Captain Elliot and the Founding of Hong Kong Read online

  We were much alarmed and inconvenienced too at one time for all the Chinese servants were taken from us and there was a report that all Europeans were to be murdered except Lady Napier and her two daughters who were to be taken as hostages. We may laugh now at these idle tales but I assure you at the time we were all much alarmed the husbands being absent at Canton and the poor women alone.32

  On Napier’s death the office of Chief Superintendent passed seamlessly to the Second Superintendent, John Francis Davis. Equally automatically Sir George Best Robinson became Second Superintendent and John Harvey Astell Third. In January 1835 the escalator moved again; Davis was due for home leave but retired from the Commission instead, Robinson took over as Chief and Astell as Second, and Charles Elliot came in as Third Superintendent.

  The mood among the British merchants was unsettled. Jardine set about gathering support for a request to Palmerston to send a force in retaliation for the indignities suffered by the British. When received by Palmerston’s successor at the Foreign Office, the Duke of Wellington, it was deliberately ignored, largely on the advice of Davis who had written to Palmerston the day after Napier died informing him that: ‘In the absence of any advances on the part of the Chinese, a state of absolute silence and quiescence on our part seems the most eligible course, until further instructions shall be received from home.’33

  Davis’s decision to retire had been taken in the hope and expectation that Charles Elliot, of whom he had long been a keen supporter, would then be appointed a Superintendent. Elliot himself was aware of Davis’s continuing goodwill towards him, and considered it thoroughly deserved. He confided to Emma: ‘I have no doubt he will do me more than justice at headquarters, and most assuredly it would only be doing me basic justice to say, that I have worked hard, both head and hand.’34 Elliot’s relations with his new superior, Robinson, were however in stark contrast to those he had enjoyed with Davis. Perhaps partly because his reputation for incompetence and arrogance preceded him, Robinson was disliked from the start by Elliot, who accorded him scant respect. In 1828, having been reprimanded for failure to obey orders, Robinson had protested to the Select Committee in aggressive, almost insolent terms: ‘Finding that my best endeavours have only exposed me to what I feel to be your very unjust censure, I must beg to decline an office the duties of which render me constantly liable to such vexatious and frivolous remarks.’35 Charles Elliot wearily complained to his sister that ‘The Su[perintendent] [Robinson] is on my shoulders here, dear Emy, but you need not be afraid’, and then declared, making it clear that his personal strategy was to keep his head down and not make waves, ‘silence and quiescence’ at an individual level, ‘I will commit no blunders and strive to perform no wonders.’36

  Wonders or not, Elliot could not resist trying to remedy one of the most striking deficiencies, as he saw it, of commercial life amongst the British at Canton. Napier’s instructions had indicated that civil disputes were to be settled by arbitration or persuasion, and the Superintendents were to use as much influence and authority as they could muster to that end. The Superintendents had no legal powers and while Elliot, for one, was keen to sort out difficulties himself where he could, he judged that a framework for proceeding in such matters was sorely needed.37 He described the problem:

  Ships will repair to China for a season and perhaps never return, having on board, in many cases, Agents charged with the disposal and purchase of their cargoes, whose transactions with the resident British merchants will probably be very extensive; and in some instances it may be extremely needful to possess such means of constraining such parties to submit disputed points to investigation, upon the spot.

  …the practical problem is to shape the process … [to] secure substantial justice between disputants with the least possible … delay, … expense, and … interference on the part of this Commission.38

  Elliot’s proposal included examples of how the scheme would work. He advocated the use of press reports in order to have in the public domain ‘a small body of useful precedents’.39 Such transparency could be helpful in ‘examples of unprincipled disinclination to adjust disputes, against … which this check of publicity may incidentally operate in a salutary manner.’40 One of the guiding principles of Elliot’s scheme, as he set it out, is instructive as an indication of the general approach to regulation which would inform his subsequent roles:

  To do the least that is necessary for the accomplishment of the object in view is the principle that should judge us, and perhaps in the first place the wisest course to pursue would be merely to define the practice, and to leave experience to indicate the points which will require more comprehensive provision. A needless burden of regulation is a great evil. I very well know (for I have had considerable experience in these matters in other parts of the world) that a copious supply of legal remedies for anticipated difficulties is the sure precursor of an abundant crop of subterfuge, evasion, and chicane. To establish as sound and as few principles as we can, and carefully to adapt our practice and proceedings, in any necessities which arise, to those principles, is the task we have to perform.41

  By mid-April 1835 Elliot had submitted his scheme to Robinson, who sent it on to Palmerston asking for authorisation to introduce a system of arbitration based on Elliot’s proposals. While no authority to operate a formal procedure was given, the Commission could handle disputes with Elliot’s principles in mind.

  In the same month there was another change of offices when Astell resigned as Second Superintendent. Elliot moved up again and the Secretary, A.R. Johnston, became Third Superintendent. For Elliot, ambitious but feeling undervalued, this was so far so good. After a few months his new salary allowed him to clear his debts, much to the relief of his wife, and enabled Charles and Clara to look forward to moving with their children Harriet and Hughie into a new – much larger – house on San Francisco Green, Macao. In a letter to Emma, Elliot touches on the problem of communication and distance, and borders on self-pity in describing his own professional position:

  The terrible drawback of this country is the immense time it takes for the transit of letters; making it absolutely a frightful thing to open one’s letters when they do arrive. I sometimes speculate upon your whereabouts and I confess upon the whole I am disposed to think this letter will find you in England…. Since poor Napier’s demise, I have done the whole business of this Commission, and when I consider my former career in the public service I do not think I have deserved ill treatment at the hands of the Government. Perhaps I am needlessly disquieting myself but I feel I am without interest, and a man without interest in England must look to be trodden upon.42,43

  Whether or not Elliot was justified in feeling so apparently sorry for himself, his view of the world will have been affected both by a recent illness (‘a decided attack of the liver’) and by an event in late January and early February in which he suffered unexpected physical harm.44 A boat carrying twelve crewmen from the British merchant ship Argyle, dispatched to seek help in a storm west of Macao, was intercepted by a Chinese vessel. A ransom demand for the twelve sailors was published, prompting the Chief, Second and Third superintendents to seek help from the Canton authorities. Elliot, Macdonald (the captain of the Argyle) and the interpreter Gutzlaff were sent with a communication to one of the city gates. What they presented was not in the ill-fated form of a letter that had caused so much trouble on previous occasions, but nor was it a petition as Chinese protocol required. It was a report, for which the British considered there to be sound precedent. When Elliot and his colleagues tried to hand over the report at the gate Elliot was violently manhandled by the guards and hurled to the ground, and all three were then pushed and dragged about. Military and civil officials appeared, but refused to accept the communication because it was not a petition.45 The sailors were later released, but the episode was for Elliot a stark reminder of the reality of dealing with the mandarins and their less sophisticated agents. His later critics would doubtless have c
onsidered that this attempt to find a middle way through the mode of communication problem, and its consequences, typified what they regarded as Elliot’s misguided evenhanded approach.

  Robinson’s attitude towards the Chinese was even more ‘hands off’ than Davis’s. No contact was his aim, on the grounds that ‘the less we have to do with the Chinese authorities and people, save when appealed to in cases of aggression and injustice, which I trust will be rare and trifling, the less apprehension may be entertained of those perplexing difficulties in which we are liable to be involved’.46 Having penned this view to the Foreign Secretary, Robinson transferred his office from Macao to the Louisa, which was moored close to the island of Lintin in the Pearl River estuary. Moving his place of work to such a location was hardly expected, but it was consistent with his wish to be apart from people and situations which might disturb the tranquillity by which he set so much store. For Charles Elliot this was another example of Robinson’s incompetence and insensitivity; the Chief Superintendent was signalling that not only did he not wish to communicate with the Chinese, he did not want to talk to his colleagues either.

  Robinson lost no opportunity in his reports to the Foreign Secretary to defend his conduct generally and to talk up his management of affairs, but he was fighting a losing battle. In private correspondence with a personal contact at the Foreign Office Elliot was highly critical of his superior’s actions, and his comments will have been brought to the attention of those who needed to know.47 If, given his earlier acknowledgement to Emma of Davis’s goodwill, Elliot really thought he was a man ‘without interest’, he was wrong. Davis had written before his departure from China that ‘I shall probably accompany Mrs Davis home and leave Captain Elliot of the Navy as a member of the Commission. He is a very prudent and able man, well known to our Governt and should have come as Chief Superintendent instead of poor Lord Napier’.48 He later repeated his support, writing again in June 1835: ‘The Chinese have given fresh trouble by the latest account and I shall be uneasy for the state of affairs unless Elliot is immediately put in charge. Poor Robinson is quite prepared to fall back on the Company. … Both justice and policy seem to require that such a man as Elliot should not remain below such a man as Robinson.’49

  Since his appointment as Master Attendant, Charles Elliot’s promotions had been to fill vacancies occurring above him through death, retirement and resignation. If he had blotted his copybook there may have been difficulties, but as he kept his head down and did not ‘commit any blunders’, his elevations were entirely predictable. His final appointment in the Superintendency, however, was anything but automatic. Robinson, unsurprisingly given his policy of inaction and the tone of his reports home, fell out of favour with Palmerston. The Foreign Secretary’s communication terminating his appointment as Chief Superintendent and recalling him from China was dispatched on 7 June 1836, reaching the China coast several months later. In the same instruction Palmerston appointed Charles Elliot to the top post; but he was formally to be designated Chief of the Commission, not Chief Superintendent. The title had to be changed since, as part of the government’s policy of reducing the cost of the civil service, the £3,000 salary now attached to the post was half what Robinson had been paid, and instead of two assisting superintendents Elliot had only one deputy (Johnston). The implication, for public consumption, was that the job had been downgraded, but in practice it became far more demanding – and no one in the British community in China had any difficulty in continuing informally to refer to him as Chief Superintendent. He could not of course know it, but Elliot was at the start of one of the most testing periods in the history of Anglo-Chinese relations, one which would stretch his abilities to their limits. He was however in charge, and he could no longer complain that he was being held back. He now had to demonstrate that he was indeed the right man for the job.

  Chapter Eight

  Opium Prelude

  It was December 1836 when Elliot heard of his promotion. He considered, especially in the light of the non-communication policy of his predecessor, that the crucial step now was to engage in dialogue with the Chinese authorities, and quickly. Without that, he reasoned, he could not fulfil his brief, which remained as it had been for Napier two years earlier. Specifically, no progress could be made on the increasingly vexed question of opium, which stood to jeopardise the China trade as a whole. The letter which Elliot sent to the new Viceroy of Guangxi and Guangdong provinces, Deng Tingzhen, accordingly set aside British insistence otherwise and bore the superscription ‘pin’, signifying a communication from an inferior to a superior. Palmerston had earlier advised Elliot also that:

  It might be very suitable for the servants of the East India Company, themselves an Association of merchants, to communicate with the authorities of China through the merchants of the Hong; but the Superintendents are officers of the King, and as such can properly communicate with none but officers of the Chinese Government’.1

  There being no time for further reference to Palmerston, Elliot chose to disregard this too, passing his letter via the Hong merchants. He knew that he would in due course have to account for these decisions, but for the present he saw, rightly, given the long time delays involved in exchanges with London, no alternative but to take matters entirely into his own hands.

  Taking responsibility was not something Elliot ever found a problem, and sometimes he behaved in a rather exaggerated way as a result. He considered his current actions necessary, but nevertheless felt subconsciously uneasy about going against government policy. As if to make the record of his position clear for future reference, he shared the burden of his unease with his sister:

  it is certain that the steps I have taken (as I learn by dispatches subsequently received) do not jump with the views of the Government. I dare say, they will be very glad eventually, that I acted as I did, but they may not choose to admit that, and for anything I can guess to the contrary they may remove me…. Their opinions upon the soundness of my proceedings, considered merely as opinions, are of no importance to me. My own judgment in such matters is as likely to be a reasonable judgment, as my Lord Palmerston’s. I think of what I am about, and he neither knows nor thinks any thing about the matter.2

  Allowing for his customary overstatement, Elliot’s assessment of the extent of Palmerston’s engagement with the situation on the south China coast was essentially correct. It could not be otherwise; quite apart from having more pressing foreign policy issues to deal with in Europe and the Middle East, Palmerston was in no position, at four or five months’ remove, to have anything helpful to offer the Chief of Commission on how he should respond to events as they unfolded. Elliot’s comments about his own future were uncannily prescient.

  The approach to the Viceroy, seeking permission to reside at Canton and being appropriately addressed, was successful and Elliot arrived there in mid-April. He had not however simply been biding his time in the preceding few months. In the latter half of 1836 relations between the foreign traders and the Chinese authorities had deteriorated as resentment grew over the rising debts of the Hong merchants, both to their foreign counterparts and to the mandarins, and over the question of jurisdiction. The Chinese tradition of leaving foreigners to administer their own justice over their own subjects, Elliot thought, would be at risk if the Chief Superintendent were not given judicial authority over British merchants including, of course, opium smugglers, who in Elliot’s view were ‘men whose rash conduct cannot be left to the operation of Chinese laws without utmost inconvenience and risk, and whose impunity … is dangerous to British interests.’3 The Chinese tradition had in any case always been subject to Chinese intervention if the authorities thought it warranted, and in recent decades there had been several incidents involving the deaths of Chinese subjects where they thought it was.

  1836 had also seen vigorous controversy in the Chinese government about the opium problem. The physical effects of the drug on the population at all levels of society, and the econom
ic consequences of the drain of silver to pay for it, now needed urgent action. For a time it seemed that those calling for legalisation as a means of exercising better control had persuaded the Daoguang Emperor to adopt such a policy, but advocates of the elimination of opium from China altogether eventually won the day. At Canton and in the Pearl River delta the new crackdown was swiftly and forcefully implemented. Viceroy Deng, a supporter of legalisation who was thought by many to be profiting directly from the opium trade, nevertheless found it possible to carry out his duty conscientiously. Steps were taken to prepare for confrontation with the British and other opium traffickers, notably the construction of a new gun battery at Cumsingmun, some twenty miles north of Macao and opposite Lintin Island where the opium receiving vessels were moored.

  In this increasingly unstable situation Charles Elliot wrote in February 1837 to Lord Auckland, Governor General of India, suggesting that a visit from the Royal Navy to the south China coast would be helpful.4 The presence of a small flotilla of warships would send a clear message to the Chinese and (though he did not mention it specifically) strengthen his own position. That position would also be greatly assisted if he personally had more freedom of movement, and Elliot notified the Viceroy that the delay involved in his having to apply for a ‘chop’, or passport, each time he needed to proceed up river from Macao was impeding him in the exercise of his official duty to oversee British trade. Deng was content to waive the requirement, subject only to Elliot’s notifying the Chinese authorities before each trip. With some satisfaction Elliot reported to Palmerston on 2 June 1837 that the concession meant he was now in an unprecedented position for a foreigner resident in China.5

  The importance of this relaxation of the rules was overstated by Elliot. It was significant in that it indicated some flexibility on the part of the Viceroy, but made very little impact on the difficulties faced by the Chief Superintendent. He was having to find a way through at least five sets of competing and at times seemingly irreconcilable interests – the Chinese government (i.e. the Daoguang Emperor and his senior advisers); the local mandarins; the Hong merchants; the British and other foreign merchants; and the British government. Nor was any of these of a single mind as to the best way forward.