Putting down a common enemy: The International Expedition to Coulan as a Case Study in Victorian Intervention in China

Abstract

By 1854, Chinese piracy threatened not only the British colony of Hong Kong, but the entire China trade, with repercussions for the entire British Empire. The piracy of the Chilean barque Caldera, captained by an Englishman, in October of that year off the coast of Coulan spurred British action. Rear-Admiral Sir James Stirling initially requested that the Chinese governor-general, Ye Mingchen, take action against pirates. When Ye confessed he did not have sufficient force to do so, Stirling decided to take the initiative. He requested that Ye send ‘a mandarin of rank’, which Stirling hoped would provide ‘legal sanction’ to a British expedition to Coulan, a piratical stronghold on an island southwest of Macau, well beyond Hong Kong’s maritime jurisdiction.2 Ye deputed Colonel Zhang Yutang, the military mandarin at Kowloon across Victoria Harbour from Hong Kong, to accompany the expedition. The Americans and Portuguese also sent forces to accompany the Anglo-Chinese force sent to Coulan. This international intervention attacked pirates in Chinese waters and territory. This paper argues that while the expedition to Coulan violated the limits placed by mid-nineteenth century international law on intervention in a foreign state’s territorial waters and land, the British justified their actions through multilateral involvement and the rhetoric of suppressing pirates, considered enemies of all mankind. Additionally, the perceived inability of the Chinese to deal with piracy and the British ‘imperialism of free seas’ provided further impetus for intervention.The Coulan expedition provides a good case study in Britain’s circumvention of international law in deploying force to defend her interests.