TAO KUANG
Tao Kuang (glory of right principle), as he is called, from the style
chosen for his reign, gave promise of being a useful and enlightened
ruler; at the least a great improvement on his father. He did his
best at first to purify the court, but his natural indolence stood in
the way of any real reform, and with the best intentions in the world
he managed to leave the empire in a still more critical condition
than that in which he had found it. Five years after his accession,
his troubles began in real earnest. There was a rising of the people
in Kashgaria, due to criminal injustice practised over a long spell
of time on the part of the Chinese authorities. The rebels found a
leader in the person of Jehangir, who claimed descent from one of the
old native chiefs, formerly recognized by the Manchu Emperors, but
now abolished as such. Thousands flocked to his standard; and by the
time an avenging army could arrive on the scene, he was already
master of the country. During the campaign which followed, his men
were defeated in battle after battle; and at length he himself was
taken prisoner and forwarded to Peking, where he failed to defend his
conduct, and was put to death.
The next serious difficulty which confronted the Emperor was a
rising, in 1832, of the wild Miao tribes of Kuangsi and Hunan, led by
a man who either received or adopted the title of the Golden Dragon.
At the bottom of all the trouble we find, as usually to be expected
henceforward, the secret activities of the far-reaching Triad
Society, which seized the occasion to foment into open rebellion the
dissatisfaction of the tribesmen with the glaring injustice they were
suffering at the hands of the local authorities. After some initial
massacres and reprisals, a general was sent to put an end to the
outbreak; but so far from doing this, he seems to have come off
second best in most of the battles which ensued, and was finally
driven into Kuangtung. For this he was superseded, and two
Commissioners dispatched to take charge of further operations. It
occurred to these officials that possibly persuasion might succeed
where violence had failed; and accordingly a proclamation was widely
circulated, promising pardon and redress of wrongs to all who would
at once return to their allegiance, and pointing out at the same time
the futility of further resistance. The effect of this move was
magical; within a few days the rebellion was over.
We are now reaching a period at which European complications began to
be added to the more legitimate worries of a Manchu Emperor. Trade
with the Portuguese, the Spaniards, the Dutch, and the English, had
been carried on since the early years of the sixteenth century, but
in a very haphazard kind of way, and under many vexatious
restrictions, bribery being the only effectual means of bringing
commercial ventures to a successful issue. So far back as 1680, the
East India Company had received its charter, and commercial relations
with Chinese merchants could be entered into by British subjects only
through this channel. Such machinery answered its purpose very well
for a long period; but a monopoly of the kind became out of date as
time went on, and in 1834 it ceased altogether. The Company was there
for the sake of trade, and for nothing else; and one of its guiding
principles was avoidance of any acts which might wound Chinese
susceptibilities, and tend to defeat the object of its own existence.
Consequently, the directors would not allow opium to be imported in
their vessels; neither were they inclined to patronize missionary
efforts. It is true that Morrison's dictionary was printed at the
expense of the Company, when the punishment for a native teaching a
foreigner the Chinese language was death; but no pecuniary assistance
was forthcoming when the same distinguished missionary attempted to
translate the Bible for distribution in China.
The Manchus, who had themselves entered the country as robbers of the
soil and spoliators of the people, were determined to do their best
to keep out all future intruders; and it was for this reason that,
suspicious of the aims of the barbarian, every possible obstacle was
placed in the way of those who wished to learn to speak and read
Chinese. This suspicion was very much increased in the case of
missionaries, whose real object the Manchus failed to appreciate, and
behind whose plea of religious propagandism they thought they
detected a deep-laid scheme for territorial aggression, to culminate
of course in their own overthrow; and already in 1805 an edict had
been issued, strictly forbidding anyone to teach even Manchu to any
foreigner.
From this date (1834), any British subject was free to engage in the
trade, and the Home Government sent out Lord Napier to act as Chief
Superintendent, and to enter into regular diplomatic relations with
the Chinese authorities. Lord Napier, however, even though backed by
a couple of frigates, was unable to gain admission to the city of
Canton, and after a demonstration, the only result of which was to
bring all business to a standstill, he was finally obliged in the
general interest to retire. He went to Macao, a small peninsula to
the extreme south-west of the Kuangtung province, famous as the
residence of the poet Camoens, and there he died a month later. Macao
was first occupied by the Portuguese trading with China in 1557;
though there is a story that in 1517 certain Portuguese landed there
under pretence of drying some tribute presents to the Emperor, which
had been damaged in a storm, and proceeded to fortify their
encampment, whereupon the local officials built a wall across the
peninsula, shutting off further access to the mainland. It also
appears that, in 1566, Macao was actually ceded to the Portuguese on
condition of payment of an annual sum to China, which payment ceased
after trouble between the two countries in 1849.
The next few years were employed by the successors of Lord Napier in
endeavours, often wrongly directed, to establish working, if not
harmonious, relations with the Chinese authorities; but no
satisfactory point was reached, for the simple reason that recent
events had completely confirmed the officials and people in their old
views as to the relative status of the barbarians and themselves.
It is worth noticing here that Russia, with her conterminous and
ever-advancing frontier, has always been regarded somewhat
differently from the oversea barbarian. She has continually during
the past three centuries been the dreaded foreign bogy of the
Manchus; and a few years back, when Manchus and Chinese alike fancied
that their country was going to be "chopped up like a melon" and
divided among western nations, a warning geographical cartoon was
widely circulated in China, showing Russia in the shape of a huge
bear stretching down from the north and clawing the vast areas of
Mongolia and Manchuria to herself.
Now, to aggravate the already difficult situation, the opium question
came suddenly to the front in an acute form. For a long time the
import of opium had been strictly forbidden by the Government, and
for an equally long time smuggling the drug in increasing quantities
had been carried on in a most determined manner until, finally, swift
vessels with armed crews, sailing under foreign flags, succeeded in
terrorizing the native revenue cruisers, and so delivering their
cargoes as they pleased. It appears that the Emperor Tao Kuang, who
had sounded the various high authorities on the subject, was
genuinely desirous of putting an end to the import of opium, and so
checking the practice of opium-smoking, which was already assuming
dangerous proportions; and in this he was backed up by Captain Elliot
(afterwards Sir Charles Elliot), now Superintendent of Trade, an
official whose vacillating policy towards the Chinese authorities did
much to precipitate the disasters about to follow. After a serious
riot had been provoked, in which the foreign merchants of Canton
narrowly escaped with their lives, and to quell which it was
necessary to call out the soldiery, the Emperor decided to put a
definite stop to the opium traffic; and for this purpose he appointed
one of his most distinguished servants, at that time Viceroy of
Hukuang, and afterwards generally known as Commissioner Lin, a name
much reverenced by the Chinese as that of a true patriot, and never
mentioned even by foreigners without respect. Early in 1839, Lin took
up the post of Viceroy of Kuangtung, and immediately initiated an
attack which, to say the least of it, deserved a better fate.
Within a few days a peremptory order was made for the delivery of all
opium in the possession of foreign merchants at Canton. This demand
was resisted, but for a short time only. All the foreign merchants,
together with Captain Elliot, who had gone up to Canton specially to
meet the crisis, found themselves prisoners in their own houses,
deprived of servants and even of food. Then Captain Elliot undertook,
on behalf of his Government, to indemnify British subjects for their
losses; whereupon no fewer than twenty thousand two hundred and
ninety-one chests of opium were surrendered to Commissioner Lin, and
the incident was regarded by the Chinese as closed. On receipt of the
Emperor's instructions, the whole of this opium, for which the owners
received orders on the Treasury at the rate of £120 per chest, was
mixed with lime and salt water, and was entirely destroyed.
Lin's subsequent demands were so arbitrary that at length the English
mercantile community retired altogether from Canton, and after a
futile attempt to settle at Macao, where their presence, owing to
Chinese influence with the Portuguese occupiers, was made unwelcome,
they finally found a refuge at Hongkong, then occupied only by a few
fishermen's huts. Further negotiations as to the renewal of trade
having fallen through, Lin gave orders for all British ships to leave
China within three days, which resulted in a fight between two
men-of-war and twenty-nine war-junks, in which the latter were either
sunk or driven off with great loss. In June, 1840, a British fleet of
seventeen men-of-war and twenty-seven troopships arrived at Hongkong;
Canton was blockaded; a port on the island of Chusan was subsequently
occupied; and Lord Palmerston's letter to the Emperor was carried to
Tientsin, and delivered there to the Viceroy of Chihli. Commissioner
Lin was now cashiered for incompetency; but was afterwards instructed
to act with the Viceroy of Chihli, who was sent down to supersede
him. Further vexatious action, or rather inaction, on the part of
these two at length drove Captain Elliot to an ultimatum; and as no
attention was paid to this, the Bogue forts near the mouth of the
Canton river were taken by the British fleet, after great slaughter
of the Chinese. In January, 1841, a treaty of peace was arranged,
under which the island of Hongkong was to be ceded to England, a sum
of over a million pounds was to be paid for the opium destroyed, and
satisfactory concessions were to be made in the matter of official
intercourse between the two nations. The Emperor refused
ratification, and ordered the extermination of the barbarians to be
at once proceeded with. Again the Bogue forts were captured, and
Canton would have been occupied but for another promised treaty, the
terms of which were accepted by Sir Henry Pottinger, who now
superseded Elliot. At this juncture the British fleet sailed
northwards, capturing Amoy and Ningpo, and occupying the island of
Chusan. The further capture of Chapu, where munitions of war in huge
quantities were destroyed, was followed by similar successes at
Shanghai and Chinkiang. At the last-mentioned, a desperate resistance
was offered by the Manchu garrison, who fought heroically against
certain defeat, and who, when all hope was gone, committed suicide in
large numbers rather than fall into the hands of the enemy, from
whom, in accordance with prevailing ideas and with what would have
been their own practice, they expected no quarter. The Chinese
troops, as distinguished from the Manchus, behaved differently; they
took to their heels before a shot had been fired. This behaviour,
which seems to be nothing more than arrant cowardice, is nevertheless
open to a more favourable interpretation. The yoke of the Manchu
dynasty was already beginning to press heavily, and these men felt
that they had no particular cause to fight for, certainly not such a
personal cause as then stared the Manchus in the face. The Manchu
soldiers were fighting for their all: their very supremacy was at
stake; while many of the Chinese troops were members of the Triad
Society, the chief object of which was to get rid of the alien
dynasty. It is thus, too, that we can readily explain the assistance
afforded to the enemy by numerous Cantonese, and the presence of many
as servants on board the vessels of our fleet; they did not help us
or accompany us from any lack of patriotism, of which virtue Chinese
annals have many striking examples to show, but because they were
entirely out of sympathy with their rulers, and would have been glad
to see them overthrown, coupled of course with the tempting pay and
good treatment offered by the barbarian.
It now remained to take Nanking, and thither the fleet proceeded in
August, 1842, with that purpose in view. This move the Chinese
authorities promptly anticipated by offering to come to terms in a
friendly way; and in a short time conditions of peace were arranged
under an important instrument, known as the Treaty of Nanking. Its
chief clauses provided for the opening to British trade of Canton,
Amoy, Foochow, Ningpo, and Shanghai, at which all British subjects
were to enjoy the rights of extra-territoriality, being subject to
the jurisdiction of their own officials only; also, for the cession
to England of the island of Hongkong, and for the payment of a lump
sum of about five million pounds as compensation for loss of opium,
expenses of the war, etc. All prisoners were to be released, and
there was a special amnesty for such Chinese as had given their
services to the British during the war. An equality of status between
the officials of both nations was further conceded, and suitable
rules were to be drawn up for the regulation of trade. The above
treaty having been duly ratified by Tao Kuang and by Queen Victoria,
it must then have seemed to British merchants that a new and
prosperous era had really dawned. But they counted without the
ever-present desire of the great bulk of the Chinese people to see
the last of the Manchus; and the Triad Society, stimulated no doubt
by the recent British successes, had already shown signs of unusual
activity when, in 1850, the Emperor died, and was succeeded by his
fourth son, who reigned under the title of Hsien Fêng (or Hien Fong =
universal plenty).