Ye Mingchen
Ye Mingchen | |
---|---|
Grand Secretary of the Tiren Library | |
In office 1855–1857 | |
Assistant Grand Secretary | |
In office 1855–1855 | |
Viceroy of Liangguang | |
In office 1852–1858 | |
Preceded by | Xu Guangjin |
Succeeded by | Huang Zonghan |
Personal details | |
Born | 21 December 1807 Hanyang |
Occupation | Politician, Imperial viceroy |
Military service | |
Battles/wars | Second Opium War |
Ye Mingchen | |
---|---|
Hanyu Pinyin | Yè Míngchēn |
Wade–Giles | Yeh Ming-ch'en |
Ye Mingchen (21 December 1807 – 9 April 1859) was a high-ranking Chinese official during the Qing dynasty, known for his resistance to British influence in Canton (Guangzhou) in the aftermath of the First Opium War and his role in the beginning of the Second Opium War.
Early career
Ye came from a scholarly family in
Around 1850, Ye Mingchen and his father established an association in the western suburbs of Guangzhou to worship
Internal and external conflicts
As governor of Guangdong, Ye was faced with both internal and external crises. British traders claimed that the right to reside in the city of Guangzhou proper had been guaranteed by the Treaty of Nanking. In fact, the treaty read differently in its English and Chinese versions, the latter only permitting foreigners to reside temporarily in the harbors of the newly opened treaty ports. Ye stood strong and refused the British demands.[3]
As a reward for his ostensible success in keeping the British out of Guangzhou, he was promoted to
In October, British warships opened fire on Guangzhou, taking aim at Ye's residence, but in December Ye still refused to give in to British and French demands for direct negotiations and compensation for foreign property which had been burned by mobs.[1] In the meantime, Prime Minister Palmerston denounced Ye on the floor of Parliament as an "inhuman monster," and held him responsible for executing 70,000 Chinese. [6] Richard Cobden, however, defended Ye, commending his "mild and conciliatory tone" even after the British bombarded his personal residence.[7] The government was defeated.
Events in Hong Kong proceeded quickly. In late December, Allied bombardments set Guangzhou aflame. Ye was in the midst of suppressing rebellion in Guangxi, did not dare to bring troops, and the city quickly fell. Harry Parkes hunted Ye through the streets of Guangzhou, and a
Legacy
The Cantonese community is said to have respected Ye Mingchen for his intransigence against the British, but also ridiculed his inability to resist them on the battlefield. In Guangzhou he was known as the "six nots": "he would not fight; he would not make peace; he would not take steps for defense; he would not die; he would not surrender; and he would not flee." (不戰、不和、不守、不死、不降、不走 buzhan, buhe, bushou, busi, buxiang, buzou)
Ye briefly won the favor of the Xianfeng Emperor, but his policy fell out of favor when hostilities broke out. Contemporary British public opinion regarded "Commissioner Yeh" as the embodiment of Chinese xenophobia and he was frequently caricatured in British media. But his image in the West was not unanimously negative. For instance, the German writer Theodor Fontane, who learned about Ye while working in London in the late 1850s, was touched by Ye's fate and later published an essay on the official.[10]
Official Chinese historiography long blamed Ye for precipitating the Second Opium War, but now he is frequently hailed as an early Chinese patriot and a monument has been erected in his memory in Guangzhou.[11]
Iconography
A sketch of Ye captured and kept on board HMS Inflexible was made to depict him as a hideous monster. It got broad circulation as British propaganda justifying the Arrow (second Opium) War.[12]
Notes
- ^ a b c d Hummel, Arthur W. Sr., ed. (1943). . Eminent Chinese of the Ch'ing Period. United States Government Printing Office.
- LCCN 2001-53064), p. 200.
- ^ John King Fairbank, Trade and Diplomacy *on the China Coast: The Opening of the Treaty Ports, 1842-1854 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1953) vol. 1, p. 201f.
- ISBN 9780804746878.
- ^ Lovell (2011), p. 252.
- ^ Lovell (2011), p. 255.
- ^ Cobden, "China and the Attack on Canton"(1857)
- ^ Lovell (2011), p. 258.
- ^ "Other-Articles-Aug-03-1859-2078635 | NewspaperArchive". Archived from the original on 2021-02-21.
- ^ (in Chinese). For original reference, see Fontane, Theodor. "Yeh, Eine Studie (Nach Der "Times")." In Sämtliche Werke, edited by Edgar Gross. München: Nymphenburger Verlagshandlung, 1959. Vol, 18a, pp. 797-806.
- ^ Article Archived 2013-10-29 at the Wayback Machine from Southern Metropolis Daily (in Chinese).
- ^ J.Y. Wong, Deadly Dreams, p.8
References and further reading
- Cobden, Richard, China and the Attack on Canton (Given to the House of Commons, 26 February 1857).
- Cooke, George Wingrove (1858). China. London, New York: G. Routledge. (Hathi Trust)
- Lovell, Julia (2011). Opium War. London: Picador. ISBN 9780330537858.
- Tu, Lien-che (1943). . In Hummel, Arthur W. Sr. (ed.). Eminent Chinese of the Ch'ing Period. Vol. II. United States Government Printing Office. pp. 904–905.
- Wong, J. Y. (1976). Yeh Ming-Ch'en: Viceroy of Liang Kuang 1852-8. Cambridge Eng. ; New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521210232.
- —— (1998). Deadly Dreams: Opium, Imperialism, and the Arrow War (1856-1860) in China. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521552559.
External links
Media related to Ye Mingchen at Wikimedia Commons