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3 - Punitive Expeditions in China, 1857–1860

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 June 2021

Stephen M. Miller
Affiliation:
University of Maine, Orono
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Summary

The Second Opium War consisted of two interventions in 1858 and 1860. The first campaign resulted from disputed Anglo- French trading rights in China. Although opium importing into China triggered the controversy, commercial access more generally was at stake. A joint military expedition fought its way up the Peiho River to Tientsin where in a treaty (1858) the Chinese met British and French demands. Implementation proved difficult, however, especially when the Chinese imprisoned foreign diplomats and others. A second expedition, consisting of about 17,000 French, British and Indian army soldiers backed up by the Royal Navy, followed two years later and pushed to and up the Peiho River and on to Beijing. The expeditionary force reached Beijing quickly and secured the allies’ demands. They avoided unduly weakening the imperial government, since only stable government could uphold their trading rights. The campaigns will be examined in new ways, concentrating on the co-ordination of three distinctive armies, logistics, and the Indian army’s role. The war’s most controversial episode - the burning of the imperial summer palace at the campaign’s end - will be re-examined in relation to: the conduct of the war, its contemporary and later impact, and the emblematic use of such destructive acts in ‘colonial’ campaigning.

Type
Chapter
Information
Queen Victoria's Wars
British Military Campaigns, 1857–1902
, pp. 40 - 61
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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References

Further Reading

Banno, Masataka. China and the West, 1858–1861: The Origins of the Tsungli Yamen. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964.Google Scholar
Gelber, Harry. Battle for Beijing, 1858–1860: Franco-British Conflict in China. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.Google Scholar
Graham, Gerald. The China Station: War and Diplomacy, 1830–1860. Oxford: Clarendon, 1978.Google Scholar
Haijian, Mao. The Qing Empire and the Opium War: The Collapse of the Heavenly Dynasty. Trans. Joseph, Lawson, Reprint. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016.Google Scholar
Hevia, James L. English Lessons: The Pedagogy of Imperialism in Nineteenth-Century China. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2003.Google Scholar
Selby, John. ‘The Third China War, 1860’. In Bond, Brian (ed.) Victorian Military Campaigns. London: Tom Donovan 1994.Google Scholar
Walrond, Theodore (ed.) Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin. London: John Murray, 1872.Google Scholar
Wong, J. Y. Deadly Dreams: Opium, Imperialism, and the Arrow War (1856–1860) in China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.Google Scholar

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