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Zhang 2018 changing - Opium war
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“Changing Conceptions of the Opium War as History and Experience” (Paper to be presented at the AAS conference at Toronto in 2017)
Xin Zhang Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis
Academic and popular accounts of the Opium War have gone through nearly two centuries of change in focus, view, and scope. 1 Before the era of social history, the focus was on its political and institutional aspects; topics ranged from British imperialism to China’s failure to re-enter the world system as a nation. After the rise of the “China-centered approach,” however, though popular accounts focused on diplomacy and battles, most researchers abandoned the topic altogether. As cultural studies gained momentum, many scholars widened their scope to include the cultural and social facets of opium consumption but paid less attention to the war itself. Only in the wake of post-colonial studies did we return. Since then, knowledge and understandings of the war have been enhanced by putting China’s modern transition into global contexts and seeing it in a longer sweep of history. This study intends to probe this sequence of changes in the writing of history as they appeared in different periods. I will first examine the period before the 1960s. In many ways, the study of Chinese history from the very beginning up to the mid 1960s was undertaken under the strong influence of the Euro-centered perspective of global history as well as the teleological view of global changes. This is obvious in the focus of the research—the type of historical questions being asked and the answers historians were looking for—most of which was based on the assumption that China was a country of backward tradition and had to depend on stimuli from modern countries from Europe and North America to better itself. With regards to the Opium War the main focus, aside from European imperialism, is how the Qing dynasty interacted with the West as a traditional
1 We usually consider that the Opium War consists of two wars: one, the Opium War, also known as the First Opium War, took place between the British Empire and the Chinese Qing Dynasty from 1839 to 1842; the other, the Arrow War named after the British vessel involved in the incident that led to the war, also known as the Second Opium War, pitted the British Empire and the Second French Empire against the Chinese Qing dynasty from 1856 to 1860. It is not unusual for these separate wars to be seen as one, with the latter one as the continuation of the former. For example, scholars in mainland China usually consider the Arrow War a continuation of the First Opium War, presumably a result of the influence of Karl Max’s view on the war. To some degree, British scholars like Jack Beeching also consider the two wars as one; hence he calls them “the Opium Wars.” I agree with J. Y. Wong that both wars share one common cause: the opium trade. Therefore, I will use the term “Opium War” to include both wars. For Wong’s discussion of the definition, see J. Y. Wong, Deadly Dreams: Opium, Imperialism, and the Arrow War (1856-1860) in China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 37.
This is the author's manuscript of the article published in final edited form as: Zhang, X. (2018). Changing Conceptions of the Opium War as History and Experience. Frontiers of History in China, 13(1), 28-46. doi/10.3868/s020-007-018-0003-
society with the “middle-kingdom” mindset while treating the opium trade as a part of its tributary system. Although this type of researches were short lived because of the disappearing of interest in international and diplomatic histories among Chinese historians by the late 1960s, a large number of scholars in the U. moved their investigation to the question of how China’s attempt to strengthen itself after defeat can be understood in the framework of China’s response to the West. This was done in a way that we have overemphasized the significance of the Opium War in the changes within China itself. 2 If we take a close look at the publications in that period, we will find that the attempts to theorize the Opium War mostly fall along the line of three dominant discourses: the British intention to start the war, British imperialism, and China’s reentering the world system as one of the nations. Within these discourses, there was generally lack of attention on the Chinese people who were impacted by the war. Only in the rise of social history, scholars like Federic Wakeman began to focus their attention on the people. Here is a detailed view of how we comprehended the war ever since it broke out: The earliest publications related to the Opium War were personal memoirs that appeared in Britain shortly after the war ended and had a strong influence on the later scholarship on the war. One such example was the memoir by Sir Rutherford Alcock, the first British minister to Japan. In the memoir, Alcock suggests that commerce was the sole objective for the British in Siam, China, and Japan in the nineteenth century and that it was necessary to use coercive force to “amalgamate two civilizations,” such as the British and the Chinese. 3 Alcock’s view was echoed in later publications from a group of authors, most of whom were British themselves, that created one of the main discourses on the war characterizing itself by focusing on the British intention in China as reflected in its policy and the justification of using coercive force to achieve its goal. Within this discourse, Phillip Joseph argues that Britain’s main purpose in China as demonstrated in her policy was commercial, albeit it led to the war. 4 David Edward Owen compares British policy towards opium trade in China and India. 5 William
2 See similar discussion by Cohen, in Paul A. Cohen, Discovering History in China: American Historical Writing on the Recent Chinese Past 3 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), xiii. Rutherford Alcock, "The Capital of the Tycoon: A Narrative of a Three Years' Residence in Japan," ed. original from the University of Virginia (London,: Harper & brothers, 1863), 304. 4 Joseph’s book was mostly known for his argument that 1894, a time long after the Opium War ended, was the turning point in China when the country began to disintegrate. Philip Joseph, Foreign Diplomacy in China, 1894-1900: A Study in Political and Economic Relations with China, Studies in Economics and Political Science (London: G. Allen & Unwin, 1928). 5 David Edward Owen, "British Opium Policy in China and India" (Originally submitted as a doctoral dissertation, Yale University, 1927 cf Pref, Yale University Press;
up with the demand for market of the industrialists who in turn put pressure on their governments to secure access to overseas territories for market expansion as well as guaranteed long term availability of resources. 13 V. I. Lenin perceives that the ever increasing chasm between capital and the working classes in European societies would inevitably lead to a crisis within the capitalist system itself on the one hand and overseas imperialism on the other. 14 In Joseph Alois Schumpeter’s perception, the industrial nations in Europe were deeply rooted in the warrior culture that was facing its extinction in a new capitalist order. 15 Many of these theoreticians used China as an example of European imperialism overseas. While seeing British missionaries as an imperium in imperio that were above Chinese law, John A. Hobson considers the underlying reason for imperialism to be the capitalist development that inevitably led to the expansion of European countries looking for new markets and places of investment. 16 Citing Hobson’s book, V. I. Lenin also uses China as an example to argue that imperialism is the highest stage of monopoly capitalism. A capitalist country like Great Britain had to rely on preying on a weaker nation like China to continue its capitalist development. 17 Also influenced by Hobson, Arthur J. Sargent supports Hobson’s view of British imperialism in China, while suggesting that the Opium War is misnamed because the war was not all about opium. He argues that the Treaty of Nanking did not refer to the war as the Opium War. 18 A voice of dissent first came from Sir John Pratt. Pratt insists that what the British did in China was different from being imperialistic, because what imperialism aimed at was “domination and the destruction of political independence.” Instead, Pratt says, the British policy in the Far East was “immutably fixed by one governing consideration—the essential identity of interest between China and Great Britain.” Pratt stresses, “when China suffers British interests suffer, and when China prospers British interests also prosper.” 19 As a compromise between these conflicting views, John Gallagher and Ronald Robinson offered a new term: “imperialism of free trade.” Gallagher and
13 J. A. Hobson, Imperialism : A Study (New York: Gordon Press, 1975). 14 Vladimir Il ich Lenin, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (New York,: International publishers, 1933). 15
16 Joseph Alois Schumpeter, Imperialism and Social Classes (New York,: A.M, 1951). 17 J. A. Hobson, Imperialism; a Study (New York,: J. Pott & Company, 1902), 215. 18 Lenin. A. J. Sargent, Anglo-Chinese Commerce and Diplomacy (Mainly in the Nineteenth Century) (Oxford,: Clarendon Press, 1907), 87. 19 John Thomas Pratt, War and Politics in China (London,: J. Cape, 1943). Quoted from William Roger Louis, Robin William Winks, and Alaine Margaret Low, The Oxford History of the British Empire / Volume V, Historiography (Oxford ; New York: Oxford university press, 1999), Texte imprimé, xxix.
Robinson defines this particular type of imperialism as “a sufficient political function of this process of integrating new regions into the expanding economy... .” In other words, the British activities overseas, such as in China and Latin America, were necessary to bring those countries into the world of free trade. 20 This “imperialism of free trade” notion soon sparked a debate of its own. Platt expresses some doubts about the concept that imperialism of free trade was for opening world markets. 21 In an article, “The Imperialism of Free Trade: Some Reservations,” Platt specifically airs his disagreement. Platt’s criticism continued when he responded to Gallagher and Robinson’s rebuttal. 22 However, D. K. Fieldhouse supports the notion by using the Opium War as an example. Fieldhouse adamantly argues that the British had only one objective in China for the war, which was trade. 23 While this exchange was going on, Edmund S. Wehrle offered his alternative in the term “informal imperialism.” Wehrle uses this term to describe the British attempt to create an informal empire in China, similar to India. 24 However, this term also received objection from people like Britten Dean. Yet the “informal imperialism” idea continues to attract attention even recently. 25 The third discourse on the Opium War rose roughly in the beginning of the twentieth century by emphasizing how China was forced to interact with the industrialized countries from Europe and North America before and after the war as a nation, rather than “the center of the world” (tianxia 天下, lit., under heaven). These studies showed a strong interest in international relations as well as diplomatic history. Hosea Ballou Morse, a former officer in the Chinese Imperial Maritime Service, wrote the first book on the relationship between the Qing dynasty and the industrialized countries by using the British Parliamentary Papers
20 John Gallagher and Ronald Robinson, "The Imperialism of Free Trade," Economic History Review VI, no. 1 (1953). 21 D. C. M. Platt, Finance, Trade, and Politics in British Foreign Policy 1815-1914 (Oxford, London,: Clarendon P., 1968). 22 "The Imperialism of Free Trade: Some Reservations," Economic History Review 21 (1968). "Further Objection to an "Imperialism of Free Trade"," 23 Economic History Review 26 (1973). David K. Fieldhouse, Economics and Empire 1830-1914, World Economic History (New York: Cornell University Press, 1973). 24 Edmund S. Wehrle, Britain, China, and the Antimissionary Riots, 1891-1900 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1966). 25 Britten Dean, China and Great Britain: The Diplomacy of Commercial Relations, 1860-1864, Harvard East Asian Monographs (Cambridge, Mass.: East Asian Research Center Distributed by Harvard University Press, 1974). "British Informal Empire: The Case of China," Journal of Commonwealth and Comparative Politics xiv (1976). For an example of recent discussion on “informal imperialism,” see Jeffrey A. Auerbach and Peter H. Hoffenberg, Britain, the Empire, and the World at the Great Exhibition of 1851, (Aldershot, England; Burlington, VT: Ashgate Pub. Co., 2008).
“synarchy” to describe the institution jointly formed by the two governments of the British and the Qing to govern the treaty ports after the Second Opium War. 31 Sharing a similar interest in international history with Fairbank and Teng, Immanuel C. Y. Hsu investigated how China entered the “family of nations” reluctantly, by expediency. Hsu suggests it was not nationalism that drove China into taking these steps but rather the sheer calculation of its survival and interests. However, the rise of nationalism occurred after China took these steps. 32 This discourse was cut short partly because the interest in international history, as well as diplomatic history, was waning by the late 1960s. Further, a group of scholars in the U. decided to focus their attention on the question of China’s attempt to strengthen itself after the defeat, rather than the issues related to the war itself, after Fairbank and Teng published their book, China’s Response to the West: A Documentary Survey, 1839-1923. Aside from the above studies, there were also scholars who addressed specific issues related to the war. One such issue has to do with the opium trade. As Jacques M. Down has shown, “by the late 1830s, opium was the basis of East- West commerce. It balanced the payments and was the economic foundation of the Canton foreign community.” And, to some degree, both China and the British needed opium. 33 Peter Ward Fay has demonstrated that the war was seen by the British as a way to “recover the value” of the opium and the expenses lost before the war. 34 Jack Beeching presentes acounts from British and American traders about Chinese opium addiction and how it led to the Opium War. 35 Frederic E. Wakeman suggests that opiun was at the heart of Canton trade before the war. 36 Another issue has to do with the role of protagonists in the aftermath of the war. Ssu-yü Têng has examined the role of Chang Hsi—the assitant to one of the
31 See similar discussion in Donna Brunero, Britain's Imperial Cornerstone in China the Chinese Maritime Customs Service, 1854-1949, (London; New York: Routledge, 2006). 7. 32 Immanuel C. Y. Hsü, China's Entrance into the Family of Nations: The Diplomatic Phase, 1858-1880, Harvard East Asian Series (Cambridge,: Harvard University Press, 1960). 33 Jacques M. Downs, "Merchants and the China Opium Trade," The Business History Review 42, no. 4 (1968). Quoted from Eileen Scully, "Still Strangers at the Gate: Recent Scholarship on Pre-1900 Sino- American Relations," in Pacific Passage: The Study of American--East Asian Relations on the Eve of the Twenty-First Century 34 , ed. Warren I. Cohen (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 124. Peter Ward Fay, The Opium War, 1840-1842: Barbarians in the Celestial Empire in the Early Part of the Nineteenth Century and the War by Which They Forced Her Gates Ajar (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1975), 194-95. 35 Jack Beeching, The Chinese Opium Wars, 1st American ed. (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975). 36 Frederic E. Wakeman, "The Canton Trade and the Opium War," in The Cambridge History of China, ed. Denis Crispin Twitchett and John King Fairbank (Cambridge [Eng.] ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1978).
chief negotiators of the Qing dynasty, Yilibu—in the signing of the Teaty of Nanjing. 37 Hsin-pao Chang uses the diaries of Lin Zexu himself to investigate Lin’s role in the origin of the Opium War. 38 By all means, the publication of Frederic Wakeman’s book, Strangers at the Gate, in 1966 was a sharp departure from all the above paradigms. For the first time, there appeared a research examining the effect of the war on Chinese society, especially how it ultimately became the root cause for the Taiping Rebellion. By highlighting the social and economic changes after the war underlining the rural disorder, secret society activities, and wide spread discontent, Wakeman not only brought to our attention to the interconnectedness between the war and the Chinese local society, but also paid specific attention to the merchants, the gentry, and the villagers who were deeply impacted by the changes. 39 However, Wakeman’s work met with a field of China study whose interest in the war had already begun to wan. Right after Wakeman, there were less than a handful who had published their writings on the war, even counting those who were not historians. Here is a list of these publicaions: Douglas Hurd (British diplomat in Beijing and a member of the British Parliament) wrote The Arrow War: An Anglo-Chinese Confusion, 1856-1860 (1967). 40 Journalist Brian Inglis wrote The Opium War (1976). 41 Pin-chia Kuo published A Critical Study of the First Anglo-Chinese War, with Documents (1973). 42 And Chung Tan wrote China and the Brave New World: a Study of the Origins of the Opium War (1840-42) (1978). 43 One of the main reasons for this development was due to the popularization of social history among historians in the U., following in the footsteps of European historians such as Albert Soboul and E. Thompson. 44 As advocated by its pioneers, Fernand Braudel and Marc Bloch, social history focuses on historical questions related to societies, using the lenses of, but not limited to, demography,
37 Ss u-yü Têng, Chang Hsi and the Treaty of Nanking, 1842 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1944). 38 Hsin-pao Chang, Commissioner Lin and the Opium War, Harvard East Asian Series, (Cambridge,: Harvard University Press, 1964). 39 Frederic E. Wakeman, Strangers at the Gate: Social Disorder in South China, 1839-1861 (Berkeley,: University of California Press, 1966). 40
41 Douglas Hurd, The Arrow War: An Anglo-Chinese Confusion, 1856-1860 (London,: Collins, 1967). 42 Brian Inglis, The Opium War (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1976). Pin-chia Kuo, A Critical Study of the First Anglo-Chinese War, with Documents (Westport, Conn.,: Hyperion Press, 1973). 43 Chung Tan, China and the Brave New World: A Study of the Origins of the Opium War (1840-42) (Durham, N.: Carolina Academic Press, 1978). 44 Albert Soboul, Les Sans-Culottes Parisiens En L'an Ii (Paris: Librairie Clavreuil, 1958). E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (London: V. Gollancz, 1963).
one of the very few who joined Wakeman to examine the war from the perspective of social history. 48 While the field of China studies was in the midst of social history enthusiasm, a new wave of interest in postmodernism was quietly surfacing in the U. in the 1980s. Postmodernism started out as philosophical and epistemological discussions on human knowledge, but it soon generated a major shift in paradigmatic thinking in social science and the humanities. Although in the beginning, the earlier generation of postmodernists continued to base their ideas on the critique of modernity, the later generation of poststructuralists soon moved on to denouncing any interpretive model of history. 49 The New Cultural History sparked a great deal of interest among historians on China in 1990s. Among them, some studied opium consumption, treating it as a cultural phenomenon rather than a topic related to the Opium War. Among those studying Chinese history of science and technology, there were scholars who used methods such as the cross-disciplinary approach, a method used by new cultural historians, for their research. At the same time, the popularity of cultural studies also provided interest in cultural comparison in the public. As a clear indication of this new interest, for example, a conference took place in Toronto in 1997 that resulted in the publication of a collection of essays, Opium Regimes: China, Britain, and Japan, 1839-1952 (2000). During the conference, a group of scholars examined a wide range of topics ranging from Chinese merchants’ involvement in the British opium trade in the nineteenth century to the success of government control of the opium problem under the Communist regime in the early 1950s, none of which was directly related to the war itself. 50 This turn of interest led to the publication of a number of important studies in the late 1990s and early 200s. Although these studies did not target the war, they nevertheless shed some light on the war, especially its cause. For instance, Carl Trocki has shown us how the British depended on opium for maintaining their economic advantage vis-à-vis other industrialized countries. For that reason,
48 James M. Polachek, The Inner Opium War, Harvard East Asian Monographs (Cambridge, Mass.: Council on East Asian Studies/Harvard University: Distributed by the Harvard University Press, 1992). 49 The early generation of postmodernists are Hendry de Man, Betrand de Jouvenel, Arthur Gehlen, and Roderick Seidenberg. The later generation of poststructuralists include Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida, Jean-Francois Lyotard, and Michel Foucault. 50 For details of the conference and the discussion of the growing interest in cultural studies, see the introduction of Timothy Brook and Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi, Opium Regimes: China, Britain, and Japan, 1839-1952 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000).
the British extended their opium trade to Asia as an external market, which became the underlying cause of the war in China. 51 Continue to show the influence of post-colonialism and cultural studies, Yangweng Zheng’s work has traced the subculture of opium consumption in China back to the mid-Ming from the perspective of the “social life” of opium as a commodity. Zheng’s work has enabled us to see how opium consumption ultimately evolved into one of the main factors for the war. 52 As a part of the postcolonial discourse, some historians on China began to regain attention to topics related to the Opium War because some see in dealing with such a topic the opportunity to reexamine the issue about Western dominance and its intended discourse in the globe. Some of the new studies made advances in both perspective and sources. Such studies first came from John Wong and Glenn Melancon. In many ways, both studies addressed the same old issue, the cause of the war, but each tried to inject new ideas to the early debate prior to the late 1970s. For instance, although Wong continued to address issues related to the cause of the war by looking into “the way the British imperialism expressed itself” during the Arrow War, he refutes almost every major argument made by early studies, especially about cultural clashes. Wong suggests that the main reason the British started the war was Britain’s conquest of India, although multiple causes interacted with one another to shape the war. Individuals involved in Anglo- Chinese relations from both the British and Chinese sides were as much responsible for creating the war as the British imperial interests at home. 53 Like Wong, Melancon also focuses on how the British started the Opium War. Rather than seeing Britain as pursuing its economic interest in China or responding to China’s rejection of open trade, Melancon considers the importance of “national honor,” sought both by British individuals and the government, as a driving force for the British to start a war with China. 54 A year later, Harry Gregor Gelber published his work on the war. From this new perspective, Gelber challenges the notion that opium was the impetus for the Opium War and suggests
51 Carl A. Trocki, Opium, Empire, and the Global Political Economy: A Study of the Asian Opium Trade, 1750-1950 52 , Asia's Transformations (London ; New York: Routledge, 1999). Zheng. The Social Life of Opium in China (Cambridge, UK ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005). 53 J. Y. Wong, Deadly Dreams: Opium, Imperialism, and the Arrow War (1856-1860) in China, Cambridge Studies in Chinese History, Literature, and Institutions (Cambridge [U.] ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998). 54 Glenn Melancon, Britain's China Policy and the Opium Crisis: Balancing Drugs, Violence, and National Honor, 1833-1840 (Hampshire, England ; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003).
the globe in economic development afterwards. His concludes that a country like England had easy access to coal and iron as well as readily available primary products and other resources from the New World, which gave the western European countries the advantage in developing a resource-intensive and labor- saving economy based on the development of industrial technology and the expansion of trans-continental trade in the late eighteenth century. 58 This development in the field of China studies can be seen as the main effort by historians on China to challenge the Western-centered metanarrative in global history. By showing that cultural traditions such as religion, philosophy, and thinking patterns played very little role in the rise of industrialization in Europe that led to the uninterrupted economic growth in these countries, scholars like Kenneth Pomeranz have declared the “rise of the West” a myth rather than a miracle. Along with these developments in scholarship, some historians working on the Chinese history began to look beyond the early questions about China. This helped bring out a new type of scholarship from James L. Hevia. By combining perspectives from post-colonial studies and transnational history, Hevia examines China’s experiences with modern imperialism during the second Opium War (the Arrow War) as well as after the Boxer Rebellion. Hevia made effort to move away from the “China-centered approach” that dominated China studies during the 1980s and 1990s. He uses British archives to compare, contrast, and supplement materials from China. By doing so, he sets an example for how to approach Chinese history with two sides of the stories when dealing with a subject matter like the Opium War. Hevia closely scrutinizes how the British, together with other Western powers, succeeded first in “deterritorializing” China—making China give up its ancient institutions the dynasty relied upon to deal with foreign countries—then in “reterritorializing” China—incorporating China into the British colonial establishment in Asia. By researching a wide range of aspects of the British endeavors related to China, Hevia has identified an imperialistic pedagogical project undertaken by the British to force China into joining the transnational order as defined by the British and other early industrialized countries. Although China was never formally colonized by Britain, Hevia argues its history has been
58 By comparing social and economic conditions in China with those in western Europe—for instance between the Jiangnan region and England—Pomeranz finds that the two were not that dissimilar in areas such as consumption, life expectancy, and the accessible areas of markets prior to the mid-eighteenth century. See Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000).
significantly altered by this foreign power. One thing that made James Hevia’s study a significant departure from the previous literature is its attention on the war behaviors of the soldiers from EuroAmerican countries who committed to atrocities from lootings to massacres that impacted the life of the Chinese people a great deal. 59 Since Hevia’s research appeared, there has been a renewed interest in the war. With that interest, come two noticeable efforts to not only combine the sources from both Western and Chinese languages but also use materials such as personal diaries and travelers’ accounts to supplement the government achieves. In addition to that, some scholars became interested in personal role in the war—such as their views, behavioral style, and individual interest—as an important facet of the war. One good example of this type of new scholarship comes from Julia Lovell who relies mostly on rich British materials including personal memoirs, diplomatic correspondence, and missionary reports with some Chinese secondary literate. Rather than looking for the causes of the war from imperialism, diplomacy, or opium trade itself, Lovell focuses on the individuals, such as Charles Elliot, Lin Zexu, or even the opium dealers to show us how personal views, ambitions, and even misperceptions were at the roots of the calculation, or the miscalculation, of the British parliament as well as the Qing dynasty that led to the war. 60 In a similar way, by using sources in both English and Chinese languages— such as those from the European missionaries and travelers as well as the writings of Qing officials— Li Chen shows how the Qing dynasty engaged in cultural confrontation due to mistrust and endless legal battles with the Western countries, in particularly the British, which led to the beginning of the Opium War. 61 Song-Chuan Chen also uses the materials from both the British archives and the Chinese sources. He examines a small group of British merchants known
59 James Louis Hevia, English Lessons: The Pedagogy of Imperialism in Nineteenth-Century China (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003). 60 By analyzing the modern-day Chinese government, the Nationalist and the Communist, in their attempts to mode the war into their political propaganda, she also argues that the war not only reshaped the world in which Britain became dominant at the cost of China, but also it has ever lasting impact on the Chinese society as it continues to influence the Chinese self-image and national identity. Julia Lovell, The Opium War: Drugs, Dreams and the Making of China (London: Picador, 2011). 61 Li argues that the differences between the Chinese understanding of law and the interpretation
of it by the Western countries lied in the heart of these confrontations. Li Chen, Chinese Law in Imperial Eyes: Sovereignty, Justice, & Transcultural Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016).
gifts, the differences in etiquette, and more specifically, the argument over whether the British should follow the Chinese kowtowing procedure. 66 Robert A. Bickers’s examination of the effects of the war from its inception to shortly after the Qing dynasty was over. 67 Eric Ringmar’s research on how the attempt by the Europeans to enforce the European culture onto the China led to the destruction of the Summer Palace in China. 68 And Adrian G. Marshall’s book on the infamous stream-powered British naval vessel used in the Opium War, which did most of the fighting against the Chinese wooden warships. 69 Despite the achievements of these new studies, however, we can see the lack of attention on the Chinese people who were caught in the war: their experience, suffering, and struggle. If one takes a closer look at the publications after Hevia’s, one will notice that when it comes to China, almost all the attentions about China have gone to the Qing officials such as Lin Zexu and Qishan or individuals like the opium dealers but very little to the average Chinese people who were nevertheless deeply impacted by the war. Thus, I suggest that we bring the experiences of the Chinese people back into our study of the Opium War and to provide our readers “paralleled stories”. 70 Actually, since the beginning of this century, a growing number of leading historians in the field of China studies have already started to pay attention to the experiences of the ordinary people, especially during and after a war period (Timothy Brook 2005, R. Diana Lary 2010, Keith Schoppa 2011, Sheila Miyoshi Jager and Rana Mitter 2007, David Der-Wei Wang 2004, and William Rowe 2007). 71 Like those scholars, we shall pay close attention to the sufferings of the
66 The author suggests that this cultural clash set up for how the Chinese were going to deal with the foreigners: with much uneasiness and resentment. Dennis Abrams, The Treaty of Nanking (New York: Chelsea House, 2011). 67 Robert A. Bickers, The Scramble for China: Foreign Devils in the Qing Empire, 1832- (London: Penguin, 2012). 68 Erik Ringmar, Liberal Barbarism the European Destruction of the Palace of the Emperor of China (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), ressource électronique. 69 Adrian G. Marshall, Nemesis the First Iron Warship and Her World (Singapore: Ridge Books,
2016). 70 C. A. Bayly, "Rallying around the Subaltern," in Mapping Subaltern Studies and the Postcolonial, ed. Vinayak Chaturvedi (London: Verso, 2012), 126. 71 Timothy Brook, Collaboration: Japanese Agents and Local Elites in Wartime China (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005). Diana Lary, The Chinese People at War: Human Suffering and Social Transformation, 1937-1945 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010). R. Keith Schoppa, In a Sea of Bitterness: Refugees During the Sino-Japanese War, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011). Sheila Miyoshi Jager and Rana Mitter, Ruptured Histories: War, Memory, and the Post-Cold War in Asia (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007). Dewei Wang, The Monster That Is History: History, Violence, and Fictional Writing in Twentieth-Century China, (Berkeley: University of California Press,
people, including women, children, and the elderly, while demonstrating how the Opium War connected different parts of the globe negatively. By focusing on the average people, we will have a better understanding of the war, and therefore the entire world.
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Zhang 2018 changing - Opium war
Course: BA (Hons.) History
University: University of Delhi
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