The two famous Anglo-Chinese wars in the nineteenth century were not only the first wars fought between imperialist powers and the Far East.
It moreover opened up the possibility of partitioning and drenching for concessions in the richly resourced China. Britain set an example for other imperialist powers to follow, including the newly risen Japan. M. Chamberlain claimed that 'a number of countries were glad to join Britain in putting pressure on the Chinese, who were still unwilling to open their country up freely to Europeans (after the Opium War)'1.
La Feber called the Opium War of 1839-42 'a war that unsettled much of the Pacific's western rim, the powers scrambled for concessions'2. It set the tone for those to follow and came to carry greatest symbolic weight in China. Chinese people saw it largely as a balant case of international bullying. However, Ebrey saw the conflict with China inevitable as the rise of Britain as a great naval power dependent on foreign trade, and since the Chinese had no desire to organize trade on the European model and Britain had the power to force acceptance of its terms.Specific circumstances of the conflict were tied up with trade in the narcotic opium3. The British invested massively in the manufacture and distribution of opium, seeing its sale as a way to solve the problem of their balance of payments with China.
The East India Company licensed private traders to ship it to China, beginning with 200 a year chests in 1729 which increased to over 1000 in 1767 and 4500 by 1800. In the next quarter of the century the number was almost doubled to over 10,000 chests and quadrupled to 40,000 in 18384.Due to the huge number of supplies smoking opium became increasingly popular and by the early nineteenth century addicts included government clerks and runners as well as imperial clansmen and eunuchs at court. It was now time for the Chinese government to react. In 1800 both importation and domestic production of opium were banned and in 1813 smoking opium was outlawed and the punishment was 100 blows and wearing a 'cangue' (a heavy wooden collar) for a month.
Open trading thus disappeared but the British and other traders managed to stay clear of the Chinese authorities by docking their boats off the coast of Guangdong and selling the drug to Chinese smugglers. Soon the outflow of silver caused by the opium trade gave additional urgency to the need to solve the opium problem. By the 1820s two million taels of silver were flowing out of China a year, the number rose to nine million by the early 1830s5. Finally in 1839, official Lin Zexu, experienced and high-minded, was appointed and was determined to solve the opium problem.
Lin confiscated pipes, seized opium stores and arrested some 1600 Chinese. Moreover, he used threats and bribed to get foreign merchants to turn over their stores of opium. Lin offered to trade the opium for tea at a ratio of one to five and threatened to execute the heads of the Co-hong. He also famously wrote a letter to Queen Victoria suggesting her majesty 'would deeply hate it' if the opium trade was happening in England instead. Lin further barricaded the foreigners in China in the factories to pressure them to turn over their stocks.
To end this impasse, the British appointed superintendent Charles Elliot to collect opium from merchants, turned it over to Lin, who promptly destroyed them in the presence of the British. In its aftermath Lin ruled that only traders who put up bonds and promised not to deal in opium would thereafter be allowed to trade at Guangzhou. Lin also pressurized the Portuguese to expel the British from Macao, as a consequence of which they moved to the barren island of Hong Kong6. Meanwhile in England, commercial interests were pushing for war with China to compensate the losses in opium trade.William Jardine of the major opium trading firm sailed to London to lobby for war.
Once decision went his way, he supplied assistance, leasing vessels to the British fleet and lending pilots and translator. In 1840 a British expeditionary force left India with sixteen warships and thirty-one other ships. Hyam wrote, 'the merchants were at least able to persuade the British government that stronger action were required on their behalf'7. Lin bought new cannons for the forts and laid great chain across the estuary leading into Guangzhou.This made no problem for the British expeditionary force, since they simply bypassed Guangzhou and made for the major ports of Ningbo and Tianjin, which they shut down in short order.
This made the Chinese no longer able to refuse to negotiate. The agreement worked out in Guangzhou called for ceding Hong Kong, repaying the British the cost of their expedition (an indemnity of six million Mexican silver dollars), and allowing direct intercourse between officials and each country8. The public in both China and Britain was outraged upon learning the terms of settlement.Lin was already exiled for letting the war to start and the official who negotiated the terms was brought to the capital in chains. In England a new expeditionary force was ordered. This time with 10,000 men, more than twice the previous number, and in 1841 Britain occupied several strategic coastal cities, including Shanghai, which means foreign powers are getting closer to the capital than ever.
Dozens of Qing officials committed suicide when defeated9. Finally Britain took up positions outside the walls of Nanjing, and the Chinese were forced to sue for peace.The Treaty of Nanjing was concluded at gunpoint. It increased the indemnity up to twenty-one million ounces of silver and abolished the Co-hong completely.
It opened five treaty ports-Guangzhou, Xiamen, Fuzhou, Ningbo and Shanghai, and fixed tariff at five percent. It further ensured that British subjects in China were only answerable to British law, even when disputes with the Chinese10. Although widely known as the Opium War, issue developed from the British point of view into one of opening up a total field of commercial operations and breaking out of the restrictions of trading at Canton alone.Prime Minister Palmerston believed that the Chinese objections to opium stemmed from a desire to protect home-grown opium and perhaps stronger moral anxiety was the fact that payment for opium contributed to Chinese currency in which taxes had to be paid - which in turn had the effect of forcing prices and taxes up alarmingly11. During the course of the nineteenth century China signed many more 'unequal' treaties with imperialist powers.
China could not set her own tariffs and eventually even had to appoint European officers to collect them.When the Chinese did not buy European products in the hope-for numbers, European merchants did not fault their own expectations but the obstructionism of Chinese officials12. They demanded more treaty ports and fewer restrictions on trade. In 1860 an Anglo-French expedition occupied Beijing for a month to force the acceptance of new treaties, brought treaty ports up to a number of fourteen. By the end of the century some ports were leased in perpetuity to foreign powers13. The fact that foreigners did not have to obey Chinese laws came to resemble international cities attached to the Chinese mainland.
Foreign countries won the right to establish legations and consulates in China, with their diplomats treated according to European definitions of international protocol. Further, Christian missionaries obtained the rights to preach throughout China. By the end of the century foreign businessmen had even gained the right to open factories on Chinese soil. Another consequence of the Opium War was an increased addiction of opium. Trade was legalized by treaty in 186014.
Opium remained a major item of trade until the end of the century though proportion imported declined after 1880 with an expansion of domestic production.By the end of the century westerner observers estimated there were ten percent of the Chinese population being smokers of opium, with a-third to half of them addicted to it. This meant a fifteenth million opium addicts and another thirty million occasional users. The highest rates of addictions was probably found among imperial clansmen and bannermen, living on meager stipends without much to do. This enormous demand of the drug led to a serious outflow of cash out of China which became an increasingly heavy burden to the weak and backward Qing dynasty.The second Anglo-Chinese war broke out in 1858 as a counterattack to the Taiping rebels who attempted to seize Shanghai which would threaten western powers in China15.
The Taiping rebels were religious crusades and were anti-Manchu. In terms of size, duration and destructiveness the rebellion was probably the biggest single event in the history of the world know to Europeans in the nineteenth century, 'the great revolt and most disastrous civil war in world history'. The event was, however, not isolated, there were other rebels in China at the same time, such in the Nien, the Muslims in Yunnan and the Miao in Kweichow.Ebrey wrote, 'seven million peasants were in revolt in the period of 1856-1860'16. The Taiping Rebellion had its roots in dynastic crisis, misgovernment and disillusionment as well as in ethic feuding caused by the sufferings of the immigrant Hakka people of Guangdong and Guangxi. 'It is, however, almost impossible to deny some connection extremely important if only indirect, between western influences and the outbreak of the Taiping Rebellion'17.
It originated in the hinterland of Canton, where reaction to the foreigner was strongest during the Opium war, and the main foothold of European influence.Further, its ideology randomly included attenuated pseudo-Christian elements, although it has been claimed to be heretical. British general Charles Gordon assisted the Chinese government in the suppression of the Taipings but there is reason to suppose that his contribution was more than marginal. It was preceded by an attempt to poison the European community in Hong Kong, which was touched off by an incident involving the lorcha, the Arrow, which in a Chinese official had arrested in October 1856.The Arrow, which was on suspicion of piracy, was flying the British flag and was registered in the British territory of Hong Kong. Prime Minister Palmerston's was furious and thought 'the Chinese must be taught a lesson'18.
He famous remark wrote: 'in insolent barbarian, wielding authority at Canton, has violated the British flag, broken the engagement of treaties, offered rewards for the heads of British subjects... and planned their destruction by murder, assassination and poisons19'.Hyam saw the second Anglo-Chinese war once again arose from the clash between Chinese exclusiveness and British economic expansion. The Prime Minister Palmerston reckoned that 'these Orientals needed "a drubbing" once every decade to keep them in order'.
During the second Anglo-Chinese war the Chinese witnessed the burning of their splendid Summer Palace of Yuan-ming Yuan. A military recommendation by Sir Hope Grant, it was a spectacular public retribution for the treacherous behaviour of their opponents and for the atrocities which had taken place in it.Palmerston was said to be pleased with this 'demonstration of British indignation20'. The second Anglo-Chinese treaty was concluded in Tientsin in 1860 by Elgin, who recalled British treatment to the Chinese 'a periodic use of force'21. The treaty, with the Convention of Peking, opened more treaty ports, gave freedom for Christian missionaries to preach in China.
It furthermore permitted a permanent British embassy in Peking and secured navigation of the Yangtse.Nevertheless, by the mid-1860s the British government was firmly convinced that the China trade would never worth the expense of war and territorial control. Hyam suggested if Britain had established territorial rule in China, there would have been a risk that other powers would follow suit; and struggle for supremacy in China could embroil all Europe. It was widely assumed that British interests in China would remain temporary and limited, that commercial interest would always remain particular, even speculative interests, but never territorial ones22.
