Introduction to the Opium War

How Great Britain Gained Hong Kong and the Beginning of China's "Century of Humiliation"

The Opium War is not known well in the West. It’s not a war that is usually taught in our schools or part of our pop culture.

But in China today, the Opium War is viewed as a crime and the beginning of the unequal treaties that imposed imperialism in greater and greater amounts on the Qing by Great Britain and then the other foreign powers.

There are monuments and locations where you could visit. Some of the characters from the period are considered heroes and others, villains.

But this is not how the war has always been described. It wasn’t really considered a war by the Qing Dynasty at the time. And it only first made its way into history lessons during the Chiang Kai-shek government of the Republic of China in the 1920’s. The People’s Republic of China then continued to teach about it in its history lessons. It is now considered the opening chapter in the modernising of China, the national humiliation, and an initial step towards the eventual Chinese Revolutions.

Under Qing Dynasty rules, Europeans who wanted to trade with it were restricted by the Canton system. All foreign sea shipping had to occur through the port city of Guangzhou in southern China. Guangzhou is today’s name for the city English speakers used to call Canton. Foreign traders could not enter the city and had to operate through seasonal factories along the harbours just outside the city walls. And only during trading season. Then they were required to retreat to the Portuguese port at Macau or further away during the winter non-trading season. Foreign trade in Guangzhou also needed to go through Hong merchants who had a legalized monopoly on the Qing side.

There is a map of these places here: Opium War Map

Until 1833, the East India Company had the corresponding monopoly on trade on the British side. But the East India Company monopoly with Guangzhou was then abolished as Britain moved towards free trade.

When Great Britain ended the East India Company’s monopoly on trade, they also appointed William Napier as Superintendent of Trade with China.

The Qing prohibited on pain of death, anyone teaching a Chinese language to foreigners.

The Qing also required that its exports be paid for in silver. Please listen to the introductory episode about silver in the Qing Dynasty to better understand silver’s importance.

In that episode, silver coins from the Spanish Americas were discussed. But that flow was impacted by South American independence movements that followed Napoleon’s invasion of Spain in 1808.

When silver, especially the Carolus coin, was flowing from the Americas, China was receiving a lot of silver. Between 1752 and 1800 – a net 105 million silver dollars went into China. Even at the beginning of the 1800s, the flow of silver into China was positive. Between 1800 and 1810, $26,000,000 in net silver arrived in China.

But between 1828-1836, a net $38,000,000 in silver left China. And between 1808 and 1856, 384 million in silver left China.

What was happening? Why the big shift? As mentioned in the episode on silver, the disruption of those highly recognized and valued Carolus coins was a major factor.

The other main factor was opium.

In the early years of the 1800s, about 4000 chests each with 140 pounds of opium were sent to China annually. For example, in 1805, foreign sources document 3159 chests sent that year.

But by 1831, 20,000 chests were sent. That’s almost 7 times as much. By 1839, 40,200 chests. That’s a further doubling in 8 years and more than 10 times the average from the beginning of the 1800s.

Opium imports peaked after 1852, but interestingly by 1855, silver was also flowing into the Qing realm again. From 1856 to 1886, net inflows of silver reached $691 million. Latin America had stabilized enough by then for silver production and silver coinage to normalize. The Qing were then able to run a trade surplus in silver again, even at a time of record opium consumption.

Opium was legal in Great Britain and grown in large quantities in British controlled India. But it was illegal under the Qing. The fact that it was still flowing despite its ban tells us some important things. Firstly, of course, people were using opium. But it was also an important part of the economy. It provided bribery opportunities for Qing officials and was an important source of income for merchants and workers.

For the Emperor and his officials, opium was seized on as a culprit for the ills affecting the empire. It was seen as a cause of economic depression, disorder among the population, decrease in loyalty by soldiers and officials, decline of the army etc.

On the other hand, British consumers loved tea. The British government had import duties on tea- so the tea trade led to important revenues for the British Crown. The British government wanted trade flowing, whether it was paid for by Spanish silver coins or by opium.

Opium smuggling seems to have been good business on the Qing side, including the Hong merchants of Guangzhou.

Howqua, the richest of those Hong merchants, was estimated to have a fortune ten times greater than Nathan Rothchild. Rothchild’s fortune was considerable and at his death, his personal assets were considered to be equivalent to 0.62% of the British national income. So, if true, than Howqua’s wealth was equivalent to 6.2% of British annual national income.

This was the situation when William Napier was appointed Superintendent of Trade.

Great Britain wanted freer trading rules on the Qing side and more ports to trade in, instead of just one. They also would have preferred opium to be legalized, as it was in Britain.

Missionaries also wanted the realm opened for proselytizing.

Napier was keen to use force.

But his instructions from London were to use persuasion and conciliation.

He ignored those instructions.

Within 2 days of arriving as British Superintendent, he had broken many local rules:

He arrived without a passport

He took up residence in the British factory at Guangzhou without a permit

He tried to communicate directly with Qing officials in writing and not through the merchant intermediaries as required.

Lu Kun was Governor-general of Liangguang with responsibility for Guangdong and Guangxi). He ordered Napier to go to Macau and to not return until he had a permit.

Since Napier was not cooperating, by Sept 2, 1834, Lu Kun ordered British trade halted and the British factory blockaded.

Napier requested reinforcements and used two frigates to try to intimidate the Qing officials.

But the defensive forts fired on them and Lu Kun had Chinese boats sunk behind the British ships. The cannon fire from the forts killed a few British sailors and the sunken ships trapped the small fleet. However, the British did take out about 60 fortress cannons.

Napier caught malaria, abandoned the attempt to relieve the British in Guangzhou and retreated to the sea. He then died from his fever.

It was an initial victory for the Qing officials, but the disabling of its cannons by the two British ships was a foreshadowing of what was to come.

Lu Kun died in office in 1835 at the age of 64.

So, by 1835, both Napier and Lu Kun were dead and new officials on each side entered the story.

In 1836, an opium legalization movement was active in Guangdong. It was argued by a former judicial commissioner in Guangzhou. The new Governor General of Guangdong endorsed the proposal. This was music to the ears of the new British Superintendent of Trade, Charles Elliott.

But there was also an anti-opium lobby. It was led by Huang Juezi, President of the Sacrificial Court. Huang’s memo to the Emperor blamed the Empire’s ills on opium. Huang suggested that users be executed after a one-year chance to give up the vice. He estimated that 8 or 9 out of 10 would give up opium. He suggested that every 5 household should be bound together. They would be responsible for reporting on any violation of the law by the other households in the group. Failure to report an offender would result in collective punishment for the whole group.

Today, China uses a similar “ten households, one unit” policy. Groups of 10 households are held responsible for monitoring one another, facing collective punishment for infractions by any one household, particularly in Xinjiang.

Huang’s estimate of the success of abstinence from opium was of course widely optimistic. He also was wrong in his reporting to the Emperor that opium was not consumed in the west and that any western users were bound to a stake and shot from a gun into the sea.

The Daoguang Emperor was unsure how to respond. He seems to have been a generally indecisive leader. In this case, he asked for feedback and received 29 recommendations from top officials. Even then, he hesitated and convened a new committee, made up of his grand council of advisors.

On October 25, 1838, the Emperor was informed that one of the princes of the blood, along with lords, had been smoking opium in a temple in the Forbidden City.

On November 8th, 1838, the Emperor learned that 130,000 ounces of opium were seized in the port city of Tianjin, (which is the closest seaport to Beijing). That was the largest seizure of opium in over 100 years. It had been transported by his own subjects from Guangzhou to Tianjin.

On November 9, 1839, he invited Lin Zexu, a follower of Huang, to a meeting. He interviewed him on plans to eliminate the evils of opium. They met about 19 times over the next month. Each time, Lin answered confidently to the Emperor’s doubts.

Lin said he would first confiscate all opium pipes. He said that giving up opium was easy. It was just a matter of changing their minds. He recommended doing that with threats. Every opium smoker would be put on a one-year suspended death sentence. They had one year to stop or else... execution. He recommended mass surveillance to catch smoking. As a backup plan he said he had heard about a cure. If one takes that, then the very smell of opium would be repellant.

By the end of the year, the Emperor appointed Lin Zexu as Imperial Commissioner to Guangzhou. As Lin was leaving Beijing, Qishan (who will succeed Lin) warned Lin not to set off any “frontier disturbances”. Lin and the Emperor never appeared to have considered that when discussing their anti-opium plans.

Who was Lin Zexu?

Today, Mr. Lin is considered a hero in China.

Lin was from the southeast. He came from a declining landholding clan. His family had not had someone pass the examinations for 4 generations until Zexu. His father had ruined his own eyesight studying unsuccessfully for the exams and then focussed on having his son pass. Zexu started studying the classics at age 3 in their broken down three roomed apartment. At age 12, he passed the lowest level of examination. At 19, he passed the provincial examination. Seven years later, in 1811, he succeeded in the metropolitan exam on his third try. He was 26 years old and had been working on this goal of passing the Examinations since aged 3. His parents would have sacrificed much for this.

While Lin could have used his new positions to repair the family fortune, instead he seems to have been a paragon of hard work and virtue. When he was judicial commissioner in the southeast, he earned the name Lin, Clear as the Heavens as testament to his incorruptibility.

In 1833, Lin had expressed the belief that the Qing should grow their own opium instead of importing it. His main interest was to reform the grain transport system along canals. His reason for wanting success in Guangzhou is because he coveted the governorship of Jiangsu province, where the grain transportation system began.

The Emperor praised him on multiple occasions before Lin’s fateful posting to Guangzhou in 1839.

When he arrived in Guangdong, the first thing Lin did was to organize the people into groups of 5. Each person was responsible for the other 4. Lin also lectured that this time, he would not stop until the job was done.

Within 2 months, he had made 1600 arrests, confiscated almost 14 tons of opium and 43,000 opium pipes.

He also met the Hong merchants, had them kneel before him on hard ground and lectured them on being the cause of the problem.

Lin then wrote a letter to Queen Victoria that among other things, asked her to stop opium production in her lands. In the letter, he wrote that the Qing Celestial Empire would not have won such numerous lands without superhuman power. Do not say you have not been warned, he included.

He told the Hong merchants to order the foreigners to submit all the opium in their possession and to sign a promise to never bring any more. If not, then both the Hong and the foreigners were to be executed. He then backed this up by having Hong merchants deliver follow up messages with the Hong in chains.

Lin’s reports to the Emperor were proud. He considered his early months a success and stated to the Emperor that Jardine (a wealthy British merchant) had fled upon hearing of Lin’s appointment. In fact, Jardine had travelled to Great Britain and was briefing Lord Palmerston, the Foreign Secretary, on the situation.

Lin’s counterpart was Charles Elliott, the British Superintendent of Trade for China. Elliott was the grandson of an Earl. His father was a soldier and diplomat. By 14 years old, Charles had joined the navy. He had also worked in the foreign office in British Guiana and had advocated for the abolition of slavery. By 1834, he had been posted to China and was a Master Attendant during Napier’s battles in Guangzhou. By 1836, he had been named as Napier’s successor.

Elliott’s instructions from Lord Palmerston were contradictory and challenging. He was “to avoid giving offence to the Chinese authorities” but to refuse to “deal subserviently with the Chinese authorities.”

Elliott made clear to the opium traders that he was disgusted with their product.

But Elliott also hoped that the Qing would legalize opium, and then take responsibility for it. He thought that would lower prices and decrease the profit motive for British traders.

Elliott noted the entire cessation of money transactions in China and therefore the need to trade opium to be able to buy tea. This suggests that the shortage of silver was a major factor in increasing the importance of the opium trade.

Elliott asked his superiors for power to control the opium trade on the British side, which was refused. He therefore was duty bound to protect British property and lives, and to promote trade, without having authority to control opium. He was unpopular with the local British traders because of his hostility to opium. They regularly criticized him to their contacts in London and elsewhere. But he was also under orders not to offend the Chinese, but not to be subservient. This was his situation when Lin was appointed by the Qing Emperor.

Elliott was in Macao when the news arrived of Lin’s appointment and Elliott put on his uniform and sailed to Guangzhou. He solicited opinions at the British factory there. The British traders’ views were mixed. Some were nonplussed and others concerned. The Hong merchants were all extremely concerned for their lives. The wealthiest, Howqua was crushed by terrors, he admitted.

Before Elliott’s arrival, the traders had already stalled for time with vague statements. Lin was not satisfied. He threatened executions. The British suggested they could produce 1000 chests of opium. Lin was not satisfied. He issued an arrest warrant for a British smuggler named Lancelot Dent. Dent refused to leave his house. The Chinese authorities said they would wait for him. Dent offered them a bed to sleep on outside. It was a standstill.

Elliott then went to Dent’s house and took him under his protection. While internally Elliott had been very critical of Dent and the opium traders, but because of his role as British representative to China, he publicly referred to Dent as “one of our most respected merchants” and vowed to resist aggression against persons and property.

Lin responded by calling off all trade and to blockade the factories until all opium had been handed over. He gave his subjects half an hour to get off the property, then the place became very quiet.

The 350 foreigners in the factories were watched continually by over 1000 armed police and soldiers as well as rows of local ships to barricade the British in by water. Even the Hong merchants were required to be part of the surveillance.

Food and supplies were not an issue for the British. They had brought in supplies before the blockade. One British trader, William Hunter, had his breakfast and dinner delivered each day during the blockade by a translator to a Hong merchant.

Three days into the siege, Elliott agreed to hand over 20,283 chests of British opium. But he told the British merchants that the Crown would take responsibility for it. With those two moves, he turned a private matter into a state matter.

When news reached London six months later, this was before the telegraph had sped up communications, the government responded far more strongly to the expense than to the treatment of its nationals.

Why did Elliott act that way? There are different theories. He kept no diary.

It seems that he thought a war necessary to resolve the issue and he wanted to buy time to bring war at a more convenient time.

Had he dug in at that moment, Lin might well have ordered an attack on the factories and the British loss of life would likely have been considerable.

Lin had them surrounded.

Elliott did have the opium turned over and Lin ordered it destroyed at Humen, a small town on the coastline. The opium was mixed with salt and lime and dumped into ditches flowing to the sea.

Lin was pleased and the emperor too. The Emperor sent him a gift of roebuck meat. The Chinese name apparently sounds like “promotion guaranteed”.

He did indeed receive a promotion: to Governor General of Jiangnan and Jiangxi, once matters in Guangzhou were settled.

Lin had imposed a second condition on Elliott. The British were ordered to sign a bond pledging to never bring back opium on pain of death. When the Hong merchants brought it to Elliott, he tore it up.

He was not prepared to accept Qing jurisdiction over the British population. This had been a long-standing point of contention for the British.

Elliott replied to Lin that the British would not sign. Lin stood his ground and insisted that no trade would occur without the bond.

Lin was of the view that the British needed “tea and rhubarb” more than the Qing needed anything Britain had to trade. He later amended his view that it was tea and not rhubarb that the British really desired.

The British retreated and began using a small port on the island of Hong Kong. That is about 40 miles from the mouth of the Pearl River downstream from Guangzhou. At that time, it was virtually uninhabited. American and British traders had begun using it in the 1830’s already, but with Lin in charge at Guangzhou, its use now increased by the English speakers.

Some British sailors then went inland, found some potent local liquor, damaged a local temple, brawled with some villagers and killed one, who was called Lin Weixi.

This caused another serious issue for Elliott since the outstanding issue was already related to Qing jurisdiction over British subjects. And now one or more of them had caused the death of a local man.

Elliott tried to contain the damage. He paid compensation to the family of the deceased as well as a small further amount to the villagers. The family provided him with a document that said the death was an accident and not wilful.

But Lin heard of it and sent investigators. He got many details and posted a notice in Macau demanding that the killer come forward for punishment.

Elliott had no intention of having the Qing judge Britons. He instead improvised a trial of all those sailors who had been involved. It was not clear who had struck the final blow. 5 were found guilty of indictment of riot and assault.

But those convictions were set aside later in London, where it was determined that Elliott had no jurisdiction to try them. He had no authority as court or judge.

In any event, Lin was not satisfied. He ordered everyone to stop working with the British in Macao. (Macao already contained a Portuguese colony since 1557 but without full Portuguese control until 1849.) Lin also had signs posted around Hong Kong and Kowloon (which is across the harbour from Hong Kong island) that the wells had been poisoned. Lin also had 2000 troops sent to a station forty miles north of Macao. Things were getting tense. British women and children left Macao and boarded ships that then anchored off Hong Kong.

Lin seemed to have the upper hand. He also was trying to understand the British and even had a piece of Swiss international law translated.

But Lin also underestimated them. In a report to the Emperor that spring, Lin wrote that “they are the minority, we are the majority. Their ships were strong and their guns quick, but they could only be victorious at sea. They cannot play their tricks in port and Guangzhou was well fortified.” He thought the smugglers could be easily destroyed by fire rafts or by hiring local militia.

He said the British were not skilled at infantry engagements. “Their legs and feet were also bound by tight trousers which makes bending and stretching inconvenient. When they reach shore, they are thus powerless and can be controlled.”

Even when news of an arriving British fleet arrived, Lin dismissed it as rumours. He told the Emperor that it was only a large smuggling operation.

Communication between Guangzhou and Beijing was also slow. By the time Lin’s dismissal of the rumours reached Beijing, the British had already controlled the island of Zhoushan, by Shanghai, for 12 days. We’ll discuss that more later.

The Qing don’t seem to have considered Britain to be any different than any of the other barbarian nations. Lin does not seem to have considered the longer-term response his actions would cause among the British.

The Emperor was keen for him to finish up in Guangzhou and to move on to his next assignment.

But instead, war was coming. Neither Lin nor the Emperor were prepared for what came next.

Image:  "The Opium War Museum Humen Dongguan" by dcmaster is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.