The Convention of Peking (Beijing) comprises three unequal treaties concluded in October–November 1860 that ended the Second Opium War (the Arrow War, 1856–1860). After Anglo-French forces captured Beijing and burned the Yuanmingyuan (Old Summer Palace) on 18 October 1860, Prince Gong (Yixin), acting for the fugitive Xianfeng Emperor, signed conventions with Lord Elgin for Britain (24 October), Baron Gros for France (25 October), and the Russian envoy Nikolay Ignatyev (14 November). The conventions ratified the Treaty of Tientsin (Tianjin) of 1858, which the Qing court had refused to honour, and added fresh exactions, marking the entrenchment of the "treaty-port" system and the deepening of China's semi-colonial subjugation.
The British convention ceded the southern part of the Kowloon Peninsula (south of Boundary Street) in perpetuity to Britain, adjoining Hong Kong Island already ceded under the Treaty of Nanking (1842); opened Tianjin as a treaty port; legalised the emigration of Chinese labourers (the "coolie trade") on British ships; increased the Tientsin indemnity to eight million taels each for Britain and France; and reaffirmed toleration of Christianity and the right of missionaries to travel and hold property in the interior. The French convention secured parallel terms, including the restoration of confiscated Catholic properties. The separate Sino-Russian Convention of Peking confirmed Russia's annexation of the territory east of the Ussuri River — over 400,000 square kilometres of Outer Manchuria including the future Vladivostok — building on the Treaty of Aigun (1858); Russia, despite not fighting, gained the most territory by posing as mediator.
The conventions accelerated the cumulative apparatus of foreign control: extraterritoriality, fixed low tariffs, the most-favoured-nation clause, and the legalisation of the opium trade established at Tientsin. The 1860 settlement also permitted permanent foreign legations in Beijing, prompting the creation in 1861 of the Zongli Yamen, China's first proto–foreign ministry. The Kowloon cession of 1860, together with the 1842 cession of Hong Kong Island and the 1898 lease of the New Territories, formed the territorial basis of British Hong Kong until its retrocession to the People's Republic of China on 1 July 1997 under the Sino-British Joint Declaration of 1984. The Russian gains, by contrast, were never reversed, and the boundary they fixed remains the basis of the modern Sino-Russian frontier, finally demarcated by agreements in 1991, 2004 and 2008.
For the exam, the Convention of Peking is core to modern-Chinese-history and world-history papers (UPSC GS-I world history, optional history; CSS/BCS general knowledge; FSOT) and is examined as a node in the chain of "unequal treaties" running from Nanking (1842) through Tientsin (1858), Peking (1860), Shimonoseki (1895) and the Boxer Protocol (1901). Typical question angles ask candidates to distinguish which treaty ceded Kowloon versus Hong Kong Island, to identify Russia's territorial windfall without combat, and to link the 1860 settlement to the "century of humiliation" narrative central to Chinese nationalism and to the 1997 Hong Kong handover.
Example
In November 1860, Russian envoy Nikolay Ignatyev signed the Sino-Russian Convention of Peking, securing for the Tsar Outer Manchuria east of the Ussuri River — including the site of Vladivostok — without firing a shot.
Frequently asked questions
Britain obtained the cession in perpetuity of southern Kowloon Peninsula, south of Boundary Street, adjoining Hong Kong Island ceded in 1842. It also opened Tianjin as a treaty port and legalised Chinese labour emigration on British vessels.