Qishan (official)

Qishan (Manchu: ᡴᡳᡧᠠᠨ, Möllendorff: Kišan, Abkai: Kixan; 18 January 1786 – 3 August 1854), courtesy name Jing'an, was a Mongol nobleman and official of the late Qing dynasty. He was of Khalkha Mongol and Borjigit descent, his family was under the Plain Yellow Banner of the Manchu Eight Banners, and he lived during the reign of the Qianlong, Jiaqing, Daoguang, and Xianfeng emperors. He served as the Imperial Commissioner of the Qing Dynasty, the second highest-ranking position in the Qing government only below that of emperor, twice. He served in the First Opium War and Taiping Rebellion and famously negotiated and signed the Convention of Chuenpi with British plenipotentiary Charles Elliot.

Qishan was born in Beijing on 18 January 1786. His early career include obtaining the position of a Yinsheng in the Imperial Examination and entering the Qing bureaucracy in 1806, at the age of 20. He was part of the Jiaqing Emperor's bodyguard force from 1808 to 1814, and served as Vice-commander of the Mongol Plain Yellow Banner from 1814 to 1817, Junior Vice-President of the Court of Colonial Affairs from 1817 to 1819, Provincial governor of Henan province from 1819 to 1821, and Financial Commissioner of Jiangsu from 1821 to 1825. He also served as the Governor-General of Liangjiang, one of the richest regions in the Qing Dynasty, from 1825 to 1827. From 1831 to 1840, Qishan governed Zhili, the province surrounding the Qing capital, Beijing.

In 1840, Qishan was selected to succeed Lin Zexu as the Qing Dynasty's Imperial Commissioner. After successful negotiations in the Hai River and in Guangzhou, Qishan and British Superintendent of Trade in China, Charles Elliot, drafted and signed the Convention of Chuenpi, which demanded the Qing cede Hong Kong Island, pay an indemnity of 6 million silver ingots to compensate for the opium destroyed in 1838, and to reopen Guangzhou for opium trade by February 1841. When Qishan was discovered to have drafted and signed this convention, the Daoguang Emperor was infuriated, leading to Qishan's arrest and stripping of his ranks. He was reinstated as an official in 1842, and was appointed terms as the Viceroy of Tibet in 1843, Sichuan in 1846, and Shaan-Gan (Shaanxi and Gansu) in 1849. In 1852, he was once again appointed as Imperial Commissioner of the Qing to stop the Taiping Rebellion, which resulted in a failure. Qishan died in the summer of 1854.