Views of the World, General View of Canton, China

We'll be staying in China for a bit.  Canton is actually the city of Guangzhou.  Canton was a name used by European traders and likely comes from the Portuguese.  The Canton System was an attempt by the Chinese government to limit contact with the European colonial powers that funneled all trade through the city.  There were thirteen factories, not places of manufacture, but foreign quarters built outside the city walls for the use of the various western trading interests.  The Canton System ended in 1842 with the Treaty of Nanking, now Nanjing, which ended The First Opium War.  In addition to opening up a number of other Chinese ports for trade, it also  required the Chinese government to pay all the costs of being invaded.

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Views of the World, Nankin Road, Shanghai, China

It's time to return to The First Opium War.  In addition to their acquisition of Hong Kong, the British also secured a number of concessions, essentially giving them control over a number of port cities, including Shanghai.  Eventually, a number of other countries, including France, the United States, Japan, Germany,  Russia, Norway, and even The Congo Free State got their fingers in the pie, getting  concessions of their own.  Shanghai itself would have three main foreign enclaves controlled by Britain, France, and the U.S.  What's really amazing, the foreign concessions all had extraterritorial status. Essentially, they were all exempt from Chinese law.

Today, Shanghai is, by population, the largest city in the world.

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Views of the World, Harbor of Hong Kong, China

For those of you who were waiting for a continuation of this series, you are in luck.  Views of the World (Click in labels for the others.) is back!

Anyway, I'm not going to go into too much detail about the history of Hong Kong.  There's plenty of info available on line, and quite frankly, it would take way too long to type it all up.  In a nutshell, Hong Kong Island wasn't much until the First Opium War.  The freebooters of The British East India Company were making lots of cash addicting the people of China to opium.  When the Chinese Emperor objected to seeing his people all zoned out, and decided to end the opium trade, the British invaded, won, and forced China to cede the island to them in perpetuity.  After the Second Opium War, the Brits added the Kowloon Peninsula to their colonial empire.  In the end, China wanted it's territory back, England wasn't in a position to stop a takeover by force, so, after all the diplomatic niceties were observed, China got it's land back.  Technically, the Chinese dictatorship is supposed to recognize the democratic rights of Hong Kong's citizens, but that's an iffy thing.