page_title: History of Hong Kong (1800s–1930s)
section_title: Beginning of trade
hierarchical_section_title: History of Hong Kong (1800s–1930s) / Territorial establishment / Beginning of trade
caption_attribution_description: English: (The photographer is believed to be deceased since image was taken in the 1800s, Image from Book old Hong Kong by Trea Wiltshire)
context_page_description: Hong Kong (1800s–1930s) oversaw the founding of the new crown colony of Hong Kong under the British Empire. After the First Opium War, the territory was ceded by the Qing Empire to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland through Treaty of Nanking and Convention of Peking in perpetuity, with additional land was leased to the British under the Convention for the Extension of Hong Kong Territory, Hong Kong became one of the first parts of East Asia to undergo industrialisation.
context_section_description: China was the main supplier of its native tea to the British, whose annual domestic consumption reached 30,050,000 pounds (13,600,000 kg) in 1830, an average of 1.04 pounds (0.47 kg) per head of population.
  From the British economic standpoint, Chinese tea was a crucial item since it provided massive wealth for the taipans—foreign (especially British) businessmen in China—while the duty on tea accounted for 10% of the government's income.
  Since the ill-fated Macartney Mission of 1793, British diplomats resented performing kowtow as a form of obsequience to the Emperor of China. Many considered it a religious rite and although they insisted on being treated as equals, the British and other foreign nationals were seen by the Qing Emperor and court officials as uncivilised foreigners only there to acquire tea, silk and other Chinese goods. At the time, China's social structure, as dictated by Confucian tradition, looked down on merchants, ranking them below farmers and above slaves, since they were considered citizens who only enriched themselves.
  Some of the earliest items sold to China in exchange for tea were British clocks, watches and musical boxes known as "sing-songs". These were not enough to compensate for the trade imbalance caused by the massive quantities of tea exported and the insistence by the Chinese that it be paid for in silver. After the 1757 territorial conquest of Bengal in India, the British had access to opium, Since a large fiscal deficit existed in Bengal, opium exports became a British government means to raise tax, even though it meant an increase in the number of Chinese people addicted to the drug. Lin Zexu, a special Chinese commissioner appointed by the Qing Daoguang Emperor, wrote a letter to Queen Victoria in 1839 taking a stance against the acceptance of opium in trade. He confiscated more than 20,000 chests of opium already in Hong Kong, which had already been used years earlier as a transhipment point, and supervised their destruction.
caption: Streets of Hong Kong, 1865
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