The Jinling Machinery Manufacturing Bureau 金陵机器制造局

A receipt, late nineteenth century, reading 金陵机器製造總局 拾 月 初五 日封 (Jinling Machinery Manufacturing Bureau; Fifth day of the tenth lunar month)

Britain defeated China in the Opium Wars (1842–1860) largely because China’s military was medieval. Soldiers still carried swords and pole weapons, firearms were few and musket-type, good for sniping but slow to load, and though Chinese forces had cannon they were small calibre, often poorly made and liable to explode. The British navy had for decades been the strongest in the world, while by comparison the Chinese war fleet was disorganised, badly-armed and incompetently led.

In the wake of their victory Britain and her European competitors forced China open to trade, built their own settlements – the Treaty Ports – and began meddling in China’s internal politics. Chinese leaders became polarised: conservatives wanted to ignore these intrusions and preserve the old ways; while reformers believed the country needed to master the very technologies which had defeated them, modernise the military, and kick the foreigners out – or at least force them to the negotiating table as equals.

One of these reformers was Li Hongzhang, a veteran general and rising political statesman, who in 1862 commissioned military surgeon Halliday Macartney* (马格里) to establish a modern armaments factory. The massively destructive Taiping Uprising was entering its final phase and Li Hongzhang’s forces needed increased firepower to defeat the rebels. Unable to produce their own munitions, the Chinese were buying them from foreign companies at ruinous expense.

Nanjing Arsenal c1872 with some of its products. Photo by John Thomson

McCartney, “aided by a number of English Engineers and practical mechanics”, set up a Foreign Artillery Bureau (苏州洋炮局) at the recently-recaptured city of Suzhou; some second-hand machinery was purchased and capacity reached around 1500 shells per week.  

In 1865 the factory relocated to Nanjing, renamed as the Jinling Machinery Manufacturing Bureau (金陵机器制造局) but generally known in English as the Nanking Arsenal, with Macartney and Liu Youyu (刘佑禹) as managers. Built near the ruins of the Porcelain Pagoda, destroyed during the Taiping Uprising, photographer John Tompson visited the factory in 1872 and reported that it incorporated some of the pagoda’s former stonework and that “many hundreds of tons of guns and ammunition are yearly manufactured”. In 1868 the original mechanics were replaced by new recruits from the British Royal Arsenal at Woolich; Macartney retired in 1875 but a decade later the complex was greatly expanded with the addition of a two-storey factory building designed in the European manner.

Inside the Arsenal c1872. Machinery for manufacturing “many hundreds of tons of guns and ammunition”. Photo by John Thomson

In 1912 the arsenal was renamed “Jinling Manufacturing Bureau”. It survives today as the Nanjing Chenguang Group, part of the China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation.

*Halliday McCartney (1833–1906) served in the Crimea and fought against the Taipings with Gordon and Burgevine. He married Li Hongzhang’s niece in 1864; later their son George McCartney spent 28 years in China’s far northwest as the British representative at Kashgar. After retiring from the arsenal, in 1876 Halliday became secretary at the Chinese Legation in London. In 1896 he arranged the detention of visiting republican revolutionary Sun Yat-Sen, intending to send him back to China for execution, but was forced to release him after a public outcry.