Page:Twentieth Century Impressions of Hongkong, Shanghai, and other Treaty Ports of China.djvu/376



SHANGHAI.

HANGHAI, the most northerly of the five ports thrown open to foreign trade under the British Treaty of Nanking, is the commercial metropolis of China. A regular port of call for all the large shipping lines engaged in the trade of the Far East, it is the distributing centre for more than one-half of the commodities exchanged between the Chinese Empire and the rest of the world, and, with its cotton mills, silk filatures, and docks for building and repairing ships, it is rapidly becoming a place of considerable industrial importance. The value of its trade, which has increased seven or eight fold during the last half century, amounts approximately to sixty-five million pounds sterling a year.

Shanghai appears to have been a place of commercial importance from very early days. It is said to have been founded three hundred years before Christ by Hwang Shieh, Governor of Soochow in the kingdom of Ts'u, who was impressed with the advantageousness of the site. The first Emperor of the Yuen dynasty created it a separate district under the name of Zaunghe, meaning "up from the sea" or "upper sea," in 1292 A.D., and prior to that it had been made a Customs station. In 1360 it attained the dignify of a hien, or district city. In 1756 Mr. F. Pigou, of the East India Company's factory at Canton, reported on the place in favourable terms, but it seems to have remained disregarded by the foreigner from that time until 1832, when Mr. H. H. Lindsay, head of the firm of Lindsay & Co., and the Rev. Dr. Gützlaff visited it in the Lord Amherst, and returned with "a glowing account of its commercial possibilities." Mr. Lindsay stated that he counted upwards of four hundred junks passing inwards every day for seven days, and found the place possessed commodious wharves and warehouses. This account was confirmed three years later by the Rev. Dr. Medhurst.

Shanghai was taken by the British in 1842 upon the successful conclusion of the military operations against Canton and the southern ports. The fleet arrived in June, under Vice-Admiral Sir William Parker, and, in conjunction with a military force of four thousand men led by Sir Hugh Gough, captured the Woosung Forts and the little walled city of Paoshan. It was then found that, in the hope of striking fear into the hearts of the invaders, the Chinese had painted a number of conical mud heaps white to make them resemble tents and create the impression that a very large army was encamped at the spot. A few days later Shanghai was occupied, very little resistance being offered by the terror-stricken inhabitants, despite the elaborate preparations which had been made for the defence.

The city was evacuated on June 23rd, and after the arrival from Nanking of Sir Henry Pottinger, the British Plenipotentiary, on the conclusion of peace, a site was selected for a foreign settlement extending from the Yang-king-pang Creek on the south to the existing Peking Road on the north. Development after this proceeded but slowly, the initial difficulties of the settlers being accentuated by the disturbances due to the Triad and Taeping rebellions. Rapid progress, however, followed the opening of the Yangtsze and the northern ports in the sixties, and this was accelerated further by the opening of Japan to trade.

Shanghai's prosperity is attributable mainly to its exceptionally favoured geographical position. The Settlement lies at the mouth of the Yangtsze-Kiang, than which there are only two longer rivers in the world, in the south-east corner of the Kiangsu Plain, one of the most densely populated and fertile regions of China, about midway between Canton and Tientsin, and is the natural terminus of the ocean traffic from Japan and