Unequal Treaties from the Late Qing Dynasty Unveiled at the Palace Museum, Including the Treaty of Shimonoseki

By Li Xinyi, compiled and reported

 

The Treaty of Nanjing was the first unequal treaty forced upon the Qing court; the Sino-British Supplementary Treaty saw the Qing court forced to cede the Kowloon area to Britain; the Treaty of Shimonoseki resulted in the Qing court ceding Taiwan to Japan. These historical events are well known, but have you seen these treaties? Following the relocation of the Nationalist government to Taiwan, these treaties were preserved in the Palace Museum. Currently, the Palace Museum is hosting the special exhibition “A Century of Heritage, Forging a Path Forward – Special Exhibition of Diplomatic Historical Materials of the Republic of China,” which runs until February 6 of next year. A total of 88 important treaties are on display.

On December 21, 1948, amid the critical situation in the Huaihai Campaign and the threat to the capital Nanjing, the government considered relocating cultural relics for their safety. Among the first batch of relics transported to Taiwan on the ship Zhongding, were sixty cases of important archives inherited from the Qing-era Zongli Yamen (Office for the Management of the Business of All Foreign Countries) and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The fate of these diplomatic archives paralleled that of the Palace Museum relics — enduring the War of Resistance, the civil war, and numerous relocations, before finally settling in Beigou, Wufeng, Taichung.

The Palace Museum and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs first collaborated on a diplomatic archives exhibition in 1997, titled “From the Treaty of Nanjing to Japan’s Surrender: Shame, Struggle, and the Fight for Free and Equal Diplomacy – Special Exhibition of Diplomatic Historical Materials of the Republic of China.” That year marked the return of Hong Kong, Kowloon, and the New Territories to mainland China. The focus of that exhibition was on the Treaty of Nanking, the Convention of Peking, and the Convention for the Extension of Hong Kong Territory, all closely tied to Hong Kong’s fate, which received extensive attention from global media. This new diplomatic archives exhibition presents key historical materials from the late Qing and the Republic of China in full, offering the public a deeper understanding of their own history.

 

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