The Present Position And Prospects Of The British Trade With China

A powerful argument, published in 1836, for the right to free trade, with strong condemnation of Chinese restrictions upon it.

This book is open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. Multinational corporations (MNCs) have long played a crucial role in the Chinese economy. This role is one that is set to continue in the post-pandemic era as China works to transit to a high-quality growth model that is more sustainable and innovation-driven. With global experience and front-line involvement in some of the most pressing economic, technological, and environmental issues of our day, leading figures in MNCs and chambers of commerce are well placed to share insights that could potentially contribute to policymaking and development strategies so that everyone can “make the most” of China’s future. This collection of essay aims to share these invaluable insights with a wider audience, offering balanced and diverse perspectives from companies and advocacy groups working on a range of issues related to China’s domestic development, international economic cooperation, and China-US competition. These insights are useful not only for the wider business community, but also for academics, policymakers, students, and anyone trying to deepen their understanding of this exciting period of “transition and opportunity,” and make the most of China’s bright future. .

A study of the first three decades of British rule in Hong Kong, focusing on the troubled and controversial process of establishing a British colony at Hong Kong and on the reception of British rule by people in the region.

Early encounters between Britain and China are best known for igniting the First Opium War. Yet they also produced an enormous archive of writings by Britons who spent time in China. Frustrated with the restrictions imposed by the Manchu rulers of the Qing Empire, and unable to live or travel elsewhere apart from Canton and Macao, these diplomats, traders, missionaries, travelers, and military officers devoted thousands of pages to understanding China, its people, and their civilization. In China Hands and Old Cantons, John M. Carroll draws on this wealth of memoirs, ethnographic studies, travel accounts, narratives of military action, translations, and newspaper articles to trace Britons’ wide-ranging, often thoughtful perspectives on China, long before anyone considered going to war. They discussed almost everything they saw and speculated about much of what they could not see—including the size of China’s massive population, the extent of infanticide, the origins and practice of foot binding, and the legality and morality of the opium trade. They claimed that only those who had been there could truly understand the Middle Kingdom and that their firsthand experience gave them and their publications an advantage over those in Britain and elsewhere. Carroll brings a seminal period in the Anglo-Chinese relationship, which revolved around tea and opium, to life through the words of those who experienced it intimately.

The first Opium War (1840-42) was a defining moment in Anglo-Chinese relations, and since the 1840s the histories of its origins have tended to have been straightforward narratives, which suggest that the British Cabinet turned to its military to protect opium sales and to force open the China trade. Whilst the monetary aspects of the war cannot be ignored, this book argues that economic interests should not overshadow another important aspect of British foreign policy - honour and shame. The Palmerston's government recognised that failure to act with honour generated public outrage in the form of petitions to parliament and loss of votes, and as a result was at pains to take such considerations into account when making policy. Accordingly, British Cabinet officials worried less about the danger to economic interests than the threat to their honour and the possible loss of power in Parliament. The decision to wage a drug war, however, made the government vulnerable to charges of immorality, creating the need to justify the war by claiming it was acting to protect British national honour.