Opium (Victoria) Harbour Print

Victoria Harbour is a natural landform harbour separating Hong Kong Island in the south from the Kowloon Peninsula to the north. The harbour's deep, sheltered waters and strategic location on the South China Sea were instrumental in Hong Kong's establishment as a British colony and its subsequent development as a trading centre. Throughout its history, the harbour has seen numerous reclamation projects undertaken on both shores, many of which have caused controversy in recent years. Environmental concerns have been expressed about the effects of these expansions, in terms of water quality and loss of natural habitat. It has also been proposed that benefits of land reclamation may be less than the effects of decreased harbour width, affecting the number of vessels passing through the harbour. Nonetheless Victoria Harbour still retains its founding role as a port for thousands of international vessels each year. The harbour is a major tourist attraction of Hong Kong. Lying in the middle of the territory's dense urban region, the harbour is the site of annual fireworks displays and its promenades are used as gathering places for tourists and residents. History: The first reference to what is now called Victoria Harbour is found in Zheng He's sailing maps of the China coast, dated c.1425, which appear in the Wubei Zhi (A Treatise on Armament Technology), a comprehensive 17th-century military book. While the harbour was charted in later maps, the first map depicting it in detail is an 1810 marine chart prepared for the East India Company by Daniel Ross and Philip Maughan, lieutenants of the Bombay Marine. Some of the first recreational activities to take place in the harbour were water competitions such as swimming and water polo in the 1850s, undertaken by members of Hong Kong's first sports club, the Victoria Recreation Club. During the Taiping Rebellion, armed rebels paraded the streets of Hong Kong. On 21 December 1854, the Hong Kong police arrested several armed rebels who were about to attack Kowloon City. On 23 January 1855, a fleet of Taiping war boats was on the verge of a naval battle against Chinese imperial war boats defending the harbour. The Chinese defenders were ordered away by the British colonial authorities. These incidents caused rising tension that would eventually lead to the Arrow War. The harbour was originally called "Hong Kong Harbour", but was later renamed to "Victoria Harbour", to assure shelter for the British fleet under Queen Victoria. The subject of pollution came to the fore in the 1970s with the rapid growth of the manufacturing sector. The water club races were stopped in 1973 due to pollution in the harbour, a year after the former RMS Queen Elizabeth burned and sank at the Tsing Yi island anchorage. Studies also showed excessive nitrogen input from discharges of the Pearl River Delta into the harbour for decades. After completion of the Central and Wan Chai Reclamation Feasibility Study in 1989, the Land Development Policy Committee endorsed a concept for gradual implementation of this additional reclamation. It consists of three district development cells separated by parks, namely, Central, Tamar and Exhibition. The latest proposed reclamation, extending along the waterfront from Sheung Wan to Causeway Bay, faced public opposition, as the harbour has become a pivotal location to Hongkongers in general. Activists have denounced the government's actions as destructive not only to the natural environment, but also to what is widely considered as one of the most prized natural assets of the territory. NGOs, including the Society for Protection of the Harbour, were formed to resist further attempts to reduce the size of the waterbody, with its chairman, Christine Loh, quoted as saying that the harbour "...is a precious national asset and we must preserve it for future generations. I believe an insightful and visionary chief executive would support our stance and work with us to protect the harbour". Reclamation work also led to the demolition of Queen's Pier and Edinburgh Place Ferry Pier, structures of historic significance, to massive public opposition. The Opium Wars (simplified Chinese: 鸦片战争; traditional Chinese: 鴉片戰爭) were two wars waged between the Qing dynasty and Western powers in the mid-19th century. The First Opium War, fought in 1839–1842 between Qing China and Great Britain, was triggered by the dynasty's campaign against the British merchants who sold opium in China. The Second Opium War was fought between the Qing and Britain and France, 1856–1860. In each war, the European force's modern military technology led to easy victory over the Qing forces, with the consequence that the government was compelled to grant favorable tariffs, trade concessions, reparations and territory to the Europeans. The wars and the subsequently-imposed treaties weakened the Qing dynasty and the Chinese imperial government, and forced China to open specified treaty ports (especially Shanghai) that handled all trade with imperial powers. In addition, China gave the sovereignty over Hong Kong to Britain. Around this time, China's economy also contracted slightly, but the sizable Taiping Rebellion and Dungan Revolt had a much larger effect. First Opium War: The First Opium War began in 1839 and was fought over trading rights, open trade, and especially diplomatic status. In the eighteenth century, China enjoyed a favourable trade balance with Europe, selling porcelains, silk, and tea in exchange for silver. In the late 18th century, the British East India Company expanded cultivation of opium in its Indian Bengal territories, selling it to private traders who transported it to China and passed it on to Chinese smugglers. By 1787, the Company was sending 4,000 chests of opium (each 77 kg) per year. In earlier times, opium was taken as a relatively harmless medicine, but the new practice of smoking opium recreationally increased demand tremendously and often led to addiction. The Chinese Emperor issued edicts making opium illegal in 1729, 1799, 1814, and 1831, but imports grew as smugglers and colluding officials gorged on the profits. Some Americans entered the trade by smuggling opium from Turkey into China, including Warren Delano Jr., the grandfather of twentieth-century President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Francis Blackwell Forbes, a relative of twenty-first-century Secretary of State John Forbes Kerry; in American historiography this is sometimes referred to as the Old China Trade. By 1833, the opium traffic soared to 30,000 chests. The East India Company sent opium to their warehouses in the free-trade region of Canton (Guangzhou), and sold it to Chinese smugglers. In 1834, the East India Company's monopoly on the China trade ceased, as the illegal opium trade burgeoned. Partly concerned with the moral decay of the people and partly with the outflow of silver, the Emperor charged High Commissioner Lin Tse-hsu with ending the trade. In 1839, Commissioner Lin published in Canton, but did not send, an open Letter To Queen Victoria pleading for a halt to the opium contraband. Lin ordered the seizure of all opium in Canton, including that held by foreign governments and trading companies (called factories), and the companies prepared to hand over a token amount to placate him. Charles Elliot, Chief Superintendent of British Trade in China, arrived 3 days after the expiry of Lin's deadline, as Chinese soldiers enforced a shutdown and blockade of the factories. The standoff ended after Elliot paid for all the opium on credit from the British Government (despite lacking official authority to make the purchase) and handed the 20,000 chests (1,300 metric tons) over to Lin, who had them destroyed at Humen. Charles Elliott then wrote to London advising the use of military force against the Chinese. A small skirmish occurred between British and Chinese vessels in the Kowloon Estuary on 4 September 1839. After almost a year, the British government decided, in May 1840, to send troops to impose reparations for the financial losses of the British traders in Canton and to guarantee future security for trade. On 21 June 1840 a British naval force arrived off Macao and moved to bombard the port of Dinghai. In the ensuing conflict, the Royal Navy used its superior ships and guns to inflict a series of decisive defeats on the Chinese Empire. The war was concluded by the Treaty of Nanking (Nanjing) in 1842, the first of the Unequal Treaties between China and Western powers. The treaty forced China to cede in perpetuity the Hong Kong Island and surrounding smaller islands to the United Kingdom, and it established five treaty ports at Shanghai, Canton, Ningpo (Ningbo), Foochow (Fuzhou), and Amoy (Xiamen). The treaty also imposed a twenty-one million dollar payment to Great Britain, with six million, paid immediately and the rest through specified instalments thereafter. Another treaty the following year gave most favoured nation status to the British Empire and added provisions for British extraterritoriality. France secured the same concessions in treaties of 1843 and 1844. Second Opium War: In 1853, northern China was convulsed by the Taiping Rebellion, which established its capital at Nanking. In spite of this, a new Imperial Commissioner Ye Mingchen was appointed at Canton, determined to stamp out the opium trade, which was still technically illegal. In October 1856 he seized the Arrow, a ship claiming British registration, and threw its crew into chains. Sir John Bowring, Governor of British Hong Kong, called up Rear Admiral Sir Michael Seymour's East Indies and China Station fleet which on 23 October bombarded and captured the Pearl River forts on the approach to Canton, and proceeded to bombard Canton itself, but had insufficient forces to take and hold the city. On 15 December, during a riot in Canton, European commercial properties were set on fire and Bowring appealed for military intervention. The murder of a French missionary inspired support from France. The European allies, including Britain, France, and the Russian Empire, now sought greater concessions from China, including legalization of the opium trade, expansion of the transport of coolies (cheap labourers), opening all of China to British merchants and opium traffickers, and exempting foreign imports from internal transit duties. The war resulted in the Treaty of Tientsin (26 June 1858), which forced the Chinese to pay reparations for the expenses of the recent war, open a second group of ten ports to European commerce, legalize the opium trade, and grant foreign traders and missionaries rights to travel within China. After a second phase of fighting which included the sack of the Old Summer Palace and the occupation of the Forbidden City palace complex in Beijing, the Treaty was confirmed by the Convention of Peking in 1860. Opium (or poppy tears, scientific name: Lachryma papaveris) is dried latex obtained from the seed capsules of the opium poppy Papaver somniferum. Approximately 12 percent of opium is made up of the analgesic alkaloid morphine, which is processed chemically to produce heroin and other synthetic opioids for medicinal use and for the illegal drug trade. The latex also contains the closely related opiates codeine and thebaine, and non-analgesic alkaloids such as papaverine and noscapine. The traditional, labor-intensive method of obtaining the latex is to scratch ("score") the immature seed pods (fruits) by hand; the latex leaks out and dries to a sticky yellowish residue that is later scraped off and dehydrated. The word "meconium" (derived from the Greek for "opium-like", but now used to refer to newborn stools) historically referred to related, weaker preparations made from other parts of the opium poppy or different species of poppies. The production methods have not significantly changed since ancient times. Through selective breeding of the Papaver somniferumplant, the content of the phenanthrene alkaloids morphine, codeine, and to a lesser extent thebaine has been greatly increased. In modern times, much of the thebaine, which often serves as the raw material for the synthesis for oxycodone, hydrocodone, hydromorphone, and other semisynthetic opiates, originates from extracting Papaver orientale or Papaver bracteatum. For the illegal drug trade, the morphine is extracted from the opium latex, reducing the bulk weight by 88%. It is then converted to heroin which is almost twice as potent, and increases the value by a similar factor. The reduced weight and bulk make it easier to smuggle. Source: Wikipedia