China

Western challenge, 1839–60

China during the late Qing dynasty.Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

clipper shipThe clipper ship Le-Rye-Moon, built for the opium trade, 19th-century wood engraving from the Illustrated London News.Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.The opium question, the direct cause of the first Sino-British clash in the 19th century, began in the late 18th century as the British attempted to counterbalance their unfavourable China trade with traffic in Indian opium. After monopolizing the opium trade in 1779, the East India Company’s government began to sell the drug at auction to private British traders in India, who shipped it to buyers in China. The silver acquired from the sale of opium in China was sold at Guangzhou for the company’s bills of exchange, payable in London, and was used by the company to purchase its large annual tea cargo for sale in Europe. This “triangular trade” became a major vehicle for realizing the potential gains from the British conquest of India, providing a means to repatriate the company’s Indian revenue in opium in the form of Chinese teas. In 1819 the company began to handle larger amounts of opium. Substantial social and economic disruption followed in China, not only from the effects of the opium habit itself as it spread among the populace but from the corruption it engendered among petty officials and from a fall in the value of copper in China’s bimetallic monetary system as silver was drained from the economy. The Beijing court repeatedly banned the opium imports but without success, because the prohibition itself promoted corruption among the officials and soldiers concerned. There was no possibility of the opium question being solved as a domestic affair.

After the turn of the 19th century, the main avenue for opium smuggling was through the designated traders who were allowed only to manage the inter-Asian trade under the company’s license. Without protection from the company, they cultivated the opium market in China on their own. They defied the opium ban in China and gradually became defiant toward Chinese law and order in general, having nothing in mind but making money. After Parliament revoked the East India Company’s monopoly in 1834, William John Napier was appointed chief superintendent of British trade in China and arrived at Guangzhou. He tried to negotiate with the Guangzhou authorities on equal footing, but the latter took his behaviour as contrary to the established Sino-foreign intercourse. His mission failed, and he was replaced in 1836 by Charles (later Sir Charles) Elliot.

In Beijing a proposal in 1836 to relax the opium restraint acquired much support, but the Daoguang emperor appointed a radical patriot, Lin Zexu, as imperial commissioner for an anti-opium campaign. Chinese anti-opium efforts in fact began to make considerable headway in controlling the Chinese side of the smuggling trade in late 1838 and early 1839. The critical foreign side of the opium trade was, however, beyond Commissioner Lin’s direct reach. After arriving at Guangzhou in March 1839, Lin later confiscated and destroyed more than 20,000 chests of opium. Skirmishes began in September between the Chinese and the British.