Opium Wars

Opium Wars

Opium Wars

Introduction

It is often said that the 'Opium War' was not fought over opium but in the name of free trade, as well as diplomatic and judicial equality with China. Since the eighteenth century, the Chinese government had imposed severe restrictions on foreign trade, and was both suspicious and contemptuous of foreigners. At Guangzhou (Canton), which was the only port open to foreign commerce, the exclusive right to deal with Westerners was held by a group of licensed merchants known as the Co-hong. On the British side, the East India Company, under a charter from the Crown, likewise had a monopoly of trade with India and China.

Two developments in the 1830s undermined this relatively stable 'Canton system': the significant expansion of opium smuggling and the rise of free-trade imperialism. Opium poppy cultivation had long been established in India and had provided an important source of revenue to the Moghul Emperors. In 1761 the E.I.C. obtained a monopoly over the opium production of British India, and soon afterwards the drug began to be shipped to China as part of the Company's triangular trade between India, Guangzhou and Britain.

Discussion

Since the Chinese government had repeatedly banned opium smoking, the E.I.C. preferred to sell its production at annual auctions in Calcutta to licensed private firms so as not to jeopardise its legal trade in tea. The 'country traders' shipped the drug in specially built and heavily armed opium clippers to fortified receiving ships permanently stationed off the coast of southern China. From these floating warehouses the illicit cargoes were transferred to multi-oared 'fast crabs' and 'scrambling dragons', crewed by Chinese pirates who took the opium to coastal and riverine depots where bribed officials permitted the drug to be unloaded for distribution along extensive smuggling networks run by gangsters and Triads. The opium traffic was of considerable economic importance to the British. The profits from the E.I.C.'s auctions contributed significantly to the revenue of the government of British India, to the British government itself via tax on imported tea from China, and of course to the traders themselves. From the 1820s onwards British trade with China was in surplus, as the huge outflow of silver used to buy opium greatly exceeded the money the traders paid for Chinese tea.

In 1834 the E.I.C. monopoly of trade with China ended and all mercantile activities were now in the hands of more aggressive private British (as well as Parsee and American) firms, Jardine Matheson & Co being the most important. This was in line with the laissez-faire thinking that underlay the Industrial Revolution and the general expansion of British commerce. China was viewed by the private merchants at Guangzhou, as well as the industrial capitalists back home, as a vast potential market with boundless economic opportunities, if only the Chinese government were to remove their deliberate obstructions.

These developments, above all the increasing influx of opium in defiance of all Chinese prohibitions, naturally alarmed the Qing (Manchu) government they embarked, therefore, on a rigorous campaign of suppression, ...