Second Opium War

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Second Opium War
Part of the Opium Wars
Upper North Taku Fort in 1860.
Date 1856-1860 Location China Result Franco-British victory; Treaties of Tianjin
Belligerents
Qing Dynasty	United Kingdom French Empire
Commanders
Qing Dynasty Xianfeng Emperor	Michael Seymour James Bruce, 8th Earl of Elgin Jean-Baptiste Louis Gros

The Second Opium War, the Second Anglo-Chinese War, the Arrow War, or the Anglo-French expedition to China,^[1] was a war of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and the Second French Empire against the Qing Dynasty of China from 1856 to 1860.

[edit] Background

The 1850s saw the rapid growth of imperialism. Some of the shared goals of the western powers were the expansion of their overseas markets and the establishment of new ports of call. The French Treaty of Huangpu and the American Wangxia Treaty both contained clauses allowing renegotiation of the treaties after twelve years. In an effort to expand their privileges in China, Britain demanded the Qing authorities renegotiate the Treaty of Nanjing (signed in 1842), citing their most favoured nation status. The British demands included opening all of China to British merchants, legalizing the opium trade, exempting foreign imports from internal transit duties, suppression of piracy, regulation of the coolie trade, permission for a British ambassador to reside in Beijing and for the English-language version of all treaties to take precedence over the Chinese.

The Qing Dynasty court rejected the demands from Britain, France, and the US.

[edit] Outbreak

The war may be viewed as a continuation of the First Opium War (1839-1842), thus the title of the Second Opium War.

On October 8, 1856 Qing officials boarded the Arrow, a Chinese-owned ship that had been registered in Hong Kong and was suspected of piracy and smuggling. Twelve Chinese subjects were arrested and imprisoned. The British officials in Guangzhou demanded the release of the sailors, claiming that because the ship had recently been British-registered, it was protected under the Treaty of Nanjing. Only when this was shown to be a weak argument did the British insist that the Arrow had been flying a British ensign and that the Qing soldiers had insulted the flag. Faced with fighting the Taiping Rebellion, the Qing government was in no position to resist the West militarily. This has come to be known as the Arrow Incident^[2].

Although the British were delayed by the Indian Mutiny, they responded to the "Arrow Incident" in 1857 and attacked Guangzhou from the Pearl River. Ye Mingchen, the governor of Guangdong and Guangxi provinces, ordered all Chinese soldiers manning the forts not to resist the British incursion. After taking the fort near Guangzhou with little effort, the British Army attacked Guangzhou.

Meanwhile, in Hong Kong, there was an attempt to poison the entire European community in January. However, local bakers, who had been charged with lacing bread with arsenic bungled the attempt by putting an excess of the poison into the dough, in sufficient quantities to be detected. Criers were sent out with an alert, averting disaster^[3].

The British Parliament decided to seek redress from China based on the report about the "Arrow Incident" submitted by Harry Parkes, British Consul to Guangzhou. France, the USA, and Russia received requests from Britain to form an alliance. France joined the British action against China, prompted by the execution of a French missionary, Father August Chapdelaine ("Father Chapdelaine Incident"), by Chinese local authorities in Guangxi province. The USA and Russia sent envoys to Hong Kong to offer help to the British and French, though in the end they sent no military aid.

The British and the French joined forces under Admiral Sir Michael Seymour. The British army led by Lord Elgin, and the French army led by Gros, attacked and occupied Guangzhou in late 1857. Ye Mingchen was captured, and Bo-gui, the governor of Guangdong, surrendered. A joint committee of the Alliance was formed. Bo-gui remained at his original post in order to maintain order on behalf of the victors. The British-French Alliance maintained control of Guangzhou for nearly four years. Ye Mingchen was exiled to Calcutta, India, where he starved himself to death.

The coalition then cruised north to briefly capture the Taku Forts near Tianjin in May, 1858.

[edit] Treaties of Tianjin

In June 1858 the first part of the war ended with the Treaties of Tianjin, to which France, Russia, and the United States were parties. These treaties opened eleven more ports to Western trade. The Chinese initially refused to ratify the treaties.

The major points of the treaty were:

1. Britain, France, Russia, and the United States would have the right to establish diplomatic legations (small embassies) in Peking (a closed city at the time)
2. Ten more Chinese ports would be opened for foreign trade, including Niuzhuang, Danshui, Hankou, and Nanjing
3. The right of all foreign vessels including commercial ships to navigate freely on the Yangtze River
4. The right of foreigners to travel in the internal regions of China, which had been formerly banned
5. China was to pay an indemnity to Britain and France in 2 million taels of silver each
6. China was to pay compensation to British merchants in 2 million taels of silver for destruction of their property

[edit] Treaty of Aigun

On May 28, 1858, the separate Treaty of Aigun was signed with Russia to revise the Chinese and Russian border as determined by the Nerchinsk Treaty in 1689. Russia gained the left bank of the Amur River, pushing the border back from the Argun River. The treaty gave Russia control over a non-freezing area on the Pacific coast, where Russia founded the city of Vladivostok in 1860.

[edit] Continuation of the war

In June 1858, shortly after the Qing Court agreed to the disadvantageous treaties, more hawkish ministers prevailed upon the Xianfeng Emperor to resist encroachment by the West. On June 2, 1858, the Xianfeng Emperor ordered the Mongolian general Sengge Rinchen to guard the Dagu Fort in Tianjin. Sengge Richen reinforced the Dagu Forts with added artillery. He also brought 4,000 Mongolian cavalry from Chahar and Suiyuan.

In June, 1859, a British naval force with 2,200 troops and 21 ships, under the command of Admiral Sir James Hope sailed north from Shanghai to Tianjin with newly-appointed Anglo-French envoys for the embassies in Beijing. They sailed to the mouth of the Hai River guarded by the Dagu Fort near Tianjin and demanded to continue inland to Beijing. Sengge Rinchen replied that the Anglo-French envoys may land up the coast at Beitang and proceed to Beijing but refused to allow armed troops to accompany them to the Chinese capital. The Anglo-French forces insisted on landing at Dagu instead of Beitang and escorting the envoy to Beijing. On the night of June 24, 1859, a small batch of British forces blew up iron obstacles that the Chinese had placed in the Baihe River. The next day, the British forces sought to forcibly sail into the river, and shelled Dagu Fort. They encountered fierce resistance from Singge Rinchen's positions. After one day and one night's fighting, four gunboats were lost and two others severely damaged. The convoy withdrew under the cover of fire from a naval squadron commanded by Commodore Josiah Tattnall. Tattnall's intervention violated U.S. neutrality in China. For a time, anti-foreign resistance reached a crescendo within the Qing Court.

Cousin-Montauban leading French forces during the 1860 campaign.

In the summer of 1860, a larger Anglo-French force (11,000 British under General James Hope Grant, 6,700 French under General Cousin-Montauban)^[4][5] with 173 ships sailed from Hong Kong and captured the port cities of Yantai and Dalian to seal the Bohai Gulf. Then they carried out a landing near at Bei Tang (also spelled Pei Tang), some 3 kilometres (2 mi) from the Dagu Fort on August 3, which they captured after three weeks' on August 21. After taking Tienstin on August 3, the Anglo-French forces marched inland toward Beijing. The Xianfeng Emperor then dispatched ministers to for peace talks, but relations broke down completely when a British diplomatic envoy, Harry Parkes, was arrested during negotiations on September 18. He and his small entourage were imprisoned and tortured (some were murdered by the Chinese in a fashion that infuriated British leadership upon discovery in October). The Anglo-French invasion clashed with Singge Rinchen's Mongolian cavalry on September 18 near Zhangjiawan before proceeding toward the outskirts of Beijing for a decisive battle in Tongzhou District.

On September 21, at the Battle of Palikao, Sengge Rinchen's 10,000 troops including elite Mongolian cavalry were completely annihilated after several doomed frontal charges against concentrated firepower of the Anglo-French forces, which entered Beijing on October 6.

[edit] Burning of the Summer Palaces

Ruins of the "Western style" Xiyanglou complex in the Old Summer Palace, burnt down by Anglo-French forces.

With the Qing army devastated, Emperor Xianfeng fled the capital, leaving his brother, Prince Gong, to be in charge of negotiations. Xianfeng first fled to the Chengde Summer Palace and then to Jehol in Manchuria.^[6] Anglo-French troops in Beijing began looting the New Summer Palace (Yihe Yuan) and Old Summer Palace (Yuan Ming Yuan) immediately (it was full of valuable artwork). After Parkes and the surviving diplomatic prisoners were freed, Lord Elgin ordered the Summer Palaces destroyed starting on October 18. Beijing was not occupied; the Anglo-French army remained outside the city.

The Belvedere of the God of Literature, in the Old Summer Palace, one week before its destruction by Anglo-French troops.

The destruction of the Forbidden City was discussed, as proposed by Lord Elgin to discourage the Chinese from using kidnapping as a bargaining tool, and to exact revenge on the mistreatment of their prisoners.^[7] Elgin's decision was further motivated by the torture and murder of almost twenty Western prisoners, including two British envoys and a journalist for The Times.^[6] The Russian envoy Count Ignatiev and the French diplomat Baron Gros settled on the burning of the Summer Palaces instead, since it was "least objectionable" and would not jeopardize the treaty signing.^[7]

Chinese historians^[who?] have argued that the destruction was a cover-up for widespread looting. That the Summer Palaces was looted before being destroyed is certain but it is not surprising. Elgin was acutely sensitive to the charge of looting^{[citation needed]}, as it was his own father, Thomas Bruce (1776–1841), who, from 1799 to 1803, removed from the Acropolis in Greece what are now known as the Elgin Marbles to Britain, where they remain to this day, a subject of rancor between the Greek and British governments.

[edit] Aftermath

After the Xianfeng emperor and his entourage fled Beijing, the June 1858 Treaty of Tianjin was finally ratified by the emperor's brother, Yixin, the Prince Gong, in the Convention of Peking on October 18, 1860, bringing The Second Opium War to an end.

The British, French and - thanks to the schemes of Ignatiev - the Russians were all granted a permanent diplomatic presence in Beijing (something the Qing resisted to the very end as it suggested equality between China and the European powers). The Chinese had to pay 8 million taels to Britain and France. Britain acquired Kowloon (next to Hong Kong). The opium trade was legalized and Christians were granted full civil rights, including the right to own property, and the right to evangelize.

The content of the Convention of Peking included:

1. China's recognition of the validity of the Treaty of Tianjin
2. Opening Tianjin as a trade port
3. Cede No.1 District of Kowloon (south of present day Boundary Street) to Britain
4. Freedom of religion established in China
5. British ships were allowed to carry indentured Chinese to the Americas
6. Indemnity to Britain and France increasing to 8 million taels of silver a piece
7. Legalization of the opium trade

Two weeks later, Ignatiev convinced the Manchu to sign a "Supplementary Treaty of Peking", in which the Manchu signed away some 300,000 to 400,000 square miles (777,000–1,036,000 km²) of land to the Russians. The defeat of the Imperial army by a small Anglo-French military force (outnumbered at least 10 to 1 by the Manchu army) coupled with the flight (and subsequent death) of the Emperor and the burning of the Summer Palace was a shocking blow to the once powerful Qing Dynasty. "Beyond any doubt, by 1860 the ancient civilization that was China had been thoroughly defeated and humiliated by the West." ^[8]

[edit] Footnotes and references

[edit] Further reading

• Jack Beeching, The Chinese Opium Wars (1975), ISBN 0-15-617094-9
• Bonner-Smith and E. Lumley, The Second China War, 1944.
• W. Travis Hanes III and Frank Sanello, The Opium Wars, 2002, ISBN 0-7607-7638-5
• Immanual Hsu, The Rise of Modern China, 1985.
• Henry Loch, Personal narrative of occurrences during Lord Elgin's second embassy to China 1860, 1869.
• Erik Ringmar, Fury of the Europeans: Liberal Barbarism and the Destruction of the Emperor's Summer Palace
• J.W. Wong, Deadly Dreams: Opium, Imperialism, and the Arrow War (1856-1860) in China, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) 1998.

[edit] The Second Opium War in popular media

• Fraser, George MacDonald (1986). Flashman and the Dragon. New York, NY: Knopf. ISBN 0-394-55357-8.  — A portion of the memoirs of the fictional Harry Paget Flashman recounting his adventures during the Second Opium War and Taiping Rebellion.

[edit] See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

Second Opium War

• Unequal treaties
• David Sassoon
• Anglo-Chinese relations
• Imperialism in Asia
• Taiping Rebellion (1851-1864)
• Charles George Gordon
• British military history
• Wikisource speech by Richard Cobden MP on the situation at the time