Captain Elliot and the Founding of Hong Kong

by Captain Elliot

  1 China: Opium War and Opium Trade Parliamentary Papers No. 65, 123, quoted in Hoe and Roebuck The Taking of Hong Kong, 57–8.

  2 Minto papers, ms 13135 ff18–19, 17 February 1837, Charles to Emma.

  3 Hansard, speech by Sir James Graham, House of Commons 7 April 1840, quoted in Harry G. Gelber Opium, Soldiers and Evangelicals, England’s 1840–42 War with China, and its Aftermath (Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 54.

  4 See Jack Beeching The Chinese Opium Wars (New York, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975), 67–8. George Eden, First Earl of Auckland, was a first cousin of Charles Elliot.

  5 See Chang Commissioner Lin and the Opium War, 74–5

  6 Ibid., 85–8

  7 Ibid., 91

  8 Canton Register editorial 7 January 1834, quoted in Chang Commissioner Lin and the Opium War, 82

  9 Lay papers, 17 April 1838, quoted in Peter Ward Fay The Opening of China, in Maggie Keswick (ed.) The Thistle and the Jade, A Celebration of 150 Years of Jardine Matheson (London, Frances Lincoln Limited, 2008), 81.

  10 Henry Taylor Autobiography (London, 1885), from a communication by Elliot of 16 November 1839, quoted in Hoe and Roebuck The Taking of Hong Kong, 52.

  11 See Chang Commissioner Lin and the Opium War, 49.

  12 War with China and the Opium Question in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 47 (London and Edinburgh, 1840), 380 at http://google.co.uk/books?output=html&id=xbPQVntE8mEC&jtp=380 (accessed 9.9.2013).

  13 Ibid.

  14 Quoted in The Chinese Repository Vol. VI, May 1837 to April 1838 (Canton, 1838), 544 (unabridged facsimile, Elibron Classics Replica Edition, 2005).

  15 Ibid.

  16 These episodes included the strangling in 1784 of the gunner of the Lady Hughes, who in firing a salute had accidentally killed one of the crew of a small chop-boat lying nearby.

  17 Minto papers, ms 11810 ff31–32, 13 September 1837, Palmerston to Minto.

  18 Also, according to Blake (Charles Elliot RN, 30) to draw and paint; Hoe and Roebuck (The Taking of Hong Kong, 60) find no evidence to support this view and suggest a possible confusion with an earlier Elliot on the China coast, Captain Robert Elliot (no relation), who was an artist.

  19 Minto papers, ms 13137 ff15–17, 25 February 1838, Clara to Emma, quoted in Hoe and Roebuck The Taking of Hong Kong, 63.

  20 Minto papers, ms 13135 ff20–21, 13 October 1837, Charles to Emma.

  21 Hansard, quoted in speech by Lord Ashley (later the Earl of Shaftesbury), Suppression of the Opium Trade, House of Commons, 4 April 1843 at http://hansard.millbanksystems.com (accessed 2.10.2013).

  Chapter Nine: Authority and Honour

  1 For an informed and thorough account of Lin’s career see Chang Commissioner Lin and the Opium War 121–4.

  2 J. R. Morrison’s translation, quoted in The Chinese Repository Vol. VII, May 1838 – April 1839, 612–3

  3 Ibid., 619

  4 Minto papers, ms 13135 ff24-5, 21 March 1839, Charles to Emma

  5 See Greenberg British Trade and the Opening of China 1800–42, 112–3: opium imports at Canton rose from an average of around 4,500 chests a year between 1800 and 1821, through around 10,000 a year from 1821 to 1830–1, to 40,000 in 1838–9.

  6 Circular from Charles Elliot to Her Majesty’s Subjects, 22 March 1839, Parliamentary Papers Correspondence Relating to China, 1840, 363, at https://archive.org/stream/CorrespondenceRelatingToChina1840 (accessed 12.11.2013)

  7 Letter Elliot to Palmerston, 30 March 1839, ibid., 357.

  8 Ibid.

  9 Arthur Waley’s translation from Ya-p’ien Chan-cheng Tzu-liao Ts’ung-k’an [Corpus of material about the Opium War] (Shanghai 1955) Vol.II, 245, quoted in Arthur Waley The Opium War through Chinese Eyes (Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1968), 36.

  10 Letter Elliot to Palmerston, 2 January 1839, Parliamentary Papers Correspondence Relating to China, 1840, 340 (accessed 12.11.2013). Elliot’s statement followed a report in the same letter of a discussion with Howqua. In that exchange Elliot had explained the earlier attempt made in the House of Commons to regularise the position in the abortive China Courts Bill of 1838, in which Palmerston had sought to extend provision for admiralty and criminal courts (passed into law in 1833 but not acted on) also to allow civil cases. Howqua had listened sympathetically but ‘he desired to know what more was wanted, and how was it possible to preserve the peace, if all the English people who came to this country were to be left without control?’

  11 Letter Elliot to Palmerston 30 March 1839, Parliamentary Papers Correspondence Relating to China, 1840, 357 (accessed 21.11.2013).

  12 Jardine Matheson papers, Canton 553, quoted in Chang Commissioner Lin and the Opium War, 156.

  13 Minto papers, ms 13140 ff101–2, 4 April 1839, Charles to Clara.

  14 Letter Elliot to Palmerston 6 April 1839, Parliamentary Papers Correspondence Relating to China, 1840, 386–7 (accessed 15.12.2013).

  15 Ibid.

  16 The Chinese Repository Vol.VII, May 1838 to April 1839, 650–1 (unattributed ‘close translation’).

  17 Ibid., Vol.VIII, May 1839 to April 1840, 10-11, quoted in Chang Commissioner Lin and the Opium War, 135

  18 It is not clear why, or who was entrusted with its delivery.

  19 Minto papers, ms 13135 ff26–7, 29 May 1839, Charles to Emma and Harriet, quoted in Hoe and Roebuck The Taking of Hong Kong, 81–2

  20 Ibid.

  21 Quoted in Edgar Holt The Opium Wars in China (London, Putnam & Company Ltd., 1964), 101.

  22 See Minto papers, ms 13135 ff32–5, 23 February 1840, Charles to Emma

  23 Minto papers, ms 13135 ff28–9, 17 July 1839, Charles to Emma.

  24 Quoted in his translation in Waley The Opium War through Chinese Eyes, 55.

  25 See note 10.

  26 W.D.Bernard Narrative of the Voyages and the Services of the Nemesis from 1840 to 1843 (London, Henry Coulburn, 1844), 196.

  27 Note 23 above.

  28 Letter Elliot to Palmerston 5 September 1839, Parliamentary Papers Correspondence Relating to China, 1840, 446 (accessed 6.1.2014).

  29 FO 17/32/153–7, 27 August 1839, Elliot to Palmerston.

  30 Ibid.

  31 FO 17/32/194-196, 3 September 1839, Elliot to Palmerston.

  32 Ibid.

  33 Ibid.

  34 FO 17/32/236–239, 8 September 1839, Elliot to Palmerston.

  35 FO 17/32/250–254, 23 September 1839, Elliot to Palmerston.

  36 Some sixty miles southwest of Macao.

  37 J. R. Morrison’s translation, in FO 17/33/182-194, 27 October 1839, Lin and Deng to Elliot.

  38 Ibid.

  Chapter Ten: War

  1 Otherwise known as the First Anglo-Chinese War or simply the Opium War.

  2 Also Elliot’s nearly exact contemporary (born 1804, promoted post captain 1829); knighted and appointed admiral before retiring.

  3 See translated extracts of Lin’s subsequent report to the Emperor, quoted in Julia Lovell The Opium War (London, Picador, 2011), 94.

  4 Letter Elliot to Palmerston from HMS Volage, Hong Kong, 5 November 1839, Parliamentary Papers Additional Correspondence Relating to China, 10 -11 (accessed 24.1.2014).

  5 Ibid.

  6 Minto papers, ms 13135 f202, 8 November 1839, Charles Elliot to (daughter) Harriet.

  7 See for example those of 30 March and 6 April (notes 11,14 and 15, Chapter Nine).

  8 Algernon Thelwall The Iniquities of the Opium Trade with China: Being a Development of the Main Causes which Exclude the Merchants of Great Britain from the Advantages of an Unrestricted Commercial Intercourse with that Vast Empire. With Extracts from Authentic Documents (London, W. H. Allen and Company, 1839).

  9 ‘Proceeding with our View of the Opium Question’ Times (London, England) 23 October 1839 The Times Digital Archive, Web, 5 July 2014

  10 ‘The Opium Question’ Times 25 October 1839, ibid.

  11 Illustrative, Bank of England Inflation Calculator (accessed 14.2.2017).

  12 Minto
papers, ms 13135 ff32–35, 23 February 1840, Charles to Emma.

  13 See Chang Commissioner Lin and the Opium War, 206.

  14 Minto papers, ms 13135 ff36–37, (undated) February 1840, Charles to Emma

  15 Ibid.

  16 Minto papers, ms 13135 ff32–35, 23 February 1840, Charles to Emma.

  17 Hansard, Queen’s Speech, House of Lords, 16 January 1840, at http://hansard.millbanksystems.com (accessed 24.2.2014).

  18 Ibid., War with China, House of Commons, 7 April 1840 (accessed 27.2.2014)

  19 The form in which the Correspondence was presented, unordered, not indexed and long, generated much criticism. W.E.Gladstone said in the debate that it had been given to the House ‘in one vast, rude, and undigested chaos which the wit of man is incapable of comprehending’.

  20 Hansard, War with China, House of Commons, 7 April 1840 at http://hansard.millbanksystems.com (accessed 27.2.2014)

  21 ‘Editorial’ Times (London, England) 7 April 1840 The Times Digital Archive, Web, 5 July 2014.

  22 The Charter, quoted in Lovell The Opium War, 107.

  23 Hansard, War with China – Adjourned Debate, House of Commons, 8 April 1840, at http://hansard.millbanksystems.com (accessed 6.3.2014).

  24 Ibid.

  25 Hansard, War with China – Adjourned Debate, House of Commons, 9 April 1840, at http://hansard.millbanksystems.com (accessed 10.3.2014).

  26 Ibid.

  27 Ibid.

  28 Ibid.

  29 Hansard, War with China, House of Lords, 12 May 1840 at http://hansard.millbanksystems.com (accessed 10.3.2014).

  30 Ibid.

  31 Henry Taylor Autobiography (London, Longmans, Green and Co., 1885), 295.

  32 Minto papers, ms 11795 ff59-61, quoted in Hoe and Roebuck The Taking of Hong Kong, 107–8.

  33 See Miss Eden’s Letters ed. Violet Dickinson (London, Macmillan, 1919, reprinted General Books LLC, Memphis, 2012) Chapters XI and XII, 81-105. Greville achieved posthumous notoriety with the publication of his Diaries, parts of which caused serious offence amongst the political establishment.

  34 Philip Wilson The Greville Diary (1927), 21 February 1840, Vol.2, 506, quoted in Hoe and Roebuck The Taking of Hong Kong, 108.

  35 Leading article Times (London), 2 March 1840: 4 The Times Digital Archive, Web, 5 July 2014

  36 Minto papers, ms 13135 ff40–42, 12 May 1840, Charles to Emma.

  37 Son of Hugh Elliot’s brother Gilbert, Ist Earl of Minto, and brother of the First Lord of the Admiralty.

  38 Minto papers, ms 13135 ff38-39, 23 March 1840, Charles to Emma.

  39 See Waley The Opium War through Chinese Eyes, 103.

  40 Ya-p’ien Chan-cheng, Vol.IV, 630, quoted ibid., 108–9

  41 For a detailed contemporary account of the occupation of Zhoushan see Lieutenant John Ouchterlony The Chinese War: an Account of all the Operations of the British Forces from the Commencement to the Treaty of Nanking (London, Saunders and Otley, 1844)

  42 Minto papers, ms 13137 ff34-37, 31 August 1840, Clara to Emma.

  43 Ibid.

  44 Palmerston to ‘The Minister of the Emperor of China’ 20 February 1840, quoted in H B Morse International Relations of the Chinese Empire, Vol. 1, Appendix A (London, New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1910).

  45 Ibid.

  46 The prisoners, who had escaped from the wreck of a survey vessel and been transported in cages to Ningbo, did eventually return south with the main force.

  47 Jardine Matheson Archive, James Matheson Private Letter Books, vol. 6, 13 January 1841, 50-51, Matheson to Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy.

  48 Mao, Tianchao de bengkui (The Collapse of a Dynasty) (Beijing: Shenghuo, 1995) 212-213, quoted in Lovell The Opium War, 136.

  49 Palmerston to Elliot, 21 April 1841, extracts quoted in Maurice Collis Foreign Mud (London, Faber and Faber Limited, 1946) 300–1. The young Queen Victoria joined in, conveying indignant exasperation about the Convention – and Elliot – to her uncle Leopold, King of the Belgians.

  50 Minto papers, ms 11793 ff82-84, 19 February 1841, Auckland to Minto

  51 Ibid.

  52 Minto papers, ms 13140 ff129-130, 24 April 1841, Charles to the children (Harriet (Chachy), Hughie and Gibby).

  53 Ibid.

  54 Sir Robert S. Rait The Life and Campaigns of Hugh, First Viscount Gough, Field Marshal (London, A. Constable, 1903), vol.1, 168, quoted in Gelber Opium, Soldiers and Evangelicals,121.

  55 FO 17/52, 24 May 1841, Elliot to Gough and Senhouse, quoted in Fay The Opium War 1840 – 1842, 294.

  56 Duncan McPherson MD Two years in China, Narrative of the Chinese Expedition from its formation in April 1840 (London, Saunders and Otley, 1843), 143–4.

  57 Minto papers, ms 21216A, 3 May 1841, Palmerston to Elliot (printed in Papers Relating to China 1839–40 and 1841).

  58 Henry Taylor Autobiography, Appendix, Charles Elliot’s Operations in China, 367–8.

  59 Ibid.; though either Elliot was misquoting Dryden, or Taylor Elliot (or possibly both). The lines appear in Dryden’s Ode to the Pious Memory of the Accomplished Young Lady, Mrs Anne Killigrew, Excellent in the Sister-arts of Poesy and Painting: Slack all thy sails, and fear to come,/Alas, thou know’st not, thou art wrecked at home! (Oxford Book of English Verse (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1961), 478).

  60 Minto papers, ms 13135 ff 45–46, 26 October 1841, Charles to Emma.

  61 Blake Jardine Matheson Traders of the Far East, 110.

  62 G.B. Endacott A History of Hong Kong (Hong Kong, Oxford University Press, 1964) 34.

  Chapter Eleven: Recall, Reaction and Resolve

  1 Parliamentary Papers Correspondence Relating to China 1840, passim (accessed 28.6.2014).

  2 On 21 April 1841 (see Chapter Ten, note 49). The letter ended ‘You will no doubt, by the time you have read thus far, have anticipated that I could not conclude this letter without saying that under these circumstances it is impossible that you should continue to hold your appointment in China.’

  3 Henry Taylor Autobiography, 299–300.

  4 Minto papers, ms 13135 ff51–54, 26 June 1843, Charles to Emma.

  5 See Chapter Ten, 116 and note 50

  6 Miss Eden’s Letters Chapter XII, 15 January 1841, Emily to Eleanor, Countess of Buckinghamshire

  7 Ibid.

  8 Ibid., 6 April 1841, Emily to Eleanor.

  9 Ibid., 12 April 1841, Emily to Robert Eden.

  10 See George Pottinger Sir Henry Pottinger, First Governor of Hong Kong (Stroud, Sutton Publishing, 1997) 160.

  11 Miss Eden’s Letters Chapter XII, 8 October 1841, Emily to Eleanor.

  12 Minto papers, ms 11796 ff58-59, 21 October 1841, Emily to Lord Minto.

  13 Lloyd Sanders Lord Melbourne’s Papers (1889), 493–4, 30 April 1841, Melbourne to Russell, quoted in Hoe and Roebuck The Taking of Hong Kong, 158.

  14 MERCATOR ‘Calamitous Events in China’TheTimes 15 January 1840: 5. The Times Digital Archive, Web, 16 July 2014.

  15 Jardine Matheson Archive, James Matheson Private Letter Books, vol.6, 23 January 1841, 63–4, Matheson to Jardine.

  16 The Morning Post, 8 May 1841, at http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk (accessed 7.8.2014). The reference to Pottinger’s reputation in India for forthright action was intended by the newspaper to show that his appointment was, as it put it in the same article, a ‘warning to such nations on our Indian frontier as may have heard of the exploits of the late Plenipotentiary’.

  17 See for example The Birmingham Journal, The Leeds Times, and The Liverpool Mercury, 1840–42

  18 ‘The memorandum by the Duke of Wellington’The Times 19 March 1840:4. The Times Digital Archive, Web, 16 July 2014.

  19 Minto papers, ms 13135 ff45-46, 26 October 1841, Charles to Emma.

  20 Ibid.

  21 Minto papers, ms 21217 ff20-23, 20 October 1841, Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy to Charles.

  22 The four additional ports were Xiamen, Fuzhou, Ningbo and Shanghai.

  Chapter Twelve: Texas: Spain, Mexico and the United Stat
es

  1 See Donald E. Chipman and Harriett Denise Joseph Spanish Texas 1519-1821 (Austin, University of Texas Press, 2010), 28–47.

  2 Comprehensive Orders for New Discoveries, 1573, quoted in The Oxford History of the American West (New York and Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1994), 52–3.

  3 From The New Laws of the Indies, quoted in Hugh Thomas The Golden Age: The Spanish Empire of Charles V (London, Penguin Books, 2011), 480

  4 There had been an unpublished agreement the previous year (The Treaty of Fontainebleau) that the whole of Louisiana should go to Spain; under the 1763 Treaty the eastern half was allocated to Britain.

  5 See for example Carl A. Brasseaux and Richard E. Chandler The Britain Incident 1769–1770: Anglo-Hispanic Tensions in the Western Gulf in Southwestern Historical Quarterly Vol. 87, April 1984, 368 at http://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth117150/m1/425/ (accessed 19.10.2014). While the leaders of a British delegation to Veracruz sought reparations for the loss of the ship Britain, some of their colleagues covertly gathered detailed information about the state of Mexican defences.

  6 de Nava to Muñoz, Chihuahua 30.7.1795, Bexar Archives, Austin, University of Texas, quoted in Odie B.Faulk The Last Years of Spanish Texas 1778–1821 (The Hague, Mouton & Co., 1964), 114–5.

  7 Subsequently known as The Father of Mexican Independence.

  8 For a description of the contrast between the respective characteristics and outlooks of the Mexicans and their neighbours to the north, see Eugene Campbell Barker Mexico and Texas 1821–1835: University of Texas research lectures on the causes of the Texas revolution (New York, Russell & Russell Inc., 1965), 1–6

  9 Quoted in Mexico and Texas 1821–1825, 70.

  10 H.P.N.Gammel (comp.) The Laws of Texas 1822–1897 (10 vols.; Austin,1898–1902), 1, 424, quoted in Randolph B. Campbell An Empire for Slavery: The Peculiar Institution in Texas, 1821–1865 (Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University Press, 1991), 21.

  11 Austin to Samuel May Williams, 16 April 1831, in Eugene Campbell Barker (ed.) The Papers of Stephen F. Austin (Washington and Austin, 1924–8), II, 645, quoted in An Empire for Slavery, 28–29. Santo Domingo, present day capital of the Dominican Republic, had been overrun by Haitian forces in 1821 and subsequently forced to abolish slavery.