Treaty of Tianjin
The 26 and 27 June 1858 closed Treaty of Tientsin ( Chinese 天津條約 / 天津条约 , Pinyin Tianjin tiáoyuē ), also Treaty of Tien-tsin , the first phase of ending the Second Opium War . Contracting parties were China on the one hand and the foreign powers Great Britain , France , Russia and the USA on the other.
Original content
The quadruple treaty obliged China in particular to further open the empire to trade with foreign powers, particularly Great Britain. While it was previously only processed via the ports in Fuzhou , Canton , Ningbo , Shanghai and Xiamen (Amoy), in future those in Dengzhou , Hankou , Jiujiang , Kaohsiung , Nanjing , Kiungchow , Niuchuang , Shantou , Tanshui and Zhenjiang should be allowed to be used. For the purpose of fighting pirates , the British should even be allowed to enter any Chinese port. Foreigners should be granted unrestricted freedom of movement within a radius of 50 kilometers of the treaty ports , and if they have a passport even within the entire Reich.
The import of opium as part of the China trade , which had been a stumbling block between the two states for decades and a reason for two wars, was expressly permitted and only a sales restriction to the port area and an import duty of 30 tael per picu (= 60 kg). In addition, the inland transit duties on imported goods should be reduced to a flat rate of 2.5%, and British standard weights and measures should also be introduced in the ports and customs stations . The official lingua franca should be English . After all, discriminatory terms for the British ( 夷 , yí - “barbarian”) should no longer be used in Chinese documents .
In addition, China undertook to pay “ war compensation ” totaling 6 million tael to Great Britain and France, to establish diplomatic relations with Great Britain and to allow the Christian churches to carry out unrestricted missionary activity . The only consideration provided was the withdrawal of the British from the city of Tianjin and the evacuation of the Dagu forts .
Extension to the "Beijing Convention"
China subsequently refused to implement the Unequal Treaty . The British then opened the second phase of the Second Opium War in June 1859 with another attack on the Dagu forts . Only after the "punitive expedition" in 1860, in the course of which an invading army led by Lord Elgin a . a. laid the Old Summer Palace in ruins, Prince Gong confirmed the terms of the contract on behalf of Emperor Xianfeng, who had fled to Manchuria .
In the so-called " Beijing Convention " of October 18, 1860 , they were even supplemented by further points, in particular the opening of the port of Tianjin itself, further reparations payments as well as assignments of territory to Great Britain and Russia. As a result of the agreements were u. a. the Zongli Yamen , the forerunner of the Chinese Foreign Office, was established.
Revision 1868
According to a clause in the treaty of 1858, a revision of the Tianjin treaty was tackled ten years later, with which a number of provisions of the original treaty were to be "defused" and the bilateral contacts between the two countries were to be expanded on a peaceful basis. The compromise paper, laboriously negotiated between the Qing official Wenxiang and the British negotiator Rutherford Alcock , ultimately failed to find a majority in the British House of Commons .
In the same year the Burlingame Treaty between the United States and China came into force.
At the end of the 19th century, the United States postulated an open door policy .
literature
- Jacques Gernet : The Chinese World. The history of China from the beginning to the present time (= Suhrkamp-Taschenbuch 1505). Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1988, ISBN 3-518-38005-2 .
- Jonathan D. Spence : China's way into the modern age (= dtv 30795). Updated and expanded edition. Deutscher Taschenbuch-Verlag, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-423-30795-1 .
