“As months accumulate and years pass by, the poison they have produced increases in its wicked intensity, and its repugnant odour reaches as high as the sky. Heaven is furious with anger, and all the gods are moaning with pain!” (Excerpt from Commissioner Lin Zexu’s open letter to Queen Victoria, 1839)
On 18 March 1839, the Chinese Imperial Commissioner Lin Zexu met with the Cohong, a guild of merchants that held a monopoly on imports in the city of Canton. Lin was faced with a difficult task: he had been sent by the Daoguang Emperor to enforce the prohibition of the opium trade. Owing to the protectionist policies of Qing China, all trade with the West was focused through the port at Canton, where the Cohong controlled negotiations with foreign traders. Accusing the twelve Cohong merchants of being traitors, Lin ordered them to convince the Western opium smugglers to surrender their supply of opium, under the threat of execution.
On that same day, the Daoguang Emperor had issued an edict declaring that penalties for smuggling opium into China would now be enforced consistently. Up until that point, although the trade of opium in China had been nominally illegal since 1796, smugglers were rarely punished, and the trade of the drug had flourished. At the heart of the opium trade was the British East India Company, which was increasingly relying on exporting opium from Bengal, where it was grown, to China, where it was sold, for its profits. The effect of this was not just widespread addiction to the drug across China but also the reversal of China’s trade surplus, threatening the stability of Chinese society.
As Commissioner Lin quickly realised, the problem of opium smuggling into China through Canton was not one that could be resolved through empty threats and negotiations through the Cohong mediaries. Lin’s message to the Cohong had simply given the top foreign merchants advance warning about Lin’s intention to confiscate their stock of opium. Ignoring an invitation to Lin’s residence for interview, British traders sent their ships from Canton to Hong Kong island, where they were under the protection of the British government. However, buckling under the pressure of Chinese soldiers, British traders agreed to surrender around 20,000 chests of opium, under the condition that the British government would compensate them for their losses.
Although some smuggling continued despite Lin’s crackdown, the shipping of opium into Canton had been drastically reduced as a result of his efforts. Tensions between Britain and China only continued to escalate as the year went on. In July, two drunk British sailors murdered a villager in Kowloon; after the British Admiral Charles Elliot took it upon himself to arrest the men and try them in British courts, Lin became infuriated at the British disregard for Chinese sovereignty. As a result, he forbade the sale of provisions to the British. As the British began to run low on supplies, Elliot demanded that Lin lift the ban under the threat of violence. When his demand wasn’t met, the British ships initiated a skirmish at Kowloon, fighting off the Chinese ships stationed there. The situation worsened following another naval battle at Chuenpi on 3 November, as a result of the Royal Navy threatening to attack a merchant ship that bypassed its blockade of the Pearl River. War had begun.
In fact, the British government had been preparing for war since early October, with the Foreign Secretary, Palmerston, permitting the use of military force to gain recompense for the seized opium without any knowledge of the Battle of Chuenpi. In January 1840, a British expeditionary force was drawn up and dispatched to China with the intention of engaging in a punitive expedition against the Qing. Fighting spread from Canton and the Pearl River up the coast to the Yangtze; following the British capture of the city of Zhenjiang in July 1842, Chinese officials began to sue for peace.
Following negotiations, the Treaty of Nanking was signed on 29 August 1842, putting an end to the First Opium War. Fearing a British assault on the city of Nanking, Chinese officials had been forced into an agreement that favoured the British significantly: Britain was to gain the island of Hong Kong, the system of all trade passing through Canton was ended, and the Qing had to pay reparations not only for the confiscated opium but also for the war itself. The first of a series of ‘unequal treaties’ between Western powers and China, the First Opium War and the Treaty of Nanking set in motion China’s ensuing ‘Century of Humiliation’.
The importance of economic factors in causing the First Opium War cannot be understated. Opium was the most profitable commodity traded by the British in the 19th century, accounting for over 15% of the British empire’s revenue. The Daoguang Emperor’s threat to the British economy was one that Palmerston could not afford to let slip by. A young William Gladstone argued in parliament that Palmerston had ignored any moral considerations in going to war, instead being motivated by bringing back a substantial income stream that could improve his government’s position.
Although the importance of economic motivations was great, the failure of diplomacy in resolving the conflict was significant, nonetheless. There was an idea that British national honour had been insulted by the Qing Dynasty’s actions in Canton, something that likely played a role in influencing Palmerston’s decision. Additionally, the government of Melbourne, the incumbent Prime Minister at the time of the war’s initiation, was mired in several intractable international issues, namely war in Afghanistan and the threat of rebellion in Canada, Jamaica and Ireland. Palmerston deemed the First Opium War to be a simple resolution to what was becoming a growing threat to Britain’s expanding economy.
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Melancon, G. (1999). Honour in Opium? The British Declaration of War on China, 1839-1840. The International History Review, 21(4), 855–874. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40109164
Hevia, J. L. (2003). Opium, Empire, and Modern History [Review of Modern China and Opium: A Reader; Opium Regimes: China, Britain, and Japan, 1839-1952; Britain’s China Policy and the Opium Crisis: Balancing Drugs, Violence and National Honour, 1833-1840; Opium, Empire, and the Global Political Economy: A Study of the Asian Opium Trade 1750-1950, by A. Baumler, T. Brook, B. T. Wakabayashi, G. Melancon, & C. A. Trocki]. China Review International, 10(2), 307–326. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23732550
Lovell, J. (2015). The Opium War: drugs, dreams and the making of modern China, Oxford: Picador