History of China's First Opium War against England

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Caricature by James Gillray depicting the attitude of the Chinese towards European curiosities donated by the British embassy Macartney in 1793. Public domain,

There is a well-known joke that any discovery that is made in the world has its Chinese counterpart, only it was several centuries earlier.

At the beginning of the 19th century, China was a very wealthy country, whose products enjoyed unwavering success throughout the civilized world. Chinese porcelain, Chinese tea, silk, fans, art objects and many other exotic goods were in great demand throughout Europe. They were bought with great pleasure for a lot of money, and China took payment only in gold and silver, and completely closed its markets from foreigners.

Great Britain, which had recently conquered India and reaped fabulous profits from it, sought to expand its influence. Everything that could be plundered in India had already been taken out long ago, and I wanted more money.

In addition, the British were annoyed that Chinese goods had to be paid in precious metals, which depressed the pound sterling.

The British were unnerved by the fact that China sells a huge amount of goods in Europe, but itself does not buy anything in Europe. The trade balance was heavily skewed in China's favor. For foreigners, only one port in the country was opened - Guangzhou (Canton), while foreigners were prohibited from leaving this port and moving inland.

Negotiations with the Chinese were fruitless. The Chinese did not need goods from Europe. From a letter from Emperor Qianlong to King George III of England: "We have everything one could wish for, and we do not need barbarian goods."

And then the British found a product that could be sold in China with fabulous profits. It turned out to be opium. In Bengal, captured in 1757, there was a lot of it, the East India Company had a monopoly on its production since 1773, and it was not far from being transported.

And then it was decided to increase the smuggling of opium to China. If in 1775 only one and a half tons of opium from Bengal were sold throughout China, then by 1830 the East India Company had brought smuggling to 1,500-2,000 tons per year.

The Chinese realized too late. Millions of Chinese people from all walks of life, including the ruling elite, have been involved in drug use. It got to the point that opium was supplied through corrupt government officials who used drugs themselves, and those who did not agree were simply killed.

Between 10 and 20% of city officials used opium, and in the villages this figure was twice as high. In some institutions, more than half of the employees were drug addicts. Soldiers and officers used opium almost en masse, which made the huge Chinese army practically ineffective.

The reason for the closure of the Chinese market for foreigners was also the fact that China fought the smuggling of opium on its territory for several decades and in 1830 finally tried to stop it with tough measures. And in 1839, seeing that England, by hook or by crook, continues to smuggle opium in the country, the Chinese emperor closed the market for traders in England and her subordinate India by a special decree.

The Chinese governor Lin Zexu discovered huge stocks of opium in the only port open to foreigners and, with the help of the army, confiscated them. In addition to ships full of drugs, 19 thousand boxes and 2 thousand bales of opium were arrested.

Traders were asked to continue trading, but only after a written commitment not to sell opium. Moreover, the governor was ready to compensate the seized opium with Chinese goods. It would seem, which is much better ?!

However, this caused such a strong outburst of indignation among the British that in 1840 the so-called First Opium War was declared. For the first time in history, the war was fought not for the seizure of territories, but for the markets and the promotion of drugs into the country.

The ethics of drug dealing was initially widely discussed in England itself, but money does not smell, nothing personal. The trade lobby quickly suppressed the stupid and naive attempts of individuals, achieved its goal and in April 1840 began a war with China, which, of course, was approved by the US government.

The Chinese army was large, but scattered, scattered on different ends of a large country and poorly trained. In addition, on the eve of the fighting, the British sent large consignments of drugs to the alleged areas of the clashes, which were distributed practically for nothing, which finally killed the fighting efficiency of the Chinese and made them incapable of repelling the attack.

Therefore, only 4,000 well-trained and well-trained English soldiers in a short time, by August 1840, reached Beijing and forced the emperor to sign an armistice.

Separate battles then continued until August 28, 1842, when the Chinese Empire was forced to agree to a humiliating peace, signed in the “southern capital,” the city of Nanjing. The British discovered five trading ports in which “independent” (and in fact, of course, purely English) legislative and judicial authorities operated.

And of course, the main bonus of the signed agreement was the opportunity to sell opium in China without restrictions for the East India Company, which, with great satisfaction and no less profit, began to pump the country with drugs.

Also, under the terms of the "peace agreement," the British handed over Hong Kong to themselves, and, in addition, forced China to pay an indemnity of $ 21 million in silver. And for the opium that the Chinese governor arrested in 1839, the British demanded to pay them another 6 million dollars.

All this exceeded several times the profit received by the East India Company from the occupation of Bengal in 1757, and promised huge profits from the sale of opium in the near future.

The invaders should have been very pleased, but how can you satisfy the bottomless appetite of the British? From that moment on, the troubles in China, as it turned out, had only just begun.