1842. But by then the war had reached its crisis. On 29 August, resigned to defeat, the Qing government signed the Treaty of Nanjing on the British flagship HMS Cornwallis in the Yangtze River. The treaty abolished the old Canton trading system and gave the British favoured nation trading status and four ‘treaty ports’ – Xiamen, Fuzhou, Ningbo and Shanghai – where they could engage in commerce with whomsoever they wished.
