Describe the Cycle of Silver From the Britain to China and Back to Britain Again

The Opium Wars in the mid-19th century were a critical juncture in modernistic Chinese history. The showtime Opium War was fought betwixt China and United kingdom from 1839 to 1842. In the second Opium State of war, from 1856 to 1860, a weakened China fought both Great Uk and French republic. Prc lost both wars. The terms of its defeat were a biting pill to swallow: China had to cede the territory of Hong Kong to British control, open treaty ports to trade with foreigners, and grant special rights to foreigners operating inside the treaty ports. In add-on, the Chinese government had to stand past as the British increased their opium sales to people in Mainland china. The British did this in the name of free trade and without regard to the consequences for the Chinese regime and Chinese people.

The lesson that Chinese students learn today about the Opium Wars is that Red china should never again let itself go weak, 'backward,' and vulnerable to other countries. Every bit i British historian says, "If you talk to many Chinese nigh the Opium War, a phrase you volition rapidly hear is 'luo hou jiu yao ai da,' which literally means that if yous are backward, you volition have a chirapsia."¹

Ii Worlds Collide: The First Opium War

In the mid-19th century, western imperial powers such as Great United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland, France, and the United States were aggressively expanding their influence effectually the globe through their economical and military force and by spreading religion, mostly through the activities of Christian missionaries. These countries embraced the idea of gratuitous merchandise, and their militaries had become so powerful that they could impose such ideas on others. In one sense, China was relatively effective in responding to this foreign inroad; different its neighbours, including present-mean solar day India, Burma (now Myanmar), Malaya (now Malaysia), Indonesia, and Vietnam, Red china did not become a full-fledged, formal colony of the West. In addition, Confucianism, the system of behavior that shaped and organized Mainland china'due south culture, politics, and social club for centuries, was secular (that is, non based on a faith or belief in a god) and therefore was not necessarily an obstacle to science and modernity in the ways that Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism sometimes were in other parts of the world.

But in another sense, Cathay was not constructive in responding to the "modern" West with its growing industrialism, mercantilism, and armed forces force. Nineteenth-century China was a large, mostly land-based empire (see Map 1), administered past a c. ii,000-year-old hierarchy and dominated past centuries one-time and bourgeois Confucian ideas of political, social, and economical management. All of these things fabricated Red china, in some means, dramatically dissimilar from the European powers of the day, and it struggled to deal effectively with their encroachment. This ineffectiveness resulted in, or at least added to, longer-term problems for Red china, such as unequal treaties (which will be described later), repeated foreign military invasions, massive internal rebellions, internal political fights, and social upheaval. While the first Opium State of war of 1839–42 did not cause the eventual collapse of China's v,000-year imperial dynastic system seven decades later, it did help shift the balance of power in Asia in favour of the W.

Map 1: China'southward Borders as of 1820.

Opium and the Westward's Embrace of Costless Trade

In the decades leading upward to the first Opium War, merchandise between China and the West took place within the confines of the Canton System, based in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou (too referred to as Canton). An earlier version of this system had been put in identify by China nether the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644), and further adult by its replacement, the Qing Dynasty, also known as the Manchu Dynasty. (The Manchus were the ethnic grouping that ruled Mainland china during the Qing menstruum.) In the year 1757, the Qing emperor ordered that Guangzhou/Canton would be the merely Chinese port that would be opened to trade with foreigners, and that merchandise could take identify merely through licensed Chinese merchants. This effectively restricted foreign trade and subjected it to regulations imposed by the Chinese government.

For many years, Slap-up Britain worked within this organization to run a three state merchandise operation: It shipped Indian cotton and British argent to People's republic of china, and Chinese tea and other Chinese goods to United kingdom (come across Map two). In the 18th and early 19th centuries, the rest of trade was heavily in China'due south favour. One major reason was that British consumers had developed a stiff liking for Chinese tea, also as other goods like porcelain and silk. Only Chinese consumers had no similar preference for whatsoever goods produced in U.k.. Because of this trade imbalance, Britain increasingly had to apply argent to pay for its expanding purchases of Chinese goods. In the belatedly 1700s, United kingdom tried to alter this residue by replacing cotton with opium, besides grown in Republic of india. In economic terms, this was a success for Britain; by the 1820s, the balance of trade was reversed in U.k.'s favour, and it was the Chinese who now had to pay with silver.

Map two: Great britain's Iii-Land Trade, Early 19th Century.

Figure 1: A "stacking room" in an opium factory in Patna, India. On the shelves are balls of opium that were role of Britain'south trade with Red china.

The Scourge and Profit of Opium

The opium that the British sold in Mainland china was made from the sap of poppy plants, and had been used for medicinal and sometimes recreational purposes in Red china and other parts of Eurasia for centuries. After the British colonized big parts of Bharat in the 17th century, the British E India Company, which was created to have advantage of trade with East asia and India, invested heavily in growing and processing opium, especially in the eastern Indian province of Bengal. In fact, the British developed a profitable monopoly over the tillage of opium that would be shipped to and sold in Cathay.

By the early on 19th century, more and more Chinese were smoking British opium every bit a recreational drug. But for many, what started as recreation soon became a punishing habit: many people who stopped ingesting opium suffered chills, nausea, and cramps, and sometimes died from withdrawal. One time addicted, people would oftentimes exercise most anything to continue to get access to the drug. The Chinese government recognized that opium was becoming a serious social problem and, in the year 1800, it banned both the production and the importation of opium. In 1813, it went a step farther by outlawing the smoking of opium and imposing a penalisation of beating offenders 100 times.

Effigy two: Opium smoking in Communist china.

In response, the British Due east India Visitor hired private British and American traders to transport the drug to China. Chinese smugglers bought the opium from British and American ships anchored off the Guangzhou coast and distributed it within Mainland china through a network of Chinese middlemen. By 1830, there were more than than 100 Chinese smugglers' boats working the opium trade.

This reached a crunch point when, in 1834, the British E India Company lost its monopoly over British opium. To compete for customers, dealers lowered their selling price, which made information technology easier for more than people in China to purchase opium, thus spreading further utilise and addition.

In less than thirty years—from 1810 to 1838—opium imports to Red china increased from four,500 chests (the large containers used to send the drug) to 40,000. Every bit Chinese consumed more and more than imported opium, the outflow of silver to pay for it increased, from about two one thousand thousand ounces in the early 1820s to over nine one thousand thousand ounces a decade later on. In 1831, the Chinese emperor, already angry that opium traders were breaking local laws and increasing addiction and smuggling, discovered that members of his regular army and government (and even students) were engaged in smoking opium.

The Users Versus Pushers Debate

Past 1836, the Chinese government began to get more serious about enforcing the 1813 ban. It closed opium dens and executed Chinese dealers. But the trouble just grew worse. The emperor called for a debate among Chinese officials on how all-time to bargain with the crisis. Opinion were polarized into 2 sides.
One side took a businesslike approach (that is, an approach not focused on the morality of the outcome). Information technology focused on targeting opium users rather than opium producers. They argued that the production and sale of opium should be legalized then taxed by the authorities. Their conventionalities was that taxing the drug would brand it so expensive that people would have to smoke less of it or not smoke it at all. They also argued that the coin collected from taxing the opium trade could aid the Chinese government reduce revenue shortfalls and the outflow of silver.

Another side vehemently disagreed with this 'pragmatic' approach. Led by Lin Zexu, a very capable and ambitious Chinese government official, they argued that the opium merchandise was a moral event, and an "evil" that had to be eliminated past any means possible. If they could non suppress the trade of opium and addiction to it, the Chinese empire would have no peasants to work the land, no townsfolk to pay taxes, no students to study, and no soldiers to fight. They argued that instead of targeting opium users, they should stop and punish the "pushers" who imported and sold the drug in People's republic of china.

Figure 3: Lin Zexu.

In the end, Lin Zexu'south side won the argument. In 1839, he arrived in Guangzhou (Canton) to supervise the ban on the opium trade and to scissure down on its use. He attacked the opium trade on several levels. For example, he wrote an open letter to Queen Victoria questioning United kingdom's political support for the trade and the morality of pushing drugs. More than importantly, he made rapid progress in enforcing the 1813 ban past arresting over 1,600 Chinese dealers and seizing and destroying tens of thousands of opium pipes. He besides demanded that foreign companies (British companies, in particular) turn over their supplies of opium in substitution for tea. When the British refused to do so, Lin stopped all foreign trade and quarantined the area to which these strange merchants were confined.

After six weeks, the foreign merchants gave in to Lin's demands and turned over ii.six meg pounds of opium (over 20,000 chests). Lin's troops also seized and destroyed the opium that was being held on British ships—the British superintendent claimed these ships were in international waters, simply Lin claimed they were anchored in and effectually Chinese islands. Lin then hired 500 Chinese men to destroy the opium by mixing it with lime and salt and dumping it into the bay. Finally, he pressured the Portuguese, who had a colony in nearby Macao, to miscarry the uncooperative British, forcing them to movement to the island of Hong Kong.

Figure iv: British officers in their tent during the first Opium War, circa 1839.

Taken together, these actions raised the tensions that led to the outbreak of the offset Opium War. For the British, Lin's destruction of the opium was an affront to British dignity and their concepts of trade. Many British merchants, smugglers, and the British East India Visitor had argued for years that Cathay was out of touch with "civilized" nations, which practised complimentary trade and maintained "normal" international relations through consular officials and treaties. More to the betoken, British representatives in Guangzhou requested that merchants turn over their opium to Lin, guaranteeing that the British government would compensate them for their losses. The thought was that in the short term, this would preclude a major conflict, and that it would keep the merchants and ship captains condom while reopening the extremely profitable Red china merchandise in other goods. The huge opium liability (the opium was worth millions of pounds sterling), and increasingly shrill demands from merchants in Mainland china, India, and London when they discovered their profits were destroyed, gave politicians in Great U.k. the excuse they were looking for to human activity more forcefully to expand British imperial interests in Prc. State of war broke out in November 1839 when Chinese warships clashed with British merchantmen.

Figure v: Chinese swordsman, 1844.

In June 1840, 16 British warships and merchantmen—many leased from the principal British opium producer, Jardine Matheson & Co.—arrived at Guangzhou. Over the next two years, the British forces bombarded forts, fought battles, seized cities, and attempted negotiations. A preliminary settlement called for People's republic of china to cede Hong Kong to the British Empire, pay an indemnity, and grant Britain full diplomatic relations. It also led to the Qing government sending Lin Zexu into exile. Chinese troops, using antiquated guns and cannons, and with express naval ships, were largely ineffective against the British. Dozens of Chinese officers committed suicide when they could not repel the British marines, steamships, and merchantmen.

Effigy 6: The British bombardment of Guangzhou/Canton.

The State of war's Aftermath

The first Opium State of war ended in 1842, when Chinese officials signed, at gunpoint, the Treaty of Nanjing. The treaty provided boggling benefits to the British, including:

• an excellent deep-h2o port at Hong Kong;
• a huge indemnity (compensation) to be paid to the British authorities and merchants;
• five new Chinese treaty ports at Guangzhou (Canton), Shanghai, Xiamen (Amoy), Ningbo, and Fuzhou, where British merchants and their families could reside;
• extraterritoriality for British citizens residing in these treaty ports, meaning that they were subject to British, not Chinese, laws; and
• a "most favoured nation" clause that whatsoever rights gained by other foreign countries would automatically apply to Bully Britain as well.

For Mainland china, the Treaty of Nanjing provided no benefits. In fact, Chinese imports of opium rose to a peak of 87,000 chests in 1879 (run into Figure i). Subsequently that, imports of opium declined, and then ended during the First Earth War, every bit opium production inside China outgrew foreign product. However, other trade did non expand as much every bit foreign merchants had hoped, and they connected to blame the Chinese government for this. Among Chinese officials, the aftermath of the war led to a biting political struggle between ii factions: a peace faction, which was roughly aligned with the 'users' faction in the opium trade debate; and a 'war' faction, which was roughly aligned with the 'pushers' faction in that debate. The peace faction was in nominal command.

Figure 7: Opium War Imports into China, 1650-1880.

In addition, the Treaty of Nanjing ended the Canton Organization that had been in identify since the 17th century. This was followed in 1844 by a system of unequal treaties between Mainland china and western powers. Through the most favoured nation clauses, these treaties immune westerners to build churches and spread Christianity in the treaty ports. Western imperialism and gratis merchandise had its first great victory in China with this war and its resulting treaties.

When the Chinese emperor died in 1850, his successor dismissed the peace faction in favour of those who had supported Lin Zexu. The new emperor tried to bring Lin back from exile, simply Lin died along the style. The Chinese court kept finding excuses not to accept foreign diplomats at the capital letter city of Beijing, and its compliance with the treaties fell far short of western countries' expectations.

Second Opium War (1856–1860)

In 1856, a second Opium State of war bankrupt out and continued until 1860, when the British and French captured Beijing and forced on China a new round of unequal treaties, indemnities, and the opening of 11 more than treaty ports (see Map 3). This besides led to increased Christian missionary work and legalization of the opium trade.

Map iii: China'southward Treaty Ports, 1860.

Even though new ports were opened to British merchants afterwards the first Opium War, the Chinese dragged their feet on implementing the agreements, and legal trade with China remained limited. British merchants pressed their government to do more than, merely the government'southward hands were tied because the Chinese government in the capital city of Beijing restricted who it met with.

In October 1856, Chinese government arrested the Chinese crew of a ship operated by the British. The British used this as an opportunity to pressure China militarily to open itself up even farther to British merchants and trade. French republic, using the execution in Mainland china of a French Christian missionary as an excuse, joined the British in the fight. Joint French-British forces captured Guangzhou before moving n to the urban center of Tianjin (likewise referred to as Tientsin). In 1858, the Chinese agreed—on newspaper—to a series of western demands contained in documents like the Treaty of Tientsin. But so they refused to ratify the treaties, which led to farther hostilities.

In 1860, British and French troops landed near Beijing and fought their way into the city. Negotiations quickly bankrupt downwards and the British Loftier Commissioner to Communist china ordered the troops to loot and destroy the Majestic Summer Palace, a circuitous and garden where Qing Dynasty emperors had traditionally handled the state's official matters.

Shortly afterwards that, the Chinese emperor fled to Manchuria in northeast China. His brother negotiated the Convention of Beijing, which, in add-on to ratifying the Treaty of Tientsin, added indemnities and ceded to Britain the Kowloon Peninsula across the strait from Hong Kong. The war ended with a greatly weakened Qing Dynasty that was now confronted with the need to rethink its relations with the outside globe and to modernize its military, political, and economic structures.

Thinking About the Opium War

In 1839, the British imposed on China their version of gratuitous trade and insisted on the legal right of their citizens (that is, British citizens) to do what they wanted, wherever they wanted. Chinese critics betoken out that while the British made lofty arguments about the 'principle' of complimentary trade and private rights, they were in fact pushing a product (opium) that was illegal in their ain state.

There are different viewpoints on what was the master underlying gene in Britain'southward interest in the Opium Wars. Some in the west claim that the Opium Wars were nearly upholding the principle of free trade. Others, however, say that Great britain was acting more in the interest of protecting its international reputation while it was facing challenges in other parts of the world, such as the Near East, India, and Latin America. Some American historians have argued that these conflicts were not so much about opium as they were about western powers' desire to expand commercial relations more broadly and to do away with the Canton trading organisation. Finally, some western historians say the war was fought at least partly to go on Communist china's balance of trade in a deficit, and that opium was an effective way to do that, fifty-fifty though it had very negative impacts on Chinese society.

It is of import to point out that non everyone in Britain supported the opium merchandise in China. In fact, members of the British public and media, as well as the American public and media, expressed outrage over their countries' support for the opium trade.ⁱⁱ

From China's historical perspective, the get-go Opium War was the kickoff of the terminate of late Majestic China, a powerful dynastic organization and advanced civilization that had lasted thousands of years. The war was also the first salvo in what is now referred to in Cathay as the "century of humiliation." This humiliation took many forms. Prc's defeat in both wars was a sign that the Chinese state's legitimacy and ability to project power were weakening. The Opium Wars further contributed to this weakening. The unequal treaties that western powers imposed on Mainland china undermined the ways Prc had conducted relations with other countries and its trade in tea. The continuation of the opium trade, moreover, added to the cost to Mainland china in both silver and in the serious social consequences of opium addiction. Furthermore, the many rebellions that broke out within China after the first Opium State of war fabricated it increasingly difficult for the Chinese government to pay its revenue enhancement and huge indemnity obligations.

Nowadays-solar day Chinese historians run across the Opium Wars as a wars of aggression that led to the difficult lesson that "if you are 'backward,' you will have a beating." These lessons shaped the rationale for the Chinese Revolution against imperialism and feudalism that emerged, then succeeded, decades later.

Most the Author

Jack Patrick Hayes, PhD, is a professor of Chinese and Japanese history at Kwantlen Polytechnic University in Vancouver. His research focuses on tardily imperial and modernistic Chinese and Tibetan environmental history, resource development, and indigenous relations in western China.

End Notes:

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^ane Andrew Moody, "Lessons of the Opium War," China Daily, Feb 24, 2012, http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/weekly/2012-02/24/content_14681839.htm.

² See, for example, Peter Perdue, "The First Opium War: The Anglo-Chinese War of 1839-1842," MIT Visualizing Cultures, p. 29, https://ocw.mit.edu/ans7870/21f/21f.027/opium_wars_01/ow1_essay01.html.

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