I. Commercial expansion

The very first demand which Elgin was instructed to make, namely, ‘the opening of all ports along the China coast and the banks of rivers to foreign trade’, was related to the submissions of the various business associations in Britain. As we have seen, official publication of Admiral Seymour's first despatch concerning military operations in the Canton River prompted some very influential commercial and industrial associations to lobby the government to demand further concessions from China. They included the East India and China Association in London, the East India and China Association in Liverpool, the Chamber of Commerce and Manufactures in Glasgow, the Manchester Commercial Association, and the Chamber of Commerce and Manufactures of Manchester. Individuals who wrote included a certain E. Cousins and a James Vavasseur.

Their submissions were touched upon in the preceding chapter only in so far as the government tried to use them as signs of support for its policy towards China, to the extent of having the memorials of the East India and China Associations in London and Liverpool tabled in Parliament. In this chapter, the demands of the various pressure groups will be examined in detail.

Let us begin by recalling the commercial lobbies that came to the fore at the time of the Opium War. About 300 firms, mostly connected with the cotton industry, in Manchester, London, Leeds, Liverpool, Blackburn, and Bristol, petitioned Lord Palmerston, then foreign secretary, to intervene.