In the following years, European nations strengthened their grip
on the Nanyang. Singapore was founded as a British settlement in
1819, after the return of Batavia to the Dutch. Five years later, the First
Anglo–Burmese war gave Britain control of the Arakan and
Tenasserim coasts of Burma, in addition to the Straits Settlements in
Malaya. At the same time, direct Dutch rule in Java was extended and
reinforced, interrupted only by the Java War of 1825–1830, the last
great paroxysm of traditional Javanese resistance. Elsewhere in the
archipelago, the Dutch increasingly made their presence felt. South-
east Asian and Chinese maritime trading networks continued to
operate, but increasingly the region was drawn into an expanding
global economy dominated by European powers, from which China
still remained largely insulated.
The First Opium War of 1839–42 should have shaken Chinese
complacency to the core. Ostensibly a response to Chinese attempts to
curtail the lucrative British opium trade, it was also the outcome of
mounting misunderstanding, anger and frustration on both sides. The
lesson drawn by the Qing court, however, had more to do with the dis-
graceful behaviour of Western barbarians than with what the impunity
with which British warships could bombard Chinese ports revealed
about the weakness of Chinese naval defences.
Other countries saw the implications more clearly. European
nations benefited from the opening up of four more port cities for inter-
national trade (in addition to Canton) along the China coast, but were
jealous of the concession in 1842 of the island of Hong Kong to Britain.
These ‘treaty ports’ extended rather than replaced the ‘Canton system’.
France and America quickly signed similar treaties, followed by other
Western powers. To each China magnanimously and impartially
extended the same privileges as she had to Britain (the most-favoured-
nation provision). Not until territorial concessions were later sought
were China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity seriously threatened.
In the early 1850s, a series of anti-dynastic rebellions broke
out in China that were only put down with great difficulty and with
Enter the Europeans