The historically important First and Second China Wars campaign pair awarded to Sir Harry S....

The historically important First and Second China Wars campaign pair awarded to Sir Harry S. Parkes, G.C.M.G., K.C.B., British Consul at Canton and Shanghai, Ambassador to Japan and then to China, who served as Chief Political Officer during the Second China War, when he conducted negotiations and seized high-ranking Chinese Officials; Parkes’s heroic defiance of the torturers in the Board of Punishments in Peking’s Forbidden City led to the destruction of the Summer Palace and established his reputation as an Imperial Paragon; despite large bounties on his head, he survived multiple assassination attempts, and ‘no one contributed more to make the name of England Great and Powerful in the distant regions where he wielded his unique influence’ China 1842 (Mr. Interpreter Parkes) officially impressed naming, original suspension replaced with a Second China style suspension; China 1857-60, 3 clasps, Canton 1857, Taku Forts 1860, Pekin 1860 (Harry S Parkes CB) officially impressed naming, both with contemporary top silver riband buckles, and housed in a Spink, Piccadilly, fitted case, deeply toned on obverses, good very fine or better (2) £15,000-£20,000 --- Harry Smith Parkes, the son of Harry Parkes, founder of the firm of Parkes, Otway & Co., Ironmasters, was born on 24 February 1828 at Birchills Hall, Bloxwich, Staffordshire. When he was four years old his mother died, and the following year his father was killed in a carriage accident. Left an orphan, he found a home with his uncle, a retired naval officer, at Birmingham. He went to a boarding-school at Balsall Heath, and in May 1838, when he was ten, entered King Edward’s Grammar School. In the words of his principal biographer: ‘In person Parkes was short and slight, of a very fair complexion, large head, broad high brow, alert expression, and bright vigilant blue eyes. In character he was extraordinarily tenacious of purpose, restlessly active, prompt and energetic, never losing his presence of mind in danger or difficulty, courageous and daring to a fault.’ (Dictionary of National Biography refers). First China War In June 1841 Parkes sailed for south China to live in the house of his cousin, Mary Gützlaff, the wife of the missionary, linguist and explorer Karl Gützlaff, who was then based in the Portuguese enclave of Macau. At that time, by Imperial decree, all Chinese ports were closed to foreign ships except for Canton in the far south, where trade was undertaken during a relatively short season under carefully limited and regulated conditions. In 1839 the British had been forcibly expelled from Canton by the Imperial Commissioner charged with ending the import of opium, most of which came from British India. This was the start of the First China War (1839-42), during which Britain seized and annexed Hong Kong to serve as a safe harbour and trading base. Parkes arrived in Macau in October 1841 and at the age of fourteen began to learn Chinese. He was soon employed as an assistant by John Morrison, the secretary and chief interpreter of Sir Henry Pottinger, then British Plenipotentiary and Chief Superintendent of Trade in China. In May 1842 Parkes left Macau to join Morrison in Hong Kong, as the British prepared to sail northwards up the coast of China and compel the Imperial authorities to enter serious negotiations. On 13 June 1842 he accompanied Pottinger on the expedition up the Yangtze River to Nanking, joined in various junk captures and naval ‘cutting-out parties’ and was present at the capture of Chinkiang on 21 July. The threat posed by foreign warships and troops on the Yangtze, China’s main internal trade route, was more than the Manchu rulers could stand and they reluctantly agreed to a less regulated trade with Britain. The Treaty of Nanking obliged China to open up to international trade the five most important southern ports (Canton, Amoy, Fuzhou, Ningbo and Shanghai) and to allow foreign communities to live freely in these cities. Parkes attended all the negotiations and witnessed the signing of the Treaty of Nanking by three Chinese mandarins on board H.M.S. Cornwallis on 29 August 1842. In order to maintain a close blockade over the mouth of the Yangtze, the British had seized the island of Chusan just off Ningbo, and they kept a garrison there until the Emperor formally ratified the Treaty of Nangking and opened the five Treaty Ports (once this process was well under way, Chusan was evacuated and returned to Imperial rule). During the British occupation of Chusan the formidable Reverend Gützlaff was appointed its Civil Magistrate, and young Parkes spent a year as his clerk from September 1842 to August 1843. Diplomatic work in China and Siam In August 1843 Parkes passed the consular examination in Chinese in Hong Kong and that September was appointed Interpreter at Fuzhou. However, there was a delay in opening the port and so he served instead successively at the consulate in Canton, as assistant to the Chinese Secretary in Hong Kong and then as Interpreter at Amoy (Xiamen). Finally, in March 1845 Parkes and his Consul, Rutherford Alcock, were transferred to Fuzhou, an important tea-trading port. The British were not welcome in Fuzhou and in October Parkes survived an attack by Manchu soldiers. In August 1846 Alcock and Parkes were again transferred, this time to Shanghai, where Parkes acted as Interpreter. In 1847 he began to study Japanese and in March 1848 accompanied the British vice-consul at Shanghai to Nanking to negotiate the punishment of some Chinese men who had assaulted three British missionaries. Parkes’s prominent role, undertaken at great personal risk, received the warm approbation of Lord Palmerston. Following this he was appointed Interpreter at Shanghai on 9 April 1848. After a period of leave from 1850-1851, which he spent in Europe, Parkes took up the post of Interpreter at Canton, where, aged 24, he acted as Consul in the absence of Sir John Bowring, and in August 1853 he was placed temporarily in charge of the Canton vice-consulate before being promoted to Consul at Amoy in 1854. In 1855 Parkes was sent to Siam (now Thailand) as Joint Secretary to Sir John Bowring’s Mission to conclude a commercial treaty with the Kingdom. The treaty, the first ever European treaty with Siam, was signed in Bangkok on 18 April 1855 and Parkes was given the honour of taking it to England for ratification. He delivered it on 1 July, and was received at Court by Queen Victoria on 9 July 1855. He spent the rest of 1855 helping the Foreign Office deal with Chinese and Siamese issues and meeting with Miss Fanny Plumer. ‘She was a beautiful girl,’ wrote a friend, ‘tall, well-proportioned, and graceful, her colouring rich and soft, her features expressing sensitiveness and the power of warm emotion; her dark brown eyes full of intelligence and speaking earnestness of purpose. She possessed in a large degree the power of fascination in which all her family were remarkable.’ After a six-week courtship, they were married on New Year’s Day, 1856, at St Lawrence's Church, Whitchurch. The couple left England on 9 January, carrying the ratified Siamese treaty, which Parkes exchanged in a ceremony in Bangkok on 5 April 1856. They travelled on to Canton, where Parkes was Acting Consul. Second China War and the Seizure of Canton Parkes’ position as Acting Consul at Canton brought him into renewed contact with Imperial Commissioner and Viceroy Ye Mingchen, who he had met during his first posting to Canton in 1852-54. Clashes between the two men would soon lead to the Second China War (1856-60). Ye came from a scholarly family in Hubei Province and was awarded the highest degree in the imperial exams in 1835. In 1848...