192 



CHINA 



reviewed by the emperor at Peking once a year. 

 In addition to this there is the national army, 

 distributed in more than one thousand camps 

 throughout the provinces, nearly twice as numerous 

 as the imperial, and called ' The Army of the Green 

 Standard, being in fact little more than a vast 

 militia or gendarmerie. These forces may in 

 times of emergency be added to considerably by 

 patriotic gentlemen calling out bands of 'braves,' 

 effective enough to cope with insurgents, but all 

 unfit to encounter the disciplined forces of any 

 foreign power. Of this character at first were the 

 troops of the T'ai-p'ing rebellion, which, till its 

 suppression in 1867, for about twenty years proved 

 a match for the imperial and national forces, and 

 threatened the overthrow of the Manchft dynasty. 

 See T'AIP'INGS, and GORDON (CHARLES GEORGE). 

 The utter inadequacy of the army system was 

 shown by the collapse of China as a military power 

 in the war with Japan in 1894-95, and the much 

 vaunted navy, though fought with bravery at the 

 Yalu and Fort Arthur, effected little : five vessels 

 an armour-clad barbette and four cruisers were 

 sunk in the first engagement, and the most of the 

 remaining ships subsequently fell into the hands 

 of the Japanese. 



' Intercourse with Western Nations and Commerce. 

 It was not till after the Cape of Good Hope was 

 doubled, and the passage to India discovered by 

 Vasco da Gama in 1497, that intercourse between 

 any of the European nations and China was 

 possible by sea. It was in 1516 that the Portu- 

 guese first made their appearance at Canton ; and 

 they were followed at intervals of time by the 

 Spaniards, the Dutch, and the English in 1635. 

 The Chinese received none of them cordially ; and 

 their dislike of them was increased by their 

 mutual jealousies and collisions with one another. 

 The Manchu sovereignty of the empire, more- 

 over, was then in the throes of its birth, and its 

 rulers were the more disposed to assert their own 

 superiority to all other potentates. They would 

 not acknowledge them as their equals, but only 

 as their vassals. They felt the power of the for- 

 eigners whenever they made an attempt to restrict 

 their operations by force, and began to fear them. 

 As they became aware of their conquests in the 

 Philippines, Java, and India, they would gladly 

 have prohibited their approach to their territories 

 altogether. In the meantime trade gradually in- 

 creased, and there grew up the importation of 

 opium ( see OPIUM TRAFFIC ) from India, and the 

 wonderful eagerness of multitudes to purchase and 

 smoke it. Before 1767 the import rarely exceeded 

 200 chests, but that year it amounted to 1000. 

 In 1792 the British government wisely sent an 

 embassy under Lord Macartney to Peking with 

 presents to the emperor, to place the relations 

 between the two countries on a secure and proper 

 footing ; but though the ambassador and members 

 of his suite were courteously treated, the main 

 objects were not accomplished. In 1800 an imperial 

 edict expressly prohibited the importation of opium, 

 and threatened all Chinese who smoked it with 

 condign punishment. It had been before a smug- 

 gling traffic, and henceforth there could be no 

 doubt of its real character. Still it went on, and 

 increased from year to year. A second embassy 

 from Great Britain in 1816 was dismissed from 

 Peking suddenly and contumeliously because the 

 ambassador would not perform the ceremony of 

 San kwei chiu k'au ( ' the repeated prostrations ' ), 

 and thereby acknowledge his own sovereign to be 

 but a vassal of the empire. 



So things went on till the charter of the East 

 India Company expired in 1834, and the head of 

 its factory was superseded by a representative of 

 the sovereign of Great Britain who could not con- 



duct his intercourse with the Hong merchants as 

 the others had done. The two nations were 

 brought defiantly face to face. On the one side 

 was a resistless force, determined to prosecute its 

 enterprise for the enlargement of its trade, and the 

 conduct of *t as with an equal nation ; on the other 

 side was the old empire seeming to be unconscious 

 of its weakness, determined not to acknowledge 

 the claim of equality, and confident of its power to 

 suppress the import of opium. The government of 

 China made its grand and final effort in 1839, and 

 in the spring of that year the famous Lin Tsh-hsu 

 was appointed to the governor-generalship of the 

 Kwang provinces, and to bring the barbarians to 

 reason. Out of his measures came our first war, 

 which was declared by Great Britain against China 

 in 1840. There could be no doubt as to the result 

 in so unequal a contest ; and we hurry to its close 

 at Nanking, the old capital or the empire, where 

 a treaty of peace was signed on the 29th August 

 1842 on board Her Majesty's ship Cornwallis. The 

 principal articles were that the island of Hong- 

 kong should be ceded to Great Britain ; that the 

 ports of Canton, Amoy and Fu-Chau (in Fu- 

 chien), Ning-po (in Cheh-chiang), and Shang-hai 

 (in Cliiang-su) should be opened to British trade 

 and residence ; and that thereafter official corre- 

 spondence should be conducted on terms of equality 

 according to the standing of the parties. Nothing 

 was said in the treaty on the subject of opium, the 

 smuggling traffic in which went on as before. 



Before fifteen years had passed away, because 

 of troubles at Canton not all creditable to Great 

 Britain, and the obstinacy of the governor-general 

 Yeh Ming-chin in refusing to meet Sir John Bow- 

 ring (q.v. ), it was thought necessary by the British 

 government that war should be commenced against 

 China again. In this undertaking France joined as 

 our ally. Canton was taken on the 29th December 

 1857, when Yeh was captured and sent a prisoner 

 to Calcutta. Canton being now in the possession 

 of the allies, arrangements were made for its 

 government by a joint commission ; and in Feb- 

 ruary 1858 the allied plenipotentiaries, accom- 

 panied by the commissioners of the United States 

 and Russia as non-combatants, proceeded to the 

 north to lay their demands before the emperor at 

 Peking. There was not so much fighting as there 

 had been in 1842, and on June 26 a second treaty 

 was concluded at T'ien-tsin, renewing and confirm- 

 ing the former, but with many important additional 

 stipulations, the most important of which were 

 that the sovereigns of Great Britain and China 

 might, if they saw fit, appoint ambassadors, 

 ministers, or other diplomatic agents to their re- 

 spective courts ; and that the British representative 

 should not be required to perform any ceremony 

 derogatory to him as representing the sovereign 

 of an independent nation on an equality with 

 China. Other stipulations provided for the pro- 

 tection of Christian missionaries and their con- 

 verts ; for liberty for British subjects to travel, for 

 their pleasure or for purposes of trade, under pass- 

 ports, into all parts of the interior of the country ; 

 for the opening of five additional ports for com- 

 merce Niu-chwang (in Shing-king, the chief pro- 

 vince of Manchuria), Tang-chau (with port of Che- 

 foo, in Shan-tung ), Tai- wan (Formosa, several ports ), 

 Ch'ao-chau (with port of Swa-t'au, in Kwang- tung), 

 and Ch'iung ( Kiung-chau, in Hai-nan )-- and for 

 authority for merchant-ships to trade on the Yang- 

 tsze River, ports on which would be opened when 

 rebellion should have been put down and peace and 

 order restored. (The river was not opened to 

 steamer traffic till 1888. ) Treaties on the same lines 

 were concluded also with the United States, France, 

 and Russia. A revision of the tariff regulations of 

 1842 was to take place subsequently in the year at 



