As with the preceding chapter, we shall begin our analysis from the moment London received news of the quarrel in China, or even before.

I. Commercial interests

As mentioned, on Monday, 29 December 1856, Britons first learned about the Arrow incident and the bombardment of Canton through a telegraphic message from Trieste.1 The attitude of The Times to ‘all this slaughter and desolation must be one of regret that anything should have occurred to render so strenuous an appeal to armed force necessary’. Everybody was left to guess what the cause was. Genuinely feeling uneasy about the bloodshed, the paper expressed the hope that ‘enough has been done to render anything more of the same kind superfluous.’ Unbeknownst to the public, the British government was envisaging that much more of the same kind might be necessary in the immediate future.

The paper continued, ‘In a town so thickly inhabited, containing more than a million and a half of inhabitants, the effect of a bombardment must have been dreadful, and the loss of life enormous’. Thereupon the Victorian liberal conscience spoke out loudly and clearly, ‘We hear only, however, the loss of property by fire’.

But there was another dimension to the quarrel. The telegraphic message ended with this: ‘Commerce was at a standstill’. This caused terrific excitement.