Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

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, Ye was appointed governor of Guangdong province, which brought him into open conflict with Britain due to his refusal to allow foreign traders to reside within or alongside the city of Canton proper, which the British claimed they had a right to do according to the Treaty of Nanking. The treaty read differently in its English and Chinese versions, the latter only permitting foreigners to reside temporarily in the harbours of the newly opened treaty ports. The British were forced to occupy a narrow, indefensible strip of river frontage surrounded by the walls of Canton, where they were vulnerable to attack from Chinese forts, from the land and from the river. The ‘Factories’, as these warehouses and offices were known, had been attacked and burnt down at the start of the First China War.

As a reward for his firmness in keeping the British pinned down outside of Canton, in 1852 Ye was promoted to Viceroy of Guangdong and Guangxi Provinces as well as Imperial Commissioner in 1852. This made him the chief official in charge of relations with the West. The Cantonese community is said to have respected Ye Mingchen for his intransigence, but also ridiculed his unwillingness to fight. In Canton he was known as the ‘six nots’: ‘he would not fight, not make peace and not defend; he would not die, not capitulate and not run away.’ Contemporary British political opinion regarded ‘Commissioner Yeh’ as the embodiment of Chinese xenophobia and he was frequently caricatured in British media. Ye won the favour of the Xianfeng Emperor, but his policy was soon disavowed when hostilities broke out.
On 8 October 1856 the Chinese-owned Hong Kong lorcha Arrow was boarded by officials of the Manchu water patrol as she entered the Pearl River en route from Hong Kong. The water patrol arrested and removed 12 Chinese sailors who they claimed to be pirates and took away the British flag. Parkes sent a protest to Ye Mingchen, in which he pointed out that the Arrow was a British ship and that lowering the British flag was an insult; Ye replied that the Arrow was owned and crewed by Chinese and the flag had not been flying at the time. Parkes considered this action a violation of the treaty and sent belligerent dispatches to the governor of Hong Kong, Sir John Bowring. Bowring demanded an apology from Ye, knowing very well that, were Ye to apologise, he would suffer a huge loss of face.

As a casus belli, the logic and the complaint were very similar to that used by the United States when she declared war on Britain in 1812 -‘Free Trade and Sailors’ Rights’. For Parkes and Bowring, the deliberate escalation of the Arrow incident into war was intended to force the removal of most of the remaining obstacles to trade and diplomacy in China. Their first goal was to enforce the right to establish a substantial British settlement within or alongside the walls of Canton. Despite making minor reprisals, Ye stuck to his ‘six nots’ and Bowring, who as Governor had executive military as well as civil authority, ordered the Royal Navy to sail up the Pearl River and threaten Canton.

Naval gunfire breached the city’s walls on 29 October 1856, and Parkes and Admiral Sir Michael Seymour led a strong naval landing party that captured Ye Mingchen’s yamen (offices and residence). Ye offered a reward for Parkes’s head. Parkes was injured by an explosion during the attack on one of the Pearl River forts, when he, as usual, accompanied the Admiral with a daring fearlessness to which Sir Michael Seymour bore official testimony. The British did not have enough men to permanently occupy Canton; they anchored warships on the river and posted artillery on hills overlooking the city. On 16 December Ye’s forces once again set fire to the European factories in the settlement strip on the riverfront. Just as they had done at the start of the First China War, the British retreated to Hong Kong and awaited the arrival of reinforcements.

As many of the intended reinforcements were diverted to India after the Great Sepoy Mutiny broke out in May 1857, Parkes spent nearly a year in Hong Kong. A new High Commissioner and Plenipotentiary to China, James Bruce, Earl of Elgin, had been appointed. The British government, reassured by the success of Anglo-French co-operation during the Crimean war and their track record of working together in Shanghai, had decided to act in concert with the French, who were seeking to avenge the killing of a missionary.

Parkes was attached to Sir Michael Seymour's staff, and on 12 December 1857 was one of the party that delivered an ultimatum to Ye Mingchen’s officials. When the ultimatum expired, the bombardment of Canton began on 28 December, and the walls were secured the next day. On 5 January 1858, British forces moved in; Parkes was the first man to enter the city and personally led a party of sailors, captured Ye Mingchen and brought him on board H.M.S. Inflexible as a prisoner of war. Ye was exiled to Calcutta, where he was well-treated but refused to eat anything except Chinese food. He died of starvation in 1859.

Once the occupying forces were well-established, on 9 January 1858 the Manchu governor of Canton, Po-kuei, was nominally reinstated, but the actual government of the city was undertaken by a European Commission made up of two Englishmen and a French naval officer. Parkes, the only Chinese speaker on the Commission, became its leader and the de facto Governor of Canton. The Commission established a court and a police force, and on 10 February 1858 opened the port. Throughout 1858/59 the Manchu authorities in Guangdong remained hostile to the Europeans in Canton, mobilizing militias and putting a C$30,000 bounty on Parkes’s head. Parkes made many expeditions into the hinterland, accompanied by a small military escort.

Since it was too dangerous for Europeans to live inside the Chinese city or settle alongside it as at Shanghai, Parkes took over Shamian Island, a large but easily defended sandbank just outside the city, which he divided 80/20 into British and French Consular Concessions. Shamian Island was reclaimed from the river and connected to the mainland by two bridges, which were closed at 10 p.m. as a security measure. The English bridge to the north was guarded by Sikhs, and the French bridge to the east (closest to the Chinese city) was guarded by Annamite troops. As a reward for his success in opening-up Canton, Parkes was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath on 6 December 1859, aged 31.

Captured and tortured in the Board of Punishments
While Parkes was busy in Canton, Britain, France, the U.S.A. and Russia had decided to press for a comprehensive opening-up of China. Their main demands, for Legations in Peking (up to that time a closed city), more treaty ports, free navigation rights on the Yangtze, the right for foreigners to travel freely throughout China and the legalisation of opium imports, were included in a series of separate but coordinated treaties signed in 1858. Frederick Bruce, Consul at Shanghai and Lord Elgin’s brother, set out for Peking to get the British treaty ratified and to establish the British Legation, but as the warships carrying his mission entered the Hai river that leads to Peking they were fired on by the Taku Forts that guard the seaward approaches. An attempt on June 25 1859 to silence the forts by naval gunfire failed, and on 6 July Parkes was instructed to join Lord Elgin at sea in the Bohai Gulf. He was appointed Lord Elgin’s joint Chinese Secretary alongside Thomas Wade, but once again the Allies retired to await reinforcements before attempting to force the issue with the Imperial Manchu government.

A 17,000 strong Anglo-French expeditionary force was assembled in Hong Kong, jointly commanded by Major-General Sir James Hope Grant and General Montauban (each man assuming the command-in-chief for alternate 24 hour periods). Parkes was attached to Hope Grant’s staff, and on 1 August 1860, the allies landed near Pehtang. Parkes was sent into Pehtang (Beitang), where he took possession of the fort. He performed some reconnaissances during the advance to the Taku Forts, and after the successful assault on the main north fort on 21 August, negotiated the surrender of the remaining Manchu positions. He arrived in Tianjin on 24 August, where he arranged for the provisioning of the Allied forces, and conducted interviews with the Manchu Imperial Commissioners. Lord Elgin wrote of him: ‘Parkes is one of the most remarkable men I have ever met; for energy, courage and ability combined, I do not know where I could find his match; and this, joined to his facility of speaking Chinese, makes him at present the man of the situation.’

After discovering that the Imperial Commissioners at Tianjin did not hold plenipotentiary powers from the Emperor, the allied armies advanced towards Tungchow. Taking only a small escort, Parkes travelled ahead of the army and parleyed with the Manchu authorities at Tungchow on 14 September and again on 17 September, obtaining an agreement that the armies should advance to a position about 8 km from the city. On 18 September he left Tungchow to view and mark out the site of the proposed British camp. When he observed a Manchu military force that eventually numbered around 30,000 assembling at the site, Parkes returned to Tungchow to remonstrate with the Manchu commissioners. Receiving a hostile response, he and his party (in total 26 men) attempted to return to the British headquarters, but were seized and taken prisoner, despite being protected by a flag of truce.

After being brought before the Manchu general, San-kolin-sin (Senggelinqin), Parkes was taken to Peking along with Lord Elgin’s private secretary Henry Loch, Nal Singh, a Sikh sowar, and two French soldiers. There he and Loch were brought before the Board of Punishments, placed in chains in a common prison, and repeatedly tortured. Convinced that the Manchus intended to torture them to death, Parkes and Loch sang “God Save the Queen” and “Rule Britannia” to try to raise the morale of the other prisoners.

The 10,000 strong Allied army decisively defeated the Imperial forces at Tingchao and Palikao (Manchu casualties were estimated at 25,000, over 80%) and swept around Peking in an enveloping manoeuvre designed to isolate it from the rest of China, and thereby trap the Xianfeng Emperor. In fact the Emperor had already fled to his north-eastern Palace at Jehol in Manchuria, leaving his younger brother, Prince Gong, in charge of the Forbidden City. Peking itself was surrounded by a massive outer wall and several inner walls delineating the various different quarters of the city, while its closely packed buildings constituted a significant challenge to a military assault. The Allies prepared to assault the city at the Anting Gate, but held back, as a general assault would probably mean instant death for all foreign captives held by the Imperial forces.

Meanwhile, the French had discovered the Yuanmingyuan (Summer Palace) a vast and beautifully laid out garden with multiple pavilions filled with priceless objets d’art, the private residence of the Emperor but completely defenceless as it lay to the north-west, well outside the city walls. Looting by French troops and the local Chinese villagers began immediately.

After Parkes and Loch had spent ten days at the Board of Punishments, on 29 September Prince Gong gave orders for them to be moved to more comfortable quarters in a temple, where they were pressed to assist the Chinese in their negotiations with the Allies. Parkes refused to make any pledges, pleas or to address any representations for leniency to Lord Elgin. On 5 October the two men were informed that they would be executed that evening. The Emperor, safe in Jehol, which was far beyond the reach of the allies, issued Imperial Vermillion Death Warrants for the prisoners.

However, Prince Gong was negotiating a conditional surrender with the Allies, under which he accepted to sign the Treaties, release all prisoners and pay war indemnities to Britain and France. On 8 October Parkes, Loch, and six others were released, just a quarter of an hour before the arrival of the order from the Emperor for their execution. The remains of fifteen other prisoners were returned in coffins, covered with quicklime, almost unrecognisable, but bearing unmistakable marks of the most brutal torture.

Elgin had been negotiating with the Imperial Commissioners on the expectation that all the prisoners would be returned alive, so the discovery of these murders came as a severe shock to the Allies. After intense deliberation, Elgin decided to make a gesture that would directly target the Emperor himself as retaliation for the seizure of Parkes and the torture/murder of prisoners captured in violation of a flag of truce on 18 September. He ordered the complete destruction of all the buildings in the nine square mile Yuanmingyuan (Summer Palace) compound, knowing that this act would destroy, in a way that could not be concealed or denied, the myth of the Manchu Emperor as a living god, and send a stark message to the entire Chinese nation. Despite their eager participation in the looting of the contents of the Summer Palace, the French formally disassociated themselves with this action.

Parkes unexpectedly came face to face with his main torturer, the head of the Board of Punishments, three days before the final treaty signing ceremony in late October and had to be restrained from attacking him. He seized the residence of Prince I, the most xenophobic of the Manchus who had urged the Emperor to make war on the Europeans and who together with San-kolin-sin had ordered Parkes’s capture at Tungchow. Parkes utilised it as the new British Legation.

Negotiating with the Taiping ‘Long hairs’
The 1858 treaty was ratified, along with a new one, the Treaty of Peking, which ceded Kowloon, the part of the mainland closest to Hong Kong Island, to Britain in perpetuity (the Island had already been ceded in perpetuity at the end of the First China War). Parkes left Peking on 9 November 1860, returning to his post at Canton in January 1861, where he arranged with the Guangdong authorities the practical details of the cession of Kowloon to the British Crown. The Treaty of Tientsin had opened three Yangtze ports to trade, and between February and April 1861 Parkes accompanied Vice-Admiral Sir James Hope in an expedition up the river, setting up consulates at Chinkiang, Kiukiang (Jiujiang) and Hankow (Hankou). He spent most of the rest of 1861 trying to reach an agreement with the Taiping rebels at Nanking for the protection of the International Settlement at Shanghai.

The Taiping Rebellion was a widespread civil war in southern China from 1850 to 1864, led by the heterodox ‘Christian’ convert Hong Xiuquan, against the ruling Qing Dynasty. About 20 million people died, mainly civilians, in one of the deadliest military conflicts in history. Hong, who claimed to be the younger brother of Jesus Christ, had established the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom (officially the ‘Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace’) with its capital at Nanjing. The Kingdom’s Army controlled large parts of central southern China along the Yangtse river valley, which they plundered and ravaged, forcibly conscripting almost every able-bodied man, regardless of the consequences. The rebels were from lower socio-economic groups and regarded the ruling Manchus as foreign invaders. As they refused to cut their hair in accordance with Imperial Manchu decrees, they were nicknamed the Long Hairs.

A key Taiping objective was to capture a major port city, ideally Shanghai, to enable them to obtain supplies from abroad and to establish more contacts with western Christians, some of whom considered that the Taipings should be recognised by the western powers as the legitimate ‘christian’ government of China in place of the ‘heathen’ Manchus. Official British policy was to remain neutral, as it was considered important not to alienate whichever side would finally emerge as the ultimate victor in this civil war.

As time passed, it became clearer that Hong was completely insane and that the Taipings could only bring destruction and chaos to China. Repeated attempts to capture Shanghai in 1859 and again in 1861 and 1862 were defeated by British and French troops. The Shanghai merchants paid for the establishment of the first Chinese military unit trained in European techniques and tactics by an eclectic group of western and Filipino mercenaries – ’The Ever Victorious Army’ that was eventually commanded by Charles Gordon (later ‘Gordon of Khartoum’) on an official secondment from the British army.

In January 1862 Parkes left Shanghai to return to England, where his role in the Second China War and his captivity had made him famous. On 19 May 1862 he was made a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (K.C.B.). At only 34, he was now Sir Harry Parkes. After two years home leave, Sir Harry returned to China in March 1864, taking up the prestigious and important role of Consul in Shanghai, where he became a close friend and supporter of ‘Chinese Gordon’. In May 1865, during a trip to the Yangtze ports, Parkes was notified of his appointment as ‘Her Majesty's Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary and Consul-General in Japan’, succeeding his old chief, Sir Rutherford Alcock.

Envoy to Japan
Parkes was Envoy to Japan for eighteen years, and throughout that time he strenuously used his influence to assist those pushing for the reform and modernisation of the country, which, like China, had been closed to foreign influences until 1858. As a result, he became a marked man, and incurred the bitter hostility of Japanese reactionaries, who on three separate occasions attempted to assassinate him.
Parkes encouraged the junior members of the British mission to research and make deep studies of Japan; Ernest Satow and William Aston became great Japanese scholars. In 1869 Prime Minister Gladstone requested a report on Japanese paper and papermaking from the British Embassy in Japan. A thorough investigation was carried out by Sir Harry Parkes and his team of consular staff in different Japanese towns, resulting in the publication of a government report, ‘Reports on the manufacture of paper in Japan’, and the formation of a collection of 400+ sheets of handmade paper. The main parts of this collection are now housed in the Paper Conservation Laboratory of the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Economic Botany Collection of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. The Parkes collection is important because the origin, price, manufacturing method and function of each paper was precisely documented. This was typical of Parkes’s working style.

Lady Parkes became the first non-Japanese woman to ascend Mount Fuji, but she became seriously ill while visiting England in November 1879. Though urgently summoned by telegraph, Sir Harry did not reach London until four days after her death. ‘She hoped to the last that I should have reached in time. I have now six children to take charge of,’ he wrote, ‘and feebly indeed shall I replace her in that charge, while the Legation will have lost that bright and good spirit to which it owed whatever attention it possessed.’ Just before his return to Japan in January 1882, he was awarded the additional honour of the Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St. Michael and St. George, which had never before been conferred upon any representative of the Crown for service in the Far East.

Envoy to China
In 1883 Parkes was appointed Envoy to the Chinese Empire. While in Peking, his health failed, and he died of malarial fever on 21 March 1885, aged 57. One of his daughters married into the Keswick family, who control the famous trading firm Jardine Matheson. His papers became the property of Jardines, who loaned them to Cambridge University. Parkes Street in Kowloon, Hong Kong is named after him. In April 1890 the Duke of Connaught unveiled a statue of Parkes in centre of the Bund in Shanghai, facing directly up the main thoroughfare of the city. It was removed and melted down by the Japanese after they occupied the International Settlement in December 1941.
In popular fiction, Sir Harry Parkes features prominently in the Flashman series Flashman and the Dragon.

Note: In accordance with the statutes then in place, Parkes’ G.C.M.G. and K.C.B. insignia were returned to Central Chancery after his death.