Treaty ports

Foreigners all lived in prestige sections newly built for them on the edges of existing port cities. They enjoyed legal extraterritoriality, as stipulated in the unequal treaties. Foreign clubs, racecourses, and churches were established in major treaty ports. Some of these port areas were directly leased by foreign powers such as in the concessions in China, effectively removing them from the control of local governments.[2]

Western images of the Chinese treaty ports focus on the distinctive geography of the “bund,” a long narrow strip of land in a prime location on the waterfront where the businesses, offices, warehouses and residences of all foreigners were located. The Shanghai bund was the largest and most famous. The North Riverbank in Ningbo (nowadays known as the Old Bund), was the first in China, opening in 1844, 20 years before the Shanghai bund. A typical bund contained British, German, French, American, Japanese and other nationals.

Even a modest pay scale would allow them to have numerous Chinese servants. The bund was a self-governing operation with its own shops, restaurants, recreational facilities, parks, churches. courts, police, and local government. The facilities were generally off-limits to the natives. The British, who by far dominated foreign trade with China, normally were the largest presence. Businessmen and officials typically brought their own families with them and stayed for years but sent their older children back to England for education.

Chinese sovereignty was only nominal. Officially, the foreign powers were not allowed to station military units in the bund, but in practice, there often was a warship or two in the harbor.[3]

The treaty port system in China lasted approximately one hundred years. It began with the 1841 Opium War. The major powers involved were the British, the French, and the Americans, although by the end of the 19th century all the major powers were involved.

The system effectively ended when Japan took control of most of the ports in late 1930s, The Russians relinquished their treaty rights in the wake of the Russian revolution in 1917, and the Germans were expelled in 1914. The three main treaty powers, the British, the Americans, and the French, continued to hold their concessions and extraterritorial jurisdictions until the Second World War. This ended when the Japanese stormed into their concessions in late 1941. They formally relinquished their treaty rights in a new "equal treaties" agreement with Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist Government in exile in Chungking in 1943. The international communities that were residues of the treaty port era ended in the late 1940s when the communists took over and nearly all foreigners left.

Although the great majority of Chinese lived in traditional rural areas, a handful of booming treaty port cities became vibrant centers that had enormous long-term impact on the Chinese economy and society. Above all Shanghai became the dominant urban center. Tianjin, and Shenyang followed; Hong Kong, although a British colony not a treaty port was similar. Foreigners were welcomed and had stable safe bases, as did Christian missionaries. Outside the ports the only foreigners were occasional Christian missionaries, and they often encountered serious difficulties. The other 89 cities that became treaty ports between 1842 and 1914 were of minor importance.[4][5]

The Shanghai International Settlement rapidly developed into one of the world's most modern cities, often compared to Paris, Berlin and London.[6] It set the standard of modernity for China and all of East Asia. In Shanghai the British and American settlements combined in 1863 into an international settlement, with the French settlement operated separately nearby. The foreigners took out long-term leases on the land, and set up factories, offices, warehouses, sanitation, police, gardens, restaurants, hotels, banks and private clubs. The Shanghai Municipal Council was created in 1854, with nine members who were elected by three dozen foreign landowners at first, and by about 2,000 electors in the 1920s. Chinese residents comprised 90% of the total population of Shanghai but complained about taxation without representation. Eventually the Council admitted five Chinese representatives.[7]

The European community promoted technological and economic innovation, as well as knowledge industries, that proved especially attractive to Chinese entrepreneurs as models for their own cities across the growing nation.[8] Port cities combined a number of leadership roles. First of all they were the major port of entry for all imports and exports - except for opium, which was handled by smugglers in other cities.[9] Foreign entrepreneurs introduce the latest European manufacturing techniques, providing a model followed sooner or later by all of China. The first establishments focused on shipbuilding, ship repair, railway repair, and factories producing textiles, matches, porcelain, flour, and machinery. Tobacco, cigarettes, textiles, and food products were the specialty in Canton. Financing was handled by branch banks, as well as entirely new operations such as HSBC -the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, which remains a world-class establishment into the 21st century.[10] Across the modernizing world railway construction was major financial and industrial endeavor, usually led by the British. Investments now poured into building a railway-plus-telegraph system knitting China together, connecting the treaty ports, and other major cities, as well as mining districts and agricultural centers.[11] Chinese entrepreneurs learned their skills in the port cities, and soon applied for and received bank loans for their own startups. Chinese merchants headquartered there set up branches across the Southeast Asia, including British Singapore and Malaya, the Dutch East Indies, French Indochina and the American Philippines.[12]

The information industry flourished in the port cities, with printing shops, newspapers, magazines and pamphlets in Chinese and European languages. Book publishers often featured Chinese translations of European classics in philosophy, politics, literature and social issues.[13] According to historian Klaus Mühlhahn:

This vast network, with Shanghai as its center, spurred the transformation of the Chinese urban population. In their thoughts, tastes, and daily activities, the educated and affluent groups of the urban population began to abandon traditional ways of living and started to embrace what they saw as modern lifestyles.[14]

Christian missionaries saw all of the Chinese population as their target audience, but they headquartered in the port cities. The missionaries had very modest success in conversion of the Chinese population, but discovered they became widely popular for setting up medical and educational facilities. For example St John's University in Shanghai (1879-1952) first set up faculties of theology, Western learning,and Chinese languages, then expanded to cover literature, science, medicine, and intense coverage of Western languages eagerly sought by the ambitious Chinese intellectuals and entrepreneurs who had rejected the old Confucian exam system for the Western model of modernity. Engineering schools were established as well, and in by 1914 a network of universities, colleges, teacher training schools, and specialized industrial schools were headquartered in the Port cities, and diffusing their alumni across urban China.[15]

Students poured into the port cities. Many adopted ideas, and used the facilities newly opened to them to network with each other, set up organizations and publications, and plot a revolution against the Qing government. Aggressive Japanese moves to dominate China in World War I caused a strong backlash of nationalism in the May Fourth Movement, which focused its ire not just on Japan, but also in the entire port city system as emblematic of an imperialism that should no longer be tolerated.[16] The national government had almost no police power in the port cities, allowing secret societies to flourish in the Chinese community, some of which turned into criminal gangs. Eventually Shanghai had a strong underground illegal underworld that was ready to employ violence.[17]

For encyclopedic details on each treaty port, see Robert Nield's China’s Foreign Places: The Foreign Presence in China in the Treaty Port Era, 1840-1943 (2015).

Current province or municipality	Cities	Date	Foreign concession holders
Shanghai	Shanghai	1842–1946	Greater Shanghai had three sections: These comprised the Shanghai International Settlement of the  United Kingdom and the  United States, the French Concession and the Old City of Shanghai.
Jiangsu Province	Nanjing (Nanking)	1858
	Zhenjiang
Jiangxi Province	Jiujiang
Hubei Province	Hankou, now part of Wuhan (Hankow)	1858–1945	United Kingdom; later France,  Germany and  Empire of Japan
	Shashi		Japan
	Yichang
Hunan Province	Changsha	1937–1945	Japan
	Yuezhou
Sichuan Province	Chongqing (Chungking)
Zhejiang Province	Ningbo (Ningpo)	1841–1842	United Kingdom
	Wenzhou		United Kingdom
Fujian Province	Fuzhou (Foochow)	1842–1945	United Kingdom, then  Japan
	Xiamen (Amoy)	1842–1912	United Kingdom
Guangdong Province	Guangzhou (Canton)	1842–WWII	United Kingdom; then  Japan
	Shantou (Swatow)	1858	United Kingdom
	Sanshui
	Haikou (Qiongshan)	1858
Guangxi Province	Beihai	1876–1940s?	United Kingdom,  United States,  Germany,  Austria-Hungary,  France, Italy,  Portugal,  Belgium
	Nanning
Yunnan Province	Mengzi
	Simao
	Dengyue
Shandong Province	Yantai
Hebei Province	Tianjin (Tientsin)	1860–1902	United Kingdom,  United States,  Russia,  Germany,  Austria-Hungary,  France, Italy,  Portugal,  Belgium
Liaoning Province	Niuzhuang	1858
	Yingkou
	Shenyang
Jilin Province	Changchun
	Hunchun
Heilongjiang Province	Harbin	1898–1946	Russia,  United States,  Germany; later  Japan and the  Soviet Union
	Aihun		Russia,  Soviet Union
	Manzhouli		Russia,  Soviet Union
New Taipei City	Tamsui	1862
Tainan	Tainan	1858	France

In these territories the foreign powers obtained, under a lease treaty, not only the right to trade and exemptions for their subjects, but a truly colonial control over each concession territory, de facto annexation:

Territory	Modern Province	Date	Lease holder	Notes
Kwantung	Liaoning	1894–1898	Imperial Japan	Now Dalian
		1898–1905	Imperial Russia
		1905–1945	Imperial Japan
Weihai	Shandong Province	1898–1930	United Kingdom
Qingdao	Shandong Province	1897–1922	German Empire
New Territories	Hong Kong SAR	1842; 1860; 1898–1997	United Kingdom	These are the territories adjoining the original perpetual Hong Kong concession and its 1860 Kowloon extension
Guangzhouwan	Guangdong Province	1911–1946	France	Now Zhanjiang

• Cortazzi, Hugh, ed. Victorians in Japan: In and around the Treaty ports (A&C Black, 2013), Anthology of primary sources.
• Dennys, Nicholas Belfield. The Treaty Ports of China and Japan. A Complete Guide to the Open Ports of Those Countries, Together with Peking, Yedo, Hongkong and Macao. Forming a Guide Book & Vade Mecum... With 29 Maps and Plans (1867). online
• Wright, Arnold. Twentieth century impressions of Hongkong, Shanghai, and other treaty ports of China: their history, people, commerce, industries, and resources (1908) online