William Nelson Lovatt in Late Qing China
War, Maritime Customs, and Treaty Ports, 1860-1904
G Bracken (TU Delft - Spatial Planning and Strategy)
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Abstract
China was forced to open its first treaty ports in 1842. This was one of the conditions of the Treaty of Nanking (now Nanjing), which ended the First Opium War (1839–42). The country was forced to make further concessions with the Treaty of Tientsin, which ended the Second Opium War (1856–60). China saw an ever-increasing number of treaty ports appear before the system finally ended in 1943. The second treaty also opened the Yangtze River to foreign trade and missionary activity, allowing Westerners to penetrate the Chinese interior. In the first year of the river's opening, Shanghai's customs revenues tripled, but the duties paid on goods, incoming and outgoing, were handed to Western customs officers, who then forwarded receipts to Peking (now Beijing). This was because during the early stages of the Taiping Rebellion (1850–64), the British had begun collecting import duties, and because the revenues were so much larger [...]