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The ‘Arrow’ Incident: A Reappraisal

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

J. Y. Wong
J. Y. Wong
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
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Extract

In the years 1856–60, Great Britain, France and China were involved in a war, which has been referred to by different names, depending, naturally enough, on the nationality of the historian. Scholars in China, almost without exception, call it the Second Opium War. Historians in England, however, usually prefer to call it the Second Anglo-Chinese War or even the Second China-foreign War. It has been given yet another name, the Arrow War. None of these names is, strictly speaking, entirely appropriate. To begin with, the war was not fought over the question of opium, although in many ways it was a continuation of the Opium War of less than two decades before. In the last analysis, it was a consequence of an ever-expanding British economy. Secondly, although it is true that Great Britain and China were the chiefcontenders, the title Anglo-Chinese War ignores the part played by France in the campaign. Then the name Second China-foreign War, apart from betraying the English desire to forget that part of their past, is misleading because it focuses attention on China herself rather than on British encroachment on that country. Finally, the Arrow incident was, like the burning of opium by Commissioner Lin, an immediate cause of the quarrel; but once London had decided to resort to arms, little further reference was made to it in British diplomatic documents. The name Arrow War is particularly irrelevant for the period after the scene of confrontation had changed from Canton to Tientsin and then Peking. On balance, however, the names Second Anglo-Chinese War and Arrow War seem preferable because they do not carry overtones of nationalist prejudice. The latter title has the additional merit of illustrating how, in the age of European expansion, a small diplomatic incident could be magnified to justify the use of force to press home demands unrelated to it. It reflects the fact that the receiving end—in this case China, and in particular her Imperial Commissioner for Foreign Affairs, Yeh Ming-ch'en—tried throughout to argue the case over the specific casus belli, whereas for the British the whole affair was merely a pretext for wider demands to be made on China. Thus it seems more appropriate to call the conflict the Arrow War; and in order to examine its origins, the first step will be to analyse the documentary evidence related to the Arrow incident. Some papers in the Chinese language have only recently been made available to scholars in the Public Record Office. London, and these provide additional information for a re-investigation of the origins of the war.

Type
Articles
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 8 , Issue 3 , May 1974 , pp. 373 - 389
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1974

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References

1 This article aims solely at evaluating the evidence connected with the incident. A full-scale analysis of the origins of the Arrow War is best dealt with in a book, which the author is in the process of writing.

2 F.O. 228.213, Parkes-Bowring Desp. 158, Incl., Yeh-Parkes, 14 October 1856. The name Su Ya-ch'eng is here romanized according to the Chinese characters given in F.O. 682.100.1, Yeh—Seymour, 31 October 1856.

3 I have not been able to discover the Chinese characters for Fong Ah-ming. Probably this is the Cantonese version of Fang Ya-ming. Some Chinese local gazetteers (Nan-hai hsien-chieh 2.60b, P'an-yü hsien-chieh 22.32b and Kuang-chou fu-chich 82.311) recorded that the owner was Hsiao Ch'eng, which probably refers to the same person as Su Ya-Ch'eng. If this were the case, then these gazetteers must have mistaken the builder for the owner.

4 Lane-Poole, S., The Life of Sir Harry Parkes (London, 1894), I. 228, quoting one of Parkes' private letters, dated 14 November 1856.Google Scholar

5 In March 1855, the local legislature of Hong Kong passed an ordinance to this effect (Hansard's Parliamentary Debates, Series 3, 144.1160).

6 Cf. F.O. 228.213, Parkes-Bowring Desp. 153, 10 October 1856.

7 The fact that her owner was resident in Hong Kong does not mean that she belonged to a British subject. As pointed out by the Attorney General of the colony, hardly any one of the 60,000 Chinese inhabitants there could be legally called a British subject (Hansard, op. cit., 1161 ff). Indeed, most of these Chinese inhabitants, apart from the peasant minority, went to Hong Kong on a temporary basis, to make a living, like so many of the mobile merchants and labourers in China herself (cf. F.O. 233/185–188 series, which are Chinese documents concerning the administration of Hong Kong between 1845 and 1906).

8 F.O. 228.213, Parkes-Bowring Desp. 153, 10 October 1856.

9 Ibid., Desp. 154, Incl., Yeh-Parkes, 10 October 1856, containing the deposition of Wu Ya-jen. The names Liang Ming-t'ai, Liang Chien-fu and Wu Ya-jen are here romanized according to the Chinese characters found in F.O. 682.100. Yeh-Seymour, 31 October 1856.

10 Ibid., Deposition of Huang Lien-kai.

11 Ibid., Desp. 158, Incl., Yeh-Parkes, 14 October 1856.

12 Ibid., Desp. 155, Incl., Kennedy's deposition, 9 October 1856.

13 Ibid., Desp. 155, Incl., Leach's deposition, 9 October 1856; ibid. Desp. 160, Incl., Earl's deposition, 16 October 1856.

14 Ibid. The distance was estimated by Kennedy to be between 50 and 100 yards.

15 He was also Governor of Hong Kong and Superintendent of Trade.

16 F.O. 228.213, Parkes-Bowring Desp. 150, 8 October, and Incl., 1856, and Incl., Parkes-Yeh, 8 October 1856. The Dutch Folly (Hai-chu) is an island in the middle of the Pearl River at Canton.

17 Ibid.

18 Ibid.

19 Ibid.

20 Lane-Poole, Parkes, I. 229, quoting one of Parkes' private letters dated 14 November 1856.

21 F.O. 228.213, Parkes-Bowring Desp. 150, Incl., Parkes-Yeh, 8 October 1856.

22 Parliamentary Papers (1857), ‘Papers relating to the Proceedings of H.M. Naval Forces at Canton’, p. 32, Parkes-Seymour,22 October 1856Google Scholar.

23 F.O. 228.213, Parkes-Bowring Desp. 151, 9 October 1856.

24 Ibid., Desp. 155, 11 October 1856. See next note.

25 Ibid., Incl., Leach's deposition, 9 October 1856.

26 If Kennedy had been telling the truth, then of course it follows that this was probably what Leach would have said.

27 Parkes had already acquired a considerable reputation as a harsh but successful interrogator of Chinese of all classes. For an analysis of the character of Parkes, see Daniels, G., ‘Sir Harry Parkes: British Representative in Japan, 1856–83’, unpublished D.Phil. thesis (University of Oxford, 1967), Ch. 1Google Scholar.

28 F.O. 228.213, Parkes-Bowring Desp. 155, 9 October 1856, Incl., Chin A-shing's deposition, 9 October 1856. See next note.

29 Ibid., Leung A-yung's deposition, 9 October 1856. I have not been able to find the Chinese characters of Chin A-shing or Leung A-yung. Consequently they have to remain in their present form, which is probably Cantonese.

30 F.O. 228.213, Parkes-Bowring Desp. 160, 16 October 1856, and Incl., Earl's deposition, 16 October 1856.

31 Hurd, D., The Arrow War: An Anglo-Chinese Confusion, 1856–1860 (London, 1967), p. 30.Google Scholar Hurd further maintains that Earl gave evidence seven months after the incident, giving as reference F.O. 17.269. If one compares his reference with that in my footnotes, it is clear that Mr Hurd has not read the documents himself (see notes no. 30 and 33–34).

32 Consequently Earl's statement is not among the Parliamentary Papers.

33 There is no allusion to it in Bowring's letters to Lord Clarendon until seven months later (see next note), or in his correspondence with his sons (Ryl. Eng. MSS 1228 and 1229 series) in England.

34 F.O. 17.268, Bowring-Clarendon Desp. 224, 7 May 1857.

35 War was not formally declared until December 1857 by Lord Elgin.

36 F.O. 17.268, Bowring-Clarendon Desp. 224, 7 May 1857.

37 See my article, entitled ‘Sir John Bowring and the Canton City Question’, Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester (09 1973).Google Scholar

38 Costin, W. C., Great Britain and China, 1883–1860 (Oxford, 1937), p. 207.Google Scholar

39 This is evident throughout Yeh's diplomatic correspondence on the subject. See F.O. 228.213 passim.

40 Costin, Britain and China, p. 207.

41 Par. Papers, ‘Naval Forces at Canton’, p. 35, Yeh-Parkes, 24 October 1856; cf. ibid., Yeh-Seymour, 31 October 1856.

42 Hansard, Series 3, 144.1166, Lord Derby's speech.

43 Par. Papers, ‘Naval Forces at Canton’, p. 15, Clarendon-Bowring, 10 December 1856.

44 Lane-Poole, Parkes, p. 228, Parkes to his wife, 14 November 1856.

45 Ibid., p. 169, Parkes-Patteson, 27 October 1852. Parkes was also acting Consul of Canton at this time.

46 F.O. 228.213, Parkes-Bowring Desp. 160, 16 October 1856, Incl., Earl's deposition, 16 October 1856.

47 Hansard, 1166, Lord Derby's speech.

48 Hansard, 1200, Lord Clarendon's speech.

49 Costin, Britain and China, p. 207.

50 The Hoppo was the chief superintendent of the customs house at Canton.

51 Costin, Britain and China, p. 207.

52 See my thesis, entitled ‘The Political Career of Yeh Ming-ch'en, 1807–1859’. Unpublished D.Phil. thesis (University of Oxford, 1971), p. 104 ff.Google Scholar

53 Cf. e.g., F.O. 682.1725 Bowring-Yeh, 21 November 1855 and F.O. 682.1777. Yeh-Bowring, 12 December 1855. Both documents are in Chinese.

54 F.O. 228.213, Parkes-Bowring Desp. 153, 10 October 1856.

55 F.O. 228.213, Bowring-Parkes Desp. 127, 11 October 1856.

56 F.O. 228.213, Parkes-Bowring Desp. 156, 12 October 1856.

57 F.O. 17.267, Bowring-Clarendon Desp. 169, 8 April 1857, and Incl., C.I. Antonio do Rozario's deposition, 16 November 1856.

58 Ibid. It is perhaps not surprising that Kennedy was in fact ordered to ‘surrender his credentials’ to the proper authorities in November 1856, less than two months after the incident (Parkes Papers, Bowring-Parkes, 28 November 1856).

59 F.O. 228.213, Parkes-Bowring Desp. 155, 11 October 1856, Incl., Kennedy's deposition, 9 October 1856.

60 Ibid.

61 Ibid., Desp. 150, 8 October 1856.

62 Walrond, T. (ed.), Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin (London, 1872), p. 209.Google Scholar

63 Ryl. Eng. MSS 1230/67, The Daily Press, 6 January 1858.