The Closing Events of the Campaign in China: The Operations in the Yang-Tze-Kiang, and Treaty of Nanking

This 1843 work by naval officer Granville Gower Loch (1813-53) is based on his journal of the capture of Chinkiang (Zhenjiang) in July 1842, the last major battle of the First Opium War. Covering not only military and diplomatic activity, the work also contains Loch’s colourful descriptions of the region’s landscape, architecture, commerce, people and customs. Having been promoted to captain in August 1841, Loch had gone to China as a volunteer and aide-de-camp to General Sir Hugh Gough (1779-1869). Following service in the West Indies, he was killed on a mission in Burma during the Second Anglo-Burmese War. A monument was erected to his memory in St Paul’s Cathedral. One of his brothers, Henry Brougham Loch (1827-1900), also later served under Gough and his Personal Narrative of Occurrences during Lord Elgin’s Second Embassy to China (1869) has been reissued in this series.