a lower level about his follower Zhang Xi in early August 1842. On August 16, the British finally presented a draft contract. On August 19, the Chinese side signaled approval of this draft treaty. On August 20, Qiying and Pottinger met on board the British flagship HMS Cornwallis off Nanking. However, the further meetings did not result in any changes to the draft contract. On August 29, 1842, Qiying and Yilibu signed the contract on board the HMS Cornwallis on behalf of the Qing Empire. The treaty was ratified in Hong Kong on June 26, 1843 after formal approval by Queen Victoria and Emperor Daoguang .

The Opium War was Britain's reaction to China's attempt to stop the opium trade. The instructions of Lord Palmerston , those of his successor Lord Aberdeen , explicitly provided that no demands were made regarding the legalization of the opium trade. However, he was also instructed as far as he was able to put pressure on the Chinese government to stop pursuing opium prohibition. Pottinger received assurances from his negotiating partner Qiying that the Chinese government would not carry out any further seizures of opium in foreign possession. However, he explicitly reserved the right to prosecute local opium dealers and users of China. The privately organized opium dealers were not interested in legalization because they feared falling prices and competition.

Original content

Trade liberalization

Schematic map showing the treaty ports and Hong Kong determined by the Treaty of Nanking (1842)

The central provision of the treaty provided for the opening of the ports of Canton , Xiamen (outdated Amoy ), Fuzhou , Ningbo and Shanghai to free trade with England (Art. 2). In particular, the various restrictions that trade in Canton had previously been subject to (so-called Cohong monopoly system) have been lifted:

  • The British merchants no longer had to live in a kind of ghetto in the treaty ports. Rather, the British subjects were now granted unrestricted right of residence in the port cities mentioned and even the establishment of consulates was granted (Art. 2).
  • When communicating with the Chinese trading houses, the British no longer had to rely on merchants from the so-called Cohong Guild and the court-appointed trade officials (" Hoppo " 關 部  /  关 部 , Guānbù , Jyutping Gwaan 1 bou 6 , Chinese Customs Directorate in Canton) (Art. 5).
  • The monopolistic-administrative price fixing at the expense of foreigners, which was customary up to now, has been abandoned. The only trade restrictions were now appropriate export, import and transit duties for all traders regardless of nationality (Art. 10). The original contract was supplemented after it was signed and provided for the lowest import tariff in the world at that time with a 5% import tariff and a ban on transit tariffs in China.

Hong Kong

In Article 3 of the Nanking Treaty, England was given "perpetual ownership" of the island of Hong Kong (Hong Kong Island). De jure, the People's Republic of China could only have demanded the transfer back of the New Territories , which had only been leased in 1898, in 1997 . Even if Hong Kong Island and Kowloon, which was ceded by the Beijing Convention in 1860, were returned, it was for diplomatic reasons.

Cash benefits

China also pledged to pay England a total of 21 million silver dollars. In the preliminary negotiations, Zhang Xi achieved a reduction in the original claim of 30 million silver dollars. Of which were

  • 7 million as compensation for the 20,000 boxes of British opium destroyed in Canton by Commissioner Lin Zexu in May 1839 (Art. 4),
  • 12 million as reparations for the military expenditures of England in the First Opium War (Art. 6) and
  • 2 million intended to replace British debts with the Cohong merchants (Art. 5).

Payment was to be made in four installments by 1845. If the deadline was missed, interest on arrears of 5% p. a. due (Art. 7).

In return for the aforementioned war compensation, the British armed forces undertook to withdraw from Nanjing and the Imperial Canal after receiving the first installment. Zhoushan , which was also occupied , was only to be evacuated after the entire sum had been paid in full (Art. 12).

Others

In Articles 8 and 9 of the treaty, the Qing government committed itself to the immediate release of all British nationals imprisoned and the unconditional amnesty of all Chinese subjects who lived with the British, traded with the British or were in British service.

Finally, Article 11 provided for a reorganization of the foreign policy relations between China and Great Britain. The two states committed themselves to diplomatic relations on an equal footing. The previous system, according to which the British, as barbarians (Yi), could only contact the Qing government through intermediaries, has been abolished. This represented an externally imposed novelty in the political practice of the empire and contradicted the China-centered state ideology of the empire. According to Art. 10, the treaty should be ratified by both heads of state within a specified period.

consequences

In particular, after it was supplemented by the Treaty of Humen in 1843, the Nanking Treaty was intended to pave the way for a series of similar agreements with which the foreign powers gradually deprived China of large parts of its state sovereignty .

The treaty was an incredible humiliation for China, which until then saw itself as the center of the world, which was far superior to all "barbarians". Within the empire, the treaty was seen by both the scholarly elite and the general population as a defeat and loss of prestige for the Qing dynasty. The governor of Zhejiang Liu Yunke warned of a domino effect as other European countries try to enforce similar treaties. He saw the loss of foreign trade sovereignty as another source of economic decline, as it exacerbated the currency crisis caused by a silver shortage. He also feared that the surrender of the sovereignty rights in the Nanking Treaty would lead to further conflicts. Great Britain could use this to gain even more far-reaching concessions in another war. However, given their military weakness, the state elite of the Qing Empire found no answer to these challenges. In today's Chinese historiography, the treaty is seen as the first of the unequal treaties , which further exacerbated the power imbalance to the detriment of the empire.

See also

literature

  • R. Derek Wood: The Treaty of Nanking. Form and the Foreign Office, 1842-1843. In: Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 24, 1996, pp. 181-196.

Web links

Wikisource: Treaty of Nanking  - Sources and full texts (English)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Mao Haijian: The Qing Empire and the Opium War - The Collapse of the Heavenly Dynasty. Cambridge 2016, pp. 405-414
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g Mao Haijian: The Qing Empire and the Opium War - The Collapse of the Heavenly Dynasty. Cambridge 2016, pp. 433-435
  3. ↑ Stephen R. Platt: Imperial Twilight - The Opium War and the End of China's Last Golden Age. New York, 2019, p. 426
  4. ↑ Mao Haijian: The Qing Empire and the Opium War - The Collapse of the Heavenly Dynasty. Cambridge 2016, p. 444
  5. ↑ Julia Lovell: The Opium War. 2nd edition, London, 2012, p. 233
  6. ↑ Mao Haijian: The Qing Empire and the Opium War - The Collapse of the Heavenly Dynasty. Cambridge 2016, pp. 416-421