China, Britain, and Opium - Part 1: China Just Says No to Drugs

Opium in 18th and 19th century China draws a lot of similarities to marijuana in Canada today. Each seem to have their medicinal purposes, both are illegal but not really illegal, and no politician can really come to a solid agreement on just what to do about it. Naturally, with both, plenty of people swear by it, thinking it's some magical cure-all, while another group thinks it's the bane of humanity and all of it should be abolished. It's a real open-and-shut case.

The positives of opium are that it does seem to help with a few things; dysentery, coughs, diarrhea and a number of minor ailments would be at the very least reduced. However, like any drug, there is always the risk of reliance and addiction, and taking enough will cause visions and paranoia. Go way overboard, and it can be fatal due to suppressed breathing. It also had a habit of causing an air of complacency about people. So... good and bad.

Emperor Daoguang had a long history of
wishy-washy politics and a lack of strong
decision making, but the man had an
undeniable sense of style.

This the Chinese knew quite well. Opium has likely been in China since around the 7th century, but it wasn't until the late 1700s that it really took off, even though it was made illegal in 1729. Of course, illegalities didn't stop the super-rich from using it, and by 1790 it was seen as a drug for the wealthy; like caviar laced with cocaine. Wait another thirty years, though, and and the drug is now for everyone and the use is incredibly widespread. All of this is amidst government bans and threats that largely fell on deaf ears; shipments would come in and after a bribe would unload their cargo. Occasionally the officers in charge would stage a fake chase, just to make it look good.

Meanwhile, the emperor Daoguang, doesn't take too well to this. China was going through some crap at the time; a silver crisis in the global market is messing with their economy, everyone's poor, there are riots and anger, a self-serving ultra-rich are openly corrupt, and they're having difficulties securing their borders. It's a classic "when it rains it pours, then drowns out all the good in your country" situation. Daoguang's idea on how to fix this is to cut off opium, especially since just recently China had lost a small battle due to their troops supposedly being high as kites. This was met with differing opinions; one side saw it as a "well, they're all going to die anyways" situation, and they likely wouldn't be able to enforce any laws (the emperor was calling for execution in most cases) that stretch to 1% of the population, or four million people. The other camp felt that the opium was a means for foreign nations to weaken the country economically, socially and politically through a gradual weakening of each. To be fair, both bring up pretty decent points.

The solution was to focus not on the whole population, but to cut if off from where it begins; in Canton, the trading centre for the British bringing in Opium. On the last day of 1838, the emperor goes nuclear on opium and puts out a full ban. He sends Lin Zexu, a tireless, incorruptible civil servant in charge to go forth and wreak havoc on the drug trade. Lin Zexu issued an ultimatum to opium users caught smoking the drug: repent for a year and prove you are able to go without, or face a death sentence. In just two months, 1,600 were arrested in Canton with fourteen tons of opium confiscated. Such a hard-line style just may have worked, save for one very important problem that was sadly overlooked.

The British were quite fond of making a ridiculous amount of money off opium.

Here are the two pictures of Charles Elliot
Wikipedia has provided me. One is exactly as you
would expect from a British man from the 1830s to be.

The other is this.

Enter Charles Elliot. Elliot is the man in charge of the opium trade with China on behalf of the British, but he isn't really the man one might expect. He hates opium, thinking that the whole trade is disgusting and amoral and therefore distinctly un-British. He had really been hoping it would be made legal (keep in mind it had been illegal for quite some time, just not really enforced) in order to wipe his hands of the immortality of it as then the Chinese government would have the fault placed on them. He hates his job, he hates the trade, and hates the wares he's peddling, but darn it, it's his work and the interests of Britain are his own. Adding to his list of problems is a lack of clear instruction from upper level government on how to deal with an angry China, being on the other side of the world, and not having a few important things: cell phone reception; a cell phone; a time period that has cell phones developed.

Elliot and Lin Zexu are my two favourite players in this story. Elliot's confusion over just how to feel about the opium trade makes him always entertaining, and Lin Zexu being such a strong-willed incorruptible at a time where those characteristics are sorely lacking in China makes him immediately likeable. It makes it all the better when they butt heads. Lin, not realizing just how powerful the British are, (you'll see this is a common theme) blockades the river with junks - ancient Chinese ships - and barricades the British in their factories in Canton. Not uncomfortably, mind you, as the citizens of Canton were rather fond of these people that delivered them their opium and made Canton wealthy in the process, and managed to find a way to bring food and water to the sort-of-prisoners. What Lin was looking for was the release of the opium to the Chinese government, as they knew it was illegal to be trading it and are therefore subject to forfeit their wares.

The British didn't take too well to this. For one, they would then see themselves as this persecuted group in China, therefore giving themselves some moral ammunition to use. Holding them up in their factories was some sort of insult to British dignity, two words that when paired together are almost certainly pompous, although the concept has certainly evolved into something new ever since the advent of Benny Hill. Secondly, they had a lot of opium. We're talking 20,000 chests of it, each chest containing about 60 kilograms, and worth in total about £6-10 million. Now, Elliot's reaction here is a strange one. He simply capitulates. Perhaps it's because he finally wants to spur a reaction from the British government that had honestly been giving him a cold shoulder for the past long while in regards to how to handle issues on his end, but really we're at a historical loss as to why he gave in the way he did.

The end result is Lin Zexu gets the opium and in a massive "screw-you" to the British they destroy it 

Pictured: Lin Zexu destroying millions of pounds worth
(like, currency pounds) of opium.
Not Pictured: An understanding on how this may not be
the best course of action.

all. As if matters need to be made worse, the retreating British stop by a shore just off the coast of Hong Kong and decide that the laws didn't really apply to them. They knocked around a bunch of stuff in a temple, and accidentally killed a guy in a wrestling match. When Lin investigates and finds out there's been a bribery attempt to hush everyone up, appealing to the "boys will be boys" idea, he states that they will no longer be serving the British and forces them off land. You know, the sun-never-sets, world super-power, technologically advanced, British.

From here on out, things go for China about as well as one might expect.