"Treaty of Peking" redirects here. For the 1887 treaty signed by the Qing dynasty of China and Kingdom of Portugal, see Sino-Portuguese Treaty of Peking.
1860 unequal treaty between Qing China and Britain, France, and Russia
The Convention of PekingorFirst Convention of Peking is an agreement comprising three distinct unequal treaties concluded between the Qing dynasty of China and Great Britain, France, and the Russian Empire in 1860.
On 18 October 1860, at the culmination of the Second Opium War, the British and French troops entered the Forbidden CityinPeking. Following the decisive defeat of the Chinese, Prince Gong was compelled to sign two treaties on behalf of the Qing government with Lord Elgin and Baron Gros, who represented Britain and France respectively.[1] Although Russia had not been a belligerent, Prince Gong also signed a treaty with Nikolay Ignatyev.
The original plan was to burn down the Forbidden City as punishment for the mistreatment of Anglo-French prisoners by Qing officials. Because doing so would jeopardize the treaty signing, the plan shifted to burning the Old Summer Palace and Summer Palace instead.[1] The treaties with France and Britain were signed in the Ministry of Rites building immediately south of the Forbidden City on 24 October 1860.[2]
In 1860, the area known as Kowloon was originally negotiated for lease in March, but in few months' time, the Convention of Peking ended the lease, and ceded the land formally to the British on 24 October.[3]
Article 6 of the Convention between China and the United Kingdom stipulated that China was to cede the part of Kowloon Peninsula south of present-day Boundary Street, Kowloon, and Hong Kong (including Stonecutters Island) in perpetuity to Britain.[4]
Article 6 of the Convention between China and France stipulated that "the religious and charitable establishments which were confiscated from Christians during the persecutions of which they were victims shall be returned to their owners through the French Minister in China".[5]
In addition to ceding territory that had been ruled by the Qing dynasty, the treaty also ceded territory under Korean jurisdiction, notably the island (by that time and currently a peninsula at the southernmost end of Primorsky Krai) of Noktundo. This was not known to the Koreans until the 1880s (20 or so years after the signing of the treaty, to which Korea was not a party), at which point it became a matter of official protest as the Koreans asserted that the Qing had no authority to cede Noktundo to Russia.
The status of Noktundo, which had been under Korean jurisdiction from the turn of the 17th century but was (unbeknownst to the Koreans until the 1880s) ceded to Russia in the treaty, remains formally unresolved, as only one of two Korean jurisdictions/governments have accepted a border agreement with Russia.[7] North Korea and the USSR signed a border treaty in 1985 officially certifying the Russian-North Korean border as running through the center of the Tumen River[8] which left the now-peninsula of Noktundo on the Russian side of the border. This agreement is not recognized by South Korea, which has since demanded Noktundo's return to Korean jurisdiction (ostensibly this would be North Korean jurisdiction, with the expectation of unified Korean control after an eventual Korean reunification).[9]
^ abHarris, David. Van Slyke, Lyman P. [2000] (2000). Of Battle and Beauty: Felice Beato's Photographs of China. University of California Press. ISBN0-89951-100-7
^Naquin, Susan. [2000] (2000). Peking: Temples and City Life, 1400-1900. University of California Press. ISBN0-520-21991-0
^Hong Kong Government Gazette - "Convention of Peace Between Her Majesty and the Emperor of China, signed at Peking, October 24th, 1860"(PDF), Hong Kong: Hong Kong Government, 1860 [15th December], p. 270 Article IV. With the view of law and order in and about the harbour of Hong-kong, His Imperial Majesty the Emperor of China agrees to cede to Her Majesty the Queen of Great Britain and Ireland, and to Her Heirs and Successors, to have and to hold as a dependency of Her Britannic Majesty's Colony of Hongkong, that portion of the township of Cowloon, in the province of Kwang-Tung, of which a lease was granted in perpetuity to Harry Smith Parkes, Esquire, Companion of the Bath, a Member of the Allied Commission at Canton, on behalf of Her Britannic Majesty's Government, by Lau Tsung-kwang, Governor-General of the two Kwang.