1854, Britain, France and the United States all demanded that the existing treaties be revised. The Qing government refused and instead opened up all of China, legalized the opium trade, increased tax exemptions, granted foreign diplomats permanent residence in Beijing and so on.
The United States, in 1855, appointed Peter Parker, a missionary, the Chargé D’affaires and required that he obtain permanent residence in Beijing and unlimited freedom for Americans to trade and travel throughout China. They said that in order to maximize their interests, the powers must drastically revise the existing treaties and get tough with China.11 He visited London and Paris, where the colonial diplomats reached an agreement. In August, as Parker was about to leave for Beijing and force the Chinese government to amend the treaties, his British counterpart asserted that without seeing the military might of the powers, China would not make significant concessions.12 Convinced by this, Parker gave up the trip. When the Sino-American Wangxia Treaty expired in 1856, Britain, France and the United States attempted to get Qing to revise the treaties in accordance with their demands. The Qing government again refused, making war, once again, inevitable.
The Crimean War ended in March, 1856. Russia lost to France and Britain. Britain then decided to send its warships to China. The adversaries of the Crimean battlefield now became comrades in the partition of China.
The Arrow was a commercial ship registered in Hong Kong. In October, 1856, the Guangdong navy searched this ship and arrested several pirates. The British consul in Guangzhou, at the British ambassador’s request, then alleged that the ship was owned by Britain and that the Chinese sailors had insulted the British national flag. He demanded an apology and the immediate release of those who had been arrested. The governor of Guangdong first wrote a letter to the British, angered at their statements. He later decided to send those arrested to the British consulate. The British army in late August began bombarding the city of Guangzhou; and, by the next spring, the Palmerston government began to frantically clamor for war against China. The opposition in Parliament questioned Palmerston and set a motion of non-confidence against him. An angered Palmerston asked for a new election. Parliament was reshuffled and finally enacted a bill of war. The British army commanded by James Bruce, Earl of Elgin, was sent to China. At the same time, the Palmerston government invited its French counterpart to join this aggressive expedition. France accepted Britain’s invitation in exchange for approval to expand into Vietnam and for support for an imprescriptible, privileged French Catholicism in China. Some French troops led by the Baron Gros joined the British.
The British and French began to arrive in Hong Kong in October, 1857. One month later, they were joined by the Americans and Russians. By the end of 1857, more than 5,600 British and French soldiers were stationed at the estuary of the Pearl River. Soon the British and the French joined forces and stormed into Guangzhou where they captured the governor. Later, this governor was sent to Calcutta, India, where he died in prison. The invaders set up a puppet regime in Guangzhou. They then headed north and pointed their guns at Beijing. In May, 1858, they took the strategic Dagu garrison, greatly threatening Tianjin. At this point, the Russians and Americans started to mediate and the Qing government was forced to hold peace talks. In the first half of June, Qing signed the Tianjin Treaty with Russia and the United States, which stipulated that both sides should demarcate a border as soon as possible. This laid the foundation for Tsarist Russia’s large-scale territorial seizures in China. In late June, the treaties involving China, Britain and France were signed; they stipulated that foreign diplomats should be given permanent residence in Beijing, that ten more treaty ports should be created, that custom duties be further reduced, and that China pay 4,000,000 silver dollars to Britain and 2,000,000 silver dollars to France in war reparations. Then, in November, the powers forced China to sign an additional treaty legalizing the opium trade and stipulating that the China’s customs should be guided by Britain. Emperor Xianfeng had no choice but to approve all of these treaties.
The next year, the British, French and American ambassadors travelled to China in their own fleets in order to sign the documents. On June 25, they launched an unexpected attack on the Dagu garrison. The defending force was commanded by the renowned Sengge Linqin, who destroyed ten enemy warships and annihilated more than four hundred enemy soldiers. The wounded British admiral and his American counterpart had to withdraw. For the first time, Qing had won a huge victory against the Western invaders.
Following the Dagu battle, China and the United States signed an agreement. Britain and France, on the other hand, were preparing for another war. They sent seventy-nine British warships and 20,000 or so British soldiers, together with forty French warships and 7,600 French soldiers. Colonial armies of this size had rarely been seen in world history. In April, 1860 the colonial troops successively captured Zhoushan (in present-day Zhejiang), Dalian (in Liaoning) and Zhifu (present-day Yantai, Shandong) and blocked the Bohai Gulf. One month later, the Russian and American envoys arrived. While officially mediating with the Chinese, in reality they were secretly helping the British and the French. In late August, the Americans and Russians occupied Tianjin. The Qing government agreed to start another round of peace talks; however, these failed due to the colonialists’ harsh requirements. At the Russian diplomats’ instigation, in early September the allied troops began attacking Beijing, which resulted in Qing’s defending forces, commanded by Sengge, finally being destroyed in late September. Emperor Xianfeng had to flee Rehe (present-day Chengde, Hebei). The British troops attacked Beijing in retaliation, looted and burnt Yuanmingyuan, the Old Summer Palace, which epitomized the brilliance of ancient Chinese art and culture. Today, one can see Yuanmingyuan’s broken stone pillars, which survived the attack carried out by the colonialists.
Intimated by the Western powers, Qing had to sign the Treaty of Beijing with Britain and France in late October. As part of the treaty, Tianjin was turned into a treaty port and a new piece of territory was added to Britain’s territory in Hong Kong, and more millions of silver dollars in war reparations were paid. After the Second Opium War, an imperialistic system was formally set up causing considerable damage to China’s sovereignty. The signing of the Treaty of Beijing marked the further decline of China.
Tsarist Russia: A Grabber of Chinese Lands
Russia intensified its efforts to grab land in the northeast and northwest of China after the First Opium War. In September, 1847, the Tsar appointed a general and diplomat as Governor General of East Siberia. The governor’s main duty was to seize China’s Heilong River. Two years later, the Russian navy invaded the river’s estuary and Kuyedao (Sakhalin). By 1853, Russia had expanded into the lower reaches of the Heilong River. At the beginning of 1854, the Tsar approved the Governor General’s decision to arm navigation along the Heilong River. In May, seventy Russian warships and 1,000 Russian soldiers crossed the Sino-Russian border and began to build garrisons in the lower reaches of the Heilong River. The next year, Tsarist Russia even started to transport armed settlers into the territory. In late 1856, the Tsar set up a new oblast (province) on the Heilong River’s lower reaches and Kuyedao.
In May, 1858, when China was facing Anglo-French aggression, the governor of East Siberia forced the Qing general supervising Aihui (present-day Heihe, Heilongjiang) to sign the Treaty of Aihui (Aigun). Under this treaty, Russia grabbed more than 600,000 square kilometers of Chinese territory north of the Heilong River and south of the Stanovoy Range. However, the Qing government disapproved of this treaty and punished the general of Aihui. Russia, however, took Hailanpao, the Chinese city on the north side of Heilongjiang, renamed it Blagoveshchensk and awarded the governor of East Siberia a noble title. Russia continued their expansion into the northwest China and the Tsar’s troops invaded the region east of Balkhash Lake as early as 1846. Then, in the 1850s, Russia crossed the Ili River and seized a huge piece of Chinese territory.
After the signing of the Treaty of Beijing, which involved China, Britain and France, Russia threatened a huge attack against China
