Opium Wars

Combat at Guangzhou (Canton) during the Second Opium War

The Opium Wars (simplified Chinese: 鸦片战争; traditional Chinese: 鴉片戰爭; pinyin: Yāpiàn Zhànzhēng), also known as the Anglo-Chinese Wars, lasted from 1839 to 1842 and 1856 to 1860, the climax of a trade dispute between China under the Qing Dynasty and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. British smuggling of opium from British India into China and the Chinese government's efforts to enforce its drug laws erupted in conflict.

China's defeat in both wars left its government having to tolerate the opium trade. Britain forced the Chinese government into signing the Treaty of Nanking and the Treaty of Tianjin, also known as the Unequal Treaties, which included provisions for the opening of additional ports to foreign trade, for fixed tariffs; for the recognition of both countries as equal in correspondence; and for the giving of Hong Kong to Britain. The British also gained extraterritorial rights. Several countries followed Britain and sought similar agreements with China. Many Chinese found these agreements humiliating and these sentiments are considered to have contributed to the Taiping Rebellion (1850-1864), the Boxer Rebellion (1899-1901), and the downfall of the Qing Dynasty in 1912.

Background

Direct maritime trade between Europe and China started in the 16th century, after the Portuguese established the settlement of Goa in India, and shortly thereafter that of Macau in southern China. After Spanish acquisition of the Philippines, the pace of exchange between China and the West accelerated dramatically. Manila galleons brought in far more silver to China than the Silk Road. The Qing government attempted to limit contact with the outside world, only allowing trade through the port of Canton (now Guangzhou). Severe red-tape and licensed monopolies were set up to restrict the flow of trade, resulting in high retail prices for imported goods and limited demand. Spain began to sell opium, along with New World products such as tobacco and corn, to the Chinese in order to prevent a trade deficit.

As a result of high demand for tea, silk, and porcelain in Britain and the low demand for British commodities in China, Britain had a large trade deficit with China and had to pay for these goods with silver. Against strong protest from the weakened Qing Dynasty, Britain began exporting opium to China from British India in the 18th century to counter its deficit. The opium trade took off rapidly, and the flow of silver began to reverse. The Yongzheng Emperor prohibited the sale and smoking of opium in 1729 because of the large number of addicts, and only allowed a small amount of opium imports for medicinal purposes.

Growth of the opium trade

Opium destruction

The British East India Company pursued a monopoly on production and export of opium in India after Britain conquered Bengal in the Battle of Plassey in 1757.

In 1773 the Governor-General of Bengal pursued the monopoly on the sale of opium in earnest and abolished the old opium syndicate at Patna. For the next fifty years opium was the key to the East India Company's hold on India. Importation of opium into China was against Chinese law (although China did produce a small quantity domestically). Thus, the British East India Company would buy tea in Canton on credit, carrying no opium, but would instead sell opium at the auctions in Calcutta. Eventually the opium would reach the Chinese coast aboard British ships and be smuggled into China by Chinese merchants. In 1797 the company ended the role of local Bengal purchasing agents and instituted the direct sale of opium by farmers to the company. British exports of opium to China skyrocketed from an estimated fifteen tons in 1730 to 75 tons in 1773, shipped in over two thousand "chests", each containing 140 pounds (64 kg) of opium.

Earl Macartney's negotiations with the Qianlong Emperor in 1793 to ease trade restrictions between Britain and China were unsuccessful.

In 1799 the Chinese Empire again banned opium imports. The Empire issued the following decree in 1810:

Opium has a harm. Opium is a poison, undermining our good customs and morality. Its use is prohibited by law. Now the commoner, Yang, dares to bring it into the Forbidden City. Indeed, he flouts the law!

However, recently the purchases, eaters, and consumers of opium have become numerous. Deceitful merchants buy and sell it to gain profit. The customs house at the Ch'ung-wen Gate was originally set up to supervise the collection of imports (it had no responsibility with regard to opium smuggling). If we confine our search for opium to the seaports, we fear the search will not be sufficiently thorough. We should also order the general commandant of the police and police- censors at the five gates to prohibit opium and to search for it at all gates. If they capture any violators, they should immediately punish them and should destroy the opium at once. As to Kwangtung and Fukien, the provinces from which opium comes, we order their viceroys, governors, and superintendents of the maritime customs to conduct a thorough search for opium, and cut off its supply. They should in no ways consider this order a dead letter and allow opium to be smuggled out!

The decree had little effect because the Qing government in Beijing in the north could not stop merchants from smuggling opium into China from the south. This, along with the addictive properties of the drug, the desire for more profit by the British East India Company which had been granted a monopoly on trade with China by the British government, and the fact that Britain wanted silver (see gold standard) furthered the opium trade. By the 1820s China was importing 900 tons of opium from Bengal annually.

Napier Affair to the First Opium War (1839–1843)

Lin Zexu's "memorial" (摺奏) written directly to Queen Victoria

Main article: First Opium War

In 1834 to accommodate the revocation of the East India Company's monopoly, the British sent Lord William John Napier to Macau. He tried to circumvent the restrictive Canton Trade laws which forbade direct contact with Chinese officials by attempting to send a letter directly to the Viceroy of Canton but the Viceroy never accepted the letter and closed trade starting on September 2 of that year. Lord Napier had to return to Macau (where he died a few days later) and, unable to force the matter, the British agreed to resume trade under the old restrictions.

Within the Chinese mandarinate there was an ongoing debate over legalizing the opium trade itself. However, this idea was repeatedly rejected and instead, in 1838 the government sentenced native drug traffickers to death. Around this time, the British were selling roughly 1,400 tons per year to China. In March 1839 the Emperor appointed a new strict Confucianist commissioner, Lin Zexu, to control the opium trade at the port of Canton. His first course of action was to enforce the imperial demand that there be a permanent halt to drug shipments into China. When the British refused to end the trade, Lin imposed a trade embargo on the British. On March 27, 1839 Charles Elliot, British Superintendent of Trade, demanded that all British subjects turn over their opium to him, to be confiscated by Commissioner Lin Zexu, amounting to nearly a year's supply of the drug. In a departure from his brief, he promised that the crown would compensate them for the lost opium. While this amounted to a tacit acknowledgment that the British government did not disapprove of the trade, it also forced a huge liability on the exchequer. Unable to allocate funds for an illegal drug but pressed for compensation by the merchants, this liability is cited as one reason for the decision to force a war. After the opium was surrendered, trade was restarted on the strict condition that no more drugs would be smuggled into China. Lin demanded that British merchants had to sign a bond promising not to deal in opium under penalty of death. The British officially opposed signing of the bond, but some British merchants that did not deal in opium were willing to sign. Lin had the opium disposed of by dissolving it in water, salt, and lime, and dumping it into the ocean.

In 1839 Lin took the extraordinary step of presenting a letter directly to Queen Victoria questioning the moral reasoning of the British government. Citing what he understood to be a strict prohibition of the trade within Great Britain, Lin questioned how it could then profit from the drug in China. He wrote: "Your Majesty has not before been thus officially notified, and you may plead ignorance of the severity of our laws, but I now give my assurance that we mean to cut this harmful drug forever." Opium was not illegal in England at the time, however, where comparably smaller quantities were imported to be smoked.

It is believed that the queen never received Lin's letter. The British government and merchants offered no response to Lin, accusing him instead of destroying their property. Lin had had a large quantity of opium destroyed; it had been confiscated mainly from British traders, put into a specially-dug canal, treated with lye and washed out to sea. When the British learned of what was taking place in Canton, as communications between these two parts of the world took months at this time, they sent a large British Indian army, which arrived in June 1840.

British military superiority was clearly evident during the armed conflict. British warships, constructed using such innovations as steam power combined with sail and the use of iron in shipbuilding, wreaked havoc on coastal towns; such ships (like the Nemesis) were not only virtually indestructible but also highly mobile and able to support a gun platform with very heavy guns. In addition, the British troops were armed with modern muskets and cannons, unlike the Qing forces. After the British took Canton, they sailed up the Yangtze and took the tax barges, a devastating blow to the Empire as it slashed the revenue of the imperial court in Beijing to just a small fraction of what it had been.

In 1842 the Qing authorities sued for peace, which concluded with the Treaty of Nanjing negotiated in August of that year and ratified in 1843. In the treaty, China was forced to pay an indemnity to Britain, open five ports to Britain, and cede Hong Kong to Queen Victoria. In the supplementary Treaty of the Bogue, the Qing empire also recognized Britain as an equal to China and gave British subjects extraterritorial privileges in treaty ports. In 1844, the United States and France concluded similar treaties with China, the Treaty of Wanghia and Treaty of Whampoa respectively.

Second Opium War (1856-1860)

Main article: Second Opium War

The Second Opium War, or Arrow War, broke out following an incident in October 1856 during which Chinese officials boarded a vessel by the name of Arrow outside the port of Whampoa. The eponymous ship was owned by a Chinese privateer who had registered the vessel with British authorities in Hong Kong (according to some to facilitate privateering); he had received a one-year permit from the Hong Kong authorities but it was expired when inspected by the official who boarded the vessel. The crew were accused of piracy and smuggling and were arrested. In response, the British consulate in Guangzhou insisted the vessel was under British jurisdiction and accused Chinese officials of tearing down and violating the British flag during the inspection. The war started when British forces attacked Guangzhou in 1856.

French forces joined the British intervention after a French missionary Auguste Chapdelaine was killed by a local mandarin in China. Other nations became involved diplomatically, although they didn't provide military personnel.

The Treaty of Tianjin was created in July 1858 but was not ratified by China until two years later; this would prove to be a very important document in China's early modern history as it was one of the primary Unequal Treaties.

Hostilities broke out once more in 1859 after China refused to establish a British embassy in Beijing as had been promised by the Treaty of Tianjin. Fighting erupted both in Hong Kong as well as Beijing, where the British set out to destroy the Summer Palace and the Old Summer Palace. China ratified the Treaty of Tianjin at the Convention of Peking in 1860, ending the war. The treaty provided for the creation of ten new port cities, permission for foreigners (including Protestant and Catholic missionaries) to travel throughout the country, and indemnities of three million ounces of silver to Great Britain and two million to France.

Hero in the war against opium

Main article: Lin Zexu

Lin Zexu, the Governor-General of Hunan and Hubei, recognized the consequences of opium abuse and warned the Daoguang Emperor of this nationwide problem. The Manchu emperor authorized him to do so, and Lin Zexu embarked on an anti-opium campaign which saw the immediate arrest of 1,700 opium dealers and confiscation and destruction of 2.6 million pounds of opium.

These actions have earned Lin Zexu fame in the annals of Chinese history as a man of superlative conduct and high moral ground, a shepherd of his people. Although his war against the illicit drug ultimately failed and he was made the scapegoat for setting into motion events leading to British military retaliation in the First Opium War, Lin Zexu is popularly viewed as a hero of 19th century China who stood up against European imperialism and whose likeness has been immortalized at various locations around the world.

See also

• David Sassoon
• Imperialism in Asia
• History of China
• Opium
• Unequal treaties

Further reading

• Jack Beeching, The Chinese Opium Wars (1975), ISBN 0-15-617094-9
• Maurice Collis, Foreign Mud, An account of the Opium War (1946), ISBN 0-571-19301-3
• Timothy Brook and Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi, editors, Opium Regimes: China, Britain, and Japan, 1839-1952 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000). Collection of well-informed articles.
• Carl A. Trocki, Opium, Empire and the Global Political Economy: A Study of the Asian Opium Trade, 1750-1950 (London: Routledge, 1999).
• Yangwen Zheng, The Social Life of Opium in China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). Outstanding comprehensive social history.
• Brian Inglis, The Opium War (Coronet, 1976), ISBN 0-340-23468-7
• Diana L. Ahmad, The Opium Debate and Chinese Exclusion Laws in the Nineteenth-century American West (University of Nevada Press, 2007). Drugs and Racism in the Old West.
• Wolseley, GJ., Narrative of the War with China in 1860 (Longman, Green, Longman & Roberts, 1862)
• Waley, A. The Opium War through Chinese Eyes (George Allen & Unwin, 1958)
• Chesneaux, J. and others. China from the Opium Wars to the 1911 Revolution (Harvester Press, Sussex, 1977).