Bullies to the Weak, Cowards to the Strong
Richard Cobden wanted to know why British policy towards China was so different to our policy towards the USA and European powers.
Richard Cobden wanted to know why British policy towards China was so different to our policy towards the USA and European powers.
On October 8th, 1856, Chinese authorities in Canton arrested twelve sailors for piracy. Sir John Bowring, governor of Hong Kong, demanded their release, as their ship the Arrow had flown (albeit illegally) a British flag. On the 22nd the obliging Chinese delivered the suspects up; on the 23rd, the Royal Navy nonetheless began a three-week bombardment of Canton. The following February, Richard Cobden expressed his outrage in the Commons.
I lay these things before the House as the basis for our investigation, not with the view of appealing to your humanity, not with the view of exciting your feelings, but that we may know that we are at war with China, and that great devastation and destruction of property have occurred.
What I ask is, that we shall inquire who were the authors of this war, and why it was commenced?* and that I ask, not in the interest of the Chinese, but for the defence of our own honour. I ask you to consider this case precisely as if you were dealing with a strong Power, instead of a weak one. I confess I have seen with humiliation the tendency in this country to pursue two courses of policy — one towards the strong, and the other towards the weak.
* The affair of the Arrow ignited what is known as the Second Opium War, which brought the Treaty of Tientsin in 1858 but is usually held to have ended in 1860 with the Convention of Peking, signed on October 24th, 1860, by Prince Gong for China, by Lord Elgin for the United Kingdom, and by Baron Gros for France. ‘Second Opium War’ is something of a misnomer. The First Opium War in 1839-1842 arose out of China’s attempts to stop smugglers from flooding China with noxious opium produced in India, at that time under the control of the British East India Company, though it turned into a broader erosion of China’s economic sovereignty. By 1856, opium was hardly being mentioned, though Cobden remarked that it was still being trafficked: the goal was quite openly to force China into letting the Company control Chinese industry and government as it did in India.