I’d certainly heard of the Opium Wars before I became so immersed in the world of Chinese studies, but I knew nothing about them. When I first read the story of these wars, I was incredulous. Today, as we work on various publishing projects designed to help students and professionals see the world from other perspectives, I often think about the hypocrisy of powerful countries when they claim moral superiority. Indeed they often promote things that are genuinely good: democratic elections, human rights, and corporate ethics, for example. But not only do people around the world see hypocrisy today—think of the United States and its election problems going out to police other nation’s free elections—but they remember history better, it seems, than we usually do. Britain’s going to war with China because China wanted to protect its citizens from drug traffic rates right up there with U.S. involvement with right-wing governments in Latin America.Here’s an article about the Opium Wars from the Encyclopedia of Modern Asia, which we published with Scribners in 2002, and a related story from a recent issue of Guanxi: The China Letter.

Opium War

From the Encyclopedia of Modern Asia, Berkshire/Scribners 2002

The First Opium War (1839<N>1842) was the beginning of active foreign aggression against China. The war began over Chinese attempts to prohibit British importation of opium. After China’s defeat, the opium trade continued, but China also lost Hong Kong and was forced to open treaty ports to foreign trade and to accept the unequal treaties, which limited China’s control over its foreign affairs.

Opium imports became a serious concern for the Qing dynasty court in the 1820s, as the court was worried about the effects of opium smoking on officials and soldiers and the supposed drain of silver out of the country. In the 1830s, a debate took place over whether these problems were best dealt with by legalizing and regulating opium or by prohibiting it. Prohibition won, and Lin Zexu was sent to Guangzhou (known popularly by its English name, Canton) to bring about the end of the trade.

The British in Canton were already unhappy that the Chinese government forbade them to trade in other ports, forced them to trade with a group of monopoly merchants (the Cohong) in Canton, and forbade the trade in opium, forcing the British to smuggle it or forgo the enormous profits it brought. British merchants were also unhappy at being subjected to Chinese law, which they regarded as barbaric. The McCartney mission of 1793 and the Amhurst mission of 1816 were intended to win the British full access to Chinese markets and European-style diplomatic relations with China, but both were failures.

Lin Zexu seized and destroyed the British opium at Canton and demanded that foreign merchants pledge not to import opium again. The British took these actions to be justification for war and sent a naval and military force from India. Fighting began in June of 1840. British strategy was to seize the island of Zhoushan, near the mouth of the Chang (Yangtze), and then sail north to Tianjin and demand payment for the seized opium and a complete revision of the relationship between the two countries. The British easily defeated all the Chinese naval and land forces they faced. The Qing court was eventually forced to agree to the Treaty of Nanjing. The Second Opium War 1856<N>1858 (also called the Arrow War) resulted in the 1858 Treaty of Tianjin, which further opened China to foreign penetration. These treaties were the foundation of the system of unequal treaties that would govern China’s relations with the imperialist powers until World War II. The opium trade continued and grew, and the political and economic dislocations caused by the war and the treaty were key causes of the Taiping Rebellion, which lasted from1851 to 1864.

Alan Baumler

Further Reading
Chang, Hsin-pao. (1964) Commissioner Lin and the Opium War. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Polachek, James M. (1992) The Inner Opium War. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Waley, Arthur. (1958) The Opium War through Chinese Eyes. London: Allen & Unwin.

English Tea Drinking and the China Trade

From Guanxi: The China Letter

In the early 19th century, Britain faced a major trade imbalance because of the surging demand for Chinese tea at home and China’s lack of interest in Western products. The pendulum swung drastically in Britain’s favor once its traders began buying opium (which was illegal in China) in Bengal, a colony. The traders would sell the opium in China and then buy tea.
Britain’s profitable drug trade naturally had major negative effects on China’s economy and society, and China pressed Britain to end it. Lin Zexu, imperial commissioner at Guangzhou, was responsible for negotiations. He wrote this well-known letter to Queen Victoria in 1839, the year the Opium War began. That war, which showed the vast superiority of Europe’s military, shaped China’s relations with the West for over a century.

Is there a single article from China that has done any harm to foreign countries? Take tea and rhubarb, for example; the foreign countries cannot get along for a single day without them. If China cuts off these benefits with no sympathy for those who are to suffer, then what can the barbarians rely upon to keep themselves alive? Moreover the woolens, camlets, and longells [i.e., textiles] of foreign countries cannot be woven unless they obtain Chinese silk … As for other foodstuffs, beginning with candy, ginger, cinnamon, and so forth, and articles for use, beginning with silk, satin, chinaware, and so on, all the things that must be had by foreign countries are innumerable. On the other hand, articles coming from the outside to China can only be used as toys. We can take them or get along without them …

The goods from China carried away by your country not only supply your own consumption and use but also can be divided up and sold to other countries, producing a triple profit. Even if you do not sell opium, you still have this threefold profit. How can you bear to go further, selling products injurious to others in order to fulfill your insatiable desire?

From Lin Zexu, “Letter to the English Ruler” (1839), in Wm. Theodore de Bary and Richard Lufrano, comps. Sources of Chinese Tradition: From 1600 through the Twentieth Century. 2nd ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 1I:202. Wm. de Bary was featured in the second issue of Guanxi; his Sources of Chinese Tradition is read by virtually all students of Chinese history and culture.