Hi,
I’d like to know if the drain of British silver to balance Britain’s balance of payments deficit with China was the real reason for Britain’s colonial policy toward China. If it wasn’t the main reason, can it be said to have been a major reason. After all it the war also coincided with the 1857 worldwide recession/depression. I look forward to your feedback.
davidmich
The Chinese did love them some silver; many of them also loved them some some opium as well, because 'tis a hard life, and the national prohibition on opium went as well, and was bound for the same end, as the prohibition on alcohol in America 70 odd years later.
However, people don’t go to war over silver — gold, yes — nor over forcing ( if it can be called forcing when the forcee grabs everything with both arms and immediately comes back for more ) drugs. Actually, on one level both sides were simply swapping one drug for another since the British were equally addicted to tea.
Nor was the British Empire’s attitude to the Chinese Empire ‘colonialist’ ( except for those dyspeptic leftists who regard traditional family structure with the parents on top as ‘colonialist’ ) since having Hong Kong as entrepot was pretty much the same as Italy owning an Island a few miles across off Massachusetts would have on the bulk of the United States; or even ‘imperialist’ [ a separate thing, even as simply, extraction of resources ], in this case it was simple plain war, and the war was simply to force the Chinese to trade with the world — which is a pretty bad thing to do, since it was solely their choice. Neither the British liberal government nor the rulers of the Chinese Empire had an excess of wisdom in their actions, but the British probably had the edge when it came to workers’ rights.
It would be the height of hypocrisy for anyone who believes in drug legalization to blame the British, and I’m one of those, particularly as the dreams induced by maryjane and opium seem much the same, as do the exaggerated consequences. Where they can be blamed is their participation in the American-led anti-opium racket of the League of Nations a little later.
Yeah, but then the Qing banned the sale of one half of the drug equation, which was a HUGE market. I expect the British, beyond a “no slanty-eyed yellow devil is going to tell US chaps what to do !” sentiment which doubtless played a part, figured that going to war with China would cost them less money in the long term than sitting on all that opium they’d been producing.
Which they were right about, as the Qing military was pretty crummy at that point.
Uh, no, no the opium wars were absolutely part of a colonialist and imperialist enterprise - and not just on Great Britain’s part either. Read up on the break up of China, man. I don’t think any of the Powers wanted to make China a direct colony of theirs - too big to rule, too many people - but they all wanted to reduce it to a protectorate.
In what way exactly is using military might, then financial shenanigans, to force another country to do things your way *not *imperialist ?
The dreams might be the same, but the consequences really aren’t. Opium withdrawal is the same as any opioid withdrawal - up to one month of pain, cramping, nausea, vomiting, shakes… it’s not pretty, and it’s not easy either.
Beyond that, and regardless of what your personal opinions on drug legislation, China was a sovereign nation. The British had absolutely no right to bully them into doing anything, much less ceding territory, resource monopolies and granting British citizens special rights.
France was an equal partner in this war.
Actually, I remember Chinese peasantry kidnapped some British troops in this war and tortured them to death: they tried this on the French also, but only once, because the French were more ruthless and fearsome than the Chinese.
Oh, absolutely. As I said, most every European power thoroughly messed with China throughout the XIXth century and the early XXth, with a lot of collusion between them in the endeavour.
I forget where I saw the claim, but it was that China at the time didn’t really care about people using opium per se, it was more an anti-colonialism motivation. That the “drugs are bad mm’kay” is sort of a modern viewpoint assumed to be behind the opium wars.
Or in other words if the opium had been grown inside China it wouldn’t have been an issue, how true is this?
Bit of column A, bit of column B.
It was not solely about opium use, the Qing and the Brits had been butting diplomatic heads for a while over a number of issues and both sides were getting exasperated with the other. I don’t think we can dub that anti-colonialism per se, however. In 1839 there was precious little occidental presence in China, or colonies in SE Asia to begin with (save for India obviously). In China they were only allowed trade (but not residence) in the port of Guangzhou/Canton - which is one of the things that pissed off the Brits. And of course, the first opium war was the source of the very first unequal treaty China had to endure, i.e. the first *actual *manifestation of colonialism.
Now, onto the “opium bad, m’kaay” aspect : it is true that, historically, the Chinese in general and the Qing dynasty had never had a problem with it per se. The problem they faced was not, however, that some people got high (by which I mean a moral objection), it’s the sheer *number *of people who’d taken to getting high, and that this growth was rapidly accelerating. Pasting numbers from my SE Asian history textbook, which are based on East India Company ledgers :
[QUOTE=Nora Wang]
1729 : 200 crates
1750 : 600
1773 : 1,000
1790 : 4,054
1800 : 4,570
1810 : 4,968
1820 : 5,106
1823 : 7,082
1828 : 13,131
1832 : 23,570
[/QUOTE]
You can see how a non-issue wrt. principles might have become a societal issue when the curve of users started spiking like crazy. And the British were fully aware of the societal damage caused by opium dens, too : opium was quite strictly banned in Great Britain.
Another issue is that, while the central Qing administration in Beijing had started putting out edicts banning the use and commerce of opium as early as 1789, the local administrators and the merchant guilds in Guangzhou didn’t give a fuck because they made hella money out of it, be it by taking part in the trade/smuggling or because they were taking bribes from the EIC. So that might have been a factor in sending Lin Zexu over too, a play by the Qing emperors to reassert their authority over a turbulent province. One last problem is that the trade had further economic ramifications beyond just “hundreds of thousands of smoke zombies all over China” : a lot of silver was leaving the country there, and there were currency shortages all across the Canton region. Which naturally had a negative impact on *all *trade and commerce down there.
So, in summary : the first opium war wasn’t *strictly *about opium regulation or the social damage caused by opium fiends, but it was still a big factor.
Ah, crap, I put in all that work and just now I realize we’re talking about the *second *opium war.
In which case, yeah, absolutely, nationalism/anti-colonialism was much more of a factor there and the British wanting the opium trade to be made legal again (they were still smuggling the hell out of it) was just one item on a long list of onerous demands, backed by gunboat and taking advantage of the fact that the Qing were busy trying to put down the Taiping rebellion at the time.
It was pretty much an open mugging at this point, with the French piling on to try and get their own slice of the pie.
I don’t think this is true.
Until the Pharmacy Act of 1868, Opium and opiates were, I think, quite unregulated in the UK.
http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/history/ophs.htm
Even then, all that the law did was require labelling. True restrictions on Opium and opiates use, I think, started up in the 20th century, not the 19th.
Oh and of course one of our most famous literary works is De Quincy’s Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, slightly earlier at 1821 AD, but in general 19th century British people and police viewed other people taking drugs with a profound apathy.
Americans too — and in France some of the Romantics, de Nerval and Baudelaire etc., partook – although their schoolmarmishness was getting into stride: in fact there has started a small cottage industry [ to borrow from the term used to describe those seeking to rehabilitate Stalin ] averring various 19th century American notables took whatever drug the writer is peddling: especially Louisa May Alcott and Abraham Lincoln, and even the monstrous Jefferson himself.
The incident regarding reprisals I mentioned above was in a Chambers’ Magazine of the early 1860s, and involved a large cooking pot. Obviously it could be invented propaganda; but people back then didn’t hate the Chinese enough to care and rather mawkishly in my opinion, absolved the common folk from blame, saying it was the regime at fault. Which is why the Franco-British Expedition committed the foul wicked atrocity of destroying the Summer Palace, in order not to make life worse for the peasantry by other exactions.
Actually I don’t know if life ever got more wretched for the Chinese Peasant in any period, and if one, I would have wolfed down opium like candy.
My mistake, then. I was basing this assertion on the open letter Lin Zexu sent Victoria’s way circa 1839.
[QUOTE=Lin Zexu, excerpted]
We find your country is sixty or seventy thousand li [three li make one mile, ordinarily] from China Yet there are barbanan ships that strive to come here for trade for the purpose of making a great profit The wealth of China is used to profit the barbarians. That is to say, the great profit made by barbarians is all taken from the rightful share of China. By what right do they then in return use the poisonous drug to injure the Chinese people? Even though the barbarians may not necessarily intend to do us harm, yet in coveting profit to an extreme, they have no regard for injuring others. Let us ask, where is your conscience? I have heard that the smoking of opium is very strictly forbidden by your country; that is because the harm caused by opium is clearly understood. Since it is not permitted to do harm to your own country, then even less should you let it be passed on to the harm of other countries – how much less to China! Of all that China exports to foreign countries, there is not a single thing which is not beneficial to peo ple: they are of benefit when eaten, or of benefit when used, or of benefit when resold: all are beneficial. Is there a single article from China which has done any harm to foreign countries?
[/QUOTE]
Having a steam-powered iron gunboat that could go up Chinese rivers blasting everything in its way may have been a factor.
If you have a secret weapon that gives you a huge military advantage and a wealthy empire refuses to do business on your terms…it led to a new kind of diplomacy:
Gunboat diplomacy. Lord Palmerston was quite keen on this.
There were many examples of this sort of intimidation by industrialised countries.
The US did much the same thing, convincing the Japanese that it was advisable to sign a trade agreement that they had hitherto refused to countenance. A display of gunboat firepower by Commodore Perry did the trick. The same approach was made to Korea, some years later.
They looked for an excuse to pick a fight.
Not really a colonial project, more like a protection racket.
It’s a heartfelt letter, but Lin was a bit light on his understanding of the British … after all, the British at the time could not care less (apparently) about their own people drinking themselves to death with gin; why should they care about Chinese people addicted to opium?
Very true indeed.
Also, rather than concentrating on the source, he would have done better to persuade Chinese merchants not to make a profit from the foreign devils. Appealing to their better natures over cupidity or something.
Also, it irritates people to be called barbarians in diplomatic discourse.
I still play Taipan! at odd times, although it’s a tiny, tiny game. There’s nowt like a warehouse full of Opium…
[QUOTE=Claverhouse]
Also, rather than concentrating on the source, he would have done better to persuade Chinese merchants not to make a profit from the foreign devils. Appealing to their better natures over cupidity or something.
[/QUOTE]
He did that too. Well, tried to, anyway.
It’s a lost in translation thing. He just meant “foreigners”, “not Chinese”.
Traditionally Chinese have divided the world in two kinds of people : “Hua”, which is “culturally Chinese” (no ethnic or racial component) and “Yi”, which is everyone else. Yi is commonly translated as “barbarian”, but it’s not 1:1 equivalent - any Yi people or person could become Hua, and Hua people could lose their way and become Yi.
Or, to put it another way, there *was *no Chinese word for “European” besides “barbarian”.
In general, the attitude the Daoguang emperor (and Lin Zexu) had towards European foreigners wasn’t that they were irredeemably wild brutes or anything of the sort, more like children that only needed to be patiently taught how to behave properly.
So, not entirely unlike how many Europeans considered non-Europeans in the colonial era ;).
China accumulated silver in the 16th-17th centuries, as the result of exporting chinaware ceramics wares to the Spanish in Manila. The silver came from the mines of Peru and Bolivia. This trade ran for years, and China accumulate a considerable amount of silver. Later, when western merchants tries to do business in China, they were stymied-the empire only wanted two things (ginseng and silver). So the (forced) import of indian opium solved the trade balance question. Of course, making addicts of a large portion of the citizenry wasn’t very good for British-Chinese relations.
China remained on the silver standard until the 1940s.