Beginnings

And then I came here first in nineteen forty seven with my my father, who was in the Navy and was a a a chaplain. That means he's a priest. Who works with the Navy. And he was the first chaplain of the new shore-based HMS Tamar, which was set up when the British reoccupied Hong Kong in 1945.

And we were here for a couple of three years and then I went away, was schooled in Britain, did my own time in the military, came back to Hong Kong in nineteen sixty seven with the Royal Marines, uh during those riotous days. And then left the military, went to university, came back to Hong Kong in nineteen seventy four to teach at Hong Kong U, where on and off I've been ever since.

out of an interest in Hong Kong and a great interest in the conversations that I've had with Stephen. We're calling this first episode The Beginnings and we must put some caveats before we start that both Stephen and myself are both English. Um we don't read Chinese. I speak a little bit of Mandarin and uh I think you have some knowledge of Chinese, but we we are not

Chinese scholars uh and we don't pretend to be. Um and so these conversations are coming from our perspective. I've been here about five years, um ac yn ymwneud â'r hynny'n ymwneud â'r hynny'n ymwneud â'r hynny'n ymwneud â'r hynny'n ymwneud â'r hynny'n ymwneud â'r hynny'n ymwneud â'r hynny. Um we're calling this episode The Beginnings, and we're not talking about the beginnings of Hong Kong as a place. Um back um from uh I think four Two hundred, three hundred thousand years ago when

uh begun. And the answer is that Westerners started trading actively with the tea trade, in effect. I mean there there'd been small trade for millennia. the main big tea trade begins in the seventeenth century with the founding of East India Companies, the whole expansion of the Western world to go and uh be a nuisance on everybody else's door.

And during the eighteenth century, as as the trade built and built and built, There was a need for the ships which the Westerners were moving backwards and forwards. to be serviced. There was also a an increasing presence of Western warships and particularly the Indian East India Company's Bombay Marines. in Chinese waters, which I purely technically is of course

Provided they stayed in international waters, then as now, uh no problem. When you're in somebody else's territorial waters, even though they don't have that concept concept themselves, you are quite clearly trespassing in a way. But anyway.

There was a need for some sort of servicing. We've got reasonable evidence that probably Westerners were, particularly British and Americans, were visiting Hong Kong for water and supplies, and from what I can work out, timber as well, from the late eighteenth century, pretty much so. And during the nineteenth century

And this is m pure speculation. The eviden there is no hard evidence. It's purely inference from various documents, pr primarily charts and other navigational My guess is that the East India Company, its Bombay Marine, which is a kind of priv private navy, was using Aberdeen as a kinda secret base because they were Making the first detailed modern style maritime charts of the Pearl River Delta area. Quick seg back.

In order for ships to get up to to Guangzhou, to Wampou, which is where they stopped and they did their loading and unloading at the end of each northeast the beginning of each northeast winter monsoon,

had to get themselves from the Macau Roads, which is the little area of Macau, up the river, and they had to get to the Macau Roads in the first place. And anybody who's been sailing around here knows that this is pretty intricate waters. There's rocks and islands and shoals and goodness knows what else all over

And so people would take pilots. Outside they would take the fishermen pilots, the Yu Yinren, who w were basically just fishermen who were out there, who'd say, Yeah, yeah, I know where Macau is and they were of varying reliability. And then to get up to Wampur they had to take the official Macau pilot who would get on board and would take them up to Wampur with a an ingenious system of kind of relays of sampants who'd actually act as boys, B U O Y S

and a a couple of sandpans would go ahead and stake out the deep channel and the pilot would take the ship up. Meanwhile, other sandpans would rush in the back to get further ahead and so they'd make their way up to one part. But this was expensive. and also it was a system of control and much of what gave rise to Hong Kong, we could say, was independent of anything else like opium. a genuine almost religion of free trade.

It places should be open for you to come in and provided you behave yourself. and you conform with uh what whatever sensible regulations there are, then you should be able to come in with whatever you've got and sell it and buy whatever's for sa for sale and take it away. Free trade.

So there was some resistance to the limitations that having to take pilots on board. And this fitted in with what was happening anyway in the Western world, which was this growth of The world's waters, which enabled someone from somewhere to go anywhere. That they'd never even been to before, because they had a document on board, an accurate chart, that would enable them to get into that place without having to summon somebody and hope that the person knew more than they did.

So the the East India Company quite explicitly in eighteen oh five, eighteen oh six Gives instructions to its people in India that they are to provide a ship to come out and help the East India Company avoid piracy, which was a bit of a problem on the Canton coast at the time. Everybody said of Jungbo jai, he's he's the guy.

Uh so piracy was one of their remit, but the other remit and it's very explicit, is to make good quality charts of all these waters so that they can ensure that their captains A can find their way into the Macau Roads where they had to go through Chinese official processes. But B, if they ran into any problems on the way, that they knew where they could go to find uh an emergency and All the way from Hainan up to the Pearl River Delta.

They get halfway up the China Sea and whoops they bump into the incoming northeast monsoon. And ships in those days couldn't go very well against the wind. They just plodded up and down on one spot and then everybody gets scurvy and the ship gets slower and slower and slower because you've got It's harder to push through the water. And then they need to rush off or a typhoon hit.

and they lose a mast, or two masts, or as is often quite recorded, uh three masts, so they become hulks and they they rig a jewelry riggers, it's called. They get bits of timber and bits of cloth and they manage to limp to the coast.

And then they needed to know where was safe to go and how to get in there. So there is this this whole plan of improving knowledge of Chinese waters. Nobody asks the Chinese because this is what we're looking at. the beginnings of high European im imperialism where you you do whatever you want. Um and if people don't understand it, that's because they're backward, uh not because they just don't want you.

So anyway, these guys they are actively from eighteen oh seven onwards, they're actively chartered. uh the coast around here and we know that in eighteen oh eight, eighteen oh nine, Lieutenant Daniel Ross of the Bombay Marine and his sidekick, Lieutenant Philip Mourne, they are in the good ship's antelope and discovery. ac yw'n gweithio'r hynny'n gweithio'r hynny'n gweithio'r hynny'n gweithio'r hynny'n gweithio'r hyn.

And we know this because in eighteen sixteen, when the infamous Amherst Embassy that's the second embassy that the British are sending to the Imperial Court in Beijing, asking for the rights of free trade, which the Imperial Court would say, No, go away, you're not gonna get it. So the Amherst Embassy was the same, it was gonna have that reply. But before it it it set off to be re It wanted to gather all its ships together,'cause again

ships coming out in convoy from the west from somewhere in Europe would often get scattered. They couldn't always keep together. So they'd they'd agree agree a rendezvous where everybody pulled together for the final final leg. And so the rendezvous for this Amherst Embassy, in order not to rattle the bars of the cages, I mean the Europeans knew very well that they were skating always around the edges of proper conduct to China.

And they knew that if they all went properly into Wampau and made their number with the Viceroy in Gongzhou and tried to organise their forward trip to Beijing. They would be immediately stonewalled. The viceroy would quite rightly say, Look, I can't give you permission to go to Beijing. You've y you're gonna have to wait. I'll have to send a message up to Beijing to say okay if these These Guailo uh come up and say hi. And and I can tell you that Beijing's gonna say no.

I can do it and it'll take a while and you're just gonna have to kick your heels. Um

Um and there's two sorts. There's the official Company trades, so that's like the East India Company and the uh the Danish East India Company, which the Chinese were most happy with because you had a kind of official something that could control people, but an increasing number of ships called country trade. which were plying between India and Southeast Asia and

Back to the East India Company. So these guys, they're charting these waters. And the Amherst Embassy is asked To rendezvous. in the entrance to what we now know as Aberdeen Harbour, in the western entrance. And there there are a couple of famous pictures which show the waterfall at Wafu, and another one which shows the waterfall at Tinhuan, which is a bit further in.

And the charts that emerged from this show that they also knew and probably used primarily the waterfall that used to come down by the Lions Club Technical School in Aberdeen, which is now not so much there because the Aberdeen Reservoir was built and that stopped the water flow. But the key point about Aberdeen were were there were these three absolutely reliable year-round sources of good fresh water.

good from the point of view of the eighteenth century. Um and so it was a good rendezvous. There was all it was also known to be pretty good for spas. This goes back to an American captain called John Kendrick. who was in a ship trading uh And sandalwood from Hawaii, and he comes to Guangzhou, and on his way back to get another load, he's dismastered in a typhoon. So he limps back in and he finds Aberdeen and he leaves a report saying, Whoa, Aberdeen's great.

Yeah, you can you can get all kinds of help and food and they're really nice people. Uh they really helped me. I've managed to re-rig the ship completely because there's good spa timber from the pine trees up in the hills behind. Uh great place. Gotta go there. So he leaves this record and this appears in the late seventeen nineties in in all the growing number of official or semi official what are called pilot books that's a kind of guidebook for sailors.

Which were emerging from Western European sources, and the particular one, the hydrographer of the East India Company, a chap called Alexander Dalrymple, he produces his first notes and he reproduces what Kendrick said. Now, when Daniel Ross and Philip Mort are doing their chart, they also put notes together on the waters of Hong Kong.

Where they describe all the good anchorages. And they send this back, as they're duty bound to do, to the East India Company's hydrographer, who was a chap called James Horsborough, in London. And at this moment, James Horsbrough is Putting together a massive It's about fifteen hundred pages, guide called the India Directory. takes people from the English Channel all the way out to the Poe River Delta.

Not only via the Malacca Straits in Singapore, but by the Sunda Straits and also by what's called Pitts Passage, where you go through Indonesia across the top of Papua New Guinea, loop up to the east of the Philippines, and then come into China that way. And all of this is is written down by James Horsbrough. John Kendrick's instructions for finding Abidin. Now I said earlier there's inference that the Brits weren't using and knew about Hong Kong War.

If you like, we're kind of covering it up, because if you follow James Horsborough's Indie Directory, the first edition of which comes out in 1810, 1811, it then goes through six separate editions. through until when the British annexed Hong Kong in the eighteen forty. And from the beginning on

Where there's clear instructions for finding the Po Chongwan southern entrance into Aberdeen, which John Kendrick left behind. He said, When you're coming in from down by Po Toy, this is what you look for and you'll find this entrance to this great place where people will We'll help you. Uh it had what was called where the MTR now lands on Ablechau. Yes. It's all reclaimed now, but there were three little islands uh which came out from the Apli Chow shore.

Pushing across to where the Catholic seminary is, on top of the Hill in Walchalk. And those little islands were called Aptan, Ducky.

um the duck eggs, and on the north side of the duck eggs was a shallow sandy area, which the Brits called uh careening islands. They called them the careening islands'cause this shallow sand you could put a ship ashore on at high tide, you could use its masts and tackles to roll it over slightly, so you could clean the bottom or repair any leaks or reculk it or whatever it was.

So here was something really, really important in eighteenth century and nineteenth century shipping, this ability safely to put your boat on a beach and keep it clean or or repair. So here's his instructions to this great place. Water, friendly people, wood, veggie, good pork. You mention it, Aberdeen's the spot.

And over the next six editions, you can watch James Horseback. Subtly change these instructions. So they stop being instructions for going into Aberdeen and become instructions to going into Titan. And you've got to ask, wait a minute, why do they why do they do this? And then you look at the chart that Daniel Ross and Philip Morne put together.

To me this is really gripping, because we know from the Amherst Embassy That at least two of the members of the Amherst expedition Including uh one of its its leading members who's I'm getting old, my brain has lost his name, Sir George Staunter. he and another they walk up Wong Chuk Hang Creek, as it was then, In order to visit Hong Kong Chai, which is the little village, uh little Hong Kong, which was at the entrance to the Aberdeen tunnel.

and then to walk up to a hill, Bennett's Hill, as it's now called, behind the Wong Wongchuk Hang factory area, Where they could survey the world around them. Now we know they did this, and if you got Bennett's Hill and look out, you can see that Aberdeen Harbour starts where the ferry from Pat Cock goes in, and it runs through under the MTR and Road Bridge. Hangs aright a bit after the narrows and goes out through Pongchong Po Chongwan into the East Lama Channel.

And then you look at this carefully made chart of Daniel Ross and Philip Morn. And they show that there is no central passage. They show a bay in the north going in north of Ablechau. They show a bay in the south coming in south. And they show the area around the duck eggs and the Seminary Hill as an isthmus that joins the two together. And stops them being c a continuous harbour. Now you put that together.

Hydrographers Daniel Ross in eighteen twenty two becomes a Fellow of the Royal Society for the quality of his child. the China Seas. Uh he put together, on my count, uh I I'm kind of the world expert on Daniel Ross, he put together about forty charts of the waters from from Burma around to the the Yellow Sea and the Bohai Gulf. Stunning, twenty years work. He's not gonna get this wrong. But he did. Horsborough has given the world the template for what assailing directions look like.

Everybody today still basically follows Horsbrough's pattern. And he himself had been trading in out of out of Guangzhou with the country trade for ten or fifteen years, since the late eighteenth century. So he knew these waters pretty well. Why then?

Did the East India Company publish a chart with this small detail that was manifestly wrong and We have good reason to believe there were quite a few people who would have known it was wrong, and published A book guiding people to these waters with information which they gradually.

Tinkered with to change what it told you was available. And it's not till the eighteen forty when the British annex Hong Kong, that we suddenly see, oh gosh, yes, Apple Chow, it's an island, and Aberdeen Harbour goes all the way through. And you find interestingly, Horsboro's Directory is not amended until the seventh when we get an acknowledgement of Shek Pai Wan existing as a harbour. So the Brits knew about We can now segue. 30 years.

but which said, We own all the waters to three miles out from our coast, from from the low water mark, three miles out, that is our national waters, and you can't do anything, anything at all in our national waters, without asking us. And if you try, uh, we'll either shoot at you or we'll arrest you and we'll sell your ship unless you pay a fine or whatever it might be.

No. But ba yeah, cannons couldn't shoot three miles. I basically meant hot pursuit. Uh you c you could probably probably catch someone. Okay. Anyway The Chinese equivalent, which is articulated by by the Chinese authorities during the process of the Qing dynasty, is to dys to divide their waters, but it's conceptual, it's not geographical.

And that's the key difference. They're dividing their waters up, but they're not doing it by charting and measuring. They're doing it In effect with an economy of power, they they they have what are they called the Nehoi or Ne Yang, the inner war. And those are, in the Qing Conception, unquestionably Chinese. And what they actually mean is these are waters that we actively police and can control.

Then there's an area which they call the Haijiang, Hojang, the which is the same as Xinjiang, the the new border. It Hojang means the sea frontier, the sea border. Now what's interesting is that's not a border in the way that we've come to think of it today, like a a almost a Euclidean line with a Trumpian fence down the middle. Rather, it's it's a notional zone. Fuzzy at the edges, at the inside edge it it it fades into the nayang.

At the outside edge, it fades into the Hoiang or Hoi Hai, which which means the big wide open god who cares. The Hai Jiang is as wide or as narrow as effective policing can make. It doesn't have a tight geographical description like three miles off the low water line. It's uh this is the area we more or less control but not so well.

And if I've got it right, and I I I think I'm pretty much on the button. The Hoi Jiang in the early nineteenth century through until the mid nineteenth century actually included most of Hong Kong. The the Neiang kinda started in the area of Shekal, uh in Shenzhen, going across to probably Zhuhai, uh and that was unquestionably Neyang, and there was no absolutely no question about who controlled that. And maybe gets out to beyond Hong Kong.

the local green standard army guys who ran China's Coast Guard in effect, if they were on one of their highs and were capably and well led, they could effectively Patrol and control. China's coastal waters, probably out as far as beyond L the islands beyond Lantau, inclusive of Hong Kong. As you can see, there are forts. They're not built to a while later, but there are forts at Fan Lao. At Dong Chung, at Fatamun, on the north side of uh

Uh brain's gone dead for a moment. Uh Chonggy, uh th the the island uh Just north of Waglan. So clearly that there are signs that, yes, there was effective coastal patrol. But they didn't last very long. They were only in place and actively garrisoned, from what I can work out, for fifty or sixty years. And by the time the East India Company were doing all this chart, China's control of its coastal waters was pretty poor. You've got uh Changpo Chai running rampant up and down the coast.

In effect, the whole Hong Kong area is a bit of a twilight zone. And the East India Company guys they knew this. They knew that they could operate around here. So now we can bounce forward to the eighteen thirties and the growing problem with the opium trade, which the Brits were using primarily to finance their insatiable desire for tea, um tea being a less harmful drug than opium, and The Chinese authorities getting extremely pissed off, on the one hand, by this illegal.

shipping of drugs into China. It's a difficult area and there are there there are still major scholarly disputes. There's there's the straight ideological history on the one hand yna yna yna yna yna yna yna yna yna yna yna yna yna yna yna yna yna yna yna yna yna yna yna

Uh the Hudson Bay Company, the monopoly right to trade into Canada. So these were this was kind of standard operating procedure by the mid eighteenth century, and great for the monopoly. There was increasing pressure during the early eighteenth century against this. So by I forget exactly when it's it's the early eighteen twenties, I think. Uh the East India Company loses its monopoly of trade with India. And then the next thing is it loses its monopoly of trade with China.

Up until then, anybody who was trading between India and China, what was called the country trade, could only take stuff back to India. Only the East India Company could take stuff back to to Europe. So There was huge pressure to enable the private traders to get on the real gravy, which was getting the stuff back to Europe.

So in 1833, the East India Company loses the arguments in Parliament. I mean, the East India Company was basically very badly run. The amount of bung that was going around was Unbelievable that there were people like ships captains making an absolute fortune. through what's called their private allowance. Uh an East India Company ship is chartered by the East India Company with a captain from what was called an owner or an owner's syndicate.

That ship was then part of the East India Company's voyage that year. There could be up to thirty of them, which would sell out from Europe any time between uh January and mm at the very, very latest May, for China. Usually and some for India, some for China, uh some for both. And they'd arrive Anytime between August and September and and December, January. Uh they would arrive in in Guangzhou, they would load up. Now on that ship, the captain Had his privilege carved.

He was allowed I forget what was fifty tons, I think, of of cargo space for him to load up to trade on his private recog recognizances when he got back to Britain. Each of the ship's officers had a lesser amount of time. And this was being pretty widely abused and not properly regulated. Meanwhile the charter fees that were being charged to the East India Company were being gerrymandered, and so

The East End Company was losing money. It was deeply in debt by the late 18th century and was bailed out by the British government. By the eighteen thirties, eighteen forty it was even more in debt. I mean the whole model was was collapsing, which is why in the end the private trade

got away with it. So we are into the late 1830s We've got this knowledge of Hong Kong that is built up. both with the private traders and with the East India Company's official traders. This is a known area with good anchorages and so forth. Macau, meanwhile, which had always been the officially accepted Chinese

place a place within Chinese territory where westerners could spend winters and where their ships were officially expected to arrive to pick up the pilot to take them upriver, and where they were expected to call in on their way back down to drop off the pilot and to clear for foreign waters.

Macau was silting up, uh because at the same time you've got ships getting bigger. If you look at the average West Indiaman East Indiaman that arrived, let's say, in seventeen hundred, it would have been about five hundred tons. A ton, by the way, in shipping terms, is a volume. So it's 500 tons, it's 500 times 94 cubic feet.

That's roughly it. So it's a measure of volume, measure of the ship's size. Five hundred tons. By the time you're getting to the eighteen twenties, eighteen thirties, the biggest in East Indiamen are twelve hundred tons, and that's a cheap. Because from what everybody can work out they were probably nearer three thousand.

uh on measurement. So the ships have increased maybe six times in size and the amount of water they draw, that means how deep they go down below the surface of the water, has increased from maybe Phew three meters to more like six or seven. So Macau is simply not usable for most of these ships.

People need d so you need deep water. They're much bigger, so the area they need in which to to anchor and swing around as the wind and tide changes gets larger. Nothing about Macau is really able to accommodate these changes.

So with all the changes that are going on People are aware that Hong Kong is offering if anything goes wrong, Hong Kong is offering something useful. Now we can at this point Click in yet another thing, all the way through this whole process of the Westerners Arriving in China and trading, there has been this constant resentment of the extent to which the Chinese extremely effectively controlled trade in and out of China.

They had every like every sovereign state they had an interest in controlling who came. what they brought, what they took away, how they did it, and they had an extremely effective port control system. Uh it

But it was a very efficiently run port, and nobody had any if you if you read the nobody's complaining about how well it's run. Sometimes they they they grizzle about having to pay money, but then who doesn't grizzle about having to pay money? But the Brits actually what they wanted was something that they controlled.

They were always looking for an island. My favourite, which they found in the well seventeen fifties, was an island off the coast of Myanmar, Burma, which was uncanny brilliance they decided was the island they wanted and they colonized it. Only to discover, come the change of monsoons, that it wasn't an island at all, and that it disappeared uh when the wind changed directionally.

And was underwater. So they abandoned that one. It didn't stop them keep keeping on searching. They found Penang, uh which is in the what, seventeen seventies, with with Captain Light they find Penang, but that's too far away from China. And so they're they're constantly looking. Then Alexander Dalrumpel in the seventeen seventies I think he comes up with Balambangan, which is between Palawan and the Philippines and Saba in Borneo, which he thinks is really great.

But uh the locals, the Iranun people from the Sulu archipelago, were not of the same view. So it's there for a couple of years and then the Iranun uh raid it and wipe everything out. There's a few escapees, but basically nothing's left. So that was a bad idea. Uh and so they want they they know about Portuguese Macau. They want a Macau. How how can they get it? And the Chinese going, you know, uh we we kinda got conned into Macau.

And we're not stupid, so we're not doing that again. And anyway, n we know what you've done to India, so forget it. You're not getting anywhere around us. Now the Chinese People think that the Qing was this closed in world. It was not. They were really well informed. Um okay, they had some weird geographical ideas.

But they were pretty well informed about what we would call geopolitics and they knew about Western colonies and they knew about how rapacious the Westerners were. So they were saying, Well y forget it. You are not coming and getting an island here So Deal with this on our terms or don't deal. Easy. Uh your choice. But the Western guys are on a roll. They've got a different order of guns. They've got ships which are technically clearly superior in in military terms.

They've spent the entire eighteenth century fighting each other, which has massively enhanced and advanced their military technology. So th I mean they're punched. Come the eighteen thirties when the the issues of the opium trade, the outpouring of silver, the Qing dynasty's wobbles because i again you've got to flip your mind over and look at Qing dynasty China in itself in the early nineteenth century, there was a sequence of really bad harvests. and serious social unrest. Occasional

outbursts of uh of of major rebellious forces which had to be put down. You've got piracy all along the coast that at one stage effectively controlled uh the entire Fujian and Guangdong coast. so that and they they r they even ran a tax office in Guangzhou itself, uh, to tax people so that they could get a laissez passer to be able to get their junks to seawood without having mm basically being snatched and held to ransom. So

The Qing dynasty is in a bit of trouble. It's extremely cross with the way Western traders are bringing opium into China and bleeding the place of silver. But the Westerners meanwhile are on this free trade Jag that they they think means that they should be able to trade with China on their terms. And so It comes to a crunch in eighteen thirty nine. when two things happen. One, uh Lin So Shou, the

Viceroy, new Viceroy in Guangzhou Guangdong, who Guangzhou, who is an absolute hardliner on the drugs front. I mean they're arguing at this point in Beijing, should we legalize it and take a tax take? So that we can control it and make money out of it because we're not going to stop it. There was a strong faction who argued for that. And then there was another faction saying, No, look, this is completely screwing up the entire country. You've got to stop it.

Banner and Lindsay Shoe was from So in eighteen thirty nine, he just simply Goes hardball and snatches, twenty snatches from foreigners, insists that they hand over all the opium that's anywhere near Chinese waters. Where he's going to destroy it, which he does do at Fumen, uh by digging big pits and letting the seawater in and mixing it all up and then letting it out. And you know, the Brit traders, they're they're looking at a serious loss of money.

Although this is another way one of the things I love about history is it's full of these really interesting little side wrinkles. Because actually if you look at the trade at that moment, it because everybody was getting in on the act, the price of opium was extremely volatile and it's highly probable that These guys were just a bit in the bullet and given up.

The British superintendent of trade had

So if you will accept uh an IOU signed by me for Queen Victoria, uh then we can do a deal and trade will resume and everybody will smile and we'll make money. These guys go, Wah. Hey, let's just not smile too widely, because they're getting a guaranteed price, which they probably would not have got in a falling market. Elliot pegs the price pretty hard.

the traders of Calcutta bombarding Palmerston with these letters saying, This is an outrage, an outrage. We've I you've got to do something. The British Crown, whatever. Um and so Palmerston in the end, I mean he's reluctant. Uh and it's not originally Palmerston actually. I think it's it i it's the guy who preceded him, and I can't remember who who that was, who was a bit of a stand-up.

But when Palmerston, when the when the administration falls and Palmerston comes in, Palmerston's gung-ho. He's he's uh an imperialist to his bootstraps, so he was going to do something. Lindsa Shut says, Right, you guys, uh not only are you being sticky about handing over your opium. But just to show you that I'm truly serious, uh

Cut the Brits off, that's what they do. So what do the Brits do? They all come rushing across to Hong Kong. Thirty ships arrive, thirty thirty to forty ships arrive and anchor in Hong Kong harbour. Now this actually leads me one of the things we never really know is the moment by moment events. We're sticking together the story from later, usually official documentation, anything that may have

Survived letters, diaries, and so forth. But we're looking at the actual events, and one of the things that really fascinates. yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r for the Royal Navy and fisheries, and in the front of the catalogue of this exhibition is a list of major naval events. When you get to the twenty third of august, eighteen thirty nine. It says the capture of Hong Kong.

Now we all know that Hong Kong wasn't officially occupied with uh the Royal Marines hoisting uh forming the colour party that hoisted the flag under Commander Belcher on Possession Point on january twenty sixth, eighteen forty one. So what's this twenty third of august eighteen thirty nine capture of Hong Kong? This goes back to all these Brit ships. And Linsershu's action against the Brits. Elliot goes ashore in Kowloon to buy supplies, to feed these people.

And the Chinese authorities say, No way, mate. Uh this is embargoed. They'd already completed their transactions. They've been chatting to the local guys, say, Yeah, no problem, couple of pigs, warp, see yours here. Some choice um, bring it over, mate. And they've all done it, they're they're they're kind of handing over the money when the Chinese officials say This is illegal.

Take it back, give the Gwelos their money, Guailos piss off, you guys get home. And Sir Elliot says excuse me, I I want to negotiate about this. Uh perfectly legitimate Transactions. Uh uh uh and the Chinese No, forget it. So Elliot then goes and he starts negotiating. There are three Chinese warships moored off the Chimsa Chi Peninsula.

So he decides he he's gonna come back with force and and negotiate, so that they can look down the barrel of a gun whilst he negotiates. This is a very good negotiating posture. Um try to get these guys to see sense. Pfft They can't do anything because ultimately if they're told by the authorities in Guangzhou you will do this, you do it until the authorities in Guangzhou change their mind.

Anyway, it turns into a shooting war. And it's it's it's an amazing account because there's uh a small brig, um I'm a really v a very small vessel, uh An armed rowing boat and something intermediate between the two, which are up against these three Chinese warships. And there's this bombardment that goes on for hours, which nobody wins. And eventually the Brits with withdraw, claiming a victory, because I think one of the Chinese junks is is sunk.

And all of this, anyway, is against the background of there having been a bunch of drunken British sailors ashore a short while beforehand.

And the guys are found guilty of affray and assault. yw'r hyn yw'r hyn yw'r hyn yw'r hyn yw'r hyn yw'r hyn yw'r hyn yw'r hyn yw'r hyn yw'r hyn yw'r hyn yw'r hyn yw'r hyn yw'r hyn yw'r hyn yw'r hyn yw'r hyn yw'r hyn yw'r hyn yw'r hyn yw'r hyn yw'r hyn yw'r hyn yw'r hyn yw'r hyn yw'r hyn yw'r hyn yw'r hyn Elioed wedi cael ei wneud unrhyw beth sy'n ei wneud unrhyw beth sy'n ei wneud unrhyw beth sy'n ei wneud unrhyw beth sy'n ei wneud.

four hundred of which was to bribe the officials on the Chinese side, and a hundred of which was to spread amongst their fellow villagers, to make sure that nobody got unduly jealous. Um So he thought he'd he'd done what was necessary and the Chinese quite reasonably going, No, come on, this is not about privacy, this is about justice, our justice, hand the bloke over. Um

But these the two people who were found guilty had been sent back to Britain. And Britain then, you know, really puts their foot in it by l letting the guys off because there's not sufficient evidence to to put'em in clink. Interestingly there is record, however, of a British sailor who is said to have been the guy who struck the fatal blow. Who was found drowned in the hub in in Hong Kong Hub?

Here are the Brits fighting off the Chinese and containing their their keeping their fleet in Hong Kong, but Elliot realizes this is not sustainable. And he moves everybody to Tongu, that's the area between uh Castle Peak, Tunmun, and the little islands just north of the airport, which was a known anchorage. So he moves them all up there, thinking that's safe. But clearly the Navy, meanwhile, had taken it into its view that

it had won a significant battle and thereby become the owner of Hong Kong waters. And this had clearly lasted on in naval

eighteen thirty nine to the actual moment when Hong Kong gets annexed militarily in january eighteen forty one. conditionally handed over in eighteen forty two, uh And finally signed off in eighteen forty two uh outside the walls of Nanjing, in the cabin of the Cornwallis. And the final ceiling and everything in eighteen forty three. This looks like there's a straight trajectory from 1839 to 1843, which says the Brits see it, they grab it.

They settle on it. They get the Chinese to agree by winning the Opium War. Actually, the Brits didn't really want Hong Kong. Hong Kong was uh a second best. What they were really going for was somewhere closer to the mouth of the Yangtze, and they fancied Josan, opposite Ningbo. But the people of Josam were not having it. So in the end The Brits get Hong Kong and it was Second choice.

The creation, if you like, of the science of geography, uh the sciences of cartography, of surveying, of geodesy, all of this emerges and The idea that you have a a detailed and accurate two dimensional map of everything that you can spot, particularly of your domains, is something that the Western world had become normal.

This was perfectly much it had become part of Qing Dynasty understanding, but it hadn't bec it hadn't escaped court secrecy, in effect. They they got good maps of China, but they were secret maps. And not widely known about. So the guys who were negotiating over over Hong Kong, they didn't really know they didn't have anything like our perception of a map that shows an island. If you look at all the contemporary Chinese maps,

Hong Kong is not easy to spot, uh, i'cause it it was of no significance. It wasn't returning any significant tax revenue. Uh it it only had three pretty small villages, uh three of four. You've got Pot Fulam, uh Sepai One Odd little and and Wong uh Wang E Chong. Uh odd little four or five little small villages, probably total population of three or four thousand people, maybe as many as six thousand.

But n all of them, they're subsistence farmers and fishermen. They are not paying big tax revenues. to to the court and it's the tax revenues that are really going to come.

which instructs British military forces to seize Any vessels any Chinese vessels So that if they don't pay up, these are then sent to an Admiralty court, declared prize, and sold on the block and their contents. so that gradually the costs of the opium, etcetera, can be recovered. And then there's a scramble whilst ships are summoned from all over the place. It's fascinating watching the navy gather.

Because when when this is all declared there are about three men and a dog uh here. There's there's one frigate, the Volage, uh and and a couple of other boats. and then some more ships are sent. Commander Belcher, who's over on the coast of South America, is told, Get your butt over to Hong Kong And meanwhile the Indian army in India, a bunch of local vessels are chartered and told

get to Hong Kong and I mean and there's some real tragedies in there. There's a ship called the Golconda. There are two of them, uh are chartered to bring out the Madras infantry, native infantry, uh in two ships. One of them disappears uh in the China Sea. It was overwhelmed by a typhoon, and so only half the regiment actually make it. Uh so they gradually gather enough forces. And they

don't meet adequate resistance from the Chinese forces because the Chinese forces had different w I mean, partly they were astonished. Wha what's going on here? You know, we have t this is our territory. Why are these people coming in and fighting us? And worse.

uh when they took the forts at Fumen, which basically controlled the narrows going up to Guangzhou, when they took there's The Brits were taken around the back and led in to assault the forts in the back by locally recruited guides who were also carrying half the kit. Uh this is another thing that's quite hard to get your head around. The the notions of China and Chinese.

in some respects are a late nineteenth century invention to try and and sy'n gweithio'r hyn sy'n gweithio'r hyn sy'n gweithio'r hyn sy'n gweithio'r hyn sy'n gweithio'r hyn sy'n gweithio'r hyn. how people thought of themselves, I don't really know. I mean, I I I would be fascinated d w most of these people are illiterate, uh, and I but I'd be fascinated to be able to find out how would they have described themselves. I mean I think of France, for example.

I there's a famous survey in France in the eighteen nineties in the south of France where one of the questions is Escuet France Are you French? And it's some unbelievable percentage of the respondents go what

uh and are happy to cover the costs of making this podcast. We'd be very happy to hear from you. We do have a website at the Hong Kong History Podcast dot com. There you'll find information about us. And also how to contact us for now. Stephen, thank you very much.