diplomats were continually subjected in their efforts to establish
commercial and political relations with the Chinese were rapidly
drifting the two nations into war. Still, it was peculiarly
unfortunate and it put foreigners grievously in the wrong before
the Chinese that the overt act which developed the long-
gathering bitterness into open rupture was the righteous if irregular
seizure by the Chinese of a poison that the English
from motives of unscrupulous greed were determined to force
upon an unwilling people. The probability that war would
have broken out in time even if there had been no dispute
about opium does not mitigate the fact that from the beginning,
foreign intercourse with China was so identified with an iniquitous
traffic that the Chinese had ample cause to distrust and
dislike the white man.

This hostility was intensified when the war resulted in the
defeat of the Chinese and the treaty of Nanking in 1842 with
its repudiation of all their demands, the compulsory cession of
the island of Hongkong, the opening of not only Canton but
Amoy, Foochow, Shanghai, and Ningpo as treaty ports, the
location of a British Consul in each port, and, most necessary
but most humiliating of all, the recognition of the extra-territorial
rights of all foreigners so that no matter what their crime,
they could not be tried by Chinese courts but only by their
own consuls. This treaty contributed so much to the opening
of China that Dr. S. Wells Williams characterized it as ``one
of the turning points in the history of mankind, involving the
welfare of all nations in its wide-reaching consequences.'' It
was therefore a lasting benefit to China and to the world. But
the Chinese did not then and do not yet appreciate the benefit,