During the First Opium War, British plenipotentiary Charles Elliot and Qing commissioner Qishan concluded a tentative, unratified arrangement (the Convention of Chuenpi). It included terms for Britain to obtain Hong Kong Island, but both governments later rejected the convention, and it was superseded by the 1842 Treaty of Nanjing.
Following the Chuenpi arrangements, Commodore Gordon Bremer conducted a formal possession ceremony at Possession Point, raising the Union Jack. This date is widely treated as the start of British administration of Hong Kong.
The First Opium War ended with the Treaty of Nanjing, under which Qing China ceded Hong Kong Island to Britain and agreed to additional commercial and diplomatic concessions that reshaped Qing foreign relations.
Ratifications of the Treaty of Nanjing were formally exchanged in Hong Kong, bringing the treaty fully into force and consolidating the legal framework for Britain’s colonial possession of Hong Kong Island.
The Supplementary Treaty of the Bogue implemented and expanded the Treaty of Nanjing’s regime, granting Britain key provisions such as extraterritoriality and most-favoured-nation status—important precedents for later treaty negotiations.
In the Second Opium War, Britain and Qing China signed the Treaty of Tianjin (part of the broader Treaties of Tianjin), granting further openings and rights for foreign powers. Qing resistance to ratification helped set conditions for renewed fighting and the later Convention of Peking.
After Anglo-French forces advanced on Beijing, the Sino-British Convention of Peking confirmed earlier settlements and required Qing China to cede southern Kowloon (south of today’s Boundary Street) and Stonecutters Island to Britain in perpetuity, expanding the Hong Kong colony beyond the island.
Britain and Qing China concluded the Convention for the Extension of Hong Kong Territory (often called the Second Convention of Peking), leasing the New Territories (and related areas, including what became known as New Kowloon) to Britain for 99 years—crucial to the colony’s later geography and governance.
The 99-year lease created by the 1898 convention took effect from 1 July 1898, establishing the temporal limit that would later drive the end-of-colonial-era negotiations over Hong Kong’s future.
Sino‑British Treaties and the Hong Kong Cessions (1841–1898)
