Lady Hughes Affair

Ships and hongs in Canton in 1780, the place of the incident.

The Lady Hughes Affair was a 1784 diplomatic incident between Britain and China. On November 24, 1784, a gunner from a British ship in Canton harbor fired a salute for a Danish ship, which seriously wounded three Chinese men in a nearby boat. Two of them were dead soon. In response, Chinese officials detained the Lady Hughes until the British handed over the gunner. The gunner was then executed by strangulation, an outcome that the British were very displeased with.[1][2][3]

The British criticized the decision, saying that justice was too harsh and the gunner lacked due legal process.[4] These criticisms ultimately helped contribute to the ultimate imposition of extraterritoriality regimes in China.[5]

Although the British claimed that the deaths of the two Chinese were accidental, this has been questioned by subsequent scholarship. Under English law, for a homicide to be considered accidental it needed to occur as part of a lawful act, and the British were aware that firing salutes was a felony.[5][1]

  1. ^ a b Chen, Li (2016). Chinese Law in Imperial Eyes: Sovereignty, Justice, and Transcultural Politics. Columbia University Press. doi:10.7312/chen17374.5.
  2. ^ Spence, Jonathan (2001-04-06). "Breaking News, Analysis, Politics, Blogs, News Photos, Video, Tech Reviews". Time. ISSN 0040-781X. Retrieved 2022-09-10.
  3. ^ Wright, Arnold (1908). Twentieth Century Impressions of Hongkong, Shanghai, and other Treaty Ports of China  – via Wikisource.
  4. ^ Hsü, Immanuel Chung-yueh (2000). The rise of modern China: = Zhong guo jin dai shi (6. ed.). New York: Oxford University Press. p. 191. ISBN 978-0195125047. Retrieved 24 March 2024.
  5. ^ a b Carter, James (2020-11-25). "Justice during imperial China: Reexamining the 'Lady Hughes' affair of 1784". The China Project. Retrieved 2022-09-10.