New'Oldest letter' from Hong Kong to the West goes up for auction
Missionary's mail, written two years before British rule, expected to fetch up to HK$300,000
The oldest known letter sent from Hong Kong to the West – written two years before British colonial rule began – will go up for auction on Sunday with an expected price of up to HK$300,000.
He was one of 2,000 Britons expelled from Canton – today’s Guangzhou – before the onset of the war, after which Hong Kong Island was ceded to Britain in 1841.
Writing to sister and mother, Morrison wrote that “the feeling of the Chinese is that we are protecting the opium trade”, according to Rob Schneider, business development director at auctioneer InterAsia.
The group first travelled to Macau, but found that the Portuguese colonial rulers did not want them to stay there. Morrison and the 60 or so others onboard the Fort William waited in what are now Hong Kong waters for the arrival of a British expeditionary force from India in 1840.
This letter is more interesting because it’s from a civilian… he’s caught in the middle [of the Sino-British conflict]
“At that time, there were only several thousand people on Hong Kong Island. All foreigners were banned from going to land to search for food, so they didn’t manage to get many supplies,” Schneider said.