Introduction
The Opium Wars of 1839-42 and 1856-60 were a miserably low point in British history, as Jawaharlal Nehru makes painfully clear in this passage. Opium grown in India was smuggled into China by British merchants to feed the addiction of millions of Chinese, until the problem became so bad that the Chinese imperial government was obliged to step up efforts against the smugglers.
MATTERS became worse after 1834, when the British Government put an end to the monopoly of the East India Company in the China trade, and threw this open to all British merchants. There was a sudden increase in opium-smuggling, and the Chinese Government at last decided to take strong action to suppress it.
They chose a good man for this purpose. Lin Tse-hsu was appointed a special commissioner to suppress the smuggling, and he took swift and vigorous action.* He went down to Canton in the south, which was the chief centre for this illegal trade, and ordered all the foreign merchants there to deliver to him all the opium they had. Lin also told the foreign merchants that no ship would be allowed to enter Canton unless the captain gave an undertaking that he would not bring opium. If this promise was broken, the Chinese Government would confiscate the ship and its entire cargo.
Commissioner Lin did not realize that the consequences were going to be hard on China. Whether opium was good or bad for the Chinese was immaterial. What the Chinese Government wanted to do did not much matter; but what did matter was that smuggling opium into China was a very profitable job for British merchants.*
* Lin Tse-hsu or Lin Zexu (1785-1850), from Fuzhou in Fujian Province, served successively as Viceroy of Huguang (1837–1839), Liangguang (1840), Shaan-Gan (1845) and Yun-Gui (1848).
* Infuriatingly, historians persist in referring to the wars as a quest for ‘free trade’, whereas there was nothing free about it — just as there is nothing free about most ‘free trade’ deals today. Victorian free-traders were highly critical: in 1857 Richard Cobden (1804-1865) led a Commons revolt which censured Prime Minister Lord Palmerston’s China policy during the Second Opium War (1856-1860). According to Lord Welby (1832-1915), a former Permanent Secretary to the Treasury, Cobden blamed Britain’s scramble for China “on that fear of Russia which has so long haunted the nation, which plunged us into the Crimea War, the Afghanistan War, and which more recently led the Government to take a course in China which has not enhanced our reputation.”
Précis
In 1840, the China’s imperial government ordered a clampdown on opium smuggling, appointing commissioner Lin Zexu to the task. Lin’s anti-smuggling measures proved highly inconvenient for British merchant shipping, and instead of helping Lin to refine his approach the British chose to go to war in the hope of protecting their very profitable China trade. (55 / 60 words)
In 1840, the China’s imperial government ordered a clampdown on opium smuggling, appointing commissioner Lin Zexu to the task. Lin’s anti-smuggling measures proved highly inconvenient for British merchant shipping, and instead of helping Lin to refine his approach the British chose to go to war in the hope of protecting their very profitable China trade.
Variations: 1.increase the length of this precis to exactly 60 words. 2.reduce the length of this precis to exactly 50 words. 3.introduce one of the following words into the precis: about, because, just, may, ought, since, unless, until.
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