For Elliot was fundamentally pessimistic about what could reasonably be achieved in China, preferring to measure success not by the criterion of how much could be won, but rather by that of how much mischief had been prevented. ‘The least that is necessary for your purposes in China is best,’ he mused, after the signing of the tough Treaty of Nanjing in 1842, ‘and those purposes, or that purpose, is the security of your trade.
