To prevent news of this debacle from inspiring a general insurrection, the emperor was obliged to sign a peace agreement with the foreigners: one of the first of the Unequal Treaties, as they have come to be known. Under the terms of Treaty of Nanjing (and subsequent treaties signed with the French and American governments in the next two years), China was obliged to open five ports for trade with the west, in which foreigners were permitted to reside and were granted extraterritoriality - that is, they would not be subject to Chinese law (inevitably, these ports soon became home to numerous racketeers and hucksters claiming this immunity). Trading relations were completely changed, with a fixed tariff and most favoured trading nation status undermining traditional methods. The Emperor was also required to pay the sum of 21 million silver dollars as indemnity, in part to compensate those traders who had lost their stock of opium. Subsequently, the scale and volume of the opium trade increased significantly under the new trading scheme.
Despite all the provisions of these unequal treaties, the Western powers were still not satisfied and continued to make demands on the weakened Qing court. Ultimately, these led to the Second Opium War.
Grasso, June, Jay Corrin and Michael Kort, Modernization and Revolution in China: from the Opium Wars to World Power, third edition (M.E. Sharpe Inc.: Armonk, New York and London, 2004).
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