Captain Elliot and the Founding of Hong Kong

by Captain Elliot

  13 ADM7/561/516 Serapis

  14 From Statistical Report of the Sickness, Mortality and Invaliding Amongst the Troops in the West indies quoted in Frank Cundall Historic Jamaica (London, The West India Committee, 1915), 77 at http://archive.org/stream/cu31924020417527#page/n9/2up (accessed 15.11.2012)

  15 See Charles Mackenzie Notes on Haiti, made during a Residence in that Republic, Vol.1 (London, Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, 1830), 334: ‘During my illness my brother, two of the Vice-Consuls, and my excellent friend, Captain Elliot of the Harlequin were also laid up with dangerous sickness’ at http://archive.org/details/notesonhaitimade01mack (accessed 20.11.2012)

  16 Based on the careers of thirty-eight captains who had joined the Royal Navy between 1788 and 1820; data in William Loney RN – accessed as in Note 3 above. Twenty had served twenty-five years or more before promotion to captain.

  17 Clara’s role in Charles Elliot’s life, as a wife and mother, and in his subsequent career, is sensitively and thoroughly described in Hoe and Roebuck The Taking of Hong Kong, which has been the source of much of the material on Clara Elliot in this account.

  18 See Hoe and Roebuck The Taking of Hong Kong, 258

  19 Ibid., 239-240, Note 25 to Chapter 9

  20 See Descendants of Archibald Kane in Haiti at http://genforum.genealogy.com/haiti/messages/1296.html (accessed 22.11.2012). Clara’s brother Robert Alexandre Windsor was married to Marie Louise Isabella Kane, whose mother, Jeanne Julienne Bonnet, had married Noñez after the death of her first husband, Isabella’s father, Archibald Kane.

  21 The Republic of Haiti had been founded in 1804 following a slave revolt against the French.

  Chapter Four: Slavery and British Guiana

  1 The islands included Madeira, the Azores, and Cape Verde, and Sao Tome and Principe in the Gulf of Guinea.

  2 Notably from Amsterdam, Bordeaux, Bristol, Cadiz, Liverpool, Lisbon, London, Nantes and Seville. Many minor ports were also involved.

  3 For a summary of the worldwide implications of slave trading, see James Walvin, The Slave Trade (London, Thames and Hudson, 2011), 7–19

  4 Under Article III of the Treaty of Amiens ‘His Britannic Majesty restores to the French Republic and its allies, viz. His Catholic majesty [Spain] and the Batavian republic [the Netherlands] all possessions and colonies which respectively belonged to them…’

  5 The Treaty restored to Holland the colonial territories it held in 1803 with the exceptions of Berbice, Demerara/Essequibo and the Cape of Good Hope.

  6 Quoted in G.W.Bennett A History of British Guiana, compiled from various authorities (Georgetown, Demerara, L. M’Dermott, 1875), 112 (published (no date given) in digitised form, British Library Historical Collection)

  7 Ibid.

  8 Hansard, House of Commons debate Amelioration of the Condition of the Slave Population of the West Indies, 16th March 1824, at http://hansard.millbanksystems.com (accessed 18.12.2012). Lord Bathurst gave a similar summary in the House of Lords on the same day.

  9 Ibid.

  10 Demerara: Further Papers … Copy of Documentary Evidence Produced Before a General Court Martial (House of Commons, 1824), 6,7, quoted in Viotti da Costa Crowns of Glory, Tears of Blood (New York, Oxford University Press, 1994), 175

  11 Governor Murray was subsequently presented by the colonists with a valuable (1,200 guineas) piece of plate, in recognition of his leading role in the suppression of the revolt (see Henry G. Dalton The History of British Guiana Vol.1 (London, Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1855), 361).

  12 See Walvin, The Slave Trade, 128

  13 The Royal Gazette, 1808, quoted in Odeen Ishmael The Guyana Story (from Earliest Times to Independence), 41: The Anti-Slavery Movement in British Guiana, 2005, at http://www.guyana.org/features/guyanastory/guyana_story.html (accessed 20.12.2012)

  14 Minto papers, ms 21219, ff1–12

  15 Of the fifteen British Caribbean colonies at this time only four were in this category, Demerara/Essequibo, Berbice, St Lucia and Trinidad; the remaining eleven all possessed some form of representative government. The other ‘Crown’ colonies were the Cape of Good Hope and Mauritius.

  16 See Phillip Buckner Young, Sir Aretas William in Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online, Vol. VI 1821-1835 at http://www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01.php?&id_nbr=3204 (accessed 21.12.2012)

  Chapter Five: Office and Delusion

  1 Hansard, House of Lords debate Condition of Slaves in the West Indies, 8 February 1830, Order of the King in Council at http://hansard.millbanksystems.com (accessed 4.1.2013)

  2 Full title ‘The Society for the Mitigation and Gradual Abolition of Slavery Throughout the British Dominions’, founded by – amongst others – the veteran abolitionists Thomas Clarkson and William Wilberforce

  3 For a summary and the Anti-Slavery Society’s reaction see The Anti-Slavery Reporter No 92, January 1832, Vol. 5 No. 1, 1-5, New Slave Code: Protectors and Assistant Protectors (London, London Society for the Abolition of Slavery Throughout the British Dominions, 1833) at http://archive.org/stream/antislaveryrepor005soci# (accessed 2.1.2013)

  4 Ibid.,3

  5 Public Record Office Lists and Indexes, XXXVI List of Colonial Office Records (London, HMSO) 1911, noted in Blake Charles Elliot RN, 13

  6 Buckner Young, Sir Aretas William, DCBO

  7 See CO 114/12, Minutes of the Proceedings of the Court of Policy, British Guiana, 195–6

  8 Ibid., 58-9

  9 CO 116/178, Blue Book of Statistics, Berbice 1831, 114

  10 Noted in Richard B. Sheridan The Condition of Slaves on the sugar plantations of Sir John Gladstone in the colony of Demerara, 1812–49 in New West Indian Guide/Nieuwe West-Indische Gids 76 (2002), no.3/4, Leiden, 264 at http://www.kitlvjournals.nl/index.php/nwig/viewFile/3455/4216 (accessed 14.1.2013)

  11 Minto papers, ms 21219 ff 95-102. Robertson’s figures also give numbers of slaves according to crop cultivated: sugar (47,456); cotton (2,859); and coffee (2,555). In smaller numbers, slaves were also engaged in other tasks, such as working with cattle (385).

  12 CO 116/159 Report of the Protector of Slaves, Demerara and Essequibo, January – June 1832

  13 i.e. including Berbice, which as a separate colony had had until June 1831 its own Acting Protector of Slaves, the Registrar Mr Samuel, who had held the post in the absence of the Protector, Mr Power, since January of that year.

  14 CO 114/12, Minutes of the Court of Policy, 188-94

  15 Ibid., 189

  16 Ibid., 189–90

  17 Ibid., 190

  18 Ibid.

  19 An Ordinance for Assimilating the Manner of Proceeding for the Recovery of the Fines and Penalties Provided in the Slave Ordinances in the United Colony of Demerary and Essequebo, and of Berbice Respectively in The Essequebo and Demerary Royal Gazette, December 1831 at http://www.vc.id.au/edg/18311231rg.html (accessed 15.1.2013).

  20 Ibid.

  21 CO 114/12, Minutes of the Court of Policy, 191

  22 Ibid., 193

  23 Ibid., 203 – the planters had commented, for example, that ‘it is notorious that the duties paid on sugar exceed the residue of gross sales’.

  24 Ibid., 202

  25 Minto papers, ms 21219 f97, quoting Robertson, who had been Registrar of Slaves in Demerara/Essequibo since 1817

  26 Ibid.

  27 Ibid.

  28 CO 116/146, Report of the Protector of Slaves, Berbice, May–September 1830 Table A, 108-110 (standard form numbering in Protectors’ reports)

  29 Henry Beard, Governor of Berbice 1821–31

  30 CO 116/146, 1

  31 Ibid.

  32 Ibid., 5

  33The Anti-Slavery Reporter No. 104 December 31, 1832, Vol. V No.13, 313, Analysis of the Report of a Committee of the House of Commons on the Extinction of Slavery at http://archive.org/stream/antislaveryrepor005soci#(accessed 22.1.2013)

  34 Ibid., 463

  35 Ibid., 464

  36 Ibid., 465

  37 Ibid., 466

  38 Min
to papers, ms 13135 ff5-7, 25 January 1834, Charles Elliot to Emma Hislop.

  39 Bell, K.N. and Morrell, W.P. (eds.), Select Documents on British Colonial Policy, 1830–1860 (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1928), quoted in Blake Charles Elliot RN, 18

  40 Ibid., 18-19

  41 Minto papers, ms 13135 ff5-7, 25 January 1834, Charles to Emma.

  42 Under-Secretary of State for Home Affairs, until July 1834. He was subsequently Secretary at War (1835-1839) and Secretary of State for War and the Colonies (1846–52)

  43 Minto papers, ms 21217 f2, 2 March 1833, Howick to the Treasury.

  44 Ibid.

  45 Grey papers, ms GRE/B148/8, 9 October 1832, Charles Elliot to Lord Howick.

  46 Ibid.

  47 Ibid.

  Chapter Six: Trade and China

  1 Ibn-Battuta Rihla, quoted in Joe Studwell The China Dream (London, Profile Books, 2002), 6

  2 Ibn Taghri-Birdi A History of Egypt, 1382–1469 AD, quoted in Gavin Menzies 1421 The Year China discovered the World (London, Bantam Press, 2002), 71

  3 A detailed account of Weddell’s activities in China is provided in Austin Coates Macao and the British 1637-1842, Prelude to Hong Kong (Hong Kong, Oxford University Press, 1988), 1-27

  4 Peter Mundy The Travels of Peter Mundy in Europe and Asia 1608–1667 quoted in Frank Welsh A History of Hong Kong (London, Harper Collins, 1993), 550

  5 See Niall Ferguson Empire: How Britain made the Modern World (London, Penguin Books, 2003), 22-23

  6 See John Keay The Honourable Company: A History of the East India Company (London, Harper Collins, 1993), 177

  7 J. Fryer A New Account of the East Indies and Persia … 1672–1681, cited ibid., 137

  8 F. E. Penny Fort St George, Madras: A Short History of Our First Possession in India (London, Swan Sonnenschein & Co. Ltd., 1900), 36, at http://archive. org/details/fortstgeorgemad00penngoog (accessed 6.3.2013)

  9 Day’s and Charnock’s successors, who with those at Bombay were the men in overall charge of the East India Company’s Indian settlements, were formally designated Presidents, though they were more usually known as Governors or Governors-General. Until the Presidency of Madras came into being, the Company’s activities on the Coromandel coast were the administrative responsibility of the Bantam Presidency. Its trading in the Bay of Bengal was under the aegis of Madras initially, but was accorded Agency status in 1681 and by 1700, after a period in which it was again subject to Madras, had become independent as the Presidency of Bengal, centred on Calcutta.

  10 Keay The Honourable Company, 206–07

  11 After whom Yale College (now Yale University) Connecticut was named.

  12 From the Cantonese ‘hoi poi’, an abbreviation of the Mandarin title held by the superintendent of South Sea Customs (see Frank Welsh A History of Hong Kong, 27)

  13 Keay The Honourable Company, 209

  14 Ibid., 349

  15 The Act’s provisions included the granting of additional powers to the Governor General of Bengal (at that time Warren Hastings), in effect establishing Bengal as the senior of the three Presidencies and the Governor General as the British government’s officer in overall charge of its Indian territories.

  16 Joseph Rowntree (1905), quoted ibid.

  17 Martin Booth Opium: A History (New York, St Martin’s Griffin, 1998), 109

  18 Hosea Ballou Morse Chronicles of the East India Company quoted in Michael Greenberg British Trade and the Opening of China 1800-1842 (Cambridge University Press, 2008), 6

  19 Greenberg British Trade and the Opening of China, 221 (Greenberg notes that the figures, taken from Morse International Relations Vol.1, are from a number of different original sources and may not be entirely accurate; but the overall trend is clear).

  20 Quoted in Christopher Hibbert, The Dragon Wakes: China and the West 1793– 1911 (Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1984), 4.

  21 Aeneas Anderson An Accurate Account of Lord Macartney’s Embassy to China; carefully abridged from the original work (London, Vernor and Hood, 1798), 78 at http://archive.org/details/accurateaccounto00ande (accessed 11.4.2013).

  22 Ibid., 78–9

  23 Ibid.

  24 Ibid., 98

  25 J.L.Cranmer-Byng An Embassy to China: Being the Journal Kept by Lord Macartney during his Embassy to the Emperor Ch’ien-lung, 1793-94 (Longmans, 1962) quoted in Hibbert The Dragon Wakes, 13.

  26 Quoted in Greenberg British Trade and the Opening of China, 4.

  Chapter Seven: Fizzle, Silence, and Quiescence

  1 W. C. Costin Great Britain and China, 1833–1860 (Oxford, The Clarendon Press, 1937), 31

  2 See Chapter One

  3 More properly Bocca Tigris (the Mouth of the Tigris, the name by which the Pearl River was known to the East India Company)

  4 Salary in 2015 terms, £93,793 (illustrative – Bank of England inflation calculator at http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/education/Pages/resources/inflationtools/calculator/flash/default.aspx (accessed 10.4.2016)

  5 Grey papers, ms GRE/B84/10/12, 23 January 1834, Charles Elliot to Lord Howick

  6 Hoe and Roebuck assert (The Taking of Hong Kong, 6) that Elliot did not realise what he was being offered; it is possible that he had been actively encouraged to believe that a more senior post was intended.

  7 FO17/6/34-7, 13 August 1834, Elliot to Lord Palmerston.

  8 Minto papers, ms 13135 ff8-9, 21 February 1834, Charles Elliot to his sister Emma (Hislop)

  9 Ibid., ff5-7, 25 January 1834.

  10 See Minto papers, ms 13135 ff1-2, 3 November 1833, Charles to Emma (quoted in full in Hoe and Roebuck The Taking of Hong Kong, 12).

  11 Minto papers, ms 13135 ff1–2, 3 November 1833, Charles to Emma.

  12 Ibid., ff10–12, 10 May 1834.

  13 Ibid.

  14 Ibid.

  15 Ibid., ms 13137 ff4–6, 24 August 1834, Clara Elliot to Emma Hislop, quoted in Hoe and Roebuck The Taking of Hong Kong, 20. Davis had been the senior East India Company official in China before its monopoly and predominant formal role there ended in April 1834.

  16 Ibid.

  17 Correspondence Relating to China, 1840, 36 (223), 5, Parliamentary Papers, quoted in Peter Ward Fay The Opium War 1840-1842 (New York and London, W.W. Norton & Company, 1976), 69.

  18 Quoted in Glenn Melancon Britain’s China Policy and the Opium Crisis: Balancing Drugs, Violence and National Honour, 1833–1840 (Aldershot, Ashgate Publishing Ltd., 2003), 36.

  19 From the letters and journals of William John, ninth Lord Napier, quoted in Priscilla Napier Barbarian Eye: Lord Napier in China, 1834, The Prelude to Hong Kong (London, Brassey’s, 1995), 88.

  20 See Napier Barbarian Eye, 159.

  21 William Jardine Private Letter Books, Ch.3, 127, June 1834, Jardine Matheson papers, quoted in Robert Blake Jardine Matheson Traders of the Far East (London, Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1999), 69.

  22 Napier was also referred to by the Chinese in writing, more insultingly, by characters which translated as ‘Laboriously Vile’, though this was probably not as offensive in Chinese usage as Napier and the British took it to be (see Brian Inglis, The Opium War (London, Hodder and Stoughton, 1976), 97).

  23 See Napier Barbarian Eye, 124-125

  24 Correspondence of Foreign Secretaries with Superintendents, 1834–1839, Napier to Palmerston, 14–17 August 1834, Parliamentary Papers 1840, xxxvi, no.7, quoted in Costin Great Britain and China, 1833–1860.

  25 Ibid. no. 11, Napier to Grey, 21 August 1934, quoted in Costin Great Britain and China, 24.

  26 Correspondence Relating to China, 1840, 36 (223), 24, quoted in Fay The Opium War, 73.

  27 See Napier Barbarian Eye, 132.

  28 William Boyd, the merchants’ secretary.

  29 From the letters and journals of Lord Napier, quoted in Napier Barbarian Eye, 184–85.

  30 See Napier Barbarian Eye, 191

  31 Minto papers, ms 13137 ff4–6, 24 August 1834, Clara Elliot to Emma Hislop, quoted in Hoe and Roebuck The Taking of Hong Kong, 27.
>
  32 Minto papers, ms 13137 ff7–11, 9 November 1834, Clara to Emma, quoted in Hoe and Roebuck The Taking of Hong Kong, 33.

  33 Parliamentary Papers (Blue Book) (selected Foreign Office papers), 44, quoted ibid., 40.

  34 Minto papers, ms 13135 ff13-15, 19 January 1835, Charles Elliot to Emma

  35 Quoted in Hsin-pao Chang Commissioner Lin and the Opium War (New York, W.W.Norton & Company Inc., 1970), 64.

  36 Minto papers, ms 13135 ff13–15, 19 January 1835, Charles Elliot to Emma.

  37 See Derek Roebuck Captain Charles Elliot RN, Arbitrator: Dispute Resolution in China Waters, 1834–6 in Arbitration International (1998) 14:2, 185-212 at http://arbitration.oxfordjournals.org/content/14/2/185 (accessed 12.1.2016).

  38 Quoted ibid.

  39 Ibid.

  40 Ibid.

  41 Ibid.

  42 ‘without interest’ i.e. in whom no-one is interested

  43 Minto papers, ms 13135 ff16–17, 28 April 1835, Charles Elliot to Emma.

  44 Ibid.

  45 See Chang Commissioner Lin, 66–67.

  46 FO/17/14, 16 October 1835, Robinson to Palmerston.

  47 The contact, Lennox Conyngham, is said by Blake (Charles Elliot RN, 28) to have been a friend of Elliot’s; Hoe and Roebuck (The Taking of Hong Kong, 45) suggest he may have been a private channel of communication with Palmerston set up by Davis. ‘Private correspondence’ was both used as a means of frank communication, often usefully in advance of official messages, and not infrequently cited in Parliament by ministers as a reason for non-disclosure of information.

  48 FO 17/12/174–6, 8 November 1834, Davis to John Barrow (Second – later Permanent – Secretary to the Admiralty, 1804–6, 1807–44), quoted in Hoe and Roebuck The Taking of Hong Kong, 49–50

  49 FO 17/12/341, 26 June 1835, Davis to John Backhouse (Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office, 1827–42), quoted in Hoe and Roebuck The Taking of Hong Kong, 50.

  Chapter Eight: Opium Prelude