ABSTRACT
The 1842 Treaty of Nanjing and the similar treaties by the other powers had been an attempt to make the Chinese abandon their claim to superiority and enter the Western system of international law based on the idea of equal sovereign nations. In this central aim the treaties had failed. The Chinese had, with some small exceptions, carried out the practical provisions of the treaties, but they had not revised their conviction that China was a nation superior and indeed of a different quality to the peoples of the West; foreigners could still not reside in Canton (modern-day Guangzhou), and foreign diplomats could not even enter Beijing.
