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The Opium War and Its Impact on Social, Economical, Political, and Military Development of China (1840-1919)

 

I could not pretend to justify the opium trade on moral grounds,

But as a merchant I insist it has been . . . fair, honorable and legitimate…

Warren Delano, grandfather of Franklin Roosevelt (Meyer 1)

 

Two Opium Wars that were between 1839-1842 and 1856-1860 became the main factors, which opened China to the world and brought big political, economical and military changes.

            Before the Opium War China was very closed country that had not developed international relations with Western countries. There were three reasons that can be explained such “close-door” policy. One of them is the Chinese world perception where its country was the Central Kingdom, and other states were “barbarians” that unworthy of Chinese attention. Moreover, it was considered that Heaven was round and the Earth was square (Beeching, Epstein, and Graham S. 2).

            The second reason was fear of Western occupation or colonization that had spread around the world after the Industrial Revolution. In spite of few international contacts, China had known about conquests of India, Philippines, and Malaysia by Western countries (Beeching, Epstein, and Graham S. 3).

            The third reason was absence of demand foreign goods because China had developed internal trade (Ulrich 2).

Therefore, the best decision, from Chinese point of view, was “close-door” policy.

Chinese foreign trade was very high government controlled.  Port of Canton city was single place where it was allowed to trade with Western merchants. Moreover, government of China gave foreign trade monopoly just small group of Chinese merchants and only via them Britain could maintained trade relations. As a result, local merchants used such situation to impose high price on products made in China (Beeching, Epstein, and Graham S. 2 – 5).

Despite of limited foreign trade and expensiveness of Chinese goods, Western world had big demand in Chinese products, especially in tea, silk, medicine and porcelain.  For example, at that time ordinary London citizen spent 5% of his or her budget in order to purchase tea (Hanes and Sanello 1).

Silver and Indian cotton were the main products that Britain could offer to China as payment for tea or silk. But by the 1940s Chinese cotton from south region became one of the main substitutes of Indian. Finally, such unequal trade situation led to the big debt of Britain, especially, the East India Company through which it conducted trade with China. The debt was equal to 40 million pounds sterling. As a result, the best solution in such situation, from Britain point of view, was to start selling of Bengal opium to China.

Opium was one of the most appropriate products for selling it China because Chinese medicine had used it from 4^th-7^th century in order to cure insomnia and diarrhea. Moreover, it was used as an anesthetic in such diseases as dysentery and cholera (Miron, J., Feige C. 5).

The biggest part of opium was imported by the East India Company from Bengal and Bombay. Opium trade started in 1715 when port Canton was opened for foreign trading.

The large scale opium trading was begun in 1770. It was used to buy Chinese tea. In 1799, Chinese government started to fear big British influence and threaten the East India Company to prohibit tea trade if the Company did not stop opium import to China (Hanes, T., and Sanello 2).

It is very interesting that the East India Company refused all accusation in opium trading. Nevertheless, it is known that from 1796 it sold opium to Calcutta’s English merchants who then supplied it Chinese people.

In 1814 and 1831 Chinese Emperor imposed strict anti-opium laws. The main reasons of such decision were big number of addict and outflow of silver from China.

By the 1830s, number of opium addicts was equal about 12 million of people. Furthermore, almost all 40-year men smoked opium.

Chinese economy also suffered very much from opium trade. It disturbed trade balance between China and Western countries. Chinese tea and silk export could not exceed opium import. Moreover, by 1839 this situation led to large budget deficit that was about 60 million taels (Beeching, Epstein, and Graham S. 2 – 5; Miron and Feige 2).

Nevertheless, British merchants continued to sell opium and bribed Canton’s officials.

In 1836, Chinese Emperor absolutely prohibited to smoke and sell opium and the main punishment was death. Moreover, in order to ensure this anti-opium law Chinese government sent to Canton Special Commissioner Lin Tse-Hsu in 1839.

Lin Tse-Hsu was one of the key players in opium wars. He was a brilliant commissioner with high morale and who was not indifferent about the prosperity and the future of China. He understood the big menace and harmful effect of the opium import in China. To help the China, he achieved the appointment of Imperial Commissioner at Canton, and his main purpose and desire was to cut off the opium trade. After his appointment, March 1839, he took active action against Chinese merchants and western traders of opium, for this purpose he shut down all the traffic in opium. He was aggressively fighting against the bribery and corruption and destroyed all opium stores. On March 24, 1839 Lin seized illegal stocks of opium and destroyed 20000 chests of opium, which belonged to British merchants (Wakeman, Frederic 128). However, he understood that taking these actions was not enough to stop the drag trade, and he decided to fight with the roots of the problem. Therefore, he decided to compose a letter to Queen of England, Victoria, requesting her to cease the opium trade and to protect the legal rights of China’s citizens. The extract from this letter: “that is to say, the great profit made by barbarians is all taken from the rightful share of china. By what right do they then in return use the poisonous drug to injure the Chinese people? Even though the barbarians may not necessarily intend to do us harm, yet in coveting profit to an extreme, they have no regard for injuring others. Let us ask, where is your conscience? I have heard that the smoking of opium is very strictly forbidden by your country; that is because the harm caused by the opium is clearly understood. Since it is not permitted to do harm to your country, then even less should you let it be passed on to the harm of other countries” (Craig, Graham 843)? So, the commissioner Lin in his letter included the argument that if the opium trade and consumption is illegal in Britain, because it is fully aware of its harmful effect, it should not pass these harm to other countries.  However the British ignored the request of China.  Probably, if the only question was opium, probably England replied to the Lin’s request.  However, the main one of contention was treaty relations.  There were not formal treaty relations between two countries.  The British refused on principle to submit to emperor and to hand over to Chinese legal system, they behaved vicious and barbaric.  In response commissioner Lin threatened to stop all trade relations, and expel English from the China.  This was main cause of the beginning of opium war. Lin The-shu later was officially disgraced for his activity in Canton, and was sent to Turkestan for a new appointment. However, he was one of the officials, who were aware of the need to accept the western technology, and military methods, because he understood the technological superiority of England.

The 1st Opium war in November 1839 was not very high conflict bur it became the cause of sending British warships to Canton in June 1840.

Starting of Opium war was a very smart Britain decision. There were several reasons. First of all, China by that time had a very big budget deficit and did not have enough money to support its army. Secondly, Chinese weapon and artillery could not compete with British because at that time Britain had one of the greatest naval fleet and army in the world.

As a result, China was absolutely defeated by Britain and signed “Nanjing Treaty” that became first “unequal treaty” between China and Western countries.

This treaty included 8 main points and according to them Hong Kong was ceded to the Britain. Moreover, China was obligated to open for foreign trade and missioners not only port of Canton but also Amoy, Shanghai, Foochow, and Ningpo. Furthermore, according to third point of the treaty, China had to pay 21 million of silver dollars to the Britain as a repair of damage that was caused in the 1^st Opium War. The 4^th article stopped Gong Hang monopoly that allowed only small group of Chinese merchants to conduct international trade. Moreover, this treaty eliminated internal transit duties and decreased import tariffs. According to 6^th point of the Nanjing Treaty, Britain principals got the same status as Chinese officials. Furthermore, British people were exempted from Chinese laws. The last statement guaranteed “the adoption of nation principle in diplomatic agreements with Western countries”(Wallechinsky and Wallace 2)

The 1^st Opium war had big effects on military, economical and political development. Some of them were positive others were negative.

One of the main negative consequences of the Opium War was unemployment and the basic cause was the flow of cheap Western products. As a result, it led to elimination, for example, textile industry.

Furthermore, the Nanjing Treaty that exempted foreigners from Chinese legislation allowed British criminal easy organized their networks and led to crime increasing.

Moreover, Chinese economy was at the edge of collapse that was caused by cheap machine-made products imported from industrial Britain. It was almost eliminated Chinese textile industries because clothes in China were very expensive owing to hand-made production. Another factor that led Chinese economy to decline was decreasing of import dues from 65% to 5%. Furthermore, after the 1^st Opium War Britain got free access to such very popular and high priced Chinese items as tea and silk. Tea export increased in 560%. If in 1843 it was about 7,500,000 kilograms, in 1855 it had became about 42,000,000 kilograms correspondingly. And silk export was increased from 2000 bales in 1843 to 56,000 bales in 1855. As a result of increasing of tea and silk export, many farmers instead of food, started to produce only silk and tea. Finally, such situation led to high food price (Beeching, Epstein, and Graham 5; Wallechinsky and Wallace 1).

Nevertheless, the 1^st Opium War had also positive influence on Chinese development.

First of all, the war “opened” China to the world community. Furthermore, it helped to turn China to the reality. Moreover, this war became the main factor that gave China opportunity to understand its weak position in the world political system, realize power of progress and technological advances, and weakness of feudal system. Furthermore, it was introduced such Western basements as parliamentary democracy, capitalism and international diplomacy. Influence of Western ideas helped to establish 1^st Chinese foreign ministry, which main goals were to study and analyze Western achievements and technological discoveries in order to improve Chinese army and found factories that could be compared with Western.

Furthermore, thanks to influence of capitalism, modern commercial enterprises became interested for investment. Moreover, Chinese government was one of the main founders of commercial factories. Immediately after the 1^st Opium War China had all chances to develop capitalism. Nevertheless, it did not happen because many Chinese officials using power of their positions tried to monopolize the markets and this practice became the main factor that slowed down development of private business.

The Second Opium War took place in 1856-1860, followed an incident, when Chinese officials boarded a vessel in October 1856 near Whampoa port (Arrow), which belonged to Chinese privateer. The owner registered the vessel in Hong Kong and received he permit for a one year from British authorities. However, this permeation had expired on the moment of inspection by Chinese official. The crew of the Arrow were arrested and accused in smuggling. But, in response, the British authorities, Guanzhou consulate claimed that Arrow was a British vessel. The British accused the Chinese officials. (Tsai Jung-fang) The second opium war started in 1865, when British attacked Guangzhou. In this war Russia, French and United States supported the British. French forces joined the British intervention after local mandarin killed Auguste Chapdelaine, French missionary. Other nations did not support British with military forces, but were involved diplomatically. British and French forces took Tianjin and Guanzhou and made the china to sign one more unequal treaty, Tianjin in July 1858. In this treaty China had to open 11 more ports, permit foreign legislation in Beijing, sanction Christian missionary activity, and legalize the import of opium. However Chinese could not ratified this inequality so easily.  China’s attempt to resist to entry and domination of foreigners led to renewal of the war in 1859. Chinese tried to block the entry of diplomats and establishment of British embassy in Beijing. In response, the imperial Summer palace (yuan ming yuan) and the Old Summer palace were burned by British and French forces. After this defeat, china had to ratify the treaty of Tianjin in 1860 at the Convention of Peking, finally legalizing the import of opium and providing additional privileges to British and other Western countries. (Immanual Hsu 215)

The series of rebellions took place in China between 1850 and 1873 against the foreign encroachment and unequal treaties, such as Taiping, Nian and Muslim  these rebellions caused a big torment and suffering in the history of China. The statistic says that only during Taiping rebellion 20-30 million were killed. The Taiping leader was hong Xiuqan (1814-1864). He was a schoolteacher from a poor family in Hakka in the Kwangtung. Hong Xiuquan was a revolutionary leader; he incorporated the western ideals and beliefs of Cristianity with calassical chinese culture. Hong announced himself the younger brother of Jesus, and that God had told him to release China form evil demons. The evil demons were Manchus, Confucians, Daosists and Buddhists.  The Ttaiping rebellions took place in 1851 – 1864, and caused the loss of millions of lives.  The Taiping rebellions began by attacking Confucian temples. They were supported by peasants, miners and workers. The army of Taipings numbered almost a million when the the rebellions controlled most of the Yangzi basin, they entered  sixteen of the eighteen Chinese provinces. Hong proclaimed the Heavinly Kingsom of Great peace in 1851 and two years after that made Nanjing his capital. The Taiping ideology was composed with ideology of Old Testament Christianity with an ancient text Zhou Rites, which was often used by reformers. The Taipings supported puritanical ethics and issue about equal sharing of property. Also they prohibited opium, tobacco, alcohol, gambling, adultery, prostitution and footbinding; the women were men’s equals and had access to administrative and military posts. However, the leaders of this movement did not have a good  education, and did not have enough skills to govern efficiently. Many ideals remained unfulfilled, the land was not redistributed. Finally, Ching dynasty managed to gather a new army with the aid of Western countries, and overthrow the Taipings. (Craig and Graham 836)

Another rebellion, called Nien took place in the Northern China in 1851-1868 in the same time with Taiping (1851-1864) that took place in South China. The Nien upraising appeared in the late 1840, they were united and formed by their leader Zhang Luoxing. Initially this movement did not have clear goals and objectives. They began as bandits from walled villages; they were organizing different secret societies, and lived by raiding the surrounding countryside. However, by 1851 they built an army of 40000 people, collected taxes and ruled 100000 square miles. They took direct actions the Imperial regime after the series of environmental disasters. In 1851 Huang He River had flood thousands of square miles and caused immense loss of life. The Qing government began slowly to recover after the disaster, but there were not enough sources to provide effective aid, because most of the finances were spent on war with Great Britain and on ongoing slaughter of the Taiping rebellion. In 1855, there were new flood, Huang He river had flood the fertile province of Jiangsu. The Qing government was trying to negotiate with Europeans, but it was unable to provide efficient relief, as the country still did not recover from previous damages, and financial resources were severely depleted. (Ownby, David)   These situations had led to Nien upraising, who blamed European powers Qing regime in China’s troubles, they viewed government as incompetent to manage the country wisely.  In 1855 Zhang Luoxing attacked governmental troops in Central China. Nien army was well organized and trained; they were equipped with modern firearms. As for Qing forces was very difficult to overwhelm the rebellions broke out across the China, Nien armies managed to conquer lands at economically important areas. In 1865 Qing government sent Mongol General Senggelinquin, who had crashed a large part of Taipings, to fight with Niens. Senggelinqin’s army destroyed most of the Nien forces and killed Zhang Luoxing. However, Nien movement survived with support of Taiping commanders. In late 1856, they managed to kill Sengelinquin and his bodyguards. The Imperial forces, left without its best military commander, was continuing to sent the generals, such as Zeng Guofan,  Li Hongzhang, Zuohongtang, providing their armies with modern equipment and weapon. So, in 1867-1868 the Imperia; troops recaptured the most Nien territories and crushed the rebellions. (Ownby 226-254)

            These rebellions, Nien and Taiping failed to topple the Qing regime, however had big influence on the Chinese economy. They failed to make a strong alliance, however they became a big threat to Chinese government and European policy.  These movements resulted in countless deaths, destroyed a lot of countryside, led to big financial problems and left the China in a very poor state of economy. Nien and Taiping became one of the major factors in collapse of Qing dynasty. (Perry 248)

In conclusion, two Opium war that were in China in the19^th century brought big social, economical, political and military changes. Some of them were positive such as introduction principles of parliamentary democracy and capitalism, but another was very negative: legalization of opium and exemption of foreigners from Chinese legislation.

 

Work Cited

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Hanes, T., and Sanello, F. The Opium War 2006. 14 April 2008. <http://chancelucky.blogspot.com/2006/07/opium-wars-by-travis-hanes-and-frank.html>.

 Hooker, Richard. The Opium War. 1999. 15 April 2008. <http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/CHING/OPIUM.HTM>.

Immanual Hsu, The Rise of Modern China, 1985, pg. 215.

Meyer, K. The Opium War’s Secret History 1997. 14 April 2008. <http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=990DE5DB1031F93BA15755C0A961958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print>.

Miron, J., Feige C. The Opium Wars, Opium Legalization, and Opium Consumption in China. 2005. 14 April 2008. <http://www.nber.org/papers/w11355.pdf>.

Ownby, David. Approximations of Chinese Bandits: Perverse Rebels or Frustrated Bachelors? 2002.

Wasserstrom, Ed. and Brownell, S. Chinese Masculinities/Femininities. 2002

Perry, E. Rebels and Revolutionaries in Northern China, 1845-1945 .Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 1980.

Tsai, Jung-fang. [1995]. Hong Kong in Chinese History: community and social unrest in the British Colony, 1842–1913.

Ulrich, T. The Manchu Conquest of China 2000.  14 April 2008. <http://www.chinaknowledge.de/History/Qing/bottom>.

Wallbank, Taylor, Bailkey, Jewsbury, Lewis, Hackett. A Short History of the Opium Wars   1992. 15 April 2008. <http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/history/A0836734.html>.

Wakeman, Frederic Jr., The Fall of Imperial China, New York: The Free Press, 1975, page: 128. 14 April 2008. <http://www-atdp.berkeley.edu/9931/tlaforce/opium_war.html>.

Wallechinsky, D., and Wallace, I., Cause of the Opium War Between England and China .  15 April 2008. <http://www.trivia-library.com/a/cause-of-the-opium-war-between-england-and-china.htm >.