China

Myanmar (Burma)

In 1867 the British gained the right to station a commercial agent at Bhamo in Myanmar, from which they could explore the Irrawaddy River up to the Yunnan border. A British interpreter accompanying a British exploratory mission to Yunnan was killed by local tribesmen on the Yunnan-Myanmar border in February 1875. The British minister in China, Sir Thomas Francis Wade, seized the opportunity to negotiate the Chefoo Convention with China. Negotiated and signed at the northern Shandong city of Yantai (Chefoo) in 1876, the treaty further extended the British rights by opening more Chinese ports to foreign trade and agreeing to a mission to delineate the Yunnan-Myanmar border, though the London government put off its ratification until 1885. Guo Songtao, appointed chief of a mission of apology to Britain, arrived in London in 1877. He was the first Chinese resident minister abroad, and within two years China opened embassies in five major foreign capitals.

When the last king of Myanmar, Thibaw, tried to join with France and Italy to stave off British pressure, Britain sent an ultimatum in October 1885, seized the capital of Mandalay, and annexed the country in January 1886 under the name Burma. During the final bargaining with the British, Thibaw ignored his tributary relations with the Qing, yet China proposed that the Myanmar royal court be preserved even nominally so that it could send a decennial mission to China. Britain refused, but, in a convention signed in July 1886, it agreed that the new Burmese government should send to China a decennial envoy. This outdated practice, however, was abandoned in 1900.