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Opium War
BA (Hons.) History
University of Delhi
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The Opium Wars, as the name suggests, was a series of armed conflicts between Western powers and Imperial China in the mid-19th century over the trade of opium. It saw the first time China engaged in a full-fledged war with Western nations, resulting in its defeat and the signing of treaty settlements which would be the beginning of what is known as China’s ‘century of humiliation. The origin of the conflict is particularly complex Historians have, over the years, questioned whether this title might be a misnomer as opium need not be considered the real cause of the conflict.
The Opium War can be traced to the British search for a commodity to use in exchange for Chinese tea and silk. The balance of trade in the 18th century was very much in China’s favor. The Westerners purchased large quantities of tea, silk, and rhubarb. The English and Americans did bring in ginseng, furs, some cotton goods, and other commodities. But the agrarian economy of China was largely self-sufficient and demand was limited. So they had to bring in bullion or specie to purchase Chinese products. Tea especially was in great demand in Britain, as it had to supply tea to the whole of Europe. In 1793, the total value of tea exports from China was 19 million pounds; by 1830, this had exceeded 30 million pounds. However, this resulted in a heavy outflow of bullion from England, making it a weak economy according to the principles of laissez-faire. During 1775 and 1795, the Company’s imports of goods and bullion into China amounted to 31 million taels, against the export of 56 million taels, resulting in a 25 million-tael deficit. As a cause of worry, the British began their search for commodities to balance their Chinese trade.
Initially, the British tried to introduce woolen products into China, which were manufactured in plenty by the textile manufacturers of Manchester and Liverpool. They put pressure on the East India Company to find overseas markets for their woolens, especially in China, However, the woolens which the Company took to Canton were sold at a loss since there was no market for it in South China, where the warm climate was unsuitable. Simultaneously, around late 18th century, a new problem faced the East India Company in India, of remittances, i., how the revenue collected from India should be transferred to England. Since reinvestment had to be stopped in the mid-18th century due to protests by the Lancashire and Manchester manufacturers, now, only raw cotton was imported from India. This issue became even more serious after the Charter Act of 1813, by which the East India Company’s monopoly over Indian trade was ended and private trade showed a rapid increase. Meanwhile, after the Battle of Buxar (1764), the British, by the Treaty of Allahabad (1765), gained the right to collect revenue (diwani) from Bengal, Bihar and Orissa. All this raised the profits to a very large amount, making it difficult to remit. This problem was soon linked with the Chinese trade, which was now employed to remit colonial gains from India. China and India were thus tied together and became mutually dependent. This resulted in the formation of what can be termed as the ‘First Trade Triangle’. At first Indian coarse cotton yarn was sent to China, with limited success. This was because there was a brief period of decline in the late 18th century due to the
occurrence of natural calamities. Thus, since the level of production decreased for a short while, cotton was sent from India to China in the hope that this would balance the tea trade. However, Britain could not take over the Chinese cotton industries, as it had done in India. Moreover, this was not a long-term solution and soon the Chinese industries regained their production capacity. Thus by the late 1790s, the English could not recover the cost price of the huge cotton supplies brought from India and the value of all British goods imported into China from 1781 to 1793, amounted to only one-sixth of the value of the teas China exported to Britain.
Once again, silver was used to pay for Chinese goods. It is estimated that the export of specie to China from 1784 to 1852 amounted to no less than 180 million dollars. This time, Indian silver was used, i., the profits obtained from India were used. However, it was soon recognized that this was as bad as the payment using British bullion. Hence they began to search for alternative goods. The Western traders finally discovered a very profitable product for the Chinese markets – opium. This led to the creation of the ‘Second Trade Triangle’. The British sold manufactured goods in India and used Indian opium to trade in tea with China. Opium was a narcotic substance derived from the poppy flower. The Chinese called it ying-su or mi-nang or a-fu-Yung or po-pi (poppy). It was chiefly used as medicine to relieve pain and reduce tension. However, opium “smoking” began only after tobacco smoking had spread to China from Formosa. (Taiwan), under Dutch and Portuguese influence, in the 17th century. In the 1670s, this practice spread to 2 provinces in China – Fukien, and Kwangtung. From then on, opium smoking rapidly became a common practice and soon attained the proportions of a national vice. Objections to its use were raised from an early time. Emperor Yung-cheng prohibited the sale and smoking of opium in 1729, while Emperor Chia- Ch’ing outlawed its importation and cultivation in 1796. Thus, after this, opium was a banned substance. In 1800 there was another stringent imperial edict for the same, the whole opium traffic now became illicit. Officials were ordered to bring it to an end, but they found it too profitable as a source of “squeeze”. Most of the opium came from India, some from Persia, and, towards the last, some Turkish opium was imported by the Americans. In 1729, the annual import of opium from India was 200 chests. In 1767, this increased to 1000 chests a year. From 1800 to 1821, the average was about 4500 chests a year, but the annual total grew to some 10,000 chests by 1830 and over 40,000 chests by 1838-39. (A chest usually contained 133 pounds.) By then, the balance of trade had become unfavorable to China and the value of opium imported alone exceeded that of all the commodities exported, indicative of an increasing number of users. By the late 1830s, official records mention that there were as many as 10 million addicts in China. In 1833, the British government abolished the monopoly of the East India Company over the China trade through the Second Charter Act. This led to an increase in the activities of private traders, giving a boost to the already existing opium smuggling. New firms now entered the trade and The leading British private firm, Jardine, Matheson & Company handled roughly one-third of the total opium trade in China.
By the early 19th century, the situation became alarming with widespread addiction,
and consumption of opium.
The imperial government appointed a High Commissioner to Canton to suppress the opium trade, Lin Tse-Hsu (1785-1850). He arrived at Canton on March 10th, 1839, and took immediate drastic action. He ordered them to hand over their opium stock and asked them to sign a bond agreeing not to deal in opium. He soon found it necessary to coerce the British and for this purpose, on March 24, he confined about 350 foreigners in the Thirteen Factories. Lin released them only when the British merchants delivered their opium stocks (22,000 chests), which he then publicly destroyed. The British now decided to use force to resolve matters. Hostilities began gradually in small affrays intermixed with negotiations. There were a series of skirmishes and the conflict developed into the First Opium War. It lasted from November 1839 to August 1842, when China was finally defeated and forced to sign the Treaty of Nanking.
Since then, the Opium War has been a topic of much academic controversy. The debate is essentially on two issues – whether the war was inevitable, regardless of opium; and whether the onus for the war lies on the Chinese or the Western powers. while some call it the first Sino-British conflict, others call it the First Opium War. It should also be noted that the term ‘Opium War’ is not of Chinese origin. It was suggested by Sir Henry Pottinger, a British official. Old Chinese tradition shunned admission of defeat and till the 20th century, alluded to it as Yu-Hsin (Foreign Provocation).
HISTORIOGRAPHY Cultural War Theory
John Quincy Adams, the 6th President of the United States, began the debate in December 1841, when he said that the cause of the war was kowtow, the arrogant and insupportable pretensions of China. W.A. Martin, a US missionary scholar, modified this into a rationalized argument in his book, The Awakening of China. According to this view, opium was not important for the British at all and The main concern was their unequal relations with the Chinese government, demanding diplomatic equality. When the Chinese refused this demand, the British felt justified in going to war. Li Chien-Nung called the war “a conflict of western and eastern cultures”, over 3 issues - international relations, commerce and foreign trade, and jurisdiction. Similarly, US scholar, E. Pritchard, spoke of cultural difficulties over “the idea of equality”, the social status of the mercantile class, and “the different attitude towards justice”. Leslie Merchant sees the war as a doctrinal, philosophical clash between two cultures and two notions of government and society. John K. Fairbank, in his earlier works, also expounded this theory, saying that Sino-centrism and the regressive judicial system were the causative factors in the conflict between a dynamic Britain trying to “civilize” a backward, stagnant China. This view has been criticized by Chinese communist historians. Tan Chung says that wars cannot be fought merely on cultural grounds, which are subjective, physiological elements that never remain constant. Also, he points out that the chances of a cultural
clash, if any, were more probable when the Westerners had settled in Canton for the first time, rather than nearly 150 years later. Even after the war, no major cultural changes were witnessed in China. Moreover, the Chinese tributary system had already worn out itself to a large extent by the middle of the 18th century.
Trade war theory argues after the Industrial Revolution, Britain was rapidly expanding and hence desired raw materials as well as newer markets for its manufactured goods and China resisted this. Victor Purcell concluded that it was the Industrial Revolution, the principle of unrestricted trade and the practice of free competition, resisted by the Chinese, that contributed to British frustration against China. Also, war was seen as a product of the “trade-obsessed” England's quest for “foreign markets”. Fairbank agreed, for him, one of the fundamental causes of the Opium War “was the expansion of trade beyond the ancient Canton system of regulation”. These arguments consider the larger aim of the conflict to be the settlement of commercial relations with China on British terms. This view argues that opium was only a coincidental factor that led to the eventual war. Hsin-poa Chang said opium was variable and replaceable. Opium was thus only an instrument of British commercial expansion. Vince called opium the occasion, and not the cause, of the war, which he explained by the conditions of the Canton trade. Michael Greenburg also suggested that war could have been fought on any ‘x’ commodity. Some scholars have criticized this theory, arguing that Canton was a well-developed port and none of the restrictions hampered the conduct of trade. Moreover, on the British side, the lucrative trade was a monopoly of the East India Company till 1833 and in Britain, there had always been government measures to curb certain mercantile freedoms. So the Chinese government must also be granted a similar right to defend its interest in whatever manner it considered best, including imposing restrictions on foreigners’ activities. Anyway, it is evident that by 1836, the Canton system had fallen apart.
Opium War Theory
scholars like S. Williams, Hu Sheng, Maurice Collins, and Tan Chung argue the Opium war theory. According to this view, Anglo-Chinese conflict was inevitable due to the addictive drug, opium and its serious repercussions on the Chinese economy, society, and polity. Westel Woodbury Willoughby, a US scholar, said there is overwhelming evidence that the war is justifiably called an Opium War. Tan Chung says that the cheap and abundant of opium in India and the huge profits accrued by British merchants in the trade helped to keep it alive. Also, the British needed no pretext to enter China for trade, since the Canton system was already weakening rapidly in the 1830s. That opium was called for to balance Britain’s unfavorable trade vis-à-vis China was a myth created by the East India Company as Britain had already achieved a balance of trade by introducing Indian cotton in China in the 1780s. The main issue then was to tilt this trade in Britain's favour, which could be, and was, achieved by opium alone. It was their obstinacy to continue this trade even after Chinese attempts to stop it that led to war.
Opium War
Course: BA (Hons.) History
University: University of Delhi
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