A folly fort or just folly is a specific type of fort built in shallow water, near the shore, in the second half of the 19th century. The main characteristic of a folly fort was that it was built on the water, very close to the edge, very small, and exclusively for military defense with no intention of being used as normal living quarters. They were really defense fortifications rather than what were called "forts" at the time, which were on land and much larger. The name derives from forts built at the time in the south of England by

Lord Palmerston Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston, (20 October 1784 – 18 October 1865) was a British statesman who was twice Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in the mid-19th century. Palmerston dominated British foreign policy during the period ...

and which were called "

Palmerston's follies The Palmerston Forts are a group of forts and associated structures around the coasts of the United Kingdom and Ireland. The forts were built during the Victorian period on the recommendations of the 1860 Royal Commission on the Defence of the U ...

". Later, similar forts built by the Europeans in China came to be called "folly fort" or simply "folly". A battle at French Folly Fort

The French Folly and Dutch Folly were forts in the

Pearl River The Pearl River, also known by its Chinese name Zhujiang or Zhu Jiang in Mandarin pinyin or Chu Kiang and formerly often known as the , is an extensive river system in southern China. The name "Pearl River" is also often used as a catch-a ...

Guangzhou Guangzhou (, ; ; or ; ), also known as Canton () and alternatively romanized as Kwongchow or Kwangchow, is the capital and largest city of Guangdong province in southern China. Located on the Pearl River about north-northwest of Hong Kon ...

(then

romanized Romanization or romanisation, in linguistics, is the conversion of text from a different writing system to the Roman (Latin) script, or a system for doing so. Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written text, and ...

as "Canton"), which the Europeans used during the

Second Opium War The Second Opium War (), also known as the Second Anglo-Sino War, the Second China War, the Arrow War, or the Anglo-French expedition to China, was a colonial war lasting from 1856 to 1860, which pitted the British Empire and the French Emp ...

. The Dutch folly was located at , which was then a small island in the river. Today two skyscrapers stand in the same place, which is at the water's edge and no longer an island due to land reclamation.Se
Commons Dutch_Folly_Fort
/ref> The French folly was located at , which is now well inland due to land reclamation. The British captured it on 6 November 1856 in an intense, one-hour action during the

second Opium War The Second Opium War (), also known as the Second Anglo-Sino War, the Second China War, the Arrow War, or the Anglo-French expedition to China, was a colonial war lasting from 1856 to 1860, which pitted the British Empire and the French Emp ...

. A similar fort that saw action at the time was Macao Fort (), but it was never called "folly", possibly because the Chinese built it on a larger island that also had a temple. This island, fort, and temple still exist.

References

Coastal fortifications Sea forts Fortifications in China {{fort-stub