If you’re like most people, the only thing you know about the Opium Wars is that they destroyed China, and that they were mentioned briefly in the film “Shanghai Knights”. These pivotal and world-changing conflicts are largely forgotten today, but they were crucial to shaping the China that we have in the 21st Century. This posting will explore what the Opium Wars were, and what their affect was on the Chinese country and its people.

China Before the Opium Wars

China before the Opium Wars was a land steeped in mystery, mythology, tradition, and a strict class-society, clinging to its traditions, its customs and its ideals which it had held for centuries before. China was for the Chinese. And no-one else.

In Chinese, the country of China is called ‘Zhongguo‘ (‘Zhong-g’awe’). Translated to English, it literally means “Central Country” or “Central Kingdom”. And herein lies the root of what led up to the Opium Wars. Here is the very reason why the opium wars got started in the first place.

To understand why the opium wars started, you need to understand Chinese foreign policy during the late Imperial period. In the 18th and 19th centuries, China was an INTENSELY isolationist country, which was inward-looking, arrogant, conceited and which believed firmly that the world almost literally revolved around it. It was, in every sense of the words, the Central Kingdom. Or so it believed.

British-Chinese Relations

Western contact with China was few and far between. Westerners were not allowed to visit China. They could try, if they wished, but they were rarely allowed in. Marco Polo was one of the few people from the Western World who ever managed to get so much as a shoe-in.

In the 1700s, the British tried to set up diplomatic relations with Imperial China. England was a proud and ancient nation with a growing empire…and so was China. It probably made sense to the British that these two great powers on opposite sides of the world should become friends.

To this end, the British sent forth a man named George Macartney. Macartney was an influential and famous man. How famous? Surely some of you may have heard the saying that the British “controlled an empire upon which the sun never sets”?

It was Macartney who coined that phrase.

Macartney and his chums arrived in the Chinese capital…then called Peking…in 1792. Here, they were admitted to the Forbidden City (a VERY rare privilege, even to the Chinese!) and granted an audience with the Emperor of China.

This historic meeting between East and West was ultimately unsuccessful. The British wanted to establish an embassy in China, so that the British and Chinese governments could be diplomatic partners. They also wanted China to open more of its ports to foreign trade. The emperor of China, the Qianlong Emperor (“Chee’yan-Long“) explained to Lord Macartney that such a relationship between China and England was not possible due to conflicting views and aims from both parties. The Emperor even wrote a letter to King George III to explain why such a relationship was impossible…although by now, George III was barking mad…so he probably never read it. But you can. Here is the letter.

It’s often believed that the emperor refused trade and diplomatic relations with England because Macartney had offended him by refusing to kowtow to him, instead stating that he would bow, or salute him as his own king, but would not execute actions which would suggest that the King of England was of lower status to that of the Emperor of China!

This is not true. But it sure makes for a hell of a story.

The Chinese Government firmly believed that it had no need for foreign goods, foreign inventions, foreign anything! It was Zhongguo! The Central Kingdom! And damn anyone else who thought otherwise! Foreigners were not even called ‘foreigners’! In most court, and government documents from the period, they are actually referred to as “barbarians”! And so, for another half-a-century, China kept itself largely locked away from the West.

For roughly 80 years, between the 1750s to the 1830s, the Chinese would only allow the British access to ONE port. This was known as the “Canton System”. So-called, because the one port that was open to foreign ships was the Port of Canton, in Canton Province. Where is Canton? It’s in southern China. You won’t find it on any map printed today, but you will find it if you search for Canton’s modern name…Guangzhou.

The Leadup to the Opium Wars

The British wanted things from China. And they were sure that the Chinese wanted things from England. The British were desperate for things like silk, spices, porcelain, and of course…its national beverage…TEA! And they could GET IT…if the Chinese agreed to trade with them, and would open up more ports to Western ships…but they refused! And they said that they wanted none of whatever the British had to offer! Western inventions and technology were of no use to the Chinese whatsoever!

This bickering between two proud and ancient countries had been going on for decades. Centuries, even. Then, the British discovered that the Chinese WERE interested in something that they could offer them!…Opium!

You have to understand that there was HIGH demand for Chinese goods in Europe. Europeans wanted porcelain, silk, spices and tea, but the Chinese didn’t want suits, top hats or flintlock muskets, watches, neckties or shoelaces, so the British had to find something else to trade with the Chinese. Something that the British could lay their hands on with ease, and which the Chinese attached some sort of value to.

The issue here was that the only thing that the Chinese would accept in return for all the goods that they were exporting to Europe was silver coinage. Or to be precise, silver tael. A tael is not a dollar or a pound, or any other type of currency. It is an Asian unit of measurement, the Chinese equivalent of the Troy Ounce. One tael of silver weighed just under 40 grams. The silver, measured by weight in tael, was paid in sycees. The ‘sycee’ (‘sigh-see’) is the traditional, boat-shaped Chinese ingot, the shape into which gold and silver were cast. These things:

A 10 tael (roughly 380g) Chinese silver sycee

Since Britain and the majority of Europe traded in GOLD, silver was hard to come by, and this caused even MORE problems. It was in trying to find a solution to this silver-drain, that the British hit on the answer…

…Opium.

Starting in the 1700s, the British began importing opium into China. Small quantities at first, but when the British gained more and more control of the Indian Subcontinent, the opium-trade boomed!

Opium was very popular in Europe. It was used for everything, from toothaches to fevers, back-aches to muscle-cramps. This drowsy, pain-killing drug was the aspirin of its day. Although effective as a painkiller, opium is also highly addictive. And it was this addictive quality that the British were counting on.

The Chinese jumped on the opium at once! Before very long, opium addiction was a huge problem in China. It was so bad that the Chinese emperor of the time ordered a nationwide ban on all but the smallest uses of opium, for medicinal purposes.

The British just ignored the Chinese government and continued sending in opium. And the Chinese commoners kept smoking it. At the turn of the 19th century, the emperor put ANOTHER ban on opium! In 1810, the Chinese Empire issued the following decree:

“Opium has a harm. Opium is a poison, undermining our good customs and morality. Its use is prohibited by law. Now the commoner, Yang, dares to bring it into the Forbidden City. Indeed, he flouts the law! However, recently the purchasers, eaters, and consumers of opium have become numerous. Deceitful merchants buy and sell it to gain profit. The customs house at the Ch’ung-wen Gate was originally set up to supervise the collection of imports. If we confine our search for opium to the seaports, we fear the search will not be sufficiently thorough. We should also order the general commandant of the police and police- censors at the five gates to prohibit opium and to search for it at all gates. If they capture any violators, they should immediately punish them and should destroy the opium at once. As to Kwangtung and Fukien, the provinces from which opium comes, we order their viceroys, governors, and superintendents of the maritime customs to conduct a thorough search for opium, and cut off its supply. They should in no ways consider this order a dead letter and allow opium to be smuggled out!”

Strong words! And you can bet that the world sat up and took notice!

…or not.

The opium trade went right on ahead, as if NOTHING had happened!

The First Opium War (1839-1842)

In the end, everything came to a head! By the 1830s, tensions had been simmering for a century, and now, they finally exploded! The British wanted Chinese trade, and the Chinese didn’t want British opium! The Chinese wanted the British to stop importing opium, and the Chinese wanted the British to leave them alone! In 1839, the First Opium War started.

The Chinese easily outnumbered the British forces during the First Opium War, but the British had the benefit of modern, Victorian-era technology. And they had military bases very close to China: They had colonies in India, Australia, New Zealand and Singapore! The British systematically slaughtered the Chinese with their weaker, and older army, poorly-equipped to fight a modern war.

The First Opium War ended in 1842 with the Treaty of Nanking.

The treaty took its name from the ancient Chinese city of Nanking. It was on a ship anchored in the river, the HMS Cornwallis, that the treaty was signed.

The treaty forced China to pay reparations to the British for the cost of the war, it forced the Chinese to cede the island of Hong Kong to Britain indefinitely. In 1898, the island was granted to Britain on a 99-year lease, which famously ended in 1997.

The most famous condition of the Treaty of Nanking, however, was the British forcing the Chinese to open five of its ports to British and other foreign ships! The ports were the cities of Canton, Amoy, Fuzhou, Ningbo, and most famously…Shanghai.

The British forced the Chinese to sign the Treaty of Nanking. One of the conditions to which the Chinese were forced to consent to, was that foreigners living in China were subject to the laws of their own countries, and not to the laws of the Chinese Government. This led to the establishment of the Shanghai International Settlement in 1942.

The ending of the Opium War was a huge boost to the British. The opium-trade continued, and trade flourished between China and the West. This caused British-controlled Shanghai, soon to be the International Settlement, to flourish, turning what was once a small, riverside town, into what is today, one of China’s largest and prosperous cities. British Christian missionaries pushed deep into China to spread the word of God and British influence in the Pacific increased significantly.

The end of the First Opium War brought modern technology to China, it brought prosperity, trade, new inventions and exposure to new people. But it also brought more opium, more troubles, and it greatly weakened the public perception of the Qing Dynasty. The Qing Dynasty was never very popular. It was rife with corruption and was not generally supported by the Chinese people. Its humiliating defeat at the hands of the British caused it to slip even further in the opinions of the Chinese people.

The Second Opium War (1856-1860)

The Second Opium War was a British (’56-’60) and French (’57-’60) conflict against China. The British wanted more access to China, and they wanted to continue the opium-trade…both conditions which the Chinese Government refused to grant.

Just as with the first Opium War, the British won, and just like the first one, the conflict was over in four years. The war ended with the Convention of Peking, in 1860. Signing of the convention would result in more Chinese port-cities being opened to foreign traders; most notably, the ports of Hankou, Danshui, and Nanking). On top of this, foreign countries (France, Britain, Russia and the United States) were able to send diplomats to live and work in the Chinese capital of Peking (previously a closed city, forbidden to foreigners). This led to the establishment of the Legation Quarter in Peking, which would play a key role in the Boxer Rebellion, forty years later.

On top of this, foreigners were now allowed to travel deeper and deeper into the Chinese interior (not something previously allowed) and foreign ships were able to sail freely up and down the length of the Yangtze River.

The Impact of the Opium Wars

The two Opium Wars were short, largely one-sided regional conflicts, but their impact on the history of China was great, both positive, and negative. On the negative side, it forever established the Chinese as a bunch of opium-huffing, slitty-eyed and ignorant Asian foreigners, a stereotype that lasted well into the 20th century. Over the next half a century, the other European powers would start carving up China, staking out concessions for themselves. As this famous cartoon from the late 1800s shows, China was fair game for foreign powers:

This cartoon appeared in a French magazine. Here, we have the country of China (the pie on the table) being divided up by the Foreign Powers, represented by ENGLAND (Queen Victoria, LEFT), GERMANY (the Kaiser, next to her), RUSSIA (Tsar Nicholas II), FRANCE (peering over the tsar’s shoulder) and JAPAN (represented by by the character on the right), while the Chinese Government (the pig-tailed Oriental in the background) watches on in horror as its nation is divided up.

For all the negative effects and results of the Opium Wars, they did have positive outcomes as well. Although it was dragged kicking and screaming into the modern age, China benefited from Western exposure, new technologies, better communications and trade, and entered the 20th Century increasingly casting off its old and dusty superstitions and traditions, its illogical and irrational isolationism and embraced modernity and more forward ways of government and handling its affairs. Without the Opium Wars, China would probably still be an Imperial country, with an emperor, a Forbidden City, and struggling to keep up with the rest of the world.

The changes wrought by the Western Powers on China caused the final collapse of the much-hated and increasingly weak, and corrupt Qing Dynasty, and the birth of a modern, republican China in the early 20th century, and all the things that would come with it, such as the Nationalist Era, the Second Sino-Japanese War, the Civil War, and the establishment of modern China.

Want to Know More?

The Emergence of Modern China – The First Opium War

Victorianweb – The Opium Wars