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Citation: Monthly Review Oct 1997, v49, n5, p35(8)
Author: Newsinger, John
Title: Britain's opium wars. (fact and myth about the opium
trade in East) by John Newsinger
------------------------------------------------------------------------
COPYRIGHT 1997 Monthly Review
It is a little known fact that during the reign of Queen Victoria, the British
capitalist state was the largest drug pusher the world has ever seen. The
smuggling of opium into China was by the 1830s a source of huge profits,
played a crucial role in the financing of British rule in India and was the
underpinning of British trade throughout the East. This is one of those little
historical details that are often overlooked in the history books where the
opium trade is either played down or ignored altogether. Most recently
Professor Denis Judd's Empire, a 500-page history of British Imperialism has
no discussion of either the trade or the wars it occasioned, while the
prestigious Cambridge Illustrated History of the British Empire has a couple
of brief inadequate and uninformative paragraphs, a mere passing mention.(1)
The opium trade deserves more attention. It was, in the words of John K.
Fairbanks, "the most long-continued and systematic international crime of
modern times."(2)
The production of opium in India first came under British control in the
course of the eighteenth century. In the 1760s, some one thousand chests of
opium (each weighing 140 lbs) were smuggled into China and this figure
gradually increased to 4 thousand chests in 1800. By the 1820s the traffic in
opium began to increase dramatically with over 12 thousand chests being
smuggled into China in 1824, rising to 19 thousand in 1830, 30 thousand in
1835 and to 40 thousand chests (2,500 tons of opium) in 1838.(3) The British
energetically encouraged poppy growing, on occasion coercing Indian peasant
farmers into going over the crop. By the end of the 1830s the opium trade was
already, and was to remain, "the world's most valuable single commodity trade
of the nineteenth century."(4)
The opium trade was of vital importance to British Imperialism at this time.
It was one corner of an Eastern triangular trade that mirrored the eighteenth
century Atlantic slave trade. The smuggling of opium turned a large British
trading deficit with China into a substantial surplus, paying for British tea
imports from China, for the export of British manufactured goods to India and
for a substantial proportion of British administrative costs in India. The
opium trade was "the hub of British commerce in the East."(5)
By the end of the 1830s a sixth of British overseas trade was with China and
nearly two-thirds of that trade was in opium. In view of the tremendous
importance of the trade, its neglect by economic historians and the historians
of the British Empire is all the more surprising.
The Opium Capitalists
The opium trade was clearly not a small-scale affair carried out by small-time
crooks and gangsters. Instead, it was a massive international commerce carried
out by major British trading companies under the armed protection of the
British state. According to Sir William Jardine of Jardine Matheson, the opium
trade was "the safest and most gentlemanlike speculation I am aware of." In a
good year profits could be as high as $1,000 a chest](6) His wealth was
sufficient to buy him a seat in the House of Commons in the early 1840s and to
get him the ear of the government.
Jardine Matheson was the most successful of the opium smuggling companies, and
is still a major financial and trading company today. Jardine's partner in the
enterprise, James Matheson, best shows the use to which the profits from drug
pushing could be put. In the 1840s he too became an MP, sitting in the Commons
for twenty-five years. He went on to become a governor of the Bank of England,
chairman of the great P and O shipping line, and the second largest landowner
in Britain. He bought the Isle of Lewis in Scotland and spent over pounds
500,000 building himself a castle there]
The import of opium into China was, of course, illegal, but the British
companies engaged in the trade systematically corrupted or intimidated the
Chinese authorities so that it continued with little interruption. Depot ships
were anchored off the coast, selling the drug to Chinese smugglers who carried
it ashore for distribution. By the 1830s, the scale of the problem forced the
Chinese government to respond: the country was being drained of silver to pay
for the opium, its administration was being corrupted by foreigners and the
extent of addiction (estimates of the number of addicts go as high as 12
million) was seen as a threat to both state and society. In March 1839, the
Emperor sent a special Commissioner, Lin Tse-Hsu to Canton to stamp out the
trade once and for all.
Lin confined the British merchants in Canton to the European Factories,
holding them hostage until the opium held offshore was surrendered. After six
weeks, the Superintendent of Trade, Captain Charles Elliot, capitulated and
ordered the surrender of 10,000 chests which the Chinese destroyed. This
precipitated the First Opium War.
The First Opium War
Once they had been expelled from Canton, the British established themselves on
the island of Hong Kong, which they were determined to hold in the face of
Chinese hostility. Meanwhile, the British government responded to Chinese
actions by demanding compensation for the confiscated opium, the opening of
more Chinese ports to trade, the permanent cession of Hong Kong, the
legalization of the opium trade, and that China pay the full cost of the
British war effort to enforce these demands. A powerful expeditionary force
was despatched to bring the Chinese to their senses, first blockading the
coast and then proceeding up the Yangtze river to Nanjing. The British had an
overwhelming technological superiority that turned every battle into a
one-sided massacre. As one British officer observed: "The poor Chinese" had
two choices, either they "must submit to be poisoned, or must be massacred by
the thousands, for supporting their own laws in their own land."(7)
The British capture of the port of Tin-hai in early October 1841 provides a
useful example of the character of the war. The port was bombarded by the
Wellesley (74 guns), the Conway and the Alligator (28 guns each), the Cruiser
and the Algerine (18 guns each) and another dozen smaller vessels each
carrying ten guns. In nine minutes, they fired fifteen broadsides into the
effectively defenseless town before landing troops to storm the ruins.
According to one British participant "the crashing of timber, falling houses
and groans of men resounded from the shore" and when the smoke cleared "a mass
of ruins presented itself to the eye." When the troops landed all they found
was "a deserted beach, a few dead bodies, bows and arrows, broken spears and
guns...."(8)
The shelling of the town continued as the British troops moved in to rape and
pillage. According to the India Gazette. "A more complete pillage could not be
conceived ... the plunder only ceased when there was nothing to take or
destroy."(9) It was during this war that the Hindi word "lut" entered the
English language as the word "loot." The taking of Tin-hai cost the British
three men while the number of Chinese killed was over 2,000. Close behind the
warships came the opium ships.
Were the British aware of the consequences of the trade they were intent on
imposing on China? Lord Jocelyn, the military secretary to the expeditionary
force, in his account of the war, described visiting an opium den in Singapore
while en route to China:
One of the objects, at this place that I had the curiosity to visit, was the
opium-smoker in his heaven; and certainly it is a most fearful sight.... On a
beginner, one or two pipes will have an effect, but an old stager will
continue smoking for hours ... A few days of this fearful luxury, when taken
to excess, will give a pallid and haggard look to the face; and a few months,
or even weeks, will change the strong and healthy man into little better than
an idiot skeleton. The pain they suffer when deprived of the drug, after long
habit, no language can explain ... The last scene in this tragic play is
generally a room in the rear of the building, a species of dead-house, where
lie stretched those who have passed into the state of bliss the opium-smoker
madly seeks - an emblem of the long sleep to which he is blindly hurrying.
There can be no doubt of Lord Jocelyn's awareness of the realities of the
opium trade, but later in his book he goes on to argue that "however hateful
it may appear" the trade is nevertheless "a source of great benefit to the
Indian government, returning I have heard, a revenue of upwards of two
millions and a half yearly."(10) Put bluntly there was just too much money
involved.
At home, the war was strongly opposed in the Chartist press with the Northern
Star newspaper condemning this "opium war."(11) In the House of Commons, the
Tory Opposition put down a motion of censure on the Whig government's conduct.
Among those condemning British policy was William Gladstone, whose sister,
Helen, was an opium addict. Justice, he declared, was with the Chinese, and
"Whilst they, the Pagans, and semi-civilised barbarians, have it, we, the
enlightened and civilised Christians, are pursuing objects at variance with
both justice and religion."(12) In reply, the Secretary of State for War,
Thomas Babington Macauley, proceeded to wrap himself in the Union Jack and
appealed to the lowest kind of patriotism. He reminded MPs that the opium
traders "belonged to a country unaccustomed to defeat, to submission, or to
shame," that they had flying over them a "victorious flag" and urged "that
this most rightful quarrel may be prosecuted to a triumphal close."(13)
Macauley's shabby prostitution of his oratorical talents to the cause of
massacre and drug pushing carried the day and the government won the vote by
271 to 262.
When the Whig government finally fell in June, 1841, and the Opposition led by
Sir Robert Peel took office, they, in the best traditions of British politics,
continued to carry out the very same policy that they had earlier condemned.
The war continued until the Chinese were forced to accept British terms,
conceding everything except the legalization of opium. Public opinion in
Britain prevented the pressing of this demand, but it was made clear to the
Chinese government that the British would not tolerate any further
interference with the trade. The most important gain for the British was the
cession of Hong Kong.
The "Arrow" Incident
Relations between Britain and China remained strained. The British wanted the
whole country opened up so that China could be incorporated into their
"informal Empire," brought under indirect British rule like South America,
rather than direct rule like India. The Chinese government was expected to
govern the country in the interests of the British and their refusal to do
this was bound to provoke renewed war.
The occasion for the outbreak of the Second Opium War was the so-called "Arrow
incident" of October 1856. The Chinese authorities arrested a suspected pirate
ship, the Arrow, that was registered in Hong Kong. The colony's governor, Sir
John Bowring, condemned this as an insult to the British flag, demanded the
release of the crew and an apology. The Chinese released the crew, but refused
to apologize whereupon Bowring, in a find display of "gunboat diplomacy,"
ordered the navy to bombard Canton, one of the largest cities in the world.
The fact that the Arrow's Hong Kong registration had lapsed at the time of
seizure was kept quiet.
Bowring, it is worth noting, was not a diehard reactionary, but one of the
leading liberal intellectuals of the day with a European reputation. He was
Jeremy Bentham's literary executor, a founder of the Peace Society, a devout
Christian (he wrote the hymn "In The Cross of Christ I Glory") and a staunch
supporter of free trade. On one celebrated occasion, he managed to combine his
religious and economic beliefs with the pronouncement that "Jesus Christ is
Free Trade and Free Trade is Jesus Christ." On a more mundane level, he had
been employed by Jardine Matheson in the 1840s and, at the time of the Arrow
incident, his son was a director of the company. There can be no doubt as to
where his loyalties lay. The actions of this upstanding Christian liberal
intellectual precipitated the Second (1856-58) and Third Opium Wars (1860)
that were to cost the lives of thousands of Chinese men and women.
Palmerston's government in London was actually advised by the Attorney General
that Bowring's conduct was illegal according to international law, but
nevertheless unanimously decided to back him. They were defeated in the
Commons on the issue (once again Gladstone spoke condemning the war) and
Palmerston responded by calling a general election. He fought a fiercely
jingoistic campaign that swept him triumphantly back to power with a majority.
The British were joined by the French in the waging of the Second Opium War.
Once again the conflict was little more than a succession of technological
massacres accompanied by rape and pillage. The allied forces captured Canton
at the end of 1857, but determined to settle with the Chinese government once
and for all, Lord Elgin, the British envoy, decided to advance up the Peiho
river towards Beijing itself. In May 1858 the Taku forts guarding the mouth of
the river were taken and the allied expedition advanced as far as Tientsin
where the Chinese capitulated. The Treaty of Tientsin effectively incorporated
China into Britain's informal Empire and once the British had withdrawn the
Chinese tried to renege on its terms. This provoked the Third Opium War with
the British once again taking the Taku forts, but this time proceeding upriver
to the military occupation of Beijing in October 1860. Chinese humiliation was
complete.
As a reprisal for Chinese mistreatment of prisoners, Elgin ordered the
destruction of the Emperor's Summer Palace. Captain (later General) Charles
Gordon described how the troops went out to destroy the residence and "after
pillaging it burned the whole place, destroying in a vandal manner most
valuable property.... Everybody was wild for plunder."(14) Another officer,
Lieutenant Colonel Garnet Wolseley wrote that both officers and men "seem to
have been seized with a temporary insanity; in body and soul they were
absorbed in one pursuit, which was plunder, plunder."(15) The British were
particularly annoyed as the French had got the best of the loot]
The occupation of Beijing compelled the Chinese government to implement the
Treaty of Tientsin and to accept its place in the British world order. At last
opium was legalized. Although Elgin's official instructions had not mentioned
the trade, he had received private instructions to secure legalization. He
personally found the whole business repugnant, but there was too much profit
at stake for any display of squeamishness.
By the 1860s the British were exporting 60,000 chests of opium to China
annually, rising to 100,000 chests (over 6,000 tons of opium) annually in the
1880s. After this the trade began to decline in the face of competition from
Chinese-produced opium. Nevertheless it still remained an immensely profitable
business for the rest of the century and beyond. The British opium trade with
China only finally came to an end in 1917. As for Britain's pre-eminent
position in China, this began to come under pressure from rival Imperialist
powers before the end of the century and from Chinese revolutionary
nationalism in the early decades of the twentieth century but was only finally
eclipsed in the 1930s. What remained, up until 1997, was possession of Hong
Kong, the last of the spoils of the Opium Wars.
NOTES
1. Denis Judd, Empire (London: Harper Collins, 1996); P.J. Marshall, ed.
Cambridge Illustrated History of the British Empire (Cambridge University
Press, 1996).
2. John K. Fairbanks, "The Creation of the Treaty System' in John K.
Fairbanks, ed. The Cambridge History of China vol. 10 Part 1 (Cambridge
University Press, 1992) p. 213.
3. Michael Greenberg, British Trade and the Opening of China 1800-1842
(Monthly Review Press; Cambridge University Press 1951) p. 232.
4. Frederic Wakeman, "The Canton Trade and the Opium War" in Fairbanks, op
cit., p. 172.
5. Jack Gray, Rebellions and Revolutions: China from the 1800s to the 1980s
(Oxford University Press, 1990) p. 27.
6. Greenberg, op cit, p. 105.
7. Philip J. Maythornthwaite, The Colonial Wars Sourcebook (London: Arms and
Armour Press, 1995) p. 237.
8. Lord Jocelyn, Six Months With The Chinese Expedition (John Murray, 1841)
pp. 55-57.
9. Jack Beeching, The Chinese Opium Wars (London: Hutchinson, 1975) p. 116.
10. Lord Jocelyn, op cit, pp. 39-41, 142-143.
11. Shijie Guan, "Chartism and the First Opium War," History Workshop 24
(Autumn 1987) p. 22.
12. Richard Shannon, Gladstone 1809-1865 vol. 1 (London: Hamish Hamilton,
1982) p. 107.
13. Beeching, op cit, p. 109.
14. Michael Mann, China 1860 (Salisbury: Michael Russell, 1989) p. 152.
15. G.J. Wolseley, Narrative of the War with China in 1860 (London: Longman,
1862) p. 227.
John Newsinger is a history lecturer at Bath College of Higher Education and
the author of Fenianism in Mid-Victorian Britain (Pluto Press, 1994).
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