Wu Jianzhang

Wu Jianzhang (吴健彰, Wú Jiànzhāng) was the Shanghai daotai who, during the Small Swords crisis, agreed the arrangement that put foreign inspectors into the Chinese Customs.

A native of Chaozhou in Guangdong, he began as a merchant of the Canton Thirteen Hongs and became one of the seven chief shareholders of Russell & Co. (旗昌洋行). He acted as daotai from April 1848 and again from August 1851. In the first period he put off French consul Montigny’s request for a settlement south of the Yangjingbang.

In 1853 the Small Swords took the county city and held him; he escaped with American help. Back in office, he borrowed 127,728 taels from foreign merchants against Customs revenue to pay for operations against the rebels. With British, French and American consuls he later signed a nine-article agreement under which each consul nominated a customs inspector, which the gazetteer treats as the beginning of foreign management of Chinese Customs.

After the Qing defeat at the Muddy City Wall in April 1854, he was dismissed and sent to Xinjiang, having first had to accept a revised Land Regulations drafted by the consuls. He died in 1869.