Anchor year
1842
A treaty at the mouth of a river.
On 29 August 1842 the Treaty of Nanking ended the First Opium War. Hong Kong was ceded. Ports were opened. Indemnity was imposed. The aperture finds empire and law. Christian Doppler’s paper on frequency and Crawford Long’s 1842 ether use are dated science. They do not outrank the treaty. They do not hide it.
What does a number do when the loudest object is a coerced treaty?
Nanjing · 29 August 1842
A treaty at the mouth of a river
The Treaty of Nanking. Cession, indemnity, five ports. A coerced paper under naval pressure. Doppler and Crawford Long are dated science in the same year. They do not outrank the treaty. They do not hide it.
TREATY
The Treaty of Nanking
The first of the unequal treaties in the standard later name. Opium is in the war and not honestly in the text’s self-description. The paper opened ports and took an island.
Before
Lin Zexu at Canton, 1839; the war, 1839–42.
Why
Military defeat after a war fought for trade in a prohibited drug and for diplomatic status.
Who
Qing commissioners; British plenipotentiaries; the people of the opened ports, who did not sign.
Qiying · Henry Pottinger · Daoguang Emperor
What
A treaty: cession, indemnity, five ports, tariff, most-favoured-nation in the later system.
How
Gunboats, then a table.
The hinge
The hinge is a signed paper under naval pressure.
Where, and when
The Yangtze at Nanjing. 29 August 1842.
29 August 1842 · Nanjing (Nanking), on HMS Cornwallis and ashore
What they knew
The commissioners knew they were buying a stop to guns. They did not know 1895 or 1901.
What they could not know
The later phrase ‘century of humiliation’ as a school object.
Source object
The Treaty of Nanking, 29 August 1842
A bilingual legal text. Not a painting of the river as the whole event.
The object survives.
First record
The treaty text, 1842.
After
Further treaties. The opium trade continued.
Later retelling
National wound, or free-trade origin. Both are later frames.
Limit
Doppler 1842 and Long 1842 are real and smaller in consequence here.
What it does not prove
Does not make 42 a treaty-number or a China-number.
Why it entered
Included as independently major. Not as a 42 of opening.
How we know
- 1. Treaty of Nanking (Nanjing), 29 August 1842, between Great Britain and the Qing empire. Cession of Hong Kong, five ports, indemnity. Bilingual legal text.
Method
independent firsthard
Not important to the existing work before this search.
The aperture
Independent-first imperial and legal history. Science is present, not the cluster-winner.
Regions checked
- Europe
- Middle East and North Africa
- East Asia
- South Asia
- Africa
- the Americas
- Central Asia
Included / excluded
- Included: Nanking as anchor; Doppler and Long as present science
- Excluded: The Opium War’s start as 1842. 1839.
41 | 42 | 43
Same century. Same research threshold. Matched frames. Neither pane brighter except that the middle year is the selected aperture.
1841
Neighbor
The war continues. British occupation of Hong Kong already in fact. Neighbor is not empty.
1842
Aperture
Independent-first imperial and legal history. Science is present, not the cluster-winner.
1843
Neighbor
Implementation of the treaty. Not empty.