Opium Wars

The Opium Wars (simplified Chinese: 鸦片战争; traditional Chinese: 鴉片戰爭; pinyin: Yāpiàn Zhànzhēng), or the Anglo-Chinese Wars were two wars fought in the mid-1800s that were the climax of a long dispute between China and Britain. In the second, France fought alongside Britain. The conflict began with the growing trade deficit Britain had with China and the smuggling of opium to China by the British.

Direct maritime trade between Europe and China (without Arabic intermediaries) started in the 16th century, after Portugese settlement of Goa in India, shortly followed by Macau in southern China. After Spanish acquisition of the Philipines, the pace of exchange between China and the West accelerated dramaticly. Manilla Galleons brought in far more silver to China than the ancient land route in iterior asia (the Silk Road). The Qing government attempted to limit contact with the outside world to a minimum for reasons of internal control. Qing only allowed trade through the port of Canton(now Guangzhou). Severe red-tapes and licensed monopolies were set up to restrict the trade flow. The result was very high retail price for imported goods after myriads of tax collectors and middlemen had their take. That led to limited demand for imported goods. In order to prevent a huge balance of trade deficit, Spain began to sell opium to the Chinese, along with New World products such as tobacco and corn.

As a result of high demand for tea in Britain and the low demand for British commodities in China, Britain had to trade tea with silver. Britain was on the gold standard, so it had to buy silver from the European continent. Turmoil on the continent after the French Revolution and subsequent Napoleonic Continental System put a restriction on that trade. To find alternative goods for exchange with China, Britain began exporting opium to China from British India. The opium trade took off rapidly, and the silver flow began to reverse. China had few silver mines of its own; the drop in silver inflow caused a consternation at the court. The Qing Emperor (Dao Guan) had banned opium in China, citing its harmful effects on health and deleterious impact on societal productivity.

In 1839 Lin Zexu wrote a stern letter to Queen Victoria to stop the opium traffic to China, and warned: "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." Victoria did not receive the letter; in any case, she was an opium user herself. He held the entire British merchant population hostage in order to confiscate opium in the warehouse and on British ships, leading to Britain sending a naval squadron from India. Contrary to Lin's estimate, the Chinese navy and armed forces relying on guns purchased from Portugese merchants were no match for the British vessels. Britain prevailed and China was forced to sign unequal treaties giving foreign powers trade privileges in China and yielding Hong Kong to Britain. These treaties led in part to the downfall of the Qing Dynasty, as many countries followed Britain and forced unequal terms of trade with China.

The East India Company (1773–1833)

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 50 years, opium would be key to the East India Company's hold on India. Since importation of opium into China was against Chinese law (China already produced a small quantity domestically), 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 leaving it to be smuggled to China. In 1797, the company ended the role of local Bengal purchasing agents and instituted the direct sale of opium to the company by farmers.

British exports of opium to China skyrocketed from an estimated 15 tons in 1730, to 75 tons in 1773, shipped in over two thousand "chests", each containing 140 pounds (64 kg) of opium.

In 1799, the Chinese Empire reaffirmed its ban on opium imports, and in 1810 the following decree was issued:

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!

(Lo-shu Fu, A Documentary Chronicle of Sino-Western relations, Vol. 1 (1966), page 380)

The decree had little effect; The Qing government was located in Beijing, in the north, too far away to control the merchants who smuggled opium into China from the south. The lack of governmental action, the addictive properties of the drug, the desire for more profit by the British East India Company and merchants, and the fact that Britain wanted silver (see gold standard) combined to further the opium trade. In the 1820s, opium trade averaged 900 tons per year from Bengal to China.

From the Napier Affair through the First Opium War (1834–1843)

Main article: First Opium War

In 1834, to accommodate the revocation of the East India Company's monopoly, the British sent Lord Napier to Macao. He attempted to circumvent the restrictive Canton Trade laws, which forbade direct contact with Chinese officials, and was turned away by the governor of Macao, who promptly closed trade starting on September 2 of that year. The British were not yet ready to force the matter, and agreed to resume trade under the old restrictions, even though Lord Napier implored them to force open the port.

Within the Chinese mandarinate, there was a debate on legalizing opium trade itself, but this was rejected in favor of continued restrictions. In 1838, the death penalty was imposed for native drug traffickers; by this time the British were selling 1,400 tons annually to China. In March of 1839, a new strict confucianist commissioner, Lin Zexu was appointed by the emperor to control the opium trade at the port of Canton. He immediately enforced 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 opium to him, to be confiscated by Commissioner Lin Zexu, amounting to nearly a year's supply of the drug. After the opium was surrendered, trade was restarted on the condition that no more drugs were 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 then disposed of the opium, by dissolving it with water, salt and lime and flushing it out into the ocean.

To avoid direct conflict, Lin also attempted diplomacy. In 1839, Lin wrote a letter to Queen Victoria, questioning her royal government's moral reasonings for enforcing strict prohibition of opium trade within England, Ireland, and Scotland while reaping profits from such trade in the Far East.[1].

Side stepping the moral questions, the British government and merchants accused Lin of destroying their private property, roughly three million pounds of opium. The British responded by sending warships and soldiers, along with a large British Indian army, which arrived in June of 1840.

British military superiority was evident during the armed conflict. British warships attacked coastal towns at will, and their troops, armed with modern muskets and cannons, were able to easily defeat the Qing forces. The British took Canton and then sailed up the Yangtze and took the tax barges, slashing the revenue of the imperial court in Beijing to just a small fraction.

In 1842, the Qing authorities sued for peace, which concluded with the Treaty of Nanjing negotiated in August of that year and accepted in 1843. In the treaty, China agreed to open several low-tariff trade ports to Britain, yielded Hong Kong to Britain, and allowed British missionaries to work in China.

Second Opium War (1856-1860)

Main article: Second Opium War

The Second Opium War, or Arrow War, broke out following an incident in which Chinese officials boarded a vessel near the port of Whampoa, the Arrow in October 1856. Arrow was owned by a Chinese privateer. The Chinese owner registered the vessel with the British authorities in Hong Kong with the purpose of making privateering easier in mind. He received a one year permit from the Hong Kong authorities, but it had already expired when inspected by the Chinese officials who boarded the vessel. Therefore, it was a Chinese national matter and not related with the British in any way. The crew of the Arrow were accused of piracy and smuggling, and were arrested. In response, the British consulate in Guangzhou insisted that Arrow was a British vessel. The British accused the Chinese officials of tearing down and insulting the British flag during inspection. The Second Opium War was started when British forces attacked Guangzhou in 1856.

The Treaty of Tientsin 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 the establishment of a British embassy in Beijing, which had been promised by the Treaty of Tientsin. Fighting erupted in Hong Kong, and in Beijing, where the British set fire to the Summer Palace and the Old Summer Palace after considerable looting took place.

In 1860, at the Convention of Peking, China ratified the Treaty of Tientsin, ending the war, and granting a number of privileges to British (and other Western) subjects within China.

See also

• Imperialism in Asia
• History of China
• Unequal treaties
• Drugs

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.

External links

• Ch'ing China: The Opium Wars