I am writing about the justifications behind the clauses of the Treaty of Nanjing (1842) and I am struggling to find sources about why the British needed Hong Kong and how it was used in this period.
I am trying to prove that by ceding Hong Kong to the British Empire, the Qing Chinese Empire had a military power stationed very closely to their mainland which allowed the British to strong arm economic policies in order to be able to trade more efficiently. However, if I have gotten this wrong please tell me.
If you know of any sources that could help me please let me know!
So I don't know how in-depth your project is going to be, so I'll just provide a small handful of secondary sources that spring to mind which cover more general aspects.
On Hong Kong's military and strategic status in the British Empire, Kwong Chi Man's Eastern Fortress: A Military History of Hong Kong, 1840-1970 (2014) is the place to go.
On the matter of the Treaty of Nanking in particular, to my knowledge it has been a hot minute since someone's really reviewed the specific diplomatic history around it, so you'll find that Julia Lovell's narrative in The Opium War (2011) is mostly looking at older scholarship, and the relatively brief mention in Stephen Platt's Imperial Twilight (2018) goes back to the primary sources; neither seems to offer a recent bit of scholarship on the topic. Incidentally, a hunt through Platt's notes should dredge up some relevant source material; whether it's accessible is another matter.
One thing to note is that the strategy that led to the treaty ports was not the same strategy that led to the annexation of Hong Kong: Christopher Munn's article 'The Chusan episode: Britain's occupation of a Chinese Island, 1840–46', The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 25:1 (1997) covers the path not taken when it comes to British annexations of Chinese islands. On that note, Munn's Anglo-China: Chinese People and British Rule in Hong Kong, 1841-1880 (2001) includes a brisk but broad-ranging narrative of the British motivations behind acquiring Hong Kong in its first chapter.
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