The Lady Hughes Affair was a 1784 diplomatic incident between Britain and China. On November 24, 1784, a gunner from a British ship in Canton harbor fired a salute for a Danish ship, which seriously wounded three Chinese men in a nearby boat. Two of them were dead soon. In response, Chinese officials detained the Lady Hughes until the British handed over the gunner. The gunner was then executed by strangulation, an outcome that the British were very displeased with. [1] [2] [3]
The British criticized the decision, saying that justice was too harsh and the gunner lacked due legal process. [4] These criticisms ultimately helped contribute to the ultimate imposition of extraterritoriality regimes in China. [5]
Although the British claimed that the deaths of the two Chinese were accidental, this has been questioned by subsequent scholarship. Under English law, for a homicide to be considered accidental it needed to occur as part of a lawful act, and the British were aware that firing salutes was a felony. [5] [1]
Charles Evans Hughes Sr. was an American statesman, politician, academic, and jurist who served as the 11th chief justice of the United States from 1930 to 1941. A member of the Republican Party, he previously was the 36th governor of New York (1907–1910), an associate justice of the Supreme Court (1910–1916), and 44th U.S. secretary of state (1921–1925). As the Republican nominee in the 1916 presidential election, he lost narrowly to Woodrow Wilson.
A salute is usually a formal hand gesture or other action used to display respect in military situations. Salutes are primarily associated with the military and law enforcement, but many civilian organizations, such as Girl Guides, Boy Scouts and the Salvation Army use formal salutes. Ordinary civilians also salute informally to greet or acknowledge the presence of another person, such as a tip of the hat or a hand wave to a friend or neighbor.
The First Opium War, also known as the Anglo-Chinese War, was a series of military engagements fought between the British Empire and the Qing dynasty of China between 1839 and 1842. The immediate issue was the Chinese enforcement of their ban on the opium trade by seizing private opium stocks from mainly British merchants at Guangzhou and threatening to impose the death penalty for future offenders. Despite the opium ban, the British government supported the merchants' demand for compensation for seized goods, and insisted on the principles of free trade and equal diplomatic recognition with China. Opium was Britain's single most profitable commodity trade of the 19th century. After months of tensions between the two states, the Royal Navy launched an expedition in June 1840, which ultimately defeated the Chinese using technologically superior ships and weapons by August 1842. The British then imposed the Treaty of Nanking, which forced China to increase foreign trade, give compensation, and cede Hong Kong Island to the British. Consequently, the opium trade continued in China. Twentieth-century nationalists considered 1839 the start of a century of humiliation, and many historians consider it the beginning of modern Chinese history.
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