Opium Wars

The Opium War, also called the Anglo-Chinese War, was the most humiliating defeat China ever suffered. In European history, it is perhaps the most sordid, base, and malicious event in European history, perhaps, just perhaps, overshadowed by the over-the Third Reich in the twentieth century.

By 1830, the English had become more drug-trafficking criminal organization in the world, very few drug cartels of the twentieth century can even stir in England at the beginning of the nineteenth century in sheer volume of crime. Growing opium in India, East India Company sent tons of opium into Canton which it traded for Chinese manufactured goods and for tea. This trade had produced, quite literally, a country filled with drug addicts, as opium creches growth all throughout China in the early part of the nineteenth century. This trafficing, it must be stressed, was a criminal activity after 1836, but the British traders generously bribed Canton officials in order to keep the opium traffic. Effects on Chinese society were devestating. Actually, there are few periods in Chinese history, to turn to the beginning of the nineteenth century in terms of pure human misery and tragedy. In an attempt to stem the tragedy, the imperial government's illicit opium in 1836 and began to aggressively close down the opium dens. 

Lin Tse Hsu 

The central actor in the lead up to war was a brilliant and highly moral official name of Lin Tse-Hsu. Deeply concerned about the opium menace he maneuverd to being appointed Imperial Commissioner at Canton. His explicit purpose was to cut the opium trade at its source by removing corrupt officials and to crack down on British trade in drugs. 

He took over in March 1839 and the last two months, completely invulnerable to bribery and corruption, he had taken action against Chinese merchants and Western traders and close all trade in opium. He destroyed all existing stocks of opium and, victorious in his war against opium, he composed a letter to Queen Victoria of England requesting that the British cease all opium trade. His letter included the argument that because Britain had made opium trade and consumption of illegal in England because of its harmful effects, it should not export that harm other countries. Trade, according to Lin, should only be beneficial objects. 

 To be fair to England, where the only issue on the table were opium, the English probably (probably only) would have acceded to Lin's request. The British, however, had been nursing numerous complaints against China, and Lin's take-no-prisoners enforcement of Chinese laws combined with outrage the British against his decapitation of the opium trade. The most serious point of contention involved treaty relations, because the British refused to submit to the emperor, there was no formal treaty relations between the two countries. The most serious problem precipitated by this lack of treaty meant that the relationship between foreigners and Chinese law. The British, on principle, refused to extradite British citizens to a Chinese legal system which they felt was vicious and barbaric. The Chinese, equally principled, demanded that all foreigners who were accused of committing crimes on Chinese soil would be handled exclusively by Chinese officials. In many ways this was the real problem in the Opium War. In addition to enforcing the opium laws, Lin aggressively pursued foreign nationals accused of crimes. 

The English, despite Lin's eloquent letter, refused to fall from the opium trade. In response, Lin threatened to cut off all trade with England and expel all English from China. Thus began the opium war. 

The War 

War broke out when Chinese nobleman tried to return British merchant vessels in November 1839, although this was a low-level conflict, it inspired the English to send warships in June 1840th The Chinese, with old-style weapons and artillery, were no match for British gunship, which ranged up and down the coast shooting at forts and fighting on the ground. The Chinese were equally unprepared for the technological superiority of the British land armies, and suffered continual defeats. Finally, in 1842, the Chinese were forced to accept a ignomious peace under the Treaty of Nanking. 

Treaty imposed on the Chinese was weighted entirely to the British side. Its first and fundamental requirement was for British "extraterritoriality"; all British citizens will be exposed to the British, not Chinese, the law if they committed the crime on Chinese soil. The British would no longer have to pay tribute to the imperial administration in order to deal with China, and they had five open ports for British trade: Canton, Shanghai, Foochow, Ningpo, and Amoy. No restrictions were placed on British trade, and as a consequence, opium trade more than doubled in the three decades after the Treaty of Nanking. The Treaty also established England as the "most favored nation" trading with China, this provision is granted to Britain any trading rights with other countries. Two years later, China, against his will, signed similar agreements with France and the USA. 

Lin Tse-Hsu was officially disgraced for his actions in Canton and was sent to an outside appointment in Turkestan. Of all the imperial officials, however, Lin was the first to realize momentuous lesson of the Opium War. In a series of letters he began to agitate the imperial government to adopt Western technology, weapons and methods of warfare. He was first to see that the war was about technological superiority, his influence, however, had dwindled to nothing, so his admonitions fell on deaf ears. 

 It was not until a second conflict with England that Chinese officials began to take seriously the adoption of Western technologies. Even with the Treaty of Nanking, trade in Canton and other ports remained relatively limited, the British were incensed by what they thought were clear violation of the treaty. The Chinese that for their part, were angry at a full-scale export of Chinese nationals to America and the Caribbean working on what was no better than slave labor. These conflicts came to a head in 1856 in a series of skirmishes that ended in 1860. A second set of treaties further humiliated and weakened the imperial government. The most ignominious of the provisions of these treaties was complete legalization of opium and the humiliating provision that allowed for free and unrestricted spread of Christianity in all regions of China.