Treaty of Wanghia

The Treaty of Wanghia, spelled Wangxia or Wang-hsia in the United States Department of State account, was the first formal treaty between the United States and China, signed in 1844 at Wangxia, a suburb of the Portuguese port city of Macau. It served as an American counterpart to the Anglo-Chinese Treaty of Nanjing that ended the First Opium War in 1842. President John Tyler chose Massachusetts Congressman Caleb Cushing to negotiate, and the terms were reached quickly because the Chinese side agreed in order to keep all foreigners on the same footing. The treaty copied many key terms of the Nanjing settlement and opened five treaty ports to trade, Guangzhou, Xiamen, Fuzhou, Ningbo and Shanghai, where foreigners could first own land in China. It was longer than the British treaty: Article 17 protected American missionaries, Article 18 let Americans in China employ tutors to learn Chinese, and Americans accused of crimes in China were to be tried by American officials under extraterritoriality, except that those involved in the opium trade or smuggling were left to Chinese law. Together with the most-favored-nation clause, these terms made it one of the agreements later called the unequal treaties.