Ch 19 - The Western Foothold in Asia

Matters of Vengeance

Great Britain's China policy became the focus of a heated debate in London, where Parliament challenged the widsom of Lord Palmerston's continued beligerence against the Chinese. Lord Elgin assumed command of a powerful expeditionary force to China with instructions to end British trade restrictions and establish direct diplomatic contact with Beijing.

China and Great Britain settled into a period of "phony warfare" in the months following the Arrow Incident at Canton, with each side trying to threaten and intimidate the other. The two antagonists might have drifted toward a peaceful settlement had it not been for the strange case of the poisoned bread.

Chinese in the area around Hong Kong had long suffered the tense relationship between China and Great Britain and the recent Arrow Incident and resulting bombardment of Canton raised anti-British feelings to a fevered pitch. Acting on the theory that Chinese ate rice and the British ate bread, a group of Chinese conspirators laced Hong Kong's bread supply with arsenic in an attempt to kill the entire expatriate population. The conspirators made two mistakes. First, they used way too much arsenic. Second, they forgot that Hong Kong's large Indian community, which also ate bread, tended to eat breakfast before the British.

Shortly after breakfast on the morning of January 15, 1857, some 400 British citizens, mostly in the Indian community, became violently ill. Hong Kong residents were outraged to learn those who were sick had eaten bread poisoned with arsenic. Because the tainted bread contained such a high dose of arsenic, people vomited up the deadly dough before absorbing a fatal dose. Almost immediately, British police went after Zhong Alum, Hong Kong's most prominent baker. Early that morning, Cheong and his children boarded the steamer Shamrock bound for Macao. Cheong was arrested and dragged back to Victoria for trial, where it was proven that his own children had also eaten some of the poisoned bread and had become violently ill. Attorney General Thomas Chisholm Anstey argued passionately that Cheong's kids suffered from nothing more than seasickness and made the remarkable statement in open court that Zhong Alum and his entire staff should be hanged whether they were guilty or not. "Better hang the wrong men," he said, "than confess that British sagacity and activity have failed to discover the real criminals." The argument failed to move Chief Justice John Hulme, who held a passionate belief in the impartial administration of British justice. The jury acquitted Zhong Alum, but the British court forced him into "voluntary banishment" from China.

The day after the bread poisoning in Hong Kong, American Commissioner Doctor Peter Parker wrote a letter to Governor Yeh Mingchen in Canton to complain. Parker, highly regarded as the father of medical missions in China, performed many of the first surgical procedures in China and trained many young medical students long before the establishment of Chinese medical schools. In his written reply, Governor Yeh expressed surprise at the incident, but also noted the increased Chinese hatred of the British due to the lengthy assault against Canton. Still, he wrote that "to poison people in this underhand manner is an act worthy of detestation." Not knowing the details of the incident, Yeh remarked that such an act was perhaps a way for local natives of the surrounding districts to seek revenge for the "unnumbered evils which have been inflicted upon the Chinese by the English."

Governor Yeh's letter also commented on the longstanding friendly relations between China and the United States and that since the Americans had "never injured the Chinese, there is, of course, nothing to mar the good feeling existing between them." In conclusion, he wrote,

"Your Excellency might with propriety, issue admonitory exhortations for the Americans quietly to attend to their own business, and there can be no question but the Chinese will always treat them in a proper manner. What could induce them to think of secretly poisoning them? - a point worthy of your consideration."

Instead of following Governor Yeh's good advice and informing the American community to stay out of the British fight over Canton, Dr. Parker attempted to justify his and the American Government's decision to cooperate with the British. Parker wrote if it would not have been far better for high Chinese and British officials to meet face to face and negotiate a reasonable end to the hostilities, implying it was Yeh's refusal to meet with Rear Admiral Sir Michael Seymour which triggered the assault on Canton in the first place. He also asked if Yeh really understood the truth of the arguments over entry rights to Canton.

Framed in a spirit of friendship, Parker expressed his personal belief that the root cause of all the difficulties between China and the western nations was China's refusal to "to acknowledge England, France, America and other great nations of the West as her equals and true friends, and treat them accordingly." Doctor Parker should have known the true cause of the problems to date far better than anyone else. The trouble was not China's unwillingness to "acknowledge England, France, America and other great nations of the West as her equals," but the unwillingness of Chinese authorities to allow their subjects to be poisoned with opium while the British East India Company and a few unprincipled British, American and French traders reaped the profits.

Dispatches describing the Arrow Incident and the bombardment of Canton reached London in late December 1856. The following month, Lord Clarendon informed Governor Sir John Bowring that, "Her Majesty's Government entirely approved the course which has been adopted by Sir Michael Seymour and yourself." The brief congratulatory message contained no further instructions. In fact, Lord Clarendon directed a letter to the Secretary of the Admiralty requesting they express to Rear Admiral Seymour the Government's admiration of "the moderation with which he had acted, and the respect which he had shown for the lives and properties of the Chinese."

British journals and a segment of the American press began publishing wholesale denunciations of Chinese actions. Among the sweeping charges of treaty violations, insults to the British flag and attacks against foreigners living in China, with the exception of the Arrow Incident, not a single fact appeared in print to support their denunciations. The British Parliament split over the issue of England's foreign policy in China, with Conservatives arguing against the use of military force and the Liberals, who supported Prime Minister Palmerston, loudly demanding satisfaction for Chinese insults. Political rhetoric so misrepresented and glossed over over the facts and circumstances surrounding the Arrow Incident that it became difficult to understand the real merits of the case. Parliament's lone voice on the law, the Lord Chancellor, remarked that, "unless England had a good case with regard to the Arrow, all proceedings from the last to first were wrong."

A few years earlier, when Parliament exposed the terrible system of torture in India, one of the East India Company's Directors boldly asserted that the charges were wholly unfounded. A subsequent investigation proved the charges were based on facts which should have been known to the Company's directors, which left them to admit either "willful ignorance" or "criminal knowledge" of the horrible charges laid at the Company's feet. Prime Minister Palmerston and his Minister of Foreign Affairs, Lord Clarendon, now faced a similar situation with respect to China.

During a speech at a political banquet, Lord Palmerston attempted to justify British atrocities in China by claiming they were "necessary and vital." Convinced that a "great wrong had been inflicted on our country" and that British subjects had been "exposed to a series of insults, outrages and atrocities which could not be passed over in silence," Palmerston argued that China had violated England's treaty rights and that the British consulate in Canton and the governor of Hong Kong "were not only justified, but obliged to resent those outrages, so far as the power in their hands would enable them to do so." Thus, the destructive assault against Canton rested on the flimsy pretence that "English life and property are endangered by the aggressive acts of the Chinese!" It may have been a plausible argument, but it was indefensible based on the facts.

England's principal charge against the Chinese Government, the basis for the Canton massacres, was that it had violated Article 9 of the Supplemental Treaty Of 1843;  Chinese offenders, whether in the colony of Hong Kong, aboard a British man-of-war, or aboard a British merchant ship, were not to be seized by Chinese authorities, but should be demanded from the British Consul, who would then turn them over to local authorities. Chinese pirates aboard the lorcha Arrow were seized on the Pearl River by Chinese officers, without the intervention of the British Consul. The debate centered on whether the Arrow was, in fact, a British vessel. In a pair of masterful speeches, Lords Derby and Lyndhurst proved beyond doubt that England had no case at all with regard to the lorcha Arrow. The vessel, as Lord Derby demonstrated, was "a vessel Chinese built, Chinese captured, Chinese sold, Chinese bought and manned, and Chinese owned."

Palmerston and his Liberal supporters in Parliament attempted to divert the investigation from the main issue at hand and to sway public opinion with the idea that the long series of injuries which preceded the Arrow Incident constituted a sufficient casus belli. Little consideration was given to the fact the Chinese could point to at least ninety-nine injuries for every charge leveled by England. The British press remained strangely silent on the numerous treaty violations committed by foreigners living in China under British protection. There was nothing said of the ongoing opium trade, the constant bribery of Chinese officials, the "bullying spirit" often shown toward the Chinese, or of the numerous vices introduced by foreigners in the treaty ports. In England, Britons cared little for China's social and moral condition and, looking no further abroad than the local grocery store where they bought their tea, people were easily led to believe just about anything coming from the Prime Minister and the British press.

During Parliamentary debates over the Arrow Incident, Mr. Benjamin Disraeli, in a speech before the House of Commons on February 3, 1857, openly suggested that the spate of "accidents" which occurred in China arising from "instructions" drawn up by the British Premier was nothing new.

"I cannot resist the conviction that what has taken place in China has not been in consequence of the alleged pretext, but is, in fact, in consequence of instructions received from home, some considerable time ago. If that be the case, I think the time has arrived when this House would not be doing its duty unless it earnestly considered whether it has any means of controlling a system, which if pursued, will be one, in my mind, fatal to the interests of this country."

Prime Minister Palmerston replied most coolly,

"The Right Honorable Gentleman says the course of events appeared to be the result of some system predetermined by the Government at home. Undoubtedly, it was."

Lord Henry J. Palmerston, dismissed as Foreign Secretary in December 1851, was elected Prime Minister in January 1855, after Earl George Gordon resigned under pressure from Parliament over his handling of the Crimean War. Lord Palmerston, the man who pushed Britain into China and presided over the opening of the treaty ports and secured the Treaty of Nanjing, now sat at the head of a coalition cabinet that operated with all the characteristics of a dictatorship. Parliament had nearly abdicated its constitutional role in government during the Crimean War with Russia and failed to reassert itself. The impotence of Britain's political party system and the demands of the Crimean War helped put Palmerston in office, but in late February 1857, the House of Lords and the House of Commons considered resolutions condemning Chinese hostilities. The final vote in the House of Lords shocked Palmerston's Cabinet by leaving it with a relatively weak majority of only 36 votes. The House of Commons debate proved far more interesting.

The "China debates" raged in the House of Commons for three nights without resolution. An intense excitement pervaded the halls of Parliament and swept up the mass of people gathered in adjoining streets to hear the outcome. The excitement was not so much due to the importance of the interests at stake, but to the character of the man on trial, Prime Minister Palmerston himself. The Conservatives were outraged, complaining the Arrow Incident was a shoddy excuse for the war which Palmerston clearly proposed to wage.

On the evening of March 3, Conservative member and scholar Mr. William Ewart Gladstone gave a stirring speech that blasted Palmerston for having "turned a consul into a diplomatist, and that metamorphosed consul is forsooth to be at liberty to direct the whole might of England against the lives of a defenseless people." The Prime Minister tried to defend his position by arguing he was the victim of an unprincipled conspiracy by a coalition of opposition members of Parliament.

Mr. Benjamin Disraeli riveted the attention of the House with a rousing speech that described Palmerston as a man without principles and accused him of having spent the last half century professing almost every principle and connecting himself with almost every political party. He challenged Palmerston's argument by claiming the Prime Minister feared "that a majority of the House of Commons, ... [including some of Palmerston's colleagues] ... may not approve a policy with respect to China which has begun in outrage, and which, if pursued, will end in ruin." Disraeli continued his attack, stating that Lord Palmerston had not only failed to specify a single political maxim to guide England in its relations with China, but had clung to the feeble defense of claiming he was the victim of a conspiracy. The difficult point of the debates was to get beyond the stalking-horses of the debate - Governor Sir John Bowring of Hong Kong and his ally at Canton, British Consul Harry Parkes - and to put the question to Lord Palmerston himself by making him personally responsible for the "massacre of the innocents."

On the fourth and final night of the impassioned debate, the House of Commons concluded its business by accomplishing something it failed to do in 1840. It moved to a vote of censure against the Palmerston Cabinet. The Conservatives won the support of radicals in Parliament and defeated the Liberals, who supported Bowring, and unseated Prime Minister Palmerston's government by a resounding vote of 263 to 247. This was neither a simple Parliamentary vote, nor a conspiracy against the Prime Minister, but a rebellion, a forceful attempt to regain control of Parliament's constitutional duties. Two days after the vote, Palmerston retaliated by dissolving the House of Commons and sending the Ministers of Parliament home. The vote of no confidence forced new elections in England, giving Palmerston just the opportunity he needed to refocus the debate on the issue of Chinese insults to the British Crown.

For all his faults, Lord Palmerston held fairly consistent views on domestic and foreign policy. While he preferred the secure foundation of England's constitutional government to Europe's absolutism, his greatest interest was to advance Great Britain's interests as he saw them, including the supremacy of British sea power and the ascendancy of British economic power in the world. During his campaign, the energetic politician stressed the importance of upholding British honor and overseas interests. He told voters in his home district,

"An insolent barbarian wielding authority at Canton, has violated the British flag, broken the engagement of treaties, offered rewards for the heads of British subjects in that part of China, and planned their destruction by murder, assassinations and poisons."

With their patriotic passions aroused, the British electorate vindicated Palmerston's China policy by enthusiastically voting him and his supporters back into office. Such was Lord Palmerston's power.

Prime Minister Palmerston firmly believed the China situation called for a determined show of British muscle. Any other course would not only be embarrassing, but would impair Great Britain's prestige. Soon after his re-election, Prime Minister Palmerston again launched the might and power of England's military force against China without a declaration of war, all for the sake of "British honor" and the alleged infringement of the fanciful code of diplomatic etiquette. The London Times, in its view of the China situation, boasted,

"By this outbreak of hostilities, existing treaties are annulled, and we are left free to shape our relations with the Chinese Empire as we please. ... the recent proceedings at Canton warn us that we ought to enforce that right of free entrance into the country and into the ports open to us which was stipulated for by the Treaty of 1842. We must not again be told that our representatives must be excluded from the presence of the Chinese Governor-General, because we have waived the performance of the article which enabled foreigners to penetrate beyond the precincts of our factories."

Yet another prominent British organ, the Daily News, wrote a more accurate description of unfolding events, noting that it is a

"...monstrous fact, that in order to avenge the irritated pride of a British official, and punish the folly of an Asiatic governor, we prostitute our strength to the wicked work of carrying fire and sword, and desolation and death, into the peaceful homes of unoffending men, on whose shores we were originally intruders. Whatever may be the issue of this Canton bombardment, the deed itself is a bad and a base one - a reckless and wanton waste of human life at the shrine of a false etiquette and a mistaken policy."

In order to impress the Chinese, the British would occupy Canton, the largest city in southern China. James Bruce, the son of Thomas Bruce, seventh Earl of Elgin and former Governor-General of Canada, was appointed as plenipotentiary and ordered to lead an expeditionary force to China . Lord Elgin's mission was straightforward;  to liberate British trade from existing restrictions and establish direct diplomatic contact with Beijing. His instructions directed him to negotiate revisions to the 1842 treaties with a view toward extending trade to cities along China's greater rivers and to effect the execution of treaty stipulations at Canton and other ports. He was also directed to collect reparations for past injuries to and compensation for losses suffered by British subjects. Most importantly, he was to gain diplomatic representation at Beijing, or at least an occasional visit from a British minister, as well as the right of the British plenipotentiary to conduct direct communication with high officials of the Chinese Imperial Court.

Shortly after Lord Elgin's appointment, France agreed to cooperate with British moves underway in China. Seeking to capitalize on the martyrdom of Father Chapdelaine, the French Government dispatched its own task force under the command of Baron Gros, a thirty-year veteran of diplomacy. Baron Gros' instructions were much the same as Lord Elgin's, including the extension of trade, freedom of action for religious missionaries and diplomatic representation at Beijing. England suggested the United States join the expedition, but Washington declined to participate. The American plenipotentiary in China at the time, William B. Reed, was ordered to peacefully cooperate with the British and French, but to ensure China that the United States had no territorial or political designs on the Chinese Empire. Reed's directives called for a diplomatic residence in Beijing, an extension of treaty ports, reduction of the domestic trade tariff, religious freedom, suppression of piracy, and most-favored-nation status for all civilized nations. The United States remained on the sidelines for the most part, doing what it could to lend moral support to the maintenance of China's integrity and the supremacy of the imperial throne.

Russia, the other neutral state in China, sent Admiral Putiatin under orders to dissociate himself and Russia from the Anglo-French operations and to emphasize the long-standing friendship between Russia and China. Putiatin's secret orders directed him to assume the role of mediator between the Qing Imperial Court and the Europeans to prevent the collapse of the dynasty and the resulting shift of the political heart of China from north to south, a shift, if it ever occurred, that would undoubtedly benefit the British.

In China, the smoldering fires of hatred kindled during the First Opium War burst into a hot flame of animosity and anger that no offers of peace and friendship would easily quench. England and other western powers had already missed numerous opportunities to diffuse the situation and pursue peaceful means of achieving their ultimate aims in China. In the end, their hard line gave the Chinese every reason to regard all the nations of the Western World as united in a conspiracy against them.