Treaty ports as shipping infrastructure

Abstract

This chapter examines the treaty ports as shipping infrastructure in two ways. First, it details the development of a steam shipping network centred on the treaty ports in the 1860s. Second, the chapter investigates a specific consequence of the limitation of steam navigation to the treaty ports: the concentration of modern shipping facilities in these ports. The imbrications of modern shipping and the treaty ports was an outgrowth of particular developments in the treaty system in the 1860s, but it had an enormous impact on the treaty system, the ports themselves, and space, time, trade, and travel in modern China. Treaty ports were viewed as self-contained points of entry into the Qing Empire, most clearly represented by Canton under the Canton System, the sole point at which European ships could load and unload cargoes. In 1872, the Qing sponsored the establishment of the China Merchants Steam Navigation Company, a merchant shipping concern intended to compete with foreign shipping companies.