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TheFirstOpiumWar1839-1842.pdf
Opium clipper “Water Witch”(1831) National Maritime Museum, London
[1831_WaterWitch_PW7719_nmm]
THE OPIUM TRADE
Introduction
The Opium Wars of 1839 to 1842 and 1856 to 1860 marked a new stage in China’s
relations with the West. China’s military defeats in these wars forced its rulers to sign
treaties opening many ports to foreign trade. The restrictions imposed under the Canton
system were abolished. Opium, despite imperial prohibitions, now became a regular
item of trade. As opium flooded into China, its price dropped, local consumption
increased rapidly, and the drug penetrated all levels of society. In the new treaty ports,
foreign traders collaborated with a greater variety of Chinese merchants than under the
Canton system, and they ventured deeply into the Chinese interior. Missionaries brought
Christian teachings to villagers, protected by the diplomatic rights obtained under the
treaties. Popular hostility to the new foreigners began to rise.
Not surprisingly, Chinese historians have regarded the two Opium Wars as unjust
impositions of foreign power on the weakened Qing empire. In the 20th century, the
Republic of China made strenuous efforts to abolish what it called “unequal treaties.” It
succeeded in removing most of them in World War II, but this phase of foreign
imperialism only ended completely with the reversion of Hong Kong to China in 1997.
Conventional textbooks even date the beginning of modern Chinese history from the
end of the first Opium War in 1842.
1
Although the wars, opium trade, and treaties did reflect superior Western military force,
focusing only on Western impositions on China gives us too narrow a picture of this
period. This was not only a time of Western and Chinese conflict over trade, but a time
of great global transformation in which China played one important role. The traders in
opium included Britain, the U.S., Turkey, India, and Southeast Asia as well as domestic
Chinese merchants. The origins of opium consumption in China are very old, and its first
real boom as an item of consumption began after tobacco was introduced from the New
World in the 16th century and Chinese smokers took a fancy to mixing it with the drug.
The Qing court was not in principle hostile to useful trade. In 1689 and 1727, the court
had negotiated treaties with Russia to exchange furs from Siberia for tea, and allowed
the Russians to live in a foreigners’ guest house in Beijing. Qing merchants and officials
also traded extensively with Central Eurasian merchants from Bukhara and the Kazakh
nomads for vital supplies of wool, horses, and meat. The court knew well the value of
the southern coastal trade as well, since revenues from the Canton trade went directly
into the Imperial Household department.
The Opium Wars are rightly named: it was not trade per se but rather unrestricted drug
trade by the Western powers, particularly Britain, that precipitated them. As the wars
unfolded, however, it became clear that far more than opium was ultimately involved.
The very nature of China’s hitherto aloof relationship with the world was profoundly
challenged, and long decades of internal upheaval lay ahead.
Tensions Under the Canton Trade System
Under the system established by the Qing dynasty to regulate trade in the 18th century,
Western traders were restricted to conducting trade through the southern port of
Canton (Guangzhou). They could only reside in the city in a limited space, including
their warehouses; they could not bring their families; and they could not stay there
more a few months of the year. Qing officials closely supervised trading relations,
allowing only licensed merchants from Western countries to trade through a monopoly
guild of Chinese merchants called the Cohong. Western merchants could not contact
Qing officials directly, and there were no formal diplomatic relations between China and
Western countries. The Qing emperor regarded trade as a form of tribute, or gifts given
to him personally by envoys who expressed gratitude for his benevolent rule.
Canton, where the business of trade was primarily conducted during this period, is depicted
on this fan created for the foreign market. Seven national flags fly from the Western
headquarters that line the shore.
Chinese Fan with Foreign Factories at Canton, 1790–1800
Peabody Essex Museum [cwOF_1790c_E80202_fan]
2
Western traders, for their part, mainly conducted trade through licensed monopoly
companies, like Britain’s East India Company and the Dutch VOC. Despite these
restrictions, both sides learned how to make profits by cooperating with each other. The
Chinese hong merchants, the key intermediaries between the foreign traders and the
officials, developed close relations with their Western counterparts, instructing them on
how to conduct their business without antagonizing the Chinese bureaucracy.
As the volume of trade grew, however, the British demanded greater access to China’s
markets. Tea exports from China grew from 92,000 pounds in 1700 to 2.7 million
pounds in 1751. By 1800 the East India Company was buying 23 million pounds of tea
per year at a cost of 3.6 million pounds of silver. Concerned that the China trade was
draining silver out of England, the British searched for a counterpart commodity to trade
for tea and porcelain. They found it in opium, which they planted in large quantities
after they had taken Bengal, in India, in 1757.
British merchants blamed the restrictions of the Canton trade for the failure to export
enough goods to China to balance their imports of tea and porcelain. Thus, Lord George
Macartney’s mission to the court in Beijing in 1793 aimed to promote British trade by
creating direct ties between the British government and the emperor. Macartney,
however, portrayed his embassy as a tribute mission to celebrate the emperor’s
birthday. He had only one man with him who could speak Chinese.
When he tried to raise the trade question, after following the tribute rituals, Macartney’s
demands were rejected. His gifts of astronomical instruments, intended to impress the
Qing emperor with British technological skills, in fact did not look very impressive: the
emperor had already received similar items from Jesuits in earlier decades. Macartney’s
failure, and the failure of a later mission (the Amherst embassy) in 1816, helped to
convince the British that only force would induce the Qing government to open China’s
ports.
Opium Clippers & the Expanding Drug Trade
Opium routes between British-controlled India and China
[map_OpRoutes_BrEmpire21_234-5]
3
New fast sailing vessels called clipper ships, built with narrow decks, large sail areas,
and multiple masts, first appeared in the Pacific in the 1830s and greatly stimulated the
tea trade. They carried less cargo than the bulky East Indiamen, but could bring fresh
teas to Western markets much faster. Clipper ships also proved very convenient for
smuggling opium, and were openly and popularly identified as “opium clippers.” Ships
like the Red Rover could bring opium quickly from Calcutta to Canton, doubling their
owners’ profits by making two voyages a year.
At Canton, Qing prohibitions had forced the merchants to withdraw from Macao (Macau)
and Whampoa and retreat to Lintin island, at the entrance of the Pearl River, beyond the
jurisdiction of local officials. There the merchants received opium shipments from India
and handed the chests over to small Chinese junks and rowboats called “fast crabs” and
“scrambling dragons,” to be distributed at small harbors along the coast. The latter local
smuggling boats were sometimes propelled by as many as twenty or more oars on
each side.
The Pearl River Delta
[map_MouthCantonRiver_p79747]
The major India source of British opium bound for China was Patna in Bengal, where the
drug was processed and packed into chests holding about 140 pounds. The annual flow
to China was around 4,000 chests by 1790, and a little more than double this by the
early 1820s. Imports began to increase rapidly in the 1830s, however, as “free trade”
agitation gained strength in Britain and the East India Company’s monopoly over the
China trade approached its termination date (in 1834). The Company became more
dependent than ever on opium revenue, while private merchants hastened to increase
their stake in the lucrative trade. On the eve of the first Opium War, the British were
shipping some 40,000 chests to China annually. By this date, it was estimated that
there were probably around ten million opium smokers in China, two million of them
addicts. (American merchants shipped around 10,000 chests between 1800 to 1839.)
4
OPIUM IMPORTS TO CHINA FROM INDIA
(1 chest = approximately 140 pounds)
1773 1,000 chests
1790 4,000 chests
early 1820s 10,000 chests
1828 18,000 chests
1839 40,000 chests
1865 76,000 chests
1884 81,000 chests (peak)
Source: Jonathan Spence, Chinese Roundabout (Norton, 1992), pp. 233-35
“The Opium Ships at Lintin in China, 1824”
Print based on a painting by “W. J. Huggins, Marine Painter to His late Majesty
William the 4th”
National Maritime Museum
[1824_PZ0240_Lintin_nmm]
5
In 1831, it was estimated that between 100 and 200 “fast crab” smuggling boats were
operating in the waters around Lintin Island, the rendezvous point for opium imports.
Ranging from 30 to 70 feet in length, with crews of upwards of 50 or 60 men, these
swift rowboats could put on sail for additional speed. They were critical in navigating
China’s often shallow rivers and delivering opium to the interior.
“Fast Boat or Smuggler,” from Captain E. Belcher,
Narrative of a Voyage Round the World (1843), p. 238
[1843_belcher_238_FastBoat]
“The 'Streatham' and the opium clipper 'Red Rover'”
The Streatham, an East India Company ship, is shown at anchor in the Hooghly River,
Calcutta. Near the bank, the Red Rover, the first of the “opium clippers,” sits with her
sails lowered. Built for speed, the Red Rover doubled the profits of her owners by
completing two Calcutta-to-China smuggling voyages a year.
[BHC3580_opiumcl_nmm.jpg]
6
“The new clipper steam-ship “LY-EE-MOON,” built for the opium trade,” Illustrated
London News, ca. 1859
A quarter century after revolutionizing the drug trade, the celebrated “opium clippers”
had begun to undergo a further revolution with the addition of coal-fueled, steam-
driven paddle wheels. This illustration appeared in the Illustrated London News in
1859, two decades after the first Opium War began.
[1800s_LyEeMoonILN_Britannca]
Mandarins, Merchants & Missionaries
The opium trade was so vast and profitable that all kinds of people, Chinese and
foreigners, wanted to participate in it. Wealthy literati and merchants were joined by
people of lower classes who could now afford cheaper versions of the drug. Hong
merchants cooperated with foreign traders to smuggle opium when they could get away
with it, bribing local officials to look the other way. Smugglers, peddlers, secret
societies, and even banks in certain areas all became complicit in the drug trade.
Chinese Mandarins,
Illustrated London News,
November 12, 1842
[iln_1842_174_mandarins_012b]
7
Three paintings of the Chinese hong merchants (details)
Left Howqua, by George Chinnery, 1830
Middle Mowqua, by Lam Qua, 1840s
Right Tenqua, by Lam Qua, ca. 1840s
Peabody Essex Museum
[cwPT_1830_howqua_chinnery] [cwPT_1840s_ct79_Mouqua]
[cwPT_1840s_ct78_Tenqua]
Opium, as an illegal commodity, brought in no customs revenue, so local officials
exacted fees from merchants. Even missionaries who deplored the opium trade on
moral grounds commonly found themselves drawn into it, or dependent on it, in one
form or another. They relied on the opium clippers for transportation and
communication, for example, and used merchants dealing in opium as their bankers and
money changers. Karl Gützlaff (1803–1851), a Protestant missionary from Pomerania
who was an exceptionally gifted linguist, gained a modicum of both fame and notoriety
by becoming closely associated with the opium trade and then serving the British in the
Opium War—not just as an interpreter, but also as an administrator in areas occupied by
the foreign forces.
8
The missionary Karl Gützlaff
(often anglicized as Carl or
Charles Gutzlaff), who served as
an interpreter for the British in
the first Opium War, was well
known for frequently pursuing
his religious calling while
dressed in native garb.
Portrait of Gützlaff (inscribed)
on the frontispiece of his 1834
book, A Sketch of Chinese
History: Ancient and Modern.
[1834_Gutzlaff_SHG_fronE38B]
George Chinnery’s sketch of “Revd.
Charles Gutzlaff, Missionary,” done in
1832 [right], found later incarnation in
a lithograph captioned “Revd. Chas.
Gutzlaff, Missionary to China in the
Dress of a Fokien Sailor” (below)
Peabody Essex Museum
[1832_M976541_Gutzlaff_pem]
Wikimedia Commons
Karl_Gutzlaff.jpg
[d_1800s_KarlGutzlaff_FujianCostume_wp]
9
The Daoguang Emperor & Commissioner Lin
By the 1830s, up to 20 percent of central government officials, 30 percent of local
officials, and 30 percent of low-level officials regularly consumed opium. The Daoguang
emperor (r. 1821–50) himself was an addict, as were most of his court.
As opium infected the Qing military forces, however, the court grew alarmed at its
insidious effects on national defense. Opium imports also appeared to be the cause of
massive outflows of silver, which destabilized the currency. While the court repeatedly
issued edicts demanding punishment of opium dealers, local officials accepted heavy
bribes to ignore them. In 1838, one opium dealer was strangled at Macao, and eight
chests of opium were seized in Canton. Still the emperor had not yet resolved to take
truly decisive measures.
“The Imperial Portrait of a Chinese Emperor
called Daoguang’”
Wikimedia Commons
[Emperor_Daoguang_wp]
This portrait of the Daoguang
emperor Minning appeared as the
frontispiece in volume one of John
Elliot Bingham’s 1843 account
Narrative of the Expedition to
China. Bingham, a naval
commander, fought in key battles in
the first Opium War.
[Emperor_Bingham_frontis_gb]
10
Titled “Mien-Ning, Late Emperor
of China,” this posthumous
depiction appeared in The
Illustrated Magazine of Art in
1853, some three years after the
emperor’s death. Although copied
from a portrait painted by a
Chinese court artist, such realistic
likenesses of the emperor were
withheld from the Chinese public.
“Mien-Ning,
Late Emperor of China,”
The Illustrated Magazine of Art,
Volume 1, 1853
[1853_MienNing_EmpChina_IllMagArt_gb]
As opium flooded the country despite imperial prohibitions, the court debated its
response. On one side, officials concerned about the economic costs of the silver drain
and the social costs of addiction argued for stricter prohibitions, aimed not only at
Chinese consumers and dealers but also at the foreign importers. On the other side, a
mercantile interest including southern coastal officials allied with local traders promoted
legalization and taxation of the drug. Debate raged within court circles in the early
1800s as factions lined up patrons and pushed their favorite policies.
Ultimately, the Daoguang emperor decided to support hardliners who called for
complete prohibition, sending the influential official Lin Zexu to Canton in 1839. Lin was
a morally upright, energetic official, who detested the corruption and decadence created
by the opium trade. He had served in many important provincial posts around the
empire and gained a reputation for impartiality and dedication to the welfare of the
people he governed. In July 1838 he sent a memorial to the emperor supporting drastic
measures to suppress opium use. He outlined a systematic policy to destroy the sources
and equipment supporting drug use, and began putting this policy into effect in the
provinces of Hubei and Hunan. After 19 audiences with the emperor, he was appointed
Imperial Commissioner with full powers to end the opium trade in Canton. He arrived in
Canton in March, 1839.
Although Lin’s vigorous attempt to suppress the opium trade ultimately ended in
disastrous war and personal disgrace, he is remembered a great and incorruptible
patriot eminently deserving of the nickname he had enjoyed before his appointment as
an Imperial Commissioner in Canton: “Lin the Blue Sky.” Portraits of him by Chinese
artists at the time vary in style, but all convey the impression of a man of wisdom and
integrity. Today, statues in and even outside China pay homage to the redoubtable
commissioner.
11
Right Commissioner Lin in scholar’s robe
Yale University, Sterling Memorial Library
[1800s_LinZexu_yale]
Right Lin Zexu
painting by either Lamqua or Tinqua
Wikimedia Commons
[d_1800s_Lin_Zexu_wm]
Left Lin Zexu
from Zhonggou Jindaishi Cankao Tulu
Wikimedia Commons
[1800s_LinZexu_Zhong]
Left Lin Zexu, published 1843
From a drawing by a native artist in
the possession of Lady Strange
Beinecke Library, Yale University
[1800s_LinZexu_3454-001_yale]
12
Statues of Commissioner Lin can be
found today in many places around the
world, including Canton, Fuzhou, Hong
Kong, Macao, and, pictured here,
Chatham Square in New York City’s
Chinatown.
Wikimedia Commons
[Lin_ChathamSquare_NYC]
On viewing images of a potentially disturbing nature: click here.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology © 2010 Visualizing Cultures Creative Commons License
13
PRODUCTION & CONSUMPTION
As the court in China debated opium prohibition, the East India Company developed
opium production on an enormous scale in India. The Company established its main
production center in Patna, a town in Bihar, 600 kilometers up the Ganges River from
Calcutta. There, they forced Indian laborers to work in the extensive poppy fields and
prepare the opium in large mixing rooms and examining halls. A skilled workman was
required to produce at least 100 balls of opium per day. Then the balls were stacked to
be packed in chests made of timber from Nepal. From Patna, a fleet of native boats took
the product down the Ganges River to Calcutta.
Two very different runs of graphics produced by eyewitnesses in the 1850s
convey a vivid sense of the production process that was followed throughout most of the
19th century. The first is a spectacular suite of lithographs based on drawings by Walter
S. Sherwill, a lieutenant colonel who served as a British “boundary commissioner” in
Bengal. The second rendering of different stages of opium manufacture consists of 19
paintings on mica by the Indian artist Shiva Lal. Commissioned by Dr. D. R. Lyall, the
East India Company’s “personal assistant in charge of opium-making,” Lal’s work was
terminated when Lyall was killed in the 1857 Indian Mutiny.
14
Opium Factory at Patna, India
“The Examining Hall, Opium Factory at Patna India”
“In the Examining Hall the consistency of the crude opium as brought from the country
in earthen pans is simply tested, either by the touch, or by thrusting a scoop into the
mass. A sample from each pot (the pots being numbered and labelled) is further
examined for consistency and purity in the chemical test room.”
Prose from The Graphic reproduced in The Truth about Opium Smoking, 1882
Lithograph after W. S. Sherwill, ca. 1850
Wellcome Images
[1850_Sherwill_1_ExamH1B828]
15
“The Mixing Room, Opium Factory at Patna India”
“In the Mixing Room the contents of the earthen pans are thrown into vats and stirred
with blind rakes until the whole mass becomes a homogeneous paste.”
Prose from The Graphic reproduced in The Truth about Opium Smoking, 1882
Lithograph after W. S. Sherwill, ca. 1850
Wellcome Images
[1850_Sherwill_2_Mixing_wlc]
16
“The Balling Room, Opium Factory at Patna India”
“From the mixing room the crude opium is conveyed to the Balling Room, where it is
made into balls. Each ball-maker is furnished with a small table, a stool, and a brass
cup to shape the ball in a certain quantity of opium and water called 'Lewa,' and an
allowance of poppy petals, in which the opium balls are rolled. Every man is required
to make a certain number of balls, all weighing alike. An expert workman will turn out
upwards of a hundred balls a day.”
Prose from The Graphic reproduced in The Truth about Opium Smoking, 1882
Lithograph after W. S. Sherwill, ca. 1850
Wellcome Images
[1850_Sherwill_3_Balling_wlc]
17
“The Drying Room, Opium Factory at Patna India”
“In the Drying Room the balls are placed to dry before being stacked. Each ball is
placed in a small earthenware cup. Men examine the balls, and puncture with a sharp
style those in which gas, arising from fermentation, may be forming.”
Prose from The Graphic reproduced in The Truth about Opium Smoking, 1882
Lithograph after W. S. Sherwill, ca. 1850
Wellcome Images
[1850_Sherwill_4_Drying_wlc]
18
“The Stacking Room, Opium Factory at Patna India”
“In the Stacking Room the balls are stacked before being packed in boxes for Calcutta
en route to China. A number of boys are constantly engaged in stacking, turning,
airing, and examining the balls. To clear them of mildew, moths or insects, they are
rubbed with dried and crushed poppy petal dust.”
Prose from The Graphic reproduced in The Truth about Opium Smoking, 1882
Lithograph after W. S. Sherwill, ca. 1850
Wellcome Images
[1850_Sherwill_5_Stack1B82D]
19
“Opium Fleet Descending the Ganges on the Way to Calcutta”
“An Opium Fleet of native boats, conveying the drug to Calcutta. The fleet is passing
the Monghyr Hills, and is preceded by small canoes, the crews of which sound the
depth of water, and warn all boats out of the Channel by beat of drum, as the
Government boats claim precedence over all other craft. The timber raft shown in the
sketch has been floated down from the Nepal Forests, and will be used in making
packing-cases for the opium.”
Prose from The Graphic reproduced in The Truth about Opium Smoking, 1882
Lithograph after W. S. Sherwill, ca. 1850
Wellcome Images
[c_1850_Sherwill_6_Fleet_wlc]
Shiva Lal’s Rendering of Opium Manufacture
Commissioned by the East India Company
20
Details from an image set illustrating the manufacture
of opium, 1857–60, by Shiva Lal
Victoria & Albert Museum
21
Opium Consumption
Opium is a product of the opium poppy (papaver somniferum), which grows widely
across the Middle East, India, and Southeast and East Asia. Chinese had known it
mainly as a medicinal herb for many centuries. In the 16th century, it appeared in a
new form, mixed with a new drug from the New World: tobacco. Along with maize,
sweet potatoes, chili peppers, and peanuts, tobacco was one of the crops brought to
China by the Spanish and Portuguese. These crops flourished in the hill country of south
China, in places where it was difficult to grow rice. The Chinese quickly developed a
craving for tobacco, although, as in England, critics attacked it for its addictive and
wasteful qualities.
Opium in the West
The British were not forcing upon the Chinese a commodity that
was prohibited in their own country. On the contrary, opium was
widely used in Britain and the United States as a medical or pseudo-
medical potion, provoking an “anti-opium” movement that grew
intense in the late 1800s.
The Truth About Opium Smoking was published in London in 1882 by the Society for
the Suppression of the Opium Trade.
[b_1882_TruthPub1_title_gb]
“The Poor Child’s Nurse”
This graphic from an 1849 issue of
the British humor magazine Punch
addresses a common practice in
19th-century America as well as
England—the widespread use and
abuse of opium and opium
derivatives (such as laudanum) for
relieving illness and even quieting
children. By one estimate, at the time
of the first Opium War around 300
chests of opium were entering
England annually.
Wellcome Library, London
[k_1849_ChildsNurse
_Punch_wlc]
22
Madak, or tobacco mixed with opium, originally arrived in south China as part of the
global trade with southeast China. Chinese traders had dominated the southeast Asian
seas for centuries, mixing with other maritime peoples of the region like the Malays,
Arabs, Indians, and Bugis. The European newcomers, especially the Dutch and
Portuguese, established fortified trading posts in India, Malacca, and Java, joining a
thriving intercultural trading network. Chinese had long consumed exotic products of
Southeast Asia like elephant tusks, kingfisher feathers, and sea cucumbers. In the 16th
and 17th centuries, they increased their consumption of these tropical luxuries, and
opium piggybacked on the expanded southeast Asian trade.
In 1835, a young official named Peng Songyu left Beijing to work in the distant
province of Yunnan and was surprised to discover how widespread opium smoking had
become:
When I worked privately for Zhang, the other six colleagues of mine all
lived on opium. After lunch, they would each take a lamp and lie down; and
they would bring their own pipes to share in the evenings. I worked around
them for almost three years, but never tasted the smoke, my hands never
touched the tools. All my friends tried very hard to persuade me but I was
never moved. They all laughed at me and said that I was willing to suffer.
(Cited in Zheng Yangwen, The Social Life of Opium, p.79.)
23
Two 19th-century Chinese images depicting opium smokers
wealthy (above top) and poor (above).
Unknown Chinese artist, gouache painting on rice-paper
Wellcome Library, London
[1800s_SmokersW_ChPaint_wlc]
[1800s_Smokers_ChPaint_wlc]
Although opium was a familiar product in China, by the 18th century consumers looked
for stronger stuff. During the 18th century, consumption of tropical, addictive, and
alcoholic products increased throughout the world. Traders and producers found ways to
make these seductive products cheaper, stronger, and more widely available. Vodka
consumption in Russia, for example, more than doubled, becoming a cheap source of
intoxication, and elites campaigned against it as a moral threat to national life.
Americans, for their part, brewed large quantities of fermented apple cider. Tea, coffee,
chocolate, tobacco, sugar, alcohol, and opium were some of the addictive stimulants
that consumers demanded everywhere. The main British contribution to this trade was
to produce opium in a cheap and purified form on plantations in their newly conquered
colony of Bengal. Later, they extended production to Patna and Benares upstream on
the Ganges. Patna and Benares opium became the most popular brands of this major
export commodity and a mainstay of the East India Company’s rule.
24
Although some opium entered China by land routes from India to Sichuan in the
southwest, most of the drugs came by sea and were unloaded at the Lintin rendezvous
near Canton. From there, smugglers in their “fast crabs” did not merely transport the
opium to ports along the coast, but also carried it by river into the interior. It was this
ever expanding corruption of a vast portion of the country that provoked Commissioner
Lin’s alarm and righteous indignation.
This scene of a huge Chinese holding ship (depicted in full, upper left) depicts
foreigners unloading chests of Patna opium and selling it to Chinese intermediaries.
The holding ships amounted to floating warehouses, where the drug could be stored for
months.
Takao Club website
[1800s_SalePatnaOp_takaoclub]
25
“The Opium Trade in China, 1833–1839”
Source Yangwen Zheng, The Social Life of Opium in China (Cambridge University
Press, 2005), p. 71; see also Hsin-pao Chang, Commissioner Lin and the Opium War
(Harvard University Press, 1964), 25; also Immanuel C. Y. Hsü, The Rise of Modern
China (Oxford University Press, 1970), p. 216.
[1839_map_OpTrade_25]
Lin’s Pyrrhic Victory
Lin Zexu’s reputation as a great patriot who attempted in vain to defy the Western
imperialists rests largely on two striking actions. The first was a dramatic public
spectacle: the destruction, in 1839, of huge quantities of opium that he demanded the
British turn over to him. The second act was restrained almost to the point of
invisibility: two letters Lin addressed to the then young Queen Victoria, recounting the
harm caused by the “poison” of opium and urging her to put the illicit and immoral trade
to an end. Lin wrongly assumed that the sale of opium was forbidden in England; and,
in any case, the queen never received his fervent entreaty. One of these letters arrived
in London in January 1840, carried by a British sea captain whom the Foreign Office
refused to recognize. (The translated letter was later printed in the English-language
press.)
26
The prelude to the first of these now-celebrated acts took place in March 1839, when
Lin, newly arrived in Canton, demanded that the British surrender their opium stocks.
He then proceeded to reinforce this demand in dramatic ways. Two leading hong
merchants (Howqua and Mowqua) were arrested and threatened with decapitation;
trade in Canton was ordered stopped; Chinese servants and assistants were withdrawn
from the foreign factories; and some 350 foreigners were essentially consigned to
tedious, uncomfortable detention for what amounted to six weeks.
In these circumstances, the chief superintendent of British trade in China, Captain
Charles Elliot, took responsibility for the opium and, in mid May, surrendered 21,306
chests to Lin. Beginning in early June, the opium was destroyed in a flamboyant public
spectacle.
Destroying the Foreigners’ Opium
“Commissioner Lin and the Destruction of the Opium in 1839”
Chinese artist
Hong Kong Museum of Art
[1839_LinDestrOp_165pc_hkma]
In May 1839, in response to Commissioner Lin’s demand that the
foreign traders turn over their opium for destruction, Chief
Superintendent of Trade Charles Elliot intervened to comply with
this demand “on behalf of Her Britannic Majesty’s Government.”
This seemingly magnanimous gesture was, as one Western China
merchant phrased it, a clever “snare,” for it made the Chinese
“directly liable to the British Crown.” In short time, the British
government would trip this snare and demand compensation for
the opium that was handed over.
27
All told, Elliot delivered 21,306 chests of the drug to the Chinese.
This was an enormous amount: at roughly 140 pounds per chest,
Lin suddenly found himself with three-million pounds of opium on
his hands. This was destroyed over a period of 23 days in June
1839, at Chuanbi by the bay at Canton. The process required the
labor of around 500 workers and involved three huge trenches (150
feet long, 75 feet wide, and 7 feet deep) lined with stone and timber
and filled with approximately two feet of water from a nearby
creek. The opium balls were broken into pieces, dumped into the
trenches, and stirred until dissolved, after which salt and lime were
added, creating noxious clouds of smoke. The “foreign mud” was
then diverted to the creek and washed out to sea.
Lin and around 60 Chinese officials, together with foreign
spectators, observed the destruction from an elaborately decorated
pavilion erected nearby. In a little known coda to this famous event,
Lin also offered prayers to the spirit of the Southern Sea,
apologizing for poisoning its domain with these impurities and
advising the deity (as the historian Jonathan Spence has recorded)
“to tell the creatures of the water to move away for a time, to avoid
being contaminated.”
British Museum
[1839_LinDestrOp_1909print] 28
The above often-reproduced woodcut of Commissioner Lin
destroying the British opium at Canton was first published in 1909,
in the September 22 issue of the newspaper Shishibao Tuhua, as
part of a series titled “Portraits of the Achievements of Our
Dynasty’s Illustrious Officials.” The Chinese text perpetuates some
misinformation about this famous event, but effectively conveys
both the enduring admiration of Lin’s act and the abiding sense of
outrage at the ongoing opium trade. (The opium was not burned, as
stated, but rather gave off toxic fumes when dissolved in a mix of
water, salt, and lime; and British ships were never extensively
damaged or destroyed in the manner claimed.) The full Chinese text
on this image translates as follows:
Lin Zexu Burns the Opium
In 1839, Lin Zexu arrived as Governor-general of
Liangguang, and discovered that Western merchants
held opium stores of 20,283 chests. He burnt them
all on the beach. Later other foreign ships secretly
stole into port with more opium. Lin took advantage
of a dark night when the tide was low to send crack
troops to capture them. He burnt 23 ships at
Changsha bay. Subsequently, because these actions
caused a diplomatic incident [i.e. the Opium War],
opium imports kept on growing. Now the British
government agrees that we must eliminate the
poison of opium. Reflecting on past events, we have
turned our misfortunes into a happy outcome.
Lin’s apparent triumph of June 1839 turned out to be a delusion, for the British
seized on the destruction of the opium to demand retaliation and redress. Debate in
Parliament was heated and protracted. Hawks called for war against the obstructionist
empire that refused to recognize the blessings of “free trade.” Doves, essentially
agreeing with the Chinese, countered that the opium trade was immoral and a stain on
Britain’s reputation.
When William Gladstone, the leading Tory politician, argued that opium was a pernicious
commodity and hostilities against China would be “unjust” and “cover this country with
permanent disgrace,” Lord Palmerston, the foreign secretary, replied that China itself
had created the demand for opium, and its people were merely “disposed to buy what
other people were disposed to sell them.” At the same time, however, Palmerston
himself had reservations about the illicit trade, and even more pressing concerns about
the practical consequences of committing forces to China. Indian troops were already
preoccupied with Russian threats to Afghanistan, while the royal navy was concerned
about guarding the eastern Mediterranean against Ottoman threats.
Tensions increased in July when six drunken British seamen on shore leave in Kowloon
(Jiulong)—located near Hong Kong and across from Macao at the mouth of the Canton
estuary—vandalized a temple and killed a local man in a brawl. When the British refused
to hand over anyone for trial under Chinese justice, arguing that the Chinese would use
torture to force confessions, Lin responded by stopping trade, poisoning some wells, and
prohibiting sale of food to the foreigners. Rumors arose that the Chinese planned to
seize British property in Macao, prompting an exodus to Hong Kong of scores of ships
and around 2,000 foreigners.
29
All this precipitated the first skirmish of the still undeclared war. On September 4, 1839,
after Captain Elliot and his interpreter Karl Gützlaff failed to persuade Chinese naval
officers in the straits between Hong Kong and Kowloon to let them purchase food and
water, two small British warships opened fire on war junks anchored off Kowloon. Three
junks were damaged before the British ran low on ammunition and withdrew. Casualties
were low, and the confrontation amounted to a stalemate.
Two months later, it became clear that all hope for a peaceful resolution of these rising
tensions was out of reach.
On viewing images of a potentially disturbing nature: click here.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology © 2010 Visualizing Cultures Creative Commons License
30
HOSTILITIES
The ensuing hostilities lasted for about three years; went through several fairly distinct
military phases; introduced “gunboat diplomacy” to Asia in raw and undiluted form; and
ended in August 1842 with the first of the “unequal treaties” that England and the other
Western powers expanded on and maintained vis-à-vis China until World War II, almost
exactly a century later.
In viewing the contemporary “battle art” that follows here, it may be helpful to keep
several things in mind. The graphics are heavily weighted toward the British side, simply
because that is where the weight of the record lies. A fairly substantial body of writing
about the war did emerge on the Chinese side, along with a very insubstantial number
of random illustrations. (These writings quickly made their way to Japan, where they
inspired publications that included lively original illustrations inspired by the textual
Chinese accounts.) By and large, the Qing court had little reason to publicize its struggle
and defeat, and local officials preferred to play down the foreign attacks. The vast
majority of Chinese felt little immediate impact from the war. Only the Cantonese
population roused its militia to fight the British, but this action was fleeting and received
little recognition in the rest of the empire. China was not yet a nation, in which local
actions had broad impact across its huge territory, but a dispersed empire without a
unified consciousness of the foreign threat. There were as yet, moreover, no networks
or mechanisms of popular mass communications.
The British graphics themselves, moreover, have many limitations. In these years before
photography or the telegraph, communication in general was slow and cumbersome.
Sketches and paintings done on the scene by Western observers reached audiences
back home in the form of engravings or lithographs long after the events portrayed had
taken place. The original artist on the one hand, and final artist, engraver, and printer
on the other hand, were often continents apart, and months or even several years apart
as well. “Timely reportage,” including visual representation, lay decades in the future.
The Western graphics also, perhaps unconsciously, were skewed and self-censored.
Usually, artists did not dwell on the war dead; and where they did do this for their own
side, they looked to battlefield deaths rather than the far more common cause of British
casualties and fatalities: disease. Fever, ague, malaria, dysentery, diarrhea, gangrene,
sunstroke, even malnutrition all ravaged the foreign troops. Thus, for the period
between July 13 and December 31, 1840, when non-combat illness and death were
especially severe, official hospitalization figures recorded 5,329 admissions and 448
deaths. An English military account published in 1842 similarly observed, almost in
passing, that “at one time as many as 1,100 men were in hospital; and in the 37th
Madras regt. out of 560 men, only 50 were fit for duty. Many men and officers were
obliged to be invalided.”
As in all imperialist conflicts in this age of disproportionate military power, moreover,
casualties on the Chinese side were vastly greater than those suffered by the British
forces. More than a few battles amounted to massacres. A report submitted to the
British government in 1847 put total United Kingdom combat casualties in the first
Opium War at 69 killed and 451 wounded, for example, while estimating Chinese
casualties including deaths at 18,000 to 20,000. While the popular Western war
illustrations convey disparity of power, they only hint at the grim calculus of death that
came with this.
31
The war graphics alone also tend to submerge the complexity of racial, ethnic, and
social distinctions. A large percentage of the forces the British relied on, for example,
was comprised of sepoys, or Muslim and Hindu recruits from India—identified in reports
of the time by such phrases as “Bengal volunteers” and “Madras native infantry.” The
British force also had substantial contingents of Irish and Scottish troops.
Although England established and controlled its worldwide empire everywhere by relying
on subject peoples, the visual record does not draw attention to the polyglot nature of
“British forces” in China. In a different direction where ethnicity is concerned, there are
no graphic records at all which might confirm (or repudiate) the impression held at the
time that Chinese often treated Indian prisoners more harshly than their white captives,
although the latter were severely abused as well.
There is a contrary dimension to this also, however. While English writings of the time
sometimes speak disdainfully of the Chinese, the ostensible “British” and “Chinese”
antagonists interacted in complex ways beyond plain adversity. It is obvious that the
drug trade thrived because of complicity by Chinese at every level of society, from
officials to smugglers and secret societies to users. It was common practice, moreover,
for the foreign forces to recruit and pay wages to local “coolie” labor as their military
campaigns up and down the coast unfolded.
Additionally, both sides engaged in abuse of prisoners, wanton plunder, and other
barbarous behavior. In some of the cities and towns bombarded by the British,
particularly where most inhabitants fled the scene, mayhem involved both sides:
Chinese mobs moved in, and competed for loot with the foreigners. On at least one
occasion, the looters on each side even acted in concert. The war illustrations give only
a hint of this. On other side of the coin, men of moral integrity on the Chinese side who
spoke strongly but in vain against the opium trade had counterparts among politicians
in London and a small number of the merchants and ship captains engaged in the China
trade.
Mostly, in any case, the Western artists and illustrators—whether on the scene or
imagining events back home—focused their attention on warships, naval and
ground-force dispositions, and background landscapes. They often seemed inordinately
attracted to sails and puffs of smoke. Yet the technology of the war, the martial
nationalism of this imperialist exercise, the omissions themselves are illuminating. And
occasionally—like Walter Sherwill and the “Opium Factory at Patna”—on-the-scene
artists like John Ouchterlony of the Madras Engineers can still take us by surprise.
Phase I of Hostilities: November 1839–January 1841
On November 3, 1839—still with no declaration of war having emanated from either
side—the unresolved Kowloon incident coupled with other complications precipitated a
dramatic military confrontation at Chuanbi on Canton Bay.
On this occasion, two British frigates—the 28-gun Volage and 18-gun Hyacinth—took on
29 Chinese vessels that were blockading the harbor (16 war junks and 13 “fire-boats,”
craft packed with straw and brushwood, sometimes covering chests of gunpowder, that
were set ablaze and floated toward the wooden ships of the enemy). One junk was
blown to bits by a lucky shot to its magazine, several other junks were sunk or heavily
damaged, and only one British sailor was wounded as opposed to at least 15 Chinese
killed. Despite this humiliation, Commissioner Lin’s report to the throne gave no hint of
defeat and the emperor was persuaded that the Chinese had won a great victory.
32
HMS Volage & HMS Hyacinth confront Chinese
war junks at Chuenpee, November 3, 1839, by Miller
National Maritime Museum
[1839_ChWar_PAF4873_nmm]
“The First Battle of Chuanbi, November 1839”
by Captain Peter William Hamilton
Wikimedia Commons
[1839_chuenpee_hamilton_wm]
In these volatile circumstances, Captain Elliot requested that reinforcements be
dispatched to Canton; debate on the vice of opium versus the virtue of free trade
reached a crescendo in Parliament; and Foreign Secretary Palmerston cast aside his
pragmatic reservations. A formal declaration of war against China was issued on January
31, 1840—not by London, but by British authorities in India acting on behalf of the
home government. In the months that followed, a large British fleet was assembled for
dispatch to China.
33
Despite his misleading report to the throne about the battle of Chuanbi, Commissioner
Lin—who simultaneously served as commander in chief of the imperial navy at
Canton—was aware that the Chinese were too weak to challenge the foreign forces
directly. On the one hand, he continued to attempt to suppress the opium traffic by
admonishing and punishing dealers and users on the Chinese side. On the other
hand—and here Lin badly misread the anger, determination, profit-seeking, and national
pride of the foreigners—he still hoped moralistic arguments might persuade England to
abandon the trade. Early in 1839 Lin had drafted a letter to Queen Victoria but
apparently never attempted to send it. During these heightened end-of-the-year
tensions, he wrote a second letter to the queen and actually dispatched it, to no avail. It
never reached her hands.
In the midst of all this, the six seamen accused of murder in Kowloon were returned to
England where, unsurprisingly, they all went unpunished.
Commissioner Lin’s Letter to Queen Victoria
Commissioner Lin entrusted the second of his letters to Queen
Victoria to the captain of the East Indiaman Thomas Coutts, who in
October 1839 had defied British authorities by running the British
blockade at Canton and signing a bond with Lin agreeing he would
not transport opium. The owners of the Thomas Coutts were
Quakers opposed to the drug trade. Upon reaching London in
January, the captain turned the letter over to one of the co-owners,
who in turn attempted to deliver it to Foreign Secretary
Palmerston. When the foreign office refused to accept the letter, it
was made available to the Canton-based missionary publication
Chinese Repository, which printed it in February 1840.
The Indiaman Thomas
Coutts carried
Commissioner Lin’s 1839
letter to London.
Painting by
James Miller Huggins.
Wikimedia Commons
[1836_ThCoutts_Huggins_wm]
34
The Chinese original of Lin’s letter to
Queen Victoria (detail)
Wikimedia Commons
[1839_Lin_LetterQuV_wm]
After the British government refused to
accept Lin’s letter, a translation appeared
almost immediately in the Protestant
missionary publication, Chinese Repository.
The forces dispatched to Canton in response to Captain Elliot’s entreaties arrived in June
1840 under the command of his cousin, Rear Admiral Sir George Elliot. The fleet
consisted of 48 ships—16 warships mounting 540 guns, four armed steamers, 27
transports, and a troop ship—and carried fuel for both the steamers and the troops in
the form of six million pounds of coal (3,000 tons) and 16,000 gallons of rum. The
fighting force numbered some 4,000 men.
As the war dragged on, these forces were increased. The first steam- and sail-powered
iron warship ever built, for example, owned by the East India Company and famously
named the Nemesis, arrived in Macao in November 1840 after a perilous voyage from
England. Later reinforcements brought more iron steamers as well as sail-powered
warships, and increased the total number of ground forces and seamen to around
12,000.
After the fleet’s arrival, the British moved quickly to assert their authority and demand
(among other things) compensation for the seized opium, abolition of the restrictive
Canton trade system, and the right to occupy one or more islands off the coast. Admiral
Elliot avoided confronting the Chinese forces Lin had assembled at Canton. Instead, he
imposed his own naval blockade there and proceeded to move north along the coastline
with a portion of his forces, accompanied by Charles Elliot, England’s chief diplomat on
the scene.
One objective of this push north was to find responsible officials at a major port who
would agree to deliver the British government’s ultimatum to the emperor in Peking
(Beijing). A second, related objective was to pressure the Qing court into agreeing to
negotiations by threatening to cut off north China from the resource-rich and
economically critical south.
35
By early July—after blockading Amoy (Xiamen), where local officials refused to allow a
landing party—the fleet was approaching the Yangtze River delta, some 700 miles north
of Canton. On July 4, officers from the warship Wellesley, along with the interpreter Karl
Gützlaff, met with local officials from strategically located Chusan (Zhoushan) Island in a
vain attempt to persuade them to surrender peacefully. (The officials asked them,
among other things, why they were being threatened because of disputes centering on
Canton.)
Conference between British and Chinese officials on board the Wellesley off Chusan,
July 4, 1840. The missionary and interpreter Karl Güzlaff is seated in the center. The
British bombarded and occupied the capital of Chusan the following day, after failing
to persuade these local officials to surrender peacefully.
From a drawing by Harry Darell
Anne S. K. Brown Military Collection, Brown University Library
[1842_conf_darrell_brown]
“Taking the Island of Chusan by the British, July 5th 1840”
The British landing party sets out for shore under the cover of gunfire from the fleet.
From a drawing by Harry Darell
National Maritime Museum
[1840_PAG9185_Chusan_nmm]
36
“Chusan Bay” 1840
This depiction of the July 5, 1840 landing at Tinghai captures the distinctive eye and
style of Lt. John Ouchterlony of the Madras Engineers, whose narrative, including 53
woodcuts based on his on-the-scene drawings, was published in an 1844 book titled
The Chinese War: An Account of All the Operations of the British Forces from the
Commencement to the Treaty of Nanking.
[ou_068a_ChusanBay]
After occupying Chusan, the fleet blockaded Ningpo (Ningbo), a major port close by,
after officials there refused to accept a letter setting forth the British demands. The
force then headed north toward Tientsin (Tianjin) and the Pei-ho (Hai He), the strategic
waterway leading to Peking.
While the expedition was advancing toward Tientsin, the British also engaged in a
brief show of force in the south, known as the Battle of the Barrier. The barrier in
question ran across the isthmus separating Portuguese-controlled Macao from the rest
of the mainland. Commissioner Lin had mobilized forces that threatened to drive the
British from Macao. In a preemptive assault that began and ended in a single day
(August 19), British warships silenced the Chinese battery at the barrier; fired on the
ineffective war junks anchored offshore; landed a brigade of some 380 men (of whom
almost half were Bengal volunteers); destroyed the Chinese military stores; and then
withdrew.
Even in this brief confrontation, the disparity in casualties was typical—and so was the
manner in which Chinese officials minimized their losses. Casualties on the British side
amounted to four wounded and no one killed. The Chinese, on their part, put their
losses at seven or eight men killed—a figure English observers on the scene believed
should be “multiplied by 10.” Like the Battle of Chuanbi less than two months earlier,
however, Lin’s reports presented this encounter, too, as a Chinese victory.
37
“Barrier Wall, Macao”
The barrier on the land bridge separating Macao from China is viewed here from a
British encampment in Macao, with British warships to the left and Chinese war junks
close to the barrier on the right.
From John Ouchterlony, The Chinese War (1844), p. 81
[ou_080a_Macao]
At this point, Lin’s days as imperial commissioner were numbered. Near the end of
August, the fleet carrying the two Elliots reached the approach to Peking and succeeded
in conveying the British demands to local officials at Tientsin. Finally awakened to the
real nature of the foreign threat, the emperor responded with fury and Lin became
transformed from hero to scapegoat. On August 21, the emperor chastised him harshly:
“Externally you wanted to stop the [opium] trade, but it has not been stopped;
internally you wanted to wipe out the outlaws [opium smugglers and smokers], but they
are not cleared away. You are just making excuses with empty words. Nothing has been
accomplished but many troubles have been created. Thinking of these things, I cannot
contain my rage.” Lin was stripped of his title of imperial commissioner in September,
but allowed to remain in Canton that fall and winter to offer assistance to his successor.
Qishan, Lin’s successor as the mandarin appointed to deal with the British, rose and fell
even more quickly in emperor’s eyes. Lin warned the emperor that negotiating with the
foreign barbarians would never work: “the more they get the more they demand, and if
we do not overcome them by force of arms there will be no end to our troubles.”
Qishan, however, took a softer line, hoping to persuade the foreigners to withdraw
simply by threatening to cut off their trading privileges and then making some
concessions. He persuaded the two Elliots to return to Canton by intimating that the
Chinese were prepared to engage in serious negotiations there.
By November, the British had withdrawn to Macao. The promised negotiations began in
Canton in late December, with Charles Elliot as chief negotiator on the British side.
Palmerston’s instructions to Elliot now included these minimal conditions for an
agreement: the opening of the five ports of Canton, Amoy, Foochow (Fuzhou), Ningbo,
and Shanghai; cession of an island; and indemnities for both the value of the
confiscated opium and costs of the military expedition. Qishan offered only a smaller
indemnity than requested, and even this was done without the Qing court’s knowledge.
By January 1841, the British had become aware that Qishan was not prepared to make
substantial concessions. The fleet had been reinforced during this lull, and the next
great show of British force was unleashed at a familiar place of battle: Chuanbi, which
along with a sister fort at Tycocktow guarded the strategic Bocca Tigris strait, leading to
Canton itself.
38
The famous “Second Battle of Chuanbi” took place on January 7, lasted but an hour, and
ended with both forts captured, an estimated 500 or more Chinese killed, and perhaps
half that number wounded. British casualties were 38 wounded.
“Attack and Capture of Chuenpee, near Canton”
1843 engraving based on artwork by Thomas Allom
Between 1843 and 1847, Thomas Allom published close to 150 illustrations of
“China,” including but by no means limited to battle scenes of the Opium War. Allom
never visited China, and some of his prints acknowledge being based on drawings or
sketches by others. (Here, for example, the print includes a line indicating it is based
on a sketch by “Lieutenant White, Royal Marines.”) These illustrations are thus
“imagined” scenes—and usually, even in the war renderings, highly romanticized.
Allom’s considerable audience in England thus received a doubly deceptive
impression. The war was by and large sanitized and beautified, while China itself
—especially in scenes having nothing to do with the Opium War—was rendered exotic
and even alluring in many ways.
Beinecke Library, Yale University
[Allom_1839_Chuenpee_Yale]
39
“NEMESIS Destroying the Chinese War Junks in Anson’s Bay, Jan 7th 1841”
This famous print of the Second Battle of Chuanbi by E. Duncan,
dated May 30, 1843, records the first battle appearance
of the revolutionary iron steamer Nemesis.
National Maritime Museum
[1841_0792_nemesis_jm_nmm]
“Attack on the Chinese Junks” 1841
[1841_AttkJunks_Bridgeman]
40
“Attack on the War Junks at Chuenpee Creek”
Frontispiece to volume ll of a book by Captain Sir Edward Belcher, published in 1843
with the imposing title Narrative of a Voyage Round the World: Performed in Her
Majesty’s Ship Sulphur, During the Years 1836-1842, Including Details of the Naval
Operations in China, from Dec. 1840, to Nov. 1841.
[1843_belcher_000_Chuenpee]
The Iron Warship Nemesis Makes Its Debut
“The Hon. East India Companys Steamer “Nemesis” and the boats of the Sulphur,
Calliope, Larne, and Starling destroying the Chinese War Junks in
Ansons Bay. January 7, 1841”
National Maritime Museum
[1841_Chuenpee_PU5865_nmm]
Gunboat diplomacy attained a new level technologically in the
Second Battle of Chuanbi, when the 660-ton iron steamer Nemesis
entered the fray. Constructed in Liverpool for the East India
Company, the Nemesis was distinctive in several ways. Driven by
41
two paddle wheels, the warship was made almost completely of
iron. It was flat bottomed, with an unusually shallow draught of
only six feet when fully loaded—making it particularly suitable for
navigating China’s shallow waters. And although its three highest
officers were from the Royal Navy, the crew and the rest of the
officers were civilians.
On January 7, seeing action for the first time ever, the Nemesis
landed a force of some 600 sepoys at Chuanbi; participated in the
bombardment of the fortifications; and made a particularly
dramatic impression by blowing up a war junk with a Congreve
rocket. An 1845 book about the Nemesis recorded that “The smoke,
and flame, and thunder of the explosion, with the broken fragments
falling round, and even portions of dissevered bodies scattering as
they fell, were enough to strike with awe, if not fear, the stoutest
heart that looked upon it.”
This was the scene that artists predictably recorded and publishers
promoted back home—albeit, as always, some time after the event.
The Illustrated London News published an engraving of the
spectacular moment at Chuanbi in November 1842. The popular
colored print by E. Duncan reproduced above this box appeared in
1843, while the dramatic rendering at the top of the box appears to
have been issued as late as 1851.
“The Nemesis Steamer Destroying Chinese War Junks, in Canton River,
from a sketch in the possession of the Hon. East India Company”
Illustrated London News, November 12, 1842
[iln_1842_pg420_nemesis_wid]
42
Like all other steamer warships, the Nemesis also raised sail in certain circumstances.
This graphic appears in the 1844 book Narrative of the Voyages and Service of “The
Nemesis,” co-authored by the ship’s commander William Hutcheson Hall.
[1847_Nemesis_Hall3rdEd_gb]
The Nemesis continued to play a conspicuous and versatile role in
subsequent battles, and by war’s end had been joined by a number
of other iron steamers, all but one of them operated by the East
India Company. In addition to firing heavy shells and rockets,
along with ferrying troops, the shallow draught of the steamers
enabled them to close in and grapple with Chinese war junks, while
their ability to defy winds and tides made them useful for towing
the big British men-of-war within firing range of coastal
fortifications that were under attack.
The British Library possesses an unusual Chinese scroll with a
rough sketch of the Nemesis and another British warship,
accompanied by a 55-line poem. There is a penned-in English
translation on the scroll as well, apparently dating from around the
time of the Opium War.
Chinese scroll with illustration of the iron steamer Nemesis and a British man-of-war,
along with a 55-line Chinese poem.
[scrl_nemesis_lD40019-04_b]
43
The British Library categorizes the verse on the scroll as “doggerel.”
Insofar as accuracy goes, it amounts to a poetic counterpart to the
reports of imaginary victories Commissioner Lin and other Chinese
officials produced in the early stage of hostilities. In vivid, almost
epic language, the poem describes how the gods intervened to drive
the English warships aground in a storm, after which “the foreign
devils in hundreds then were put to death,” while others “fell sick by
fierce disease” and perished.
The closing lines are devoted to the “fire ship” encased in iron with a
wheel on each side “which is moved by the use of burning coal and
turns around like a galloping horse.” The poet acknowledges that
“Its shape and fashion astonish mankind”; but, like all the other
enemy ships, the gods drove it onto the rocks.
On January 20, confronted by the British show of force at Canton, Qishan acknowledged
his helplessness and indicated that, among other things, China was willing to cede Hong
Kong, pay an indemnity of six million dollars, engage in official relations on an equal
footing, and reopen Canton to trade. When this so-called Convention of Chuanbi was
submitted for approval, the Daoguang emperor again flew into a rage. Qishan was
imprisoned and sentenced to death; his family property was confiscated; and in May
1842, after his sentence was commuted, he was banished to a remote area near the
Amur River far in the north.
As it transpired, Charles Elliot, Qishan’s counterpart in the agreement, also received a
stinging reprimand from his government. On April 21, Palmerston castigated him for
having settled for the “lowest” possible terms, and stripped him of his appointment.
Among other things, Palmerston was critical of Elliot’s failure to insist on compensation
for the opium Lin had destroyed, as well as his agreement to withdraw British forces
from strategically situated Chusan and his acceptance of less than absolute rights to
Hong Kong (which Palmerston spoke of disparagingly as “a barren island with hardly a
house upon it”). Given the excruciating slowness of communication, Elliot did not learn
of his disgrace until late July, when his dismissal notice arrived—followed shortly by his
successor, Sir Henry Pottinger.
44
“Encampment at Toong-koo, Where Captain Elliot Met Keeshe”
John Ouchterlony’s depiction conveys the rough setting in which Elliot and Qishan
worked out the Convention of Chuanbi, which both the Chinese and British
governments refused to recognize.
From The Chinese War (1844), p. 65
[ou_064a_Camp]
Phase II of Hostilities: February 1841–June 1841
Before the news of his dismissal and replacement arrived, Captain Elliot, convinced that
the emperor would not carry out the terms he and Qishan had agreed upon at Chuanbi,
initiated a series of attacks that directly threatened Canton. In the last week of February
and first week of March—in a succession of quick battles sometimes known as the Battle
of the Bogue (also Battle of Bocca Tigris), Battle of the First Bar, and Battle of Whampoa
—British warships including the Nemesis gained control over the Pearl River and placed
themselves in position to besiege Canton.
Estimated casualties conformed to the familiar pattern: a single British soldier was killed
when his gun misfired, while fatalities on the Chinese side probably numbered around
500, including an admiral whom one of the British warships honored with a cannon-
salute when his body was taken away by his family.
45
This Chinese sketch of defensive preparations at Anunghoy in the strategic Bocca
Tigris straits leading to Canton was found by the British after they destroyed these
fortifications on February 26, 1841. The Chinese had stretched iron cables, resting on
junks, across the narrow channel in a vain attempt to deter the British warships.
Wikimedia Commons
[1841_Feb26_BoccaT_1850c_wm]
“Attack on First Bar Battery, Canton River”
This rendering of a battle that took place just below Whampoa on February 27, 1841,
appeared in Narrative of a Voyage Round the World by Edward Belcher, published in
1843 [vol. 2, p. 154]
[1843_belcher_154a_1stBarBat]
Control over Whampoa enabled the British to bring up a large force for an attack on
Canton, which they proceeded to carry out the following May. On May 21, at Elliot’s
urging, British subjects still in Canton left the city—following which Chinese soldiers and
mobs plundered and gutted the “factories” where they conducted business. By May 24,
the British force had taken the forts protecting the city and commenced bombarding
Canton itself. Local officials together with wealthy hong merchants responded quickly by
offering Elliot a “ransom” of six million dollars to desist—leading to a truce agreed to on
May 27.
46
Dr. Edward H. Cree, a surgeon with the Royal Navy who participated in the first
Opium War, maintained a personal journal illustrated with his own watercolor
paintings. These impressions of the Battle of Canton depict British sailors towing the
big warships toward the besieged city on May 24, 1841 (above, top), and ground forces
bombarding Canton from the surrounding heights (above).
National Maritime Museum
[cree_081_HurrahCanton] [1841_6028_Canton_nmm]
The truce at Canton set the stage for one of the most celebrated moments in later
Chinese recollections of the war. On May 29, as Chinese troops began to withdraw from
the city and British forces prepared to do likewise, local gentry in surrounding villages
mobilized militia to attack the invaders. They had only primitive arms like hoes, spears,
and a few matchlock guns, but were furious at the foreigners’ destruction of local
tombs; rape of local women; and looting of food, clothing, and valuables. In short time,
the gentry gathered a civilian force that peaked at around 10,000 men from some 100
villages.
47
On May 30, in the midst of a torrential rainstorm near the village of Sanyuanli, this
militia encountered and surrounded a detachment of Indian sepoys led by English
officers. The downpour left the foreigners mired in paddy-field mud, and caused their
flintlock muskets to misfire. One of the sepoys was killed and 15 wounded before British
reinforcements arrived.
John Ouchterlony’s rendering of the battle in the rain at Sanyuanli
was reduced to a small graphic in his 1844 book, as opposed to the usual full-page
illustration. By contrast, this episode dominates many Chinese recollections of the first
Opium War.
From The Chinese War (1844), p. 156
Beinecke Library, Yale University
[ou_156_rescue]
Fearing an attack by the main British army, senior officials associated with the Manchu
court’s regular military forces quickly dispersed the militia and negotiated another truce.
To Elliot and British officers on the scene, the encounter at Sanyuanli was insignificant,
and it received but passing notice in official military reports. On the Chinese side, by
contrast, rumors soon placed the British dead at “80 or 90,” with many others wounded,
and claimed that the foreign barbarians would have been completely annihilated if only
the local Manchu general had sent reinforcements. Sanyuanli became turned into a
great grass-roots victory by the Chinese people, and local literati, villagers, and
examination students castigated the corrupt imperial army and court-appointed officials
for paying off the foreigners to save their city.
In present-day Chinese accounts of the Opium War, Sanyuanli still stands out as the
major victory of the war, a symbol of the potential power of the unified Chinese masses.
As the Chinese historian Bai Shou-yi has written, “This was the earliest known
spontaneous struggle by the Chinese people against foreign aggression in modern
history.” Modern Chinese films of the war often stress the Sanyuanli victory instead of
the humiliating defeats.
48
The Opium War has been the subject of many
Chinese feature films. This poster from 1958
advertises a movie featuring Commissioner Lin
as its hero.
Wikimedia Commons
[lin_zexu_movie_4583_poster08189_wm]
An excerpt depicting
Sanyuanli from the
Chinese film “Lin Zexu,”
directed by Xie Jin,
1959, Shanghai.
Phase III of Hostilities: August 1841-March 1842
Captain Elliot’s willingness to withdraw from the siege of Canton reflected his conviction
that England would not attain its objectives without undertaking another move north to,
once again, carry gunboat diplomacy ever closer to the Qing court. Sir Henry Pottinger
—Elliot’s successor as diplomatic “plenipotentiary” and chief superintendent of trade—
arrived in Macao in August with instructions from London to do just that.
In the later part of August, the fleet headed north with 14 warships including four
steamers—quickly occupying, once again, Amoy (August 26); Tinghai, the capital of
Chusan (October 1); and Ningpo (October 13). Amoy was taken with very little
opposition, but this was not the case with the other two strategic locales.
49
Thomas Allom’s panoramic depiction of Amoy, occupied by the British on August 26,
1841, was published a few years later. An English-language account a decade later
offered this description of the city “The town is large and populous, defended by stone
walls and batteries, and has, from time immemorial, been a place of great trade, its
merchants being classed among the most wealthy and enterprising in the Eastern
world.”(Julia Corner in China Pictorial, 1853)
Beinecke Library, Yale University
[Allom_1842_Amoy_Yale]
50
“The 18th (Royal Irish) Regiment of Foot, At the Storming of the Fortress of Amoy,
August 26th 1841”
This highly imaginary rendering of the capture of Amoy picks up an earlier Western
characterization of Chinese infantry as “tigers of war.” The term may have been
coined around the turn of the century by Christian missionaries, who described Qing
soldiers as wearing striped uniforms and caps with small ears on them. It is also said
that at the time of the abortive Napier mission in 1834, some Qing troops were
deliberately dressed in such costumes in order to intimidate the British emissary. In
actuality, after heavy naval bombardment, resistance to the British landing forces at
Amoy was slight and the city was entered “without opposition.”
Anne S. K. Brown Military Collection, Brown University Library
[1841_IrishStormAmoy_Brown]
The relatively easy occupation of Amoy was deceptive. By contrast, Tinghai became a
“field of slaughter,” in the words of John Ouchterlony, with several “mandarins of note”
choosing to die by suicide rather than face the humiliation of defeat and wrath of the
emperor.
The taking of Ningpo was equally grim. On this, Ouchterlony’s account devotes several
pages to the October 10 battle at Chinhai, a critical fortification at the mouth of the
Ningpo River some 50 miles from Chusan. Chinhai, too, became “a dreadful scene of
slaughter,” a massacre where British officers were unable to stop “the butchery” by their
own troops, a macabre spectacle where most fleeing Chinese were unable “to escape
the tempest of death which roared around them.”
Chinese prisoners who did escape this tempest were subjected to petty humiliation of a
sort popular through the full course of the war among victorious British troops, who
often “deprived” defeated foe of “their tails”—that is, cut off the queues Chinese men
were required to wear under the Manchu dynasty. Typically, Ouchterlony’s account of
the Battle of Chinhai concludes by reporting that “On the side of the British but few
casualties occurred.” After the rout at Chinhai, Ningpo was ripe for the taking, and
offered no resistance.
51
“Capture of Ting-hai, Chusan
From a sketch on the spot, by Lieut. White, Royal Marines”
Thomas Allom’s illustration focuses on British troops being landed under the cover of
heavy cannon fire from the big multi-gun warships. Two steamers are visible on the
right. Chinese losses were great and ghastly at Tinghai, occupied on October 1, 1841.
Temperamentally, Allom never ventured onto such gritty terrain—but neither, by its
very nature, did maritime battle art of the Opium War in general.
Beinecke Library, Yale University
[Allom_1841_Chusan_Yale]
52
“Close of the Engagement at Chin-Hae”
The capture of Chinhai, a strategic fortification at the mouth of the Ningpo River,
paved the way for easy occupation of Ningpo on October 13, 1841. John Ouchterlony’s
woodcut rendering of the final battle, in which retreating Chinese defenders found
themselves trapped by the British landing party, captures the close-quarters nature of
the fighting. It fails, however, to convey the full horror of the massacre that
Ouchterlony provides in the vivid text in his book.
From The Chinese War (1844), p. 190.
[ou_190a_ChinHae]
These battles and occupations were prelude to a lull before the final military thrust.
Amoy was lightly garrisoned, while the bulk of the fleet wintered over in occupied
Chusan and Ningpo. Meanwhile, to the south, British merchants and officials embarked
on a construction boom aimed at turning Hong Kong from Palmerston’s “barren island
with hardly a house upon it” into the great commercial hub it was soon to become.
Phase IV of Hostilities: March 1842–August 1842
The winter lull in major military activities essentially ended in March 1842, when British
troops suppressed two Chinese offensives in and around Ningpo. On March 10, a bold
attempt of thousands of Chinese fighters to take on the foreigners within Ningpo itself
ended, as so often, in one-sided carnage when the long column of Chinese, trapped in a
narrow street, was mowed down by British muskets and a howitzer spraying grapeshot.
Lieutenant Ouchterlony described this as “merciless horror in the street,” and capped his
description with a striking vignette. “The corpses of the slain lay heaped across the
narrow street for a distance of many yards,” he wrote, “and after the fight had
terminated, a pony, which had been ridden by a mandarin, was extricated unhurt from
the ghastly mass in which it had been entombed so completely as to have at first
escaped observation.”
53
John Ouchterlony’s
rendering of the “Repulse at
Ningpo” on March 10,
1842, was accompanied by
the observation that “While
on our side not a single man
had been killed and only a
few wounded, upwards of
400 of the enemy had fallen,
consisting, of course, of
their bravest and best.”
From The Chinese War
(1844), p. 241
Wikimedia Commons
[ou_240a_Ningpo]
On March 15, five days after this slaughter, the Chinese suffered a comparably harsh
defeat at Segaon, in the countryside near Ningpo. Two months after this, beginning in
mid-May, the British expedition resumed its push north, greatly replenished by
reinforcements from India.
At its peak in this final stage of the war, the fighting force of the fleet (not including
scores of transports) was comprised of 15 warships, five steam frigates, and five
shallow-draught iron steamers. Total manpower came to 12,000 fighting men, of whom
3,000 were seamen; two-thirds of the latter were also available for deployment on
shore.
The British initially intended to attack the strategic city of Hangchow (Hangzhou) in the
basin of the Yangtze River north of the Ningpo-Chusan area where they had wintered
over. After discovering that the bay there was too shallow to allow entry of their large
warships, they turned their attention further north.
The first noteworthy battle in this final advance came on May 18, 1842, with a British
victory at Chapu that provided heroes and horrors in equal measure. Located on the
coast between Hangchow and Shanghai, Chapu was known as a “Tartar” city—a
misleading term the foreigners commonly used to denote the multi-ethnic cadre of
“bannermen”—comprised of Manchus, Mongols, and Chinese—who served as an elite
military force for the Manchu rulers. This elite cadre maintained detached residences in
the city—and, as it turned out, adhered to a grim, no-surrender culture.
54
The confrontation at Chapu gave the British a martyred officer: a Lieutenant-Colonel
Tomlinson, who died instantly after being struck in the neck by a bullet. (Total British
losses at Chapu were 10 killed and fifty wounded, against five to six hundred Chinese
dead.) Tomlinson’s fatal encounter occurred near a “joss house”—a building in which an
eclectic mixture of saints and deities was venerated—that became remembered for
various reasons in subsequent war stories. The colonel was killed there. A large
contingent of bannermen barricaded in the building earned the admiration of their
antagonists by refusing to surrender. And when the British forces took Chapu itself, they
discovered that the cult of death-before-surrender was not confined to the warriors. To
their horror, they came upon the corpses of women and children who had taken poison,
or been given poison, or been strangled or killed in other ways by their kith and kin
when news of the defeat reached town. This was the first time, but not the last, that the
invaders confronted such a gruesome response to their offensive.
“Joss House, Chapoo. Death of
Col. Tomlinson”
Thomas Allom’s well-known
print is particularly striking
because battlefield deaths and
casualties were so
comparatively rare among the
British forces. “Col. Tomlinson”
became, in effect, a heroic
symbol of the civilizing mission
the British had undertaken.
Anne S. K. Brown Military Collection
Brown University Library
[1842_JossHouse_Brown]
55
“Engagement at the Joss-House near Chapoo”
After “shot, rockets, and musketry” failed, the religious building in which bannermen
warriors had barricaded themselves was destroyed by setting it on fire with kindling.
John Ouchterlony’s account of this May 1842 battle praises the valor of enemy soldiers
who fought to the bitter end.
From The Chinese War (1844), p. 278
[ou_278a_Chapoo]
56
“Close of the Attack on
Shapoo—the Suburbs on Fire,”
May 1842
Thomas Allom’s depiction of the
naval bombardment of Chapu
reduces the burning suburbs to a
remote and almost abstract
detail, while focusing on the
rescue of unidentified men in the
harbor waters.
Beinecke Library, Yale University
[Allom_1842_Shapoo_Yale]
One month after Chapu, the British expedition attacked Woosong on the mouth of the
Hwangpu River that flows through Shanghai (on June 16), and Shanghai itself three
days later. Part of the advance on Shanghai was done on land, with British forces picking
up coolie labor along the way. At that time, Shanghai was still a small town—nothing
like the major metropolis it became by the end of the 19th century. As usually
happened, looting by native residents broke out in Woosong and Shanghai soon after
the British had wreaked their destruction.
57
“Battle of Woosung”
From an Original Drawing by Capt. Watson, R.N.C.B., published in 1845
Beinecke Library, Yale University
[Woosung_3457-003_yale]
“Shang-Hae-Heen”
Ouchterlony’s distinctive rendering of Shanghai in 1842 suggests how small and
modest the town was at the time. No one could have guessed that in the decades
that followed this would become a great seaport and one of China’s most
cosmopolitan cities.
From The Chinese War (1844), p.305
[ou_304a_ShangHaeHeen]
58
Pillage & Plunder
“Sale of Plunder at Shang-Hae”
from The Chinese War (1844), p. 318
[ou_318a_plunder]
Everywhere the British forces attacked, plunder and pillage
followed in their wake. Much of this was done by the foreigners. It
was taken for granted that silver dollars in particular, whether
found in public or private places, were legitimate victor’s spoils;
and on more than a few occasions the foreign invaders lit their
cooking fires with precious books, beautiful textiles, and
once-elegant, now-splintered furniture. In an interesting
annotation to Chinese swords from the time now in the collection of
England’s National Maritime Museum, it is noted that “The world
‘loot’, from the Hindi ‘lut’, meaning to ‘plunder’ or ‘take forcibly’,
became an accepted part of the English language during the First
Opium War.”
At the same time, in almost every city the foreigners attacked, mobs
of Chinese looters followed in their wake. Such lawlessness was
abetted by the fact that British bombardment commonly led urban
residents to flee their homes, leaving their abandoned possessions
ripe for the picking.
Shanghai was not untypical in this regard. After the opening British
cannonade, in Lieutenant Oucherlony’s words, “on pushing
forward, the place was found evacuated, and the column marched
in without molestation. …Quarters were assigned to the troops, and
measures were promptly taken to suppress pillage, but the lower
orders of Chinese, the most desperate class of men perhaps existing
when excited by the prospect of plunder, swarmed over the place,
59
which had evidently been already for some time in their possession,
as many of the principal habitations were found broken open, and
thoroughly gutted; and it was with the utmost difficulty, and by
having the streets continually patrolled in all directions by strong
parties, that the town was preserved from utter ruin by fire and
mob violence.”
As Ouchterlony’s “Sale of Plunder” graphic reveals, however, the
plunder of Shanghai eventually morphed into a bizarre sort of
binational and multiethnic collaboration. On close examination, the
figures atop the wall lowering loot to Chinese below are clearly
foreigners, and the text that surrounds the illustration paints a vivid
word-picture of this raucous ad hoc “bazaar.”
Looters at the top dropped bundles (mostly “silk cloaks and
petticoats”) just low enough for bargaining to take place. If a deal
was struck, money—usually silver dollars—would flow up while the
merchandise descended to ground. “The laughter and the screaming
forth of high and low Chinese, of English and Hindostani, and the
absurd appearance of the descending bundles of indescribables,
compensated by the ascending dollars,” Ouchterlony wrote, “…
looked like a fishery for men, with ropes and hooks baited with silk
cloaks….”
Ouchterlony found this particular scene “ludicrous and amusing.”
Plunder and wanton destruction in general appalled him, however;
and, with the wisdom of hindsight, historians also can discern in
such mayhem the seeds of chaos and civil disorder that would rock
China for decades to come.
60
After Shanghai, the British turned their eyes to Nanking (Nanjing), the huge former
Ming dynasty capital up the Yangtze River. On July 21, Chinkiang (Zhenjiang), a large
walled city at the strategic juncture of the Yangtze River and Grand Canal—150 miles
from the sea and 45 miles downriver from Nanking—fell to the invaders in what turned
out to be the final major battle of the war.
Close to 3,000 Manchus, Mongols, and Chinese fought stubbornly but vainly against a
British force of around 7,000 men in this brief last stand by the Qing military. Much of
Chinkiang was destroyed, and thousands of its fighting men and residents perished
—under the assault of the foreigners; in a paroxysm of plunder and arson by Chinese
mobs and marauders; and, as in Chapu two months earlier, in a frightful communal
spectacle of suicide and the killing of family members.
“West Gate of Ching-Keang-Foo,
sketched on the spot by Capt. Stoddard, R.N.”
Thomas Allom’s serene rendering of Chinkiang, the last major battle of the
war—typically colorful, typically based on a sketch by a British officer, and typically
published considerably after the event—also typically fails to convey the
destructiveness and human costs of the battle, particularly on the city’s residents.
Anne S. K. Brown Military Collection, Brown University Library
[1842_GhingKeangFoo_Brown]
61
Ouchterlony’s rendering of the battle at Chinkiang focuses on the strong Chinese
resistance, but fails to convey the horrors experienced within the besieged city.
From The Chinese War (1844), p. 392
[ou_392a_chin]
“British Troops Capture Chin-Keang-Foo”
The Battle of Chinkiang, which took place on a scorching day in mid July, 1842, saw
more British casualties than usual. The naval surgeon Edward Cree wrote in his
journal that “Our loss in killed is estimated at 200, but I never knew of so many deaths
from sunstroke in one day. The enemy’s loss is reckoned at 2,000 out of 5,000 said to
have been engaged.” More official reports put the British combat casualties at 38
killed and 126 wounded. As always, the real number of dead on the Chinese side could
only be guessed at.
Wikimedia Commons
[1842_July1_ChinKeangFoo_wp]
62
Dr. Edward Cree’s unpublished eyewitness watercolor captures the horrors the victors
encountered upon entering Chinkiang. Fires raged, corpses of soldiers lay in the street,
and—most horrible of all—as in Chapu two months earlier, bannermen had killed
themselves and their families en masse rather than face the rape, plunder, and disgrace
of surrender.
National Maritime Museum
[cree_104_Chinkiangfoo_dead]
“Nanking from the South-East”
Once the British forces had established themselves outside the walls of Nanking, Qing
officials finally acknowledged that they had no choice but to give in to such irresistible
gunboat diplomacy.
From The Chinese War (1844), p. 453
[ou_452a_Nanking]
63
With the fall of Chinkiang, the way to Nanking now lay open. By early August, the
British forces were within firing range of the celebrated walls of the great city, and Qing
officials finally realized the foreigners were in position to cut off all vital commerce
between south China and the north. The Yangtze region was “like a throat, at which the
whole situation of the country is determined,” Yilibu, the viceroy of Nanking, observed.
The enemy, he went on, had already cut off the transportation of salt and grain, and
impeded the movement of merchants and travelers. “That is not a disease like the
ringworm,” he continued, carried away by his anatomical metaphors, “but a trouble in
our heart and stomach.”
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64
THE FIRST UNEQUAL TREATY
Under the Treaty of Nanking, signed on August 29, 1842, China agreed to open the five
ports requested (Canton, Amoy, Foochow, Ningpo, and Shanghai), pay an indemnity of
20 million silver dollars, abolish the Cohong monopoly that hitherto had controlled trade
in and through Canton, and adhere to a fixed schedule of customs duties. Additionally,
the British were granted the right to occupy Hong Kong in perpetuity; this was their sole
outright territorial acquisition.
“The Signing and Sealing of the Treaty of Nanking in the
State Cabin of H. M. S. Cornwallis, 29th August, 1842” (detail)
Painted by Capt. John Platt
This famous 1846 engraving commemorates the signing of the first of the unequal
treaties in August 1842. In the West, this was widely heralded as a triumph of
commerce, international law, and “civilization.”
Anne S. K. Brown Military Collection, Brown University Library
[1846_TreatyNanking_Brown]
65
Bilingual pages in the Treaty of Nanking
Anne S. K. Brown Military Collection, Brown University Library
[1842_TreatyNanking]
“Chinese Tribute Money Entering the Mint”
Illustrated London News, November 12, 1842
Among other costly and humiliating conditions inflicted on the losing side in the
first Opium War, the Chinese were forced to pay a huge indemnity of 20 million silver
dollars to the victors. 12 million of this sum was for covering British war costs; three
million was for covering debts to English merchants; and five million was
compensation for the opium stocks Commissioner Lin had destroyed in 1839.
[iln_1842_174_tribute_012_c]
66
In 1843, the London publication Saturday Magazine ran a series of feature articles on
the treaty ports opened under the Treaty of Nanking, plus England’s one outright
territorial acquisition Hong Kong. From left to right, top to bottom, the graphics
feature Amoy, Foochow, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Canton, and Whampoa (at Canton).
The Ningpo treaty port is not shown.
g_3467-001_Amoy g_3467-003_FooChooFoo g_3467-007_Shanghai
g_3467-009_Canton g_3467-011_HongKong g_3467-013_Whampoa
During the 19th century the treaty ports became the largest commercial centers in
China, with Shanghai and Hong Kong leading the way. At the time the Treaty of Nanking
was concluded, however, the acquisition of Hong Kong disappointed many British
commentators. One of them, Julia Corner, wrote:
A fatal and most costly mistake was made by those who managed the war
and the treaty, in retaining the wretched, pestiferous island of Hong Kong,
and giving up the beautiful and salubrious island of Cimsan [Chusan]....
Hong Kong... is an unproductive, mountainous, lumpish isle... separated
from the mainland of China only by a very narrow strait.... This proximity
allows the pirates and other plunderers of the main to cross over to the isle
by night, and there commit their depredations and atrocities.... The
mortality of our troops has been as one in three and a half. The diseases
are endemic fevers, diarrhea, dysentery, and pulmonic complaints.... The
population [of Canton] is perverse, presumptuous, turbulent, and altogether
the most indocile and the worst people in China.
From these unpromising beginnings, Hong Kong rose to become the dominant
commercial city in China.
67
Despite such minor complaints, the first Opium War was widely regarded in England as
a great triumph, both for the nation and for Western notions of commercial and
technological progress more generally. A good sense of this is conveyed in the gold
medal the government struck commemorating “The Triumph of the British Arms, 1842.”
A profile of Queen Victoria, her hair decorated with roses and other flowers, graces the
front of the medal. The reverse side is given to celebration. Here the detailed relief
depicts four British officers, one holding the Royal Standard, facing four mandarin
officials. The two representatives in the center of the scene hold a scroll of the treaty
between them. The figure of Peace looks down upon them while the angel of Victory
flies above, blowing a trumpet. A pagoda stands behind the Chinese officials, symbolic
of traditional China. Visible behind England’s military representatives is a ship with
furled sails.
“The Triumph of the British Arms, 1842”
The British government struck this
commemorative gold medal in celebration of
the conclusion of the first Opium War. The
profile on the front of the medal is
Queen Victoria.
National Maritime Museum
[1842_MEC1104_nmm]
In 1844, the United States and France rode on England’s triumph to negotiate their own
treaties with the Qing government, effectively internationalizing and consolidating the
basis of what became known as the “unequal treaty” system. These treaties, together
with England’s, began the inexorable process of pressuring China to allow foreigners,
including missionaries, traders, doctors, and travelers, to move into the interior.
Three treaty provisions in particular constituted the core of this inequitable system:
“extraterritoriality” (exemption of the foreigners from Chinese law); “most favored
nation” privileges (guaranteeing each nation the same rights other foreigners might be
able to extract in the future); and the legal basis for imposing what turned out to be a
generally low “fixed tariff” on China (which prevented China from protecting native
industries that might become threatened by foreign imports).
There were, of course, no commemorative medals or official celebrations on the Chinese
side. On the contrary, in the words of historian Immanuel C. Y. Hsü, the Opium War and
Treaty of Nanking “introduced a century of humiliation for the Chinese people.”
68
The war and the 1842 treaty that ended it also, as it turned out, left unresolved the
fundamental issue that had triggered hostilities in the first place. Apart from stipulating
that of the huge indemnity China agreed to pay, one part (six million silver dollars) was
compensation for the opium Commissioner Lin had destroyed, the opium trade itself
went unmentioned.
It did not go away. In 1856, fourteen years after the Treaty of Nanking, China and
England (together with France) embarked on a second Opium War.
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69
WAR STORIES
The following first-hand—or close to first-hand—accounts of the first Opium War
appeared during or immediately after the war and are, with a few exceptions, available
online:
John Ouchterlony
The Chinese War: an Account of all the Operations of the British Forces from the
Commencement to the Treaty of Nanking (Saunders and Otley, London, 1844).
This is perhaps the single most interesting first-hand account available online,
enhanced by inclusion of 53 woodcut illustrations—many of which have been
reproduced in this Visualizing Cultures unit.
Keith Stewart Mackenzie
Narrative of the Second Campaign in China (Richard Bentley, London, 1842)
70
John Elliot Bingham
Narrative of the Expedition to China, from the Commencement of the War to its
Termination in 1842, with Sketches of the Manners and Customs of that Singular and
Hitherto Almost Unknown Country (Henry Colburn, London, 1843)
Edward Belcher
Narrative of a Voyage Round the World, Performed in Her Majesty’s Ship Sulphur,
During the Years 1836-1842, Including Details of the Naval Operations in China, from
Dec. 1840, to Nov. 1841, vol. II (Henry Colburn, London, 1843)
71
Robert Montgomery Martin
China; Political, Commercial, and Social; in an official Report to Her Majesty’s
Government, 2 vol. (James Madden, London, 1847)
Samuel Wells Williams
The Middle Kingdom: A Survey of the Geography, Government, Education, Social Life,
Arts, Religion, &c. of the Chinese Empire and Its Inhabitants, 2 vol. (Wiley & Putnam,
1848). See chapters 22 and 23 in volume 2 (pp. 468-604) on the first Opium War.
Williams, a missionary who went to China in 1833 and became adept in the language,
was not in China when the war took place but was nonetheless very knowledgeable
about it. This first edition of his voluminous text was published just six years after the
Treaty of Nanking.
72
Alexander Murray
Doings in China, being the Personal Narrative of an Officer Engaged in the Late Chinese
Expedition, from the Recapture of Chusan in 1841, to the Peace of Nankin in 1842
(Richard Bentley, London, 1843)
Duncan McPherson, M.D.
The War in China. Narrative of the Chinese Expedition from its Formation in April, 1840,
to the Treaty of Peace in August, 1842, 3rd edition (Saunders and Otley, London, 1843)
M.D., Madras Army
The first edition of this book, also accessible online, was published in 1842 under the
title Two Years in China.
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Edward Hodges Cree
The Cree Journals: The Voyages of Edward H. Cree, Surgeon R.N., as Related in His
Private Journals, 1837-1856, edited and with and Introduction by Michael Levien
(Nelson Canada Limited, 1981).
This publication was reissued in 1982 under the main title Naval Surgeon, and is not
accessible in full online. The hard copy includes extensive color reproductions of
Cree’s watercolor sketches.
William Dallas Bernard, Sir William Hutcheson Hall
Narrative of the Voyages and Services of The Nemesis, from 1840 to 1843...from the
notes of Commander W.H. Hall, R.N. with Personal Observations by W.D. Bernard, in
Two Volumes (Henry Colburn, London, 1844).
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The Chinese Repository, Volume VIII, from May, 1839 to April 1840
(Canton, Printed for the Proprietors, 1840) (one volume of many)
This publication, published from 1832 through 1851, provides an intimate view of
Protestant missionary perceptions of developments in China.
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SOURCES | CREDITS
In addition to the first-hand accounts presented under “War Stories” in this Visualizing
Cultures unit, see the following basic sources.
Older Secondary Sources (Online)
William Laird Clowes, The Royal Navy: A History from the Earliest Times to the Death of
Queen Victoria (Sampson Low, Marston and Company, 1901), vol. 6, pp. 279-304.
(complete view on Google Books)
This is a partisan, patriotic account—but very useful on the battles as they unfolded.
Some of the military information in this Visualizing Cultures unit derives from this
source.
Hosea Ballou Morse, The International Relations of the Chinese Empire (Longmans,
Green, and Co., London, NY, Bombay, Calcutta, 1910), vol. 1, The Period of Conflict,
1834-1860, chapters 1 through 13.
(complete view on Google Books)
Recent Secondary Sources (Online)
Korea in the Eye of the Tiger at the Korean History Project website at
http://www.koreanhistoryproject.org/index.htm
Chapters 17, 18, and 19 of this unannotated narrative account address the first
Opium War in a readable way that may be particularly appealing to teachers and
students.
Hsin-pao Chang, Commissioner Lin and the Opium War (Harvard University Press,
1964). (preview)
W. Travis Hanes and Frank Sanello, The Opium Wars: The Addiction of One Empire and
the Corruption of Another (Sourcebooks, Inc., 2002). (preview)
Frederic E. Wakeman’s often cited analysis of the Sanyuanli incident in his book
Strangers at the Gate: Social Disorder in South China, 1839-1861. (view)
Susanna Hoe, Derek Roebuck, The Taking of Hong Kong: Charles and Clara Elliot in
China Waters (Hong Kong University Press, 1999, 2009). (preview)
Basic Textbook & Scholarly Accounts
The following sources are not online, but provide solid textbook accounts of the first
Opium War:
Immanuel C. Y. Hsü, The Rise of Modern China (Oxford University Press, 1970),
ch. 8
Jonathan Spence, The Search for Modern China (Norton, 1999), pp. 147-64.
Jonathan Spence, “Opium,” Chinese Roundabout (Norton, 2003), pp. 228-56, 372-82.
John K. Fairbank, Edwin O. Reischauer & Albert M. Craig, East Asia: Tradition and
Transformation (Houghton Mifflin, 1978), pp. 448-61.
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The following monographs address various aspects of the first Opium War in detail:
Peter Ward Fay, The Opium War, 1840-1842: Barbarians in the Celestial Empire
(University of North Carolina Press, 1998)
Arthur Waley, The Opium War through Chinese Eyes (Stanford University Press, 1963)
Jessie Gregory Lutz, Opening China: Karl F. A. Gützlaff and Sino-Western Relations,
1827-1852 (William B. Erdsman Publishing, 2008)
Jack Beeching, The Chinese Opium Wars (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, NY and London,
1975)
Wikipedia Sites for the First Opium War
A number of sites on Wikipedia provide useful information about the first Opium War,
along with graphics and helpful crosslinks. The topical list that follows here focuses on
battles, is roughly chronological, and is not exhaustive. Wikipedia also contains entries
on individuals involved in the first Opium War (Lin Zexu, Charles Elliot et al.), as well as
a (very disorderly) assemblage of images accessible through the “Images” click-on or
through Wikimedia.
“First Opium War”
“Battles of the First Opium War”
“Battle of Kowloon”
“Battle of Chuenpee”
“Capture of Chusan”
“Battle of the Barrier”
“Second Battle of Chuenpee”
“Convention of Chuenpee”
“Battle of the Bogue”
“Battle of First Bar”
“Battle of Whampoa”
“Battle of Canton”
“Battle of Chinkiang”
Links to Sources in Google Books Pertinent to Aspects of the First Opium War
Excerpts from Blair B. Kling, “Partner in Empire: Dwarkanath Tagore and the age of
enterprise in eastern India,” (University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles,
London, 1976), esp. a description of the Waterwitch, 90-1. (view)
Article from Abel Stevens, editor, “The National Magazine, devoted to Literature, Art,
and Religion, Volume 5, July to December, 1854,” (Carlton & Phillips, NY, 1854), esp.
“The Opium Trade in the East,” 335-41. (view)
1882 publication The Truth about Opium Smoking, which reproduces Sherwill’s Patna
graphics on pages 112-17. (view)
Julia Corner, China: Pictorial, Descriptive, and Historical (Henry G. Bohn, London, 1853),
esp. “Reduction of Amoy” 251-2. (view)
Excerpts from Hunt Janin, “The India-China Opium Trade in the Nineteenth Century,”
(McFarland & Company, Jefferson, NC, 1999) esp. “Chinese Ships: ‘Centipedes’ and
Government War Junks,” 94-5. (view)
Excerpts from “Wrecks on the New South Wales Coast,” Jack Kenneth Loney, (Lonestone
Press, 1993 and 2001, Victoria, Australia), esp. “Ly-ee-moon,” 88. (view)
Karl Friedrich August Gützlaff, A Sketch of Chinese History: Ancient and Modern (John P.
Haven, New York, 1834). (view) Alternate online version (view)
Excerpts from Jessie Gregory Lutz, “Opening China: Karl F.A. Gützlaff and Sino-Western
relations, 1827-1852,” (Wm. B. Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, Michigan/Cambridge, U.K.,
2008), esp: “Gützlaff’s Coastal Journeys: Opium Ships,” “Gützlaff and the Prosecution of
the Opium War, 1840-1842.” (view) 77
“The Chinese Emperor, Mien-Ning,” The Illustrated Magazine of Art, vol. 1 (New York,
1853), 271-72. (view)
Excerpts from James M. Polachek, The Inner Opium War (Council on East Asian Studies,
Harvard, 1992), esp. “Lin Tse-Hsu and the Anti-Opium Campaign,” 141. (view)
Yangwen Zheng, The Social Life of Opium in China, (Cambridge University Press, 2005),
esp. map: “The Opium Trade in China, 1833-1839,” 71. (view)
Ssu-yu Teng & John K. Fairbank, China’s Response to the West (Harvard College, 1954,
1979, 1982), esp. “Commissioner Lin’s Program for Meeting the British Aggression.”
(view)
A discussion of the parliamentary debates in W. Travis Hanes and Frank Sanello, The
Opium Wars: The Addiction of One Empire and the Corruption of Another (Sourcebooks,
Napier, IL, 1992). (view)
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CREDITS
“The First Opium War” was developed by
Visualizing Cultures at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
and presented on MIT OpenCourseWare.
MIT Visualizing Cultures:
John W. Dower
Project Director
Emeritus Professor of History
Shigeru Miyagawa
Project Director
Professor of Linguistics
Kochi Prefecture-John Manjiro Professor of Japanese Language and Culture
Ellen Sebring
Creative Director
Scott Shunk
Program Director
Andrew Burstein
Media designer
In collaboration with:
Peter C. Perdue
Professor
Department of History
Yale University
Author, essay
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SUPPORT
Contributing Archives
Visualizing Cultures is indebted to the following sources for images
presented in this unit.
Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University
British Library
British Museum
Anne S. K. Brown Military Collection, Brown University Library
Hong Kong Museum of Art
National Maritime Museum, London
Peobody Essex Museum
Sterling Memorial Library, Yale University
Victoria And Albert Museum, London
Wikimedia Commons
Wellcome Images, London
Funding for this website was provided by:
The J. Paul Getty Foundation
The Henry Luce Foundation
The Andrew Mellon Foundation
The U.S. Department of Education
The Japan Foundation
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80
