The First Opium War: The foreign mud

Hardcore statements
The period between 1839 1842, the duration of the Opium War, also known as Anglo-Chinese Wars, marked the acquisition of Hong Kong by the British. Although ostensibly the war was because of the importation of opium, trading rights and diplomatic representation lay underneath.

Background
The Qing, and its predecessor the Ming, shared opposed attitude towards overseas trade, and maritime activity in general. From 1661 to 1669, in an effort to cut off Ming loyalists, the Qing issued an edict to evacuate all populations living near the coast of Southern China. Though it was later repealed, the edict seriously disrupted coastal areas and drove many Chinese overseas

 Qing attitudes were also further aggravated by traditional Confucian disdain (even hostility) towards merchants and traders. Qing officials believed that trade incited unrest and disorder, promoted piracy, and threatened to compromise information on China's defences.

 The Qing instituted a set of rigid and incomplete regulations regarding trade at Chinese ports They set up four maritime customs offices (in Guangdong, Fujian, Zhejiang, and Jiangsu) They imposed a 20 percent tariff on all foreign goods

 Although foreign merchants and traders dealt with low level Qing bureaucrats and agents at specified ports and entry points, official contact between China and foreign governments was organized around the tributary system. The tributary system affirmed the Emperor as the son of Heaven with a mandate to rule on Earth; as such, foreign rulers were required to present tribute and acknowledge the superiority of the imperial court. In return, the Emperor bestowed gifts and titles upon foreign emissaries and allowed them to trade for short periods of time during their stay within China.

 Low Chinese demand for European goods, and high European demand for Chinese goods, including tea, silk, and porcelain, forced European merchants to purchase these goods with silver, the only commodity the Chinese would accept. Thus ,the Chinese were demanding hard currency or specie (gold or silver coinage) as the medium of exchange for the international trade in their goods. From the mid-17th century around 28 million kilograms of silver entered the arches of China, principally from European powers, in exchange for Chinese goods. Great Britain had to purchase silver from other European countries, incurring an additional transaction cost.

 Therefore, by 1700s the volume of trade between China and Britain was favoring China. Thus, the British, to balance the scale, began introducing opium to the Chinese market. Opium was grown and prepared in India from where it was taken to China. Following the Battle of Plassey in 1757, in which Britain annexed Bengal to its empire, the British East India Company pursued a monopoly on production and export of Indian opium. Monopoly began in earnest in 1773, as the British Governor-General of Bengal abolished the opium syndicate at Patna. For the next fifty years opium trade would be the key to the East India Company's hold on the subcontinent.

 British merchants carrying no opium would buy tea in Canton on credit, and would balance their debts by selling opium at auction in Calcutta. From there, the opium would reach the Chinese coast hidden aboard British ships then smuggled into China by native merchants. In 1797 the company further tightened its grip on the opium trade by enforcing direct trade between opium farmers and the British, and ending the role of Bengali purchasing agents.

 Opium was not a newly introduced merchandize. It was brought to China about the 700s by Arab traders. Yet, its usage had to do with medicinal analgesic purposes. Evidently, its use soon became diverse. In 1796 the Qing emperor banned its importation. The East India Company (EIC) that had been its main legal importer, shift its trading partners, moving from Chinese trading companies to British, Indian, Parsee, Armenian and Chines smugglers who penetrated the Chinese market utilizing small undetectable boats.

 In 1810 the Qing reinforced the ban and underlined the inconvenience of its use, yet its importation thrived along: 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 (it had no responsibility with regard to opium smuggling). 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!

 In the words of an American smuggler, William Hunter, opium was an easy and agreeable business for the foreign exile who shared it in Canton. His sales were pleasantness and his remittances were peace. Transactions seemed to partake of the nature of the drug: they imparted a soothing frame of mind with three per cent commission, one percent, on returns, no bad debts.

 The ban contradicted the fact that its demand was increasing and frustrated both sides. To solve the situation, Lord Napier was sent to China in 1834 to personally hold a meeting with, first, the superintendent of the Guangdong maritime customs and later with the Qing Emperor. The Chinese didnt fall in its diplomatic role and was arrested while visiting the factories in Canton, but released as he agreed to leave China. A couple of weeks later, Napier died from malaria acquired as he was hold in the prison cells.

 Now, the British used that as a pretext to generate a political conflict where there was only a commercial one. The British, beyond that, felt their authority and world control defied. In 1838 the government sentenced native drug traffickers to death. Around this time, the British were selling 1,400 tons per year to China. Yet, for China the situation was factually more complex. The ban was a several edges sword, because it implied not only a problem of commercial balance but a public health one and a state financial one due to the taxes (again paid in silver) that they had been missing for already several decades.

 Not only that, the Emperor felt he could not politically deal with Britain without seeing his authority diminish in front of his people (and in Asia as a whole) to which he had been presented as the Son of the Heaven for millenniums already. The Emperor saw pressure leading to and coming from different directions even inside his court. Abolitionists and promoters of the ban presented their arguments all of them politically pragmatic or morally conservative.

 In 1838 the Emperor strengthen the ban prohibition by claiming that the foreign mud must end. This was considered an insult by the British, some of whom declared that the taste for opium was a congenital disease of the Chinese race (E. J. Eitel). Nobody took the new edicts seriously, because nobody had taken any of them in such a way for decades. So trafficking and consumption continued.

To make his authority be felt, the Emperor named Lin Zexu to launch a campaign vs. opium in the province of Guangdong. Lin arrested 350 foreigners, including political British figures like Charles Elliot and confiscated their opium possessions.

 In 1839, Lin took the step of publishing a letter addressed to Queen Victoria questioning the moral reasoning of the British government (it is not known that she ever received it). Citing what he understood to be a strict prohibition of the trade within Great Britain, Lin questioned how it could then profit from the drug in China. He wrote: "Your Majesty has not before been thus officially notified, and you may plead ignorance of the severity of our laws, but I now give my assurance that we mean to cut this harmful drug forever

 Opium was not illegal in England at the time, however, and comparably smaller quantities were imported. The British government and merchants offered no response to Lin, accusing him instead of destroying their property. When the British learned of what was taking place in Canton, as communications between these two parts of the world took months at this time, they sent a large British Indian army, which arrived in June 1840. A couple of months later, Great Britain and China would be starting belligerent activities.

The War
Hong Kong was immediately understood by the British strategists as a place to seize. Which was done in January 25 1841 by Edward Belcher and Gordon Bremer. Since they planned to establish a British political point there, the whole Asian structure began moving , starting with the offices of the Superintendence of GB which went from Macau to Hong Kong.

 British military superiority drew on newly applied technology. British warships wreaked havoc on coastal towns. The battle ship Nemesis was able to move against the winds and tides and support a gun platform with very heavy guns. The British troops were the first to be armed with modern muskets and cannons which fired more rapidly and with greater accuracy than the Qing firearms and artillery, though Chinese cannons had been in use since previous dynasties. After the British took Canton, they sailed up the Yangtze and blocked the tax delivering routes, thus slashing the revenue of the imperial court in Beijing to just a small fraction of what it had been.

 In 1842, the Qing authorities sued for peace, which concluded with the Treaty of Nanking negotiated in August of that year and ratified in 1843. In the treaty, China was forced to pay an indemnity to Britain, open four ports to Britain, and cede Hong Kong to Queen Victoria. In the supplementary Treaty of the Bogue, the Qing empire also recognized Britain as an equal to China and gave British subjects extraterritorial privileges in treaty ports. In 1844, the United States and France concluded similar treaties with China, the Treaty of Wanghia and Treaty of Whampoa respectively.