Opium Wars

I Introduction
Opium Wars (1839-1842, 1856-1860), two conflicts between Britain and China over
trading rights. In the Second Opium War, also known as the Arrow War or the AngloFrench War in China , French forces joined the British. The wars are so named because
they centered on the trade of opium, a powerful narcotic that British merchants were
smuggling into China in vast quantities. The Chinese lost both wars. As a result, they
found themselves forced into the emerging world of global trade and diplomacy, while
Western nations gained significant commercial privileges and territory in China .
II British-Chinese Trade
Although the Qing dynasty that had ruled China since the mid-17th century was often
depicted as isolationist, the Qing emperors in fact hoped to limit and control foreign
trade, not to eliminate it. This was the object of the so-called Canton system of trade,
which in 1757 established the southern city of Guangzhou ( Canton ) as the sole legal
port for foreign trade with China . This trade was heavily regulated by the cohong, a
group of Chinese merchants who paid the emperor handsomely for their monopoly
power. The cohong set prices, collected duties, and levied numerous fees on foreign
merchants, who were forbidden to interact with the Chinese people or even to learn
Chinese. Some merchants chafed under such restrictions, especially since they were
forbidden to lodge complaints directly with Chinese officials. Still, European traders
were accustomed to monopolies; most European trade with Asia was carried out by the
English, Dutch, and French East India Companies, merchant groups that had
purchased monopoly trading privileges from the governments of their countries much as
the cohong had.
The real irritant in Chinese-British relations, however, came to be the unequal balance
of trade between the two countries. The principal item of exchange was Chinese tea,
which had become the British national drink over the course of the 18th century. By the
early 19th century, British ships were transporting millions of kilograms of tea back to
England every year. Unfortunately, English merchants
were unable to come up with products to sell to the Chinese in similar volume, and in
some years, 90 percent of the cargo brought by British ships to China consisted of silver
bullion.
The British viewed such an imbalance as unhealthy and as early as 1793 organized a
diplomatic mission to China to demand that the Canton system be abandoned and all of
China opened to British trade. The Chinese leaders refused to comply. In his famous
reply to King George III, Emperor Qianlong declared, "We possess all things. I set no

value on objects strange or ingenious, and have

no use for your country's manufactures."
Ill The Opium Trade
Opium became the tool by which the British traders eventually broke open the Chinese
market. The Chinese had long known the addictive drugrecreational use among the
leisured classes had prompted a ban on the sale and smoking of opium as early as
1729. In 1773 the English East India Company (EEIC) established a monopoly over
opium cultivation in India . They marketed the drug
in China through Western merchants who were licensed by but not technically members
of the EEIC, which had a monopoly on trade in China . The importation and cultivation
of opium were outlawed in China in 1796, reflecting the inroads that Indian opium had
made there, but the ban was ineffective.
In 1819 greater domestic competition within India lowered opium prices dramatically,
causing Chinese consumption to shoot up accordingly. Domestic political developments
in Britain led to the breakup of the EEIC monopoly in 1833, allowing new groups of
merchants to enter the Chinese market. The following year, British exports to China
rose to new heights. The volume of this trade reversed the direction of the flow of silver,
and China paid out 34 million Mexican silver dollars (the common international currency
of the day) to purchase opium in the 1830s. Although the idle rich were the majority of
the Chinese addicts, many poor Chinese became addicted as well, and all suffered
from the economic effects of the loss of silver.
IV The First Opium War
The breakup of the EEIC monopoly was the immediate cause of the First Opium War,
both because it led to a huge increase in opium traffic and because, without the EEIC to
serve as a buffer, the British government now found itself obliged to intervene more
frequently in China. A vocal part of the English public clamored for greater access to
China 's huge market, and Britain often sought these goals through bluster and the
threat of force.
China saw the problem differently and moved to stem the trade imbalance and the
opium craze that plagued its people. In late 1838 Emperor Qianlong appointed a famed
official, Lin Zexu, as imperial commissioner and sent him to Guangzhou to solve the
problem. In March 1839 Lin ordered the British
merchants to hand over all of their opium stocks within three days and to sign a bond
pledging never again to traffic in the drug under penalty of death. When British
superintendent of trade Charles Elliot attempted to negotiate, Lin suspended trade and
held all foreign merchants hostage. Elliot then ordered the merchants to hand over their
opium to him, after which he surrendered it to Lin. Lin washed some 9 million Mexican

silver dollars worth of opium into the sea, not realizing that English patriots would view
this as destruction of Crown property.
While Lin and the British merchants jousted over the signing of the bonds, officials in
England dispatched an armed force to China . The Chinese had prepared for war at
Guangzhou , but the British force simply blockaded that city on its way north toward the
capital of Beijing , where officials met with the Chinese. The result of subsequent
negotiations was the Convention of Quanbi in January 1841, in which the bare minimum
of British demands were met. The agreement was subsequently rejected by both sides:
The emperor was enraged that his representative had made real concessions, while the
British felt that Elliot had failed to press his advantage.
Sir Henry Pottinger replaced Elliot in August 1841 and immediately directed his forces to
occupy important cities along the coast, including Ningbo and Tianjin . In the spring of
1842 the English renewed their offensive, triumphing readily over valiant but
underarmed Chinese resistance. By late June the British occupied Zhenjiang , an
important communication center and entry to the Grand Canal , the artery by which rice
from the southern regions reached the northern capital. The Chinese agreed to
negotiate, and at gunpoint they signed the Treaty of Nanjing ( Nanking ) on August 29,
1842 . The treaty more than fulfilled England 's original goals: The cohong was
abolished, four more Chinese ports were opened to trade ( Fuzhou , Ningbo , Shanghai
, and Xiamen ), and the island of Hong Kong was ceded to the British.
V The Second Opium War
The Second Opium War was in many ways an inevitable sequel to the first. The
Chinese were not eager to implement the terms of a treaty that they saw as unfair. Still,
skillful Chinese diplomacy and a number of other political distractions kept the conflict
from boiling over for a number of years. On the British side, merchants were unhappy
because they did not see a spectacular rise in profits from the China trade after the First
Opium War; they blamed their disappointment on Chinese foot-dragging. In addition, the
Treaty of Nanjing did not address the opium issue. Opium smuggling continued, and this
only increased Chinese resentment of the foreigners.
The Arrow Incident of 1856 was the spark that ignited the Second Opium War. The
Arrow was a ship owned by a Chinese resident of Hong Kong , and it was registered
with the British there. On October 8, 1856 , Chinese officers searching for a notorious
pirate boarded the shipwithout British permissionwhile it was docked off
Guangzhou , hauling down the British flag as they did so. This minor incident quickly
escalated into a shooting war.
The British sent an expedition to seek redress and were joined by a French task force.
(A French missionary had been murdered in inland China in February 1856.) After some
delay, the joint force took Guangzhou in December 1857 and then moved north to

threaten the capital once again. By June 1858 the superior power of the Europeans and
their refusal to compromise culminated in the signing of the Treaty of Tianjin, the most
important term of which was the right of foreigners to establish permanent diplomatic
residence in China 's capital. The treaty also opened ten new ports to foreign trade.
When the foreigners returned to ratify the treaty the following summer, however, angry
Chinese forces opened fire, killing more than 400 British men and sinking four ships. A
much larger Anglo-French force returned a year later, in August 1860, and invaded the
Chinese capital, sending the imperial court into flight and burning the Summer Palace .
On October 24, 1860 , British leaders forced the Convention of Beijing on the defeated
Chinese, establishing once and for all the right of foreign diplomatic representation in
China 's capital. Many restrictions on foreign travel within China were removed, and
missionaries received the right to work and even own property in China . The opium
trade, the catalyst for the whole dispute, was legalized.
VI Significance
The Opium Wars are extremely important to China's modern history. The wars, and the
unequal treaties forced on the Chinese by the West, compromised China 's sovereignty
and weakened the country's political institutions during a crucial period in its history. The
events contributed to the collapse of the Qing dynastythe country's last imperial
dynastyin the early years of the 20th
century. Although some historians have argued that the conflicts constituted a painful
but much needed jolt to shake China out of time-bound traditions, the Chinese look
back on the Opium Wars as a cruel and greedy exercise in "might makes right."
Contributed By:
David Ownby, B.A., M.A., Ph.D. Associate Professor, Universite de Montreal. Author of
Brotherhoods and Secret Societies in Early and Mid-Qing China . Coeditor of "Secret
Societies" Reconsidered: Perspectives on the Social History of Early Modern South
China and Southeast Asia .
How to cite this article: "Opium Wars," Microsoft Encarta Online Encyclopedia 2003
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