Science, Technology and Imperialism: (2) China and Beyond

Abstract

UNLIKE India, China was ‘the victim of imperialism without annexation’,¹ and a proving ground for a variety of industrial powers. Consequent upon the first opium wars, a major break in China’s relations with the West was the Treaty of Nanking of 1842, which ceded to Britain the island of Hong Kong and opened the ports of Amoy, Foochow, Ningpo and Shanghai to foreign trade. The treaty further reduced China’s economic sovereignty by depriving her of the right to fix her own tariff levels. During the 1860s further treaties were signed which expanded the treaty port system greatly. The British alone held ‘concessions’ in Canton, Amoy, Chinkiang, Kinkiang, Hankow, Tientsin and Newchang, ports within which foreign consulates exercised legal jurisdiction over their own people, who were not subject to any Chinese laws, and whose continuity of administration was maintained by foreign police forces and taxation systems. By the ‘most favoured nation’ clause the system expanded in frontier fashion; all the powers — Britain, France, Prussia, Denmark, Holland, Spain, Belgium, Italy and Austria-Hungary — in treaty with China automatically received any additional privileges wrested by any one of their number, and by 1900 some 90 treaty ports contained about 350 000 foreign residents.