The dawn of the 1830s saw the introduction of British steamers in the Arabian Sea (between Bombay and Egypt) and the Mediterranean (connecting Egypt with Europe). Simultaneously, the overland route across Egypt was also developed (Figure 1).
Figure 1. Extract from ‘Map Showing the Steam Communication and Overland Routes between England, India, China and Australia’ by W.H. Allen (1853). The ‘Overland Route’ ran across the Egyptian desert between Suez at the mouth of the Red Sea and Alexandria on the Mediterranean. It’s development provided a faster means of communications between India and Great Britain and Europe than the all-sea route around the Cape of Good Hope.
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These happenings revolutionised communications between the East and the West. Time to destination reduced from a few months to a few weeks.
As a result, they induced correspondents in the Far East and the Indian Ocean living in places such as China (including Canton, Hong Kong, and Macao), Dutch East Indies, Spanish Philippines, Australia and New Zealand, Mauritius and Reunion and Ceylon to route their letters via the Indian post offices.1 These ‘transit’ offices were situated either on mainland India (usually Bombay or Calcutta) or Singapore (Figure 2).2
Figure 2. Extracts from ‘Map Showing the Steam Communication and Overland Routes between England, India, China and Australia.’ by W.H. Allen (1853). The extract above shows various places in the East that had the opportunity of routing their letters via India to connect with steamers sailing to the Middle East (generally Suez), overland across Egypt (see Figure 1), and then in the Mediterranean Sea to Europe.
This extract shows some important ports in the Mediterranean and Europe. The three main routes to GB and Europe from Alexandria were: (a) the all-sea route via Malta and Gibraltar; (b) via Malta and Marseilles and then overland across France, and (c) via Trieste and then overland across countries in Europe
Now, I confess I love ‘transit letters’ i.e. letters from one country/colony which went via India to another country/colony, especially during the early age of steam.
In addition, I am also very keen on the history of the First Opium War (1839-42).3
Sometime back, an opportunity came by to acquire from a British dealer the earliest letter from Hong Kong4 which went to Great Britain via India. To be clear, it was written onboard a ship in the waters close to Hong Kong. At this time, there were no foreign inhabitants on the island; only a few thousand Chinese farmers, fisherman, quarry men, and pirates!
Apart from its ‘earliest’ tag, another compelling aspect is that the letter talks of the earliest days of the three-year long War. The first skirmish - the Battle of Kowloon - had taken place just five days prior to it being written.
So, I was excited! However, since the amount involved was reasonably big, I had to don my ‘Sherlock Holmes’ hat before taking the plunge.
Plucked Out from Auction
As most would do, I began my due diligence on the internet.
Quickly, I found that the letter had appeared in a Hong Kong sale conducted by InterAsia Auctions Limited (the firm has since closed) on 12 January 2014. It was the first lot (number 1001) and its estimate was an eye-popping Hong Kong Dollars 250,000-300,000 (around US$ 32,000-38,500).5
The description is reproduced in full:
Hong Kong, Entire letter datelined "Ship 'Fort William', Hong Kong, 9th September 1839" from the well-known missionary Reverend J.R. Morrison to his sister, addressed to his mother ("in case she should be away") in Stoke Newington, England (15.2.40 per docketing) "care of Mr. Ale'r Hankey, Esq.", London (13.2) "pr. Overland Mail" showing on reverse "Singapore/Paid" framed d.s. in red (25.10) with Indian manuscript ship and inland postage charges at Bombay totaling 1 rupee adjacent (2a. inward Ship Postage, 14a. inland charge Calcutta to Bombay), thence overland mail, with "London" double-arc arrival d.s. adjacent, and on front framed red "India", "Fenchurch St/1 py P.Paid" and additional framed "PD/Fe 13/1840" h.s., further rated "2/8" (1839 Anglo-French Convention ¼ oz. rate via Marseille, comprising 1s. ½ oz. British packet rate, 10d. ½ oz. British Mediterranean rate and 10d. ¼ oz. French transit). The "Fort William" was one of the ships housing the approximately 2,000 Britons expelled from Canton at the onset of the First Opium War, pending the arrival of the expeditionary force from India. The writer describes the evacuation from Macao resulting from the unwillingness of the Portuguese to let the British remain, where they had gone after leaving Canton, and notes "the feeling of the Chinese is that we are protecting the opium trade". The letter concludes with the writer mentioning that he "must… try to get this forwarded to Bombay by some friend at Singapore." According to our records, the earliest recorded cover from Hong Kong. An outstanding letter from both an historical and philatelic perspective. One of the most important postal history items of Hong Kong. Estimate 250,000 - 300,000
References: Lee Scamp, "The Earliest Known Cover from Hong Kong", Hong Kong Study Group Journal 257/4. Illustrated. Lee Scamp, Postal Rate History of China and Hong Kong: The Pre Adhesive Period to the Beginning of the Packet Service from Hong Kong 1800-1845 (1986), pp. 94-95.
Carried by private ships from Hong Kong to Singapore (c.30.9) and Singapore (c.25.10) to Calcutta (c.25.11), then carried on the East India Company "Zenobia" from Bombay (1.1.40) to Suez (19.1), Alexandria (25.1) to Malta (1.2) by the Admiralty Packet "Blazer", Malta (2.2) to Marseille (c.8.2) by the Admiralty Packet "Alecto", and thence overland to London, where forwarded to the recipient.
This covers the postal history of the cover in great detail and I do not believe I need to add much more.
The Fourth Estate is Interested
The sale, and this lot in particular, seems to have generated an unusual degree of interest in the popular press.
An article in the South China Morning Post of 9 January 2014 read:
‘Oldest letter’ from Hong Kong to the West goes up for auction
Interasia Auctions director Jeffrey Schneider studies the earliest known letter from Hong Kong to the West dated 1839. Photo: Jonathan Wong
The oldest known letter sent from Hong Kong to the West – written two years before British colonial rule began – will go up for auction on Sunday with an expected price of up to HK$300,000.
The letter was sent by Christian missionary Reverend JR Morrison from aboard the Fort William, a British naval ship that docked in Hong Kong waters as tensions grew between Britain and China ahead of the First Opium War.
He was one of 2,000 Britons expelled from Canton – today’s Guangzhou – before the onset of the war, after which Hong Kong Island was ceded to Britain in 1841.
Writing to sister and mother, Morrison wrote that “the feeling of the Chinese is that we are protecting the opium trade”, according to Rob Schneider, business development director at auctioneer InterAsia.
The group first travelled to Macau, but found that the Portuguese colonial rulers did not want them to stay there. Morrison and the 60 or so others onboard the Fort William waited in what are now Hong Kong waters for the arrival of a British expeditionary force from India in 1840.
“At that time, there were only several thousand people on Hong Kong Island. All foreigners were banned from going to land to search for food, so they didn’t manage to get many supplies,” Schneider said.
Things were brewing behind the scenes though. When the auction was held, the lot did not appear; it had been withdrawn.
‘Oldest’ letter sent from Hong Kong disputed as historians go one better
Historians have disputed an auction house's claim that it has the oldest-known letter sent from Hong Kong, causing the lot to be withdrawn from sale last week.
The letter - written by John Robert Morrison, a son of the first protestant missionary in China, Robert Morrison - was dated 1839, two years before British colonial rule began in Hong Kong.
Auction house InterAsia had estimated it would fetch up to HK$300,000.
But before the letter went under the hammer last Sunday, a European historian wrote to the auctioneer, claiming there could be an earlier letter, InterAsia’s business development director Rob Schneider said.
The other letter, dated 1838, was sold in a group lot in an earlier auction, he was told.
“We have withdrawn the lot to do more historical research,” Schneider said. He did not name the historian, but said the man was well-respected in the field.
The Game is Afoot!
It is fortuitous that the popular press covered this auction (mainly due to this letter’s historical importance). Else, I would have never known of its withdrawal from sale.
Alarmed by the last news report, I decided to investigate more.
My first email went to an existing Hong Kong-based auction house. Unfortunately, I did not get a reply.
I next inquired from a prominent Hong Kong collector. He reverted immediately. He said he vaguely recalled this incident and informed me that that the “European historian” mentioned in the above article was likely Mr. X.
Who does not know Mr. X? He is probably the most knowledgeable philatelist and postal historian of early India alive. I consider myself fortunate to have met him in the summer of 2023. We spent many hours discussing postal history and I also got to look at parts of his fabulous collection.
So, I requested him to clarify. His reply read:
I have in my “Overland Tables” a cover recorded from HongKong, dated 8. August 1838 and sent Overland to London. Arrival there on 7. Jan. 1839. This cover was sold unnoticed in one of the lots of the Hammond Giles sale October 2000. I am sorry I have no whereabouts of this item.
I informed the dealer about Mr. X’s reply. If true, the item was not worth the amount he was asking for.
The dealer said he would speak to Mr. X and revert. I am not privy to their conversation but the former reverted soon:
Yes I spoke to [Mr. X] about this cover and he gave me all the information about this cover which appeared in a mixed lot in 2000. The cover has since vanished but he has a picture of it but is not convinced about its authenticity because some of the markings do not add up.
Now, the item had appeared in a Spink name sale held in Hong Kong; the dealer presumably purchased it from there.6 Since the auction was held under a pseudonym (The ‘Connaught’ Collection of Hong Kong), I asked a friendly philatelist to figure who the owner was. He asked around and found his identity. My final email went to him.
He replied:
Thank you for your email. Regarding the easiest letter from Hong Kong, I can confirm that the September 1839 remains the earliest recorded.
The European postal historian was mistaken in his claim - The only evidence that his outer letter sheet, without content, from Jardine Matheson was from HK is this company’s association with the colony. What he did not realise was that Jardine Matheson did not open their HK office until the early 1840’s and in 1838 were headquartered in Canton. There is therefore no evidence that the 1838 letter originated in Hong Kong.
The letter was withdrawn from sale in 2014 in order to check the validity of the claim.
The previous owner is a renowned philatelist and this item was initially in his father’s collection before passing on to his. His reply was brief but confident and made me certain that this letter was indeed the holy grail!
Footprints of History
This ‘first from Hong Kong’ is presented as Figure 3. Not only does it look pretty, its significance as an item of postal as well as political and social history is immeasurable.
Figure 3. Earliest letter datelined 9 September 1839 written onboard the ship Fort William close to Hong Kong. Sent via Singapore, Calcutta, Bombay, and Marseilles to London.
The writer of the letter was John Robert Morrison (1814-1843) (Figure 4), the second son of Rev. John Morrison (1782-1834); the latter was the first Protestant missionary in China (the InterAsia description is incorrect in this regard).
Born in Macao, Morisson returned from England at the age of 12 and became a fluent Cantonese speaker and scholar. After his father’s death, he replaced him as Chinese Secretary and Interpreter to the Superintendents of British Trade in China. He was appointed Chinese Secretary to the British East India Company on behalf of the British Government. During the diplomatic troubles which led to war between England and China in 1839, all the official correspondence of the British Government with the Chinese authorities passed through Morrison's hands. In 1843, he was appointed as Acting Colonial Secretary and a member of the Executive and Legislative Council. He died the same year aged just 29.
Connecting Contents with Historical Happenings
To demonstrate its historical importance, it may not be amiss to extract a few passages from the letter and connect it with the happenings of that time.
…all British subjects were to leave Macao…all the rest are here on shipboard. The number of our vessels is more than sixty. A man-of-war is now again amongst us. And we are all in a state of defence, more or less complete. But while this is necessary to keep the Chinese in check, I feel convinced that they have not as yet entertained any intention of attacking us…
What lead to this exodus of the British from Canton and Macao?
Opium had been banned in China since 1729. However, it was cultivated in India under the monopoly of the East India Company and then sold in Calcutta auctions to British dealers. Taken by the latter to south China in fast ‘opium clippers’, thousands of chests were smuggled into the country every year with the active connivance of local merchants and corrupt officials.
Figure 5. ‘Imports of opium into China (port of Canton), 1800/01 – 1838/39’. Source: World Drug Report 2008.
The decade of the 1830s saw a sharp jump in imports (Figure 5) with British, American, and Parsi merchants being the main culprits.
Concerned with the ill-effects of the drug on his countrymen, the Daoguang Emperor (1782-1850) sent Lin Zexu as imperial commissioner to Canton to put an end to the opium trade. One of the few incorruptible civil servants around, Lin arrived in March 1839 and immediately set to work.
During April and May, British and American dealers surrendered 20,283 chests (each containing 140 lb or 63.5 kg) and 200 sacks of opium worth about three million pounds. They were destroyed over a period of 23 days in June (Figure 6).
Figure 6. A Chinese painting of Commissioner Lin and the Destruction of the Opium in 1839.
Lin then demanded that British merchants sign a bond pledging they would not bring any illegal goods into China on pain of death. Captain Charles Elliot, the Plenipotentiary and Chief Superintendent of British Trade in China, refused to allow this and ordered all British ships to leave Canton and retreat to Macao.
Meanwhile, tensions increased when on 7 July 1839 six drunken British seamen on shore leave in Kowloon vandalised a temple and killed a local villager in a brawl. Elliot refused to hand them over for trial under Chinese justice.
Angered by the violation of China's sovereignty, Lin recalled Chinese labourers from Macao and issued an edict on 15 August preventing the sale of food to the British. Concerned, Elliot issued a bulletin on 21 August asking British citizens to leave Macao. The flight from Macao between 21 and 26 August ensured that by the end of August over 60 British ships and over 2,000 people were idling off the Chinese coast near Hong Kong, fast running out of provisions.
…already a few days since, we have lost our patience, and attacked the Chinese in their war junks, whereby we killed an officer and a man, and wounded several others. The immediate result has been beneficial, for the supply of food, previously almost wholly intercepted, has since become abundant…Captain Elliot, from natural impatience…was led to act contrary to his better judgement, and fired to compel them to give provisions. A spirited return was the consequence; and Captain Elliot himself had a narrow escape, a slug having torn away as it passed near his head, a portion of his hat…
When the Chinese prevented food from being sold to the British, on 4 September 1839, the first shots of the War were fired. After the so-called Battle of Kowloon, which ended in a stalemate, the British were able to obtain provisions.
…And may its [i.e. the British government’s] interference be a kindly and considerate spirit, allowing for the provocations and the prejudices of the Chinese, and not forgetting those things in which we must condemn ourselves. The feeling of the Chinese in all these matters is, that we are defending and protecting the Opium trade, and not the interests of our general trade and intercourse…We have too too many of our people who disregard all but their immediate interests, and care not to separate themselves from the illicit trade even now when the consequences of it are so plainly seen…
While Morrison was British, his love for the Chinese language and his day-to-day interactions with the Chinese people made him (and many other Europeans) sympathetic to their point of view with respect to the opium trade.
However, the British government made various silly arguments to defend the indefensible and managed to gain Parliament’s approval to declare war on the Chinese. The latter’s sea prowess was almost non-existent and its land defenses inadequate. In battle after battle, they withered under the might of the British navy.
Figure 7. The world’s first all-iron steamer Nemesis and boats of the Sulphur, Calliope, Larne, and Starling destroying Chinese war junks in Anson's Bay on 7 January 1841.
In the aftermath of the Second Battle of Chuenpi (Figure 7) on 7 January 1841, Captain Elliot and Qishan, Lin’s successor, signed a convention under which the Chinese would pay 6 million silver dollars as reparations and the British would be allowed to establish residence on Hong Kong.7
Elliot quickly went about auctioning parcels of land on the island. 34 lots were sold in June 1841 and £3,238 obtained in quit-rents per year.8 Modern Hong Kong’s foundations were thus laid and the place and its population grew exponentially (Figure 8).
Figure 8. ‘Hong Kong’ c.1842. Source: The Chinese War by John Ouchterlony. It shows many permanent buildings having sprung up in a year or so.
18 months later, the First Opium War concluded with the signing of the first of the ‘unequal treaties’ - Treaty of Nanking - on 29 August 1842 (Figure 9). Under its terms, Hong Kong island was ceded in perpetuity to the British.9
Figure 9. ‘The Signing and Sealing of the Treaty of Nanking in the State Cabin of H.M.S. Cornwallis, 29th August, 1842.’ Dressed in civilian clothes, John Robert Morrison is standing in the center with his head slightly tilted; a ship can be seen through the the window behind him.
This was just the beginning of foreign imperialism. In the coming decades, the Second Opium War (1856-60), the Sino-French War (1884-85), and the Boxer Rebellion (1900) all sapped China.
And what happened to opium imports? As Figure 5 shows, rather than slowing down, the trend accelerated in the second half of the 19th century. It finally took concerted action by the government in the 1950s to suppress opium for good.
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From 1830 until 1867, post offices in the Straits Settlements, i.e. Singapore, Penang, and Malacca, came under the auspices of the Indian postal authorities.
For anyone wanting to read more about the history of the Opium Wars, I recommend The Opium War (2011) by Julia Lovell and Imperial Twilight (2018) by Stephen Platt. They are complimentary books with little overlap. Lovell covers the war in great detail as well as its aftermath over the coming decades. Platt, on the other hand, deals with the period leading up to the war, starting from the 18th century. Both use Chinese sources extensively and this present a balanced view of things.
The literal translation of Hong Kong is ‘fragrant harbour’. In its early days, it was commonly written as a single word ‘Hongkong’. In 1926, the government adopted the two-word name.
I did bid for this item in that auction but would not go high enough. Later, I purchased it at a premium from the dealer. Lesson learnt: ‘Be bolder at auction when you find one-of-a-kind item’.
Interestingly, this tentative agreement was never ratified; the Emperor felt it had conceded too much while the British government thought it received too little. Not surprisingly, Elliot and Qishan were soon dismissed from their posts! The main protagonist from the British side was Foreign Secretary Lord Palmerston. He was later Prime Minister of Britain 1859-65.
Buyers included British merchants like Jardine Matheson & Co. and Dent & Co., Parsi merchants such as Heerjeebhoy Rustomjee, and even officers like one Captain Morgan.
Under terms of the Treaty of Peking (1860), the British received control of Southern Kowloon too for perpetuity. Further in 1898, they leased the New Territories (about 90% of Hong Kong’s land, plus outlying islands) for 99 years. By the late 20th century, it was clear that China would not renew the lease of the New Territories nor would they accept any partial handover. To avoid conflict, in 1984 Britain agreed to handover entire Hong Kong to China in 1997 subject to certain conditions.
Spectacular article! This item tells an amazing story.