The Convention of Peking or First Convention of Peking is an agreement comprising three distinct treaties concluded between the Qing dynasty of China and Great Britain, France, and the Russian Empire in 1860. In China, they are regarded as among the unequal treaties.

Background

On 18 October 1860, at the culmination of the Second Opium War, the British and French troops entered the Forbidden City in

Beijing } Beijing ( ; ; ), alternatively romanized as Peking ( ), is the capital of the People's Republic of China. It is the center of power and development of the country. Beijing is the world's most populous national capital city, with over 2 ...

. Following the decisive defeat of the Chinese,

Prince Gong Yixin (11January 1833– 29May 1898), better known in English as PrinceKung or Gong, was an imperial prince of the Aisin Gioro clan and an important statesman of the Manchu-led Qing dynasty in China. He was a regent of the empire from 1861 to 18 ...

was compelled to sign two treaties on behalf of the Qing government with

Lord Elgin Earl of Elgin is a title in the Peerage of Scotland, created in 1633 for Thomas Bruce, 3rd Lord Kinloss. He was later created Baron Bruce, of Whorlton in the County of York, in the Peerage of England on 30 July 1641. The Earl of Elgin is the h ...

and Baron Gros, who represented Britain and France respectively.Harris, David. Van Slyke, Lyman P.

000 Triple zero, Triple Zero, Zero Zero Zero, Triple 0, Triple-0, 000, or 0-0-0 may refer to: * 000 (emergency telephone number), the Australian emergency telephone number * "Triple Zero", a song by AFI from ''Shut Your Mouth and Open Your Eyes'' * T ...

(2000). Of Battle and Beauty: Felice Beato's Photographs of China. University of California Press. 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 The Old Summer Palace, also known as Yuanmingyuan () or Yuanmingyuan Park, originally called the Imperial Gardens (), and sometimes called the Winter Palace, was a complex of palaces and gardens in present-day Haidian District, Beijing, China. ...

and Summer Palace instead. The treaties with France and Britain were signed in the Ministry of Rites building immediately south of the Forbidden City on 24 October 1860.Naquin, Susan.

(2000). Peking: Temples and City Life, 1400-1900. University of California Press.

Terms

In the convention, the Xianfeng Emperor ratified the

Treaty of Tientsin The Treaty of Tientsin, also known as the Treaty of Tianjin, is a collective name for several documents signed at Tianjin (then romanized as Tientsin) in June 1858. The Qing dynasty, Russian Empire, Second French Empire, United Kingdom, and t ...

(1858). 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. 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 Boundary Street is a three-lane one-way street in Kowloon, Hong Kong. It runs in an easterly direction from its start at the intersection with Tung Chau Street in the west, and ends at its intersection with Prince Edward Road West in ...

, Kowloon, and Hong Kong (including

Stonecutters Island Stonecutters Island or Ngong Shuen Chau is a former island in Victoria Harbour, Hong Kong. Following land reclamation, it is now attached to the Kowloon Peninsula. Fauna The island once boasted at least three mating pairs of sulphur-crested c ...

) in perpetuity to Britain. 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".

Manchuria

The treaty also confirmed the cession the entirety of what is now known as

Outer Manchuria Outer Manchuria (russian: Приаму́рье, translit=Priamurye; zh, s=外满洲, t=外滿洲, p=Wài Mǎnzhōu), or Outer Northeast China ( zh, s=外东北, t=外東北, p=Wài Dōngběi), refers to a territory in Northeast Asia that is no ...

to the Russian Empire, with Russia achieving the strategic goal of sealing off Chinese access to the Sea of Japan. It granted Russia the right to the

Ussuri krai Ussuri krai () is an unofficial name for a part of Primorsky Krai and Khabarovsky Krai that consisted of the Ussuri and South-Ussuri Okrugs. The name was often used in the late Russian Empire. The name comes from the fact that Ussuri River is loca ...

, a part of the modern day

Primorye Primorsky Krai (russian: Приморский край, r=Primorsky kray, p=prʲɪˈmorskʲɪj kraj), informally known as Primorye (, ), is a federal subject (a krai) of Russia, located in the Far East region of the country and is a part of the ...

, the territory that corresponded with the ancient

Manchu The Manchus (; ) are a Tungusic East Asian ethnic group native to Manchuria in Northeast Asia. They are an officially recognized ethnic minority in China and the people from whom Manchuria derives its name. The Later Jin (1616–1636) and ...

province of

East Tartary Tartary ( la, Tartaria, french: Tartarie, german: Tartarei, russian: Тартария, Tartariya) or Tatary (russian: Татария, Tatariya) was a blanket term used in Western European literature and cartography for a vast part of Asia bound ...

. See

Treaty of Aigun The Treaty of Aigun (Russian: Айгунский договор; ) was an 1858 treaty between the Russian Empire and the Qing dynasty that established much of the modern border between the Russian Far East and China by ceding much of Manchuria ( ...

(1858),

Treaty of Nerchinsk The Treaty of Nerchinsk () of 1689 was the first treaty between the Tsardom of Russia and the Qing dynasty of China. The Russians gave up the area north of the Amur River as far as the Stanovoy Range and kept the area between the Argun River ...

(1689) and

Sino-Russian border conflicts The Sino-Russian border conflicts (1652–1689) were a series of intermittent skirmishes between the Qing dynasty of China, with assistance from the Joseon dynasty of Korea, and the Tsardom of Russia by the Cossacks in which the latter tried ...

. 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 Noktundo is a former island (currently a peninsula) in the delta of the Tumen River on the border between Primorsky Krai, Russia and North Korea. The area of the island was . In the 15th century, Noktundo belonged to the Jurchen. In 1587 there ...

. 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.

Aftermath

Kowloon

The governments of the United Kingdom and the People's Republic of China (PRC) concluded the Sino-British Joint Declaration on the Question of Hong Kong in 1984, under which the sovereignty of the leased territories, together with

Hong Kong Island Hong Kong Island is an island in the southern part of Hong Kong. Known colloquially and on road signs simply as Hong Kong, the island has a population of 1,289,500 and its population density is 16,390/km2, . The island had a population of a ...

, ceded under the Treaty of Nanking (1842), and Kowloon Peninsula (south of

), was to be transferred to the PRC on 1 July 1997.

Noktundo

The status of

, 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. 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 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).

Original copies

An original copy of the convention is located in the National Palace Museum in Taiwan.http://www.npm.gov.tw/exh100/diplomatic/page_en02.html Republic of China's Diplomatic Archives (English)

References

External links

A timeline of the history of Hong Kong from 1840 to 1999

Full text of the Convention of Peking between China and the United Kingdom

Full text of the Convention of Peking between China and France

Full text of the Convention of Peking between China and Russia
{{DEFAULTSORT:Convention of Peking 19th century in the Russian Empire History of Manchuria Peking Peking Kowloon Peking 1860 in France 1860 in the United Kingdom 1860 in China China–Russian Empire relations Opium Wars Boundary treaties 1860 treaties Peking Peking Peking China–France relations China–United Kingdom relations October 1860 events History of Zhangjiakou