especially as they saw clearly enough that the motive of the conqueror was his own aggrandizement.

Unhappily, too, the next war between England and China, though fundamentally due to the same conditions as the "Opium War," was again precipitated by a quarrel over opium, the lorcha Arrow loaded with the obnoxious drug and flying the British flag being seized by the Chinese. Once more they suffered sore defeat and humiliating terms of peace in the treaty of 1858. The effort of the Peking Government to close the Pei-ho River against an armed force caused a third war in 1860 in which the British and French captured Peking, and by their excesses and cruelties still further added to the already long list of reasons why the Chinese should hate their European foes.

Nor did foreign aggression stop with this war. In 1861, England, in order to protect her interests at Hongkong, wrested from China the adjacent peninsula of Kowloon. In 1886, she took Upper Burma, which China regarded as one of her dependencies. In 1898, finding that Hongkong was still within the range of modern cannon in Chinese waters seven miles away, England calmly took 400 square miles of additional territory, including Mirs and Deep Bays.

The visitor does not wonder that the British coveted Hongkong, for it is one of the best harbours in the world. Certainly no other is more impressive. Noble hills, almost mountains, for many are over 1,000 feet and the highest is 3,200, rise on every side. Crafts of all kinds, from sampans and slipperboats to ocean liners and war-ships, crowd the waters, for this is the third greatest port in the world, being exceeded in the amount of its tonnage only by Liverpool and New York. The city is very attractive from the water as it lies at the foot and on the slopes of the famous Peak. The Chinese are said to number, as in Shanghai, over 300,000, while the foreign population is only 5,000. But to the superficial observer the proportions appear reversed as the foreign buildings are so spa

cious and handsome that they almost fill the foreground. The business section of the city is hot and steaming, but an inclined tramway makes the Peak accessible and many of the British merchants have built handsome villas on that cooler, breezier summit, 1,800 feet above the sea. The view is superb, a majestic panorama of mountains, harbour, shipping, islands, ocean and city. By its possession and fortification of this island of Hongkong, England to-day so completely controls the gateway to South China that the Chinese cannot get access to Canton, the largest city in the Empire, without running the gauntlet of British guns and mines which could easily sink any ships that the Peking Government could send against it, and the whole of the vast and populous basin of the Pearl or West River is at the mercy of the British whenever they care to take it. When we add to these invaluable holdings, the rights that England has acquired in the Yang-tze Valley and at Wei-hai Wei in Shantung, we do not wonder that Mr. E. H. Parker, formerly British Consul at Kiung-Chou, rather naively remarks: :

"In view of all this, no one will say, however much in matters of detail we may have erred in judgment, that Great Britain has failed to secure for herself, on the whole, a considerable number of miscellaneous commercial and political advantages from the fâcheuse situation arising out of an attitude on the part of the Chinese so hostile to progress." 1

France, as far back as 1787, obtained the Peninsula of Tourane and the Island of Pulu Condore by "treaty" with the King of Cochin-China. The French soon began to regard Annam as within their sphere of influence. In 1858, they seized Saigon and from it as a base extended French power throughout Cochin-China and Cambodia, the treaty of 1862 giving an enforced legal sanction to these extensive claims. Not content with this, France steadily pushed her conquests northward, compelling one concession after another until in 1" China," pp. 95, 96.

1882, she coolly decided to annex Tong-king. The Chinese objected, but the war ended in a treaty, signed June 9, 1885, which gave France the coveted region. These vast regions, which China had for centuries regarded as tributary provinces, are now virtually French territory and are openly governed as such.

The beginnings of Russia's designs upon China are lost in the haze of medieval antiquity. Russian imperial guards are frequently mentioned at the Mongol Court of Peking in the thirteenth century.' In 1652, the Russians definitely began their struggle with the Manchus for the Valley of the Amur, a struggle which in spite of temporary defeats and innumerable disputes Russia steadily and relentlessly continued until she obtained the Lower Amur in 1855, the Ussuri district in 1860 and finally, by the Cassini Convention of September, 1896, the right to extend the Siberian Railway from Nerchinsk through Manchuria. How Russia pressed her aggressions in this region we shall have occasion to note in a later chapter.

1 Parker, "China," p. 96.

XIII

THE UNITED STATES AND CHINA

HE relations of the United States with China have, as a rule, been more sympathetic than those of European nations. Americans have not sought territorial advantage in China and on more than one occasion, our Government has exerted its influence in favour of peace and justice for the sorely beset Celestials.

The flag of the United States first appeared in Chinese waters on a trading ship in 1785. From the beginning, Americans had less trouble with the Chinese than Europeans had experienced, partly because they had recently been at war with the English whom the Chinese hated and feared, and partly because they were less violently aggressive in dealing with the Chinese. By the treaties of July and October, 1844, the United States peacefully reaped the advantages which England had obtained at the cost of war. November 17, 1856, two American ships were fired upon by the Bogue Forts, but in spite of the hostilities which resulted, the representatives of the United States appeared to find more favour with the Chinese than those of any other power in the negotiations at Tien-tsin in 1858, and their treaty was signed a week before those of the French and the British. Article X provided that the "United States shall have the right to appoint consuls and other commercial agents, to reside at such places in the dominions of China as shall be agreed to be opened"; and Article XXX that,

"should at any time the Ta-Tsing Empire grant to any nation or the merchants or citizens of any nation any right, privileges or favour connected

with either navigation, commerce, political or other intercourse which is not conferred by this treaty, such right, privilege and favour shall at once freely inure to the benefit of the United States, its public officers, merchants and citizens."

In the settlement of damages, the Chinese agreed to pay to the United States half a million taels, then worth $735,288. When the adjustments with individual claimants left a balance of $453,400 in the treasury, Congress, to the unbounded and grateful surprise of the Chinese, gave it back to them. Mr. Burlingame, the celebrated United States Minister to China, became the most popular foreign minister in Peking within a short time after his arrival in 1862, and so highly did the Chinese Government appreciate his efforts in its behalf that during the American Civil War it promptly complied with his request to issue an edict forbidding all Confederate ships of war from entering Chinese ports. Mr. Foster declares that "such an order enforced by the governments of Europe would have saved the American commercial marine from destruction and shortened the Civil War."1

The treaty of Washington in 1868 gave great satisfaction to the Chinese Government as it contained pacific and appreciative references to China, an express disclaimer of any designs upon the Empire and a willingness to admit Chinese to the United States. The treaty of 1880, however, considerably modified this willingness and the treaty of 1894 rather sharply restricted further immigration. But in the commercial treaty of 1880, the United States, at the request of the Chinese Government, agreed to a clause peremptorily forbidding any citizen of the United States from engaging in the opium traffic with the Chinese or in any Chinese port.

Our national policy was admirably expressed in the note sent by the Hon. Frederick F. Low, United States Minister at Peking, to the Tsung-li Yamen, March 20, 1871

1 Foster, "American Diplomacy in the Orient," p. 259.