This is the last of an informal three-part series on violence and historical memory in China. It wasn’t my original intention to write a series, but the past week or so has seen several anniversaries of great significance in Chinese history. Last week was the 110th anniversary of the Qing government’s tacit declaration of war against the foreigners during the Boxer Uprising of 1900; last Friday was the 60th anniversary of the start of the Korean War; and 170 years ago this week the British launched the first major offensive of the Opium War against the Qing Empire.
While there were land and naval skirmishes starting in 1839, it was on June 28, 1840 that an expeditionary force of 16 warships and about 4000 troops reached the China coast and began to bombard the area around Guangzhou before turning northward to other, less well protected, cities. The fleet took the island of Zhoushan and threatened Tianjin before the Qing court dispatched the Manchu official Qishan to parley with the British forces. Negotiations broke down and the war continued until finally the Treaty of Nanjing was signed by Qing officials — quite literally at gunpoint from British ships parked in the adjacent