Nature and Scope


Foreign Office, Consulate and Legation Files, China: 1830-1939 consists primarily of the correspondence of the British legation and consulates in China during this period.

The legation and consulates were diplomatic outposts serving specific functions. The legation functioned like an embassy, though it was one step below an embassy in the hierarchy of diplomatic importance and was headed by a minister rather than an ambassador. Consulates held the offices of consuls, who were representatives of the British government protecting the interests of British nationals living in China.

 

The FO 228 series

The FO 228 series from The National Archives consists of correspondence from the Peking (Beijing) legation and, in addition, numerous consulates, and is therefore hugely valuable for research into the British presence in China, foreign trade, general foreign relations and the actions of key figures in successive Chinese governments. Files in the FO 228 series are general volumes of correspondence, rather than documents on specific subjects filed together. After the first few years, they are often titled by the consular port and whether the correspondence is incoming or outgoing (e.g. To Foochow; From Foochow, 1849 and From Shanghai, 1850), and can be effectively searched through these place names. Other files focus on correspondence to or from the Chinese government and the Foreign Office in London; yet others consist of collections of Chinese-language material (‘Chinese Enclosures’) whose English translations lie in other files.

For more information on the history, organisation and content of the FO 228 series, see Binbin Zheng’s contextual essay ‘Archiving China: The British Foreign Office’s Establishments in China and their Files’.

 

The FO 231 and FO 232 series

Included alongside the FO 228 collection are FO 231, the registers of the FO 228 correspondence, and FO 232, containing indexes to the correspondence. The FO 231 and FO 232 collections log all the correspondence in the FO 228 collection that was sent and received, so these series will serve as excellent supplementary research aids to the main body of the material.


This section consists of all FO 228 and associated volumes dating from the period covered.

The mid- and late nineteenth century was a tumultuous time in China. The collection documents tensions over the illegal opium trade and the First and Second Opium Wars against Britain and France. The material also reflects the huge impact of a number of internal rebellions, including the devastating conflict of the Taiping rebellion, when British and other foreign forces allied themselves with the Qing government. Further correspondence also sheds light on British interactions with the French, who were establishing their own presence in Vietnam. Records include reports from British explorers scoping out Chinese land to plan for infrastructure development, such as railways and telegraph lines. These actions shaped the reaction to potential modernisation in Chinese politics, including the Qing government’s Self-Strengthening Movement. Documents recording diplomatic discussions also reveal much about the customs and practices of the Qing government as it approached the final years of its power. Alongside the legation and consulate correspondence, the FO 228 series includes correspondence with Chinese authorities, colonial governments (such as in British India) and foreign ministries.

British presence in China in the 1830s was relatively limited, with trade ports in Guangzhou (Canton) heavily regulated by the Qing government. Following the conclusion of the First Opium War in 1842, the Treaty of Nanjing established five ‘treaty ports’ which would be under foreign consular jurisdiction. The first British consulate was then established in Guangzhou in 1843, followed by those in Shanghai, Xiamen (Amoy), Fuzhou (Foochow) and Ningbo (Ningpo).

In 1843, a vice-consulate was established at Whampoa, downstream of Guangzhou on the Pearl River. These consulates were intended to protect and police the British citizens establishing themselves at the new treaty ports, as well as the British trading interests there. The consulates were all held under the jurisdiction of the Superintendent of Trade in Hong Kong, which had been handed over to the British as part of the Treaty of Nanjing.

The Treaty of Tientsin, ratified in 1860 following the end of the Second Opium War, opened up a further nine treaty ports for trade and consular presence. These were at Shantou (Swatow), Zhenjiang (Chinkiang), Hankou (Hankow), Jiujiang (Kiukiang), Tianjin (Tientsin), Yantai (Chefoo), Yingkou (Newchwang), Anping and Qiongshan (Kiungchow). In the same year, the Convention of Beijing (Peking) allowed the presence of a legation in the capital, establishing a diplomatic presence there for the first time. A compound was leased for the site of the Beijing legation, and responsibility for the British consulates in China passed to its minister. By 1865, the consulate in Shanghai had also gained particular prominence as the site of the British Supreme Court in China. In 1867, a site at a fort in Tamsui was leased and used as vice-consular offices and accommodation. In 1876, four more treaty ports were opened through the Chefoo Convention, establishing consulates at Wuhu, Yichang (Ichang), Wenzhou (Wenchow) and Beihai (Pakhoi).

 

Key Themes

Consulate and Legation Buildings

Plentiful maps and plans of British diplomatic buildings are included in the FO 228 series, documenting the expansion of the nation’s diplomatic presence in China.

View documents relevant to consulate and legation buildings

 

Government of Hong Kong

Hong Kong Island was ceded to Britain preliminarily in 1841 by the Convention of Chuenpi and then in perpetuity in 1842 by the Treaty of Nanking. The mainland territory of Kowloon was added in 1860. As a Crown colony, Hong Kong was to become the British Empire’s pre-eminent Chinese entrepôt. 

View documents relevant to the government of Hong Kong

 

First Opium War

In 1839, Chinese enforecement of its ban on trade in opium met Britain’s determination to continue to sell what was its most profitable export commodity of the era. Chinese defeat in the subsequent war led to the imposition on China of greater foreign trade, including in opium, and the cession of territory.

View documents relevant to the First Opium War

 

Second Opium War

In 1856, France joined Britain in fighting China once more over the issue of the opium trade. A second Chinese defeat in 1860, after the capture of Beijing by the European powers, led to more conessions to western traders, a cash indemnity, and cession of 1.5 million square kilometres of territory to Russia. The opening of Beijing to foreigners also saw the establishment of the British legation there.

View documents relevant to the Second Opium War

 

Sino-Japanese War

In the late nineteenth century, China's longstanding suzerainty over Korea stood increasingly at odds with Japan’s expansionist ambitions in the Asian mainland. In 1894, Japan responded to Chinese troop-movements into Korea with an invasion of its own, which, following success in battle, expanded into China. By the Treaty of Shimonoseki of 1895, the Japanese gained both a prominent position in Korea and the cession of Taiwan (Formosa).

View documents relevant to the Sino-Japanese War

 

Taiping and other rebellions

In 1850, an uprising against the Qing government broke out in the valley of the Yangtze River. Led by Hong Xiuquan, a mystic who styled himself as the brother of Christ, it would lead to fourteen years of war and an estimated 20 to 30 million deaths.

View documents relevant to rebellions

 

Railway plans

The first Chinese railway was built in 1865 by a British merchant to demonstrate the technology to the Qing court, though rail was slow to spread due to government hostility. Defeat in the Sino-Japanese War spurred the Qings to modernisation, and by the turn of the twentieth century Britain, France and the other treaty powers had built over five thousand miles of railway in eastern China. 

View documents relevant to railway plans

 

Telegraph plans

Telegraphy came to China in 1871 when a cable was laid linking Hong Kong and Shanghai to the international telegraphy system, then dominated by British-controlled infrastructure. Chinese characters were transmitted using a set of numerical codes, which became standarised only ten years later.

View documents relevant to telegraph plans

 
The documents in section II of this resource cover the British perspective on fifteen years in which the Qing government struggled against both the ever-expanding Chinese ambitions of foreign powers, of which Britain was at the forefront, and the ambitions of its own people to secure fundamental change which both aped that foreign influence and was pursued in response to it. Already reeling from military defeat by Japan in their war of 1894-5 over influence in Korea and the loss to Japan of Taiwan, the Qing government began the 20th century facing an alliance of foreign powers which had united in their opposition to the Boxer Movement, an anti-foreign and anti-Christian uprising in northern China to which the Empress Dowager Cixi, after some hesitation, lent her support.  

The acquisition of concessions, and broader economic power, in China by expansionist European states had ballooned in the late 1890s, and attacks on foreign missionaries prompted military reprisals by their home governments which led to further seizures of territory. The Boxers emerged in response to this, under the slogan ‘Support the Qing government and exterminate the foreigners’, and besieged Beijing’s Legation Quarter in June 1900. The siege was raised in August by an eight-nation expeditionary force, for which Britain and its empire provided the third-largest contingent (after Japan and Russia), which looted much of Beijing and imposed a peace which stationed foreign troops in the city permanently and called for a monetary indemnity which exceeded China’s total annual tax revenue.  

The Boxer Rebellion was followed by a period of reform, known in China as the New Policies, by which the weakened Qing government attempted to maintain its hold on power by emulating western constitutional systems of government. Senior figures in the regime were sent abroad to research foreign governments with a view to preparing to mould China into a constitutional monarchy, and efforts were made to modernise the education system, penal code and armed forces. The death of Empress Cixi in 1908 did not interrupt this process, and after the succession to the throne of the infant Puyi elections were held to an Advisory Council intended as the precursor to a parliament, in which some seats were secured by the Tongmenghui, a nationalist and revolutionary organisation led by Sun Yat-sen. These reforms, however, were overtaken by a military mutiny in Wuhan in central China, in October 1911, which set off a cascade of provincial uprisings, under various leaders and organisations, all of which declared their allegiance to a new Chinese republic.   

The spread of British consular representation in China continued during this period, mushrooming in the wake of the numerous treaties and economic concessions the world’s pre-eminent powers were able to extract from the Qing government. Qiongshan (Kiungchow), which was one of the 1860 treaty ports, actually had its consulate established in nearby Haikou (Hoihow), where it was set up in a series of temporary buildings until a permanent home was finally erected in 1898-9. In a similar fashion, Chongqing (Chungking), in which China had accepted a British consul in 1877, did not see its first permanent consulate until 1896. Further sites were acquired in Hangzhou (Hangchow) (1897), Wuzhou (Wuchow) (1898), Nanjing (Nanking) (1899), Changsha and Yichang (Ichang) (1905), Jinan (Tsinan) (1906), Dalian (Dairen) (1907) and Shenyang (Mukden) (1908). In Beijing, meanwhile, the aftermath of the siege of the Legation Quarter and the allied victory over the Boxers saw an enlargement of the British compound, already the biggest, from seven acres to 40, giving room for students’ quarters, stables and a barracks for 500 soldiers.  

The most lasting British development in China during this period was the expansion of Hong Kong. In 1898, Britain reacted to overcrowding in the city, and recent territorial gains by France, Germany and Russia, by securing the 99-year lease of the ‘New Territories’, 365 square miles of land to the north of Kowloon. This increased the area of British Hong Kong twelvefold and secured its future as the only foreign possession in China (with the exception of Portuguese Macau, centuries older than any other) to survive past the upheavals of the Second World War.

 

Key themes  

The Boxer Rebellion  

The Boxer Movement began to spread in northern China in 1899, and reached Beijing by June 1900, bolstered by the public support of the Empress Cixi. After the Boxers’ siege of Beijing’s Legation Quarter saw an invasion of northern China by an eight-power alliance, Cixi conceded defeat and agreed to a treaty, known as the Boxer Protocol, stipulating monetary reparations and the stationing of allied troops in China.  

View documents relevant to the Boxer Rebellion  

  
Treaties between China and foreign powers  

The late 1890s and 1900s saw myriad treaties signed between China and Japan, the United States and various European powers. Later known as the ‘unequal treaties’, by these agreements the foreign powers took advantage of the Qing state’s relative weakness to extract economic, administrative and judicial power in China, often in particular geographic areas (‘spheres of influence’) or sectors of the economy. The powers also entered into agreements between themselves on their interests in China, without Chinese involvement.  

View documents relevant to treaties  

  

Reform and revolution  

The Dowager Empress Cixi staged a coup to stop the Guangxu Emperor’s ambitious reform programme (the ‘Hundred Days’ Reform’) in 1898, but did support a slower implementation after the defeat of the Boxers further exposed the weaknesses of the Chinese state in the face of foreign expansionism. These more gradual reforms had been only partially implemented by the time revolutionaries, impatient for more radical change, toppled the three-thousand-year-old dynastic system in 1911.  

View documents relevant to the 1911 Revolution  

  

Further railway development  

The Chinese railway network continued to expand into the twentieth century, as further concessions for construction and operation were granted to foreign entities. China also gained its first domestically designed and built railway line, between Beijing and Zhangjiakou (Kalgan), completed in 1909.  

View documents relevant to railways  


To be published 2026.


To be published 2027.