Captain Elliot and the Founding of Hong Kong

by Captain Elliot

  Elliot &c., will plainly address the sovereign of his nation, that she may strictly proclaim to all the merchants that they are to pay implicit obedience to the prohibitory laws of the celestial court,- that they must not again introduce any opium into this inner land, – that they cannot be allowed any longer to manufacture opium.

  From the commencement of autumn in this present year, any merchant vessel coming to Kwangtung [Guangdong] that may be found to bring opium, shall be immediately and entirely confiscated, both vessel and cargo, to the use of government, no trade shall be allowed to it, and the parties shall be left to suffer death at the hands of the celestial court, – such punishment they will readily submit to.16

  It was not surprising that Lin wanted Queen Victoria involved. As Head of State she was regarded by the Commissioner as having the kind of authority over the British that the Emperor had over the people of China. Lin had earlier composed a long letter to the British queen requesting that she forbid the cultivation of the opium poppy and the manufacture of the drug. He made the case on moral grounds:

  We are of the opinion that this poisonous article is clandestinely manufactured by artful and depraved people of various tribes under the dominion of your honorable nation…. Though not making use of it one’s self, to venture nevertheless to manufacture and sell it, and with it to seduce the simple folk of this land, is to seek one’s own livelihood by exposing others to death, to seek one’s own advantage by other men’s injury. Such acts are bitterly abhorrent to the nature of man and are utterly opposed to the ways of heaven.17

  Copies had been freely distributed in Canton, but it never reached its destination.18 So far as Elliot was concerned, Lin’s appeal to the Queen was of no importance in the immediacy of the threat to the foreign merchant community presented by the demand to sign the bond. Since the bond could not be accepted, conditions for the foreigners could be expected to deteriorate rapidly and withdrawal from Canton, already recognised by Elliot as inevitable sooner or later, now, in late April, became urgent.

  The surrender of the drug had meanwhile been proceeding as planned. Lin had set out a programme for the restoration of privileges to the besieged community, to be implemented in stages as the amount of surrendered opium increased. By 2 May the Commissioner was satisfied that his demands were being met, and he ordered the lifting of the siege. With the exception of Lancelot Dent and some fifteen other traders whom the Chinese considered the most flagrant opium traffickers, the merchants left Canton for Macao. Elliot was now concerned that if any of them should attempt to return, they would again be putting themselves at risk. Furthermore, the stand taken against what the foreign community considered to be the wholly unjust and unacceptable behaviour of Lin and his colleagues, including especially the demand that they sign a bond, would be seriously undermined.

  The order that all British subjects in Canton should leave the city had been issued by Elliot on 11 May. After sailing from Canton on 24 May he arrived back in Macao. Having been away from his family for more than two months, he was relieved not only to be with them but to be able to show that he was unharmed and attending to his duties as normal. He took the earliest opportunity to write home to Emma and to Harriet, one of their sisters. He offered fond advice concerning the care of the three children, and in the same letter addressed the children themselves about how they should behave. As customary when reporting home on his own situation he was careful, while giving assurance that he was safe and bearing up, not to downplay either the severity of the difficulties he was facing or their complexity:

  I write to you both because I know you will be equally anxious about me. I am once more with my family after a pretty close imprisonment of nine weeks, somewhat shattered in health but strong in spirit...The attempt to explain what I have been doing, or why, would be hopeless indeed.’19

  Charles Elliot was already aware that he was going to find it difficult to expound convincingly the line he had been taking with the Chinese. It would have been inappropriate, and probably alarming to her, to have reported to Emma at this stage that he had complied with the Commissioner’s demand to surrender a large and valuable quantity of British-owned opium. He was, despite his assertion otherwise, dispirited and tired. He still believed that the Chinese wanted a mutually acceptable solution, and viewed his own demeanour and that of his compatriots with a degree of cynicism:

  Since I left Canton on the 24 I have received a very moderate and conciliatory note from the Governor. They are evidently desirous of accommodating matters if they can. The Chinese, dear Emy, have made me a cautious, suspicious man and I do not gabble so easily now as I was used to do 3 years since. To borrow a figure of their own, I ‘investigate and enquire three times three’ and then answer that it is difficult to say ‘no’ and harder still to say ‘yes’. When they want to settle, they always find a way easily enough. When they want to confuse us, we usually spare them the trouble by doing it ourselves.20

  Elliot’s assumed authority over the British traders had held good in the withdrawal from Canton, as it had for the surrender of the opium, but influencing the merchants of other nations was a different matter. The Americans, in particular, felt under no obligation to toe Elliot’s line. In the United States the prevailing view was reflected in an address to Congress by the lawyer Caleb Cushing:

  God forbid that I should cooperate with the British Government in the purpose – if purpose it have – of upholding the base cupidity and violence which have characterized the actions of the British individually and collectively in the seas of China … I trust the idea will no longer be entertained in England, if she chooses to persevere in the attempt to coerce the Chinese by force of arms to be poisoned with opium by whole provinces, that she is to receive aid or countenance from the United States in that nefarious enterprise.21

  Though minor players compared with the British, in terms of both the number of firms and the volume of business, the American traders in Canton had established a separate relationship with the Chinese and were now keen to distance themselves from British moves. The young and earnest Charles King of Olyphant & Co., the only American firm not to deal in opium, was a particular thorn in Elliot’s side, criticising him publicly and at great length for the way he was conducting affairs. King’s attack focused solely on the opium issue, greatly irritating Elliot. It led him to compose a detailed refutation, set out in a later letter to Emma, which castigated King for being critical and yet for failing to indicate how he would have done things better.22 A raw nerve seems nevertheless to have been touched in Elliot. Given his own hostility to opium trafficking, he probably felt that the American was being not only self-indulgent but unfair and, since he had previously supported Elliot’s approach, hypocritical. King’s polemic was among the first of many occasions on which Charles Elliot would feel the need to justify his conduct in China.

  Commissioner Lin kept his word on the return in stages to the status quo as the opium was handed over, though progress was stalled midway when he received an unfounded report that the British were planning to interrupt the process. From the British side the surrender of the opium was supervised on Elliot’s behalf by his deputy, Johnston. For the Chinese Lin himself took direct charge, taking up residence on a boat just south of the Bogue near the island of Lankeet, where the opium was to be given up. A little short of half the promised 20,283 chests had been delivered by 19 April, after nine days. By 21 May a dispute between Lin and Johnston had been resolved, and the handover was complete. The destruction of the drug commenced early in June at Humen, then a small and otherwise insignificant town, in Dongguan, northwest of present day Shenzhen. It took some three weeks. Hundreds of workers smashed the balls of opium and poured the fragments into trenches filled with lime, salt and water, whence the dissolved drug flowed into the mouth of the Pearl River and out to sea.

  At Macao Elliot could do little more than wait patiently. He hoped that either the British government would react to the injury inflicted on its citizens
or, in the interests of reviving legitimate trade and of avoiding conflict, Lin would blink first and set the demand for the bond aside. As ever when he was not engaged in vigorous action or diplomatic exchange, Elliot was given to bouts of introspection. On this occasion he concluded that he was doing his best but that if that was not considered good enough, he would have to live with the consequences. He wrote in a resigned tone to Emma:

  I have had difficult things indeed to do, and my way is still among thorns and briars. As I grow older, blessed be God however, I grow more confident in his support, and less confident in the wisdom of the world’s ways. I am meaning to do my duty honestly and faithfully; and if the government are not satisfied I shall leave my post with the hope that they may find as honest intentions and far more ability. My task has not been an easy one and there let that matter rest.23

  There was never any real chance that Lin and his officials, who now held the upper hand, would give ground. So far as Lin was concerned there was no reason to; he believed that the barbarians had learned their lesson and that normal commercial relations would in due course be reestablished at Canton.

  The widespread tension among the foreign and local communities on the China coast perhaps made it inevitable that this period of relative calm should have been interrupted by an event outside the control of both the Chinese and British authorities. On 12 July Commissioner Lin noted in his diary: ‘Heard that at Kowloon Point sailors from a foreign ship beat up some Chinese peasants and killed one of them. Sent a deputy to make enquiries.’24 What Lin had heard was accurate; the murdered man, Lin Weixi, had died following a liquor-fuelled brawl between local villagers and (mostly English) sailors. The exchanges between the British and the Chinese which then ensued illustrated yet again their fundamentally different notions not only of the way justice should be administered but of the nature of justice itself. Charles Elliot, aware of the danger that the affair could spark a much more serious confrontation, acted swiftly to try to identify the person or persons responsible for the death. Before the report of the incident reached Lin, Elliot was at the scene of the affray. Offering a reward, he attempted to persuade the villagers to find the culprit, who would then be dealt with according to the procedures of English law. Anxious to avoid a British sailor being subject to summary Chinese justice, Elliot’s immediate aim was to convene a court and instigate a trial, as he was authorised to do under the (hitherto unused) 1833 British legislation to that effect.25 More importantly, Commissioner Lin did not recognise any legal principle of extraterritoriality; the death of a Chinese citizen had occurred on Chinese soil and the Chinese authorities would take the necessary action. He demanded that the perpetrator be identified and handed over. Elliot arraigned six of the seamen involved and they received fines and custodial sentences but it proved impossible to establish who had caused the death. The Commissioner sought a life for a life, as Chinese justice required, and Elliot’s continued refusal to surrender a murderer, coming after his refusal to allow British merchants to resume trading at Canton, was treated by Lin as another significant provocation, to which he was honour bound to respond in the strongest terms.

  The Lin Weixi episode also demonstrated misunderstandings by each side of the other’s psychology. The Commisioner was taken aback by Elliot’s apparent intransigence – the foreigners had been forced to surrender large quantities of opium, and were therefore in an inherently weak position; how could Elliot now behave in this obstructive way? The belief that the Chinese viewed any giving of ground by their opponents as a sign of weakness was to become a major part of the argument for British retaliation, and of the subsequent criticism of Elliot’s handling of affairs in China. A contemporary (British) observer of events wrote a few years later that ‘Every concession on the part of Captain Elliot, or the merchants, was to him [Lin] a victory gained, and the forerunner of greater ones.’26 Charles Elliot showed a similarly misplaced optimism about Lin’s attitude; he thought he understood the Chinese and in a general way his empathy for the people was real, but he failed fully to comprehend the determined mindset of their senior officials. In his letter to Emma of 17 July he appeared sanguine, even light-hearted, about future exchanges:

  My troublesome friend the high commissioner is still here and flirts with me ever and anon. When he waxes civil I draw up and blushingly turn away. When he is a little nearer, I throw a bland word or two at him. We shall settle our little difference amicably I dare say.27

  As with the confinement of the foreigners in the Canton factories, the measures Lin was now to take were uncompromising and effective. Except that this time the British were in Macao, it was, so far as Lin was concerned, to be very like a rerun of the Canton blockade. Once again supplies were cut off, and once again the Chinese military presence was significantly increased. This time, however, there was a way out for the British community, even if temporary and fraught with difficulty. Lin’s message that if he did not surrender Lin Weixi’s killer Elliot himself would be held responsible was for Elliot the last straw. He responded by putting into action a plan to evacuate all the Macao British to Hong Kong harbour, where they would be quartered on the fifty or so merchant ships until it became safe to return to Macao. By 27 August, twelve days after the Commissioner had decreed the cessation of supplies, Charles, Clara, the 2-year-old Freddy, and all British residents of Macao had decamped to Hong Kong. The decision to evacuate anticipated an edict from Lin requiring da Silveira Pinto, the Governor of Macao, to expel the British. Elliot had had little choice, but had acted in time to avoid a potentially violent and distressing encounter. The British families remained relatively safe, but had no secure source of supplies. Armed Chinese junks hovered around the Kowloon peninsula, where food and fresh water were normally to be had, obstructing access. Notices appeared on wells announcing that the water they contained was poisoned.

  Though the supplies situation was not desperate, Elliot’s concern that it might become so, as well as the increasing restlessness of the ships’ crews at the most humid and uncomfortable time of the year, prompted him to go in person to Kowloon to try to sort something out. After hours of waiting and an agreement which was then broken, Elliot’s frustration got the better of him and he permitted three junks to be fired on. The British vessels involved were the lightly armed cutter Louisa, a hired merchant brigantine, the Pearl, also lightly armed, and a boat from the recently arrived frigate, HMS Volage. Despite their heavier firepower the height of the junks caused their shot to pass over the British craft, whose manoeuvrability and lower line of fire enabled them to inflict significant damage. Elliot wrote later to Palmerston that he regretted allowing this action, which could have had very serious immediate consequences:

  I can assure your Lordship, that though I am responsible for causing the first shot to be fired, I did not anticipate any conflict when we left, and went accompanied [by the Pearl and the pinnace of the Volage] solely for purposes of sufficient defence against insult or attack.

  The violent and vexatious measures heaped upon Her Majesty’s officers and subjects will, I trust, serve to excuse those feelings of irritation which have betrayed me into a measure that I am certain, under less trying circumstances, would be difficult indeed of vindication.’28

  However unfairly treated he may have felt over recent years, and whatever he may have said in private, Elliot’s communications with the Foreign Secretary had always shown the level of deference their respective positions required. This was the first time the Chief Superintendent had felt the need to express regret for his own conduct to his superior – in effect, to apologise – and was perhaps a sign that the pressures on him were beginning to erode his usual high level of self-confidence.

  During these critical months of 1839 Charles Elliot was indeed under considerable strain. As well as issuing notices to the merchant community, the local Chinese population and the ships’ captains, he was in frequent correspondence with Chinese officials, the Governor of Macao, individual traders and, especially,
Palmerston. His letters to the Foreign Secretary set out in detail events as they unfolded and made it clear that he was in full charge. He was also careful to explain his objectives and to record his current thinking and preoccupations. Aware that his letters would not reach their destination for some five months, he knew that in due course he would be required to account for his actions. A full and reliable record would be essential for that purpose. Towards the end of August he referred to the Lin Weixi affair, reporting that American seamen had taken as much part as the British, and that if it was true that the US Consul had denied any American involvement ‘he has hazarded an assertion at variance with the state of the facts.’29 In the same communication, written from his temporary home on the Fort William in Hong Kong harbour, Elliot sought to draw a line under the trading arrangements with China that had prevailed hitherto:

  Your Lordship … may be assured that I will do everything in my power to prevent the Calamity and intolerable disgrace of a surprise of this valuable Fleet of near fifty sail of British Ships by Mandarin Junks or Fire rafts; and for this purpose I have this day assumed the Military as well as the civil Superintendence of the Ships and issued the necessary directions for their defence … English Ships or men, can never again be safe within these limits till our whole intercourse with this Empire be placed on an entirely different footing.30