7
China troops on board twenty-five transports, with a fleet of fifteen men ef war ships. She took port after port; forts and barracks were destroyed, thousands of Chinese killed and an incalculable number wounded.
The Chinese possessed a very rudimentary knowledge of the art of war and showed no capacity to take advantage of the strength of their position. So after a war lasting nearly three years, from 1840 until 1843, the British succeeded in teaching China her lesson—not to jeopardize in any manner the revenue of the British-India government or the profits of her Christian merchants.
The Treaty of Nankin, August 20, 1842, which was negotiated for the British government by Sir Henry Pottinger, resulted in the Chinese government making the following concessions:
1. The British were to have the right of trading at five of China's principal ports.
2. The Island of Hongkong was to be ceded to Great Britain.
3. There was to be a lasting peace between the two nations.
4. An idemnity of $21,000,000 was to be paid, made up as follows: Six millions for opium that Lin had destroyed; three millions for destruction of property of British subjects and twelve millions for the expense of the war.
The Nankin Treaty and the Commercial Treaty, signed at Hongkong, on July 25, 1843, seem to have covered most every point at issue, but left unsettled the main point of the controversy.
Nothing was said in the treaty about opium—it being the principal object at stake during the war, yet left as much unsettled as ever.
It is just possible that British diplomats reasoned that this all important point could be settled more advantageously at some future time.
How a lasting peace was to be maintained while the question of opium, the cause of all the trouble, was still unsettled, is indeed hard to understand.
The result was that the lasting peace did not last.
Less than fifteen years after the first opium war there was another war. Chinese forts were destroyed: port after port taken and thousands of Chinese killed and the Christian British for the second time crushed and subdued their prey. By the second treaty, made at Tiensin in 1858, the British received three millions
