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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 respectively, the climax of a trade dispute between China and the United Kingdom. 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 forced the government to tolerate the opium trade. The United Kingdom coerced the government into signing Unequal Treaties, opening several ports to foreign trade and yielding Hong Kong to Britain. Several countries followed Britain and forced unequal terms of trade onto China. This humiliation at the hand of foreign powers contributed to the Taiping Rebellion (1850-1864), the Boxer Rebellion (1899-1901), and the downfall of the Qing Dynasty in 1911.

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. Britain began illegally 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.

Growth of the opium trade

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 50 years opium would be 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 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 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 imported 900 tons of opium from Bengal annually.

Napier Affair to the First Opium War (1834–1843)

In 1834 to accommodate the revocation of the East India Company's monopoly, the British sent Lord William John 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 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. 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 then disposed of the opium by dissolving it with water, salt and lime and dumping it into the ocean.

In 1839 Lin took the extraordinary step of presenting a "memorial" (摺奏) directly to Queen Victoria questioning the moral reasoning of the royal government. Citing the strict prohibition of the opium trade within England, Ireland, and Scotland, Lin questioned how Britain could then profit from the drug in China. He also 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." Contrary to the accepted Chinese bureaucratic etiquette, through which such missives directly engaged the Emperor, Lin's memorial was never accorded a response.

The British government and merchants offered no response to Lin's memorial, instead accusing Lin of destroying their private property. The British responded by sending a large British Indian army, which arrived in June of 1840.

British military superiority was clearly evident during the armed conflict. British warships wreaked havoc on coastal towns. In addition, the British troops, armed with modern muskets and cannons, greatly outpowered 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.

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

Second Opium War (1856-1860)

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. He received a one year permit from the Hong Kong authorities, but it had already expired when inspected by the Chinese official who boarded the vessel. 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.

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 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.

China ratified the Treaty of Tientsin at the Convention of Peking in 1860, ending the war, legalizing the import of opium, and granting a number of privileges to British and other Western subjects in China.

See also

• 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.

References

1. Hanes, William Travis (2002). Opium Wars: The Addiction of One Empire and the Corruption of Another. p. 3. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
2. Chisholm, Hugh (1911). The Encyclopædia Britannica: A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, Literature and General Information. p. 130.
3. Fu, Lo-shu (1966). A Documentary Chronicle of Sino-Western relations, Volume 1. p. 380.
4. Coleman, Anthony (1999). Millennium. Transworld Publishers. pp. 243–244. ISBN 0-593-04478-9.
5. Modern History Sourcebook:Commissioner Lin:Letter to Queen Victoria, 1839
6. Spence, Jonathan D. The Search for Modern China 2nd ed. pp. 153–155.

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