HMS Wellesley and the British squadron sailing from Hong Kong for the attack on Amoy in 1841. In April 1840, Sir James Graham (1792-1861) brought a motion before the House of Commons censuring the Government’s belligerency, and a young William Gladstone backed him up superbly. “The jealousy of the Chinese towards strangers was well founded” he said, and Britain was only making it more so. There was in any case a far cheaper solution than war. “If we had stopped the exportation of opium from Bengal, and broken up the depot at Lintin, and had checked the growth of it in Malwa, and had put a moral stigma upon it, we should have greatly crippled, if, indeed, we had not entirely extinguished, the trade in it.”
Part 1 of 2
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. (54 / 60 words)
Part Two
Lin Zexu (1785-1850) was the official tasked with stamping out the smuggling operations of British merchants running opium into China from their base in Bengal. The British were pleased to regard his no-nonsense attitude as a slap in the face to the people of England and their Queen, and on that pretext unleashed war. And a pretext it was: in the letters of Queen Victoria’s ministers, opium fades into the background. To the fore is a quest to make China, something of a hermit nation, introduce her millions of consumers to a wide range of British goods at the advantageous prices guaranteed by a lopsided trade deal, and so increase tax revenue for the UK Treasury. No wonder it put Nehru in mind of the Fable of The Wolf and the Lamb.
SO, in the name of national honour, Britain went to war with China in 1840. This war is rightly called the Opium War, for it was fought and won for the right of forcing opium on China.*
China could do little against the British fleet which blockaded Canton and other places. After two years she was forced to submit, and in 1842 the Treaty of Nanking laid down that five ports were to be opened to foreign trade, which meant especially the opium trade then. These five ports were Canton, Shanghai, Amoy, Ningpo, and Foochow.* They were called the “treaty ports”. Britain also took possession of the island of Hong Kong, near Canton, and extorted a large sum of money as compensation for the opium that had been destroyed, and for the costs of the war which she had forced on China.
Thus the British achieved the victory of opium. The Chinese Emperor* made a personal appeal to Queen Victoria, England’s Queen at the time, pointing out with all courtesy the terrible effects of the opium trade which was now forced on China. There was no reply from the Queen.*
* With due respect to Mr Nehru, this war was never really about opium: for better or worse, it was about exclusive access to China’s internal market and (if contemporary critic Richard Cobden was right) doing down Russia. On September 23rd, 1842, Lord Stanley advised the Queen of the Treaty of Nanking and its benefits. “In China a termination has been put to the effusion of blood by the signature of a treaty which has placed your Majesty’s dominions on a footing never recognised in favour of any foreign Power — a footing of perfect equality with the Chinese Empire; which has obtained large indemnity for the past, and ample security for the future, and which has opened to British enterprise the commerce of China to an extent which it is almost impossible to anticipate.” There is no mention of opium in the letter.
* Nowadays, Foochow is usually given as Fuzhou.
* The Daoguang Emperor (1782-1850) of the Qing dynasty reigned from 1820 to 1850. Nehru draws our attention to the contrast between the Daoguang Emperor’s courteous plea and the quaint communiqué of empty threats and haughty titles which the Qianlong Emperor despatched to King George III following the Macartney embassy to China in 1792-93. See ‘Tremblingly Obey!’.
* The Prime Minister when the war opened was William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne, who held office in 1834 and in 1835-41; at the time of the Treaty of Nanking, it was Sir Robert Peel, who held office in 1834-35 and 1841-46. Support for the Government was slim: on April 8th, 1840, Lord John Russell informed the Queen that a motion censuring the policy towards China had failed by only nine votes, and the following day complained to her that “Mr Gladstone said the Chinese had a right to poison the wells to keep away the English!”. In fact, what Gladstone had said was that although the Chinese had not gone so far as to poison their wells, “they had a right to drive you from their coasts on account of your obstinacy in persisting in this infamous and atrocious traffic.” Lord Stanley’s letter of 1842, celebrating the Treaty of Nanking, reveals how the whole matter was presented to the Queen as a military, diplomatic and trade triumph.
Précis
The Royal Navy’s superior strength soon told. The unequal Treaty of Nanking, signed in 1840, opened five Chinese ports to British merchants and compensated the British for their losses with money and with Hong Kong, which was ceded to Britain. A dignified protest by the Emperor was lodged in London, but did not receive the courtesy of a reply. (58 / 60 words)
