China, Britain and Opium - Part 4: The Second War

So, there was peace for a little while. The British had succeeded; they had taken Hong Kong, opened up a number of ports, reserved the right to live in China, and made trading for them just all around easier to do. The problem is opium was still (technically) illegal, and the British had their worries about the emperor stepping in and issuing a crackdown on all the opium merchants which was the cause of the outbreak of the first Opium War. With those issues in the back of their minds, they began looking for little antagonisms that they could blow out of proportion to allow themselves to attack again, with the result of this war hopefully changing the laws further in their favour.

What eventually led to the war was the decision to detain a ship called the Arrow. Previously used as a pirate vessel, it was captured by the Chinese and eventually resold. It was then registered as a British trading vessel, but by the time of its recapture on suspicion of piracy again, it was no longer under that registration, as too much time had passed and it had expired. A number of British soldiers saw the flag being taken down from the ship, reported it to their commander, and got angry with the Chinese for daring to go after a known pirate ship that was no longer under British jurisdiction. They demanded the release of the sailors, to which the Chinese only released about three quarters of them. Having not completely complied, the British had enough moral ammunition to go to war.

A depiction of one of the battles during the Second Opium War. Someone asked
the artist "just how many corpses can you draw on a bridge?" to
which the man replied "oooh, buddy, just watch me."

Probably.

The issue was not everyone back home was OK with going to fight with China again. As usual, the two camps of "brave soldiers bent on making the world a better place" (money-grabbing imperialists)  argued with the "good-hearted moralists who saw through it all" (bleeding-heart wusses). The one side had a surprisingly modern point of view, saying that the way the British were dealing with the Chinese was country-wide bullying, imposing their will on them in order to sell drugs better, of all things. A valid argument. The other side thought that they had to teach the Chinese how to stop torturing and how to be less awful people, and that war with such lessers was inevitable. One man said they needed to "teach these wretches the common principles of humanity." Well... I mean... it was a different time, then.

Even during a looting, the Summer Palace looks like
quite a nice place. Well... I guess that's why it was looted.
This is why we can't have nice things, Britain.

The funny thing is before these arguments had even completed they were already sending dispatches out east saying that they were to make demands of the Chinese, saying they needed to make opium legal and open China everywhere (not just the coastal regions and trading ports, but the central regions as well). Oops. I guess that decides that debate. Nevertheless, it was a big moral snafu for the British, with money being the obvious driving force behind the decision making and the issue being passed through regardless of the moral cloudiness.

Signing on with the French, they besiege Canton in 1857 - again. The Chinese were already beleaguered by fighting a civil war, so the amount of already behind-the-times ships was limited as it was. Thinking there would be little resistance, the British tried to simply sail up the river to Beijing to ratify their treaty amendments and get things done and dusted without too much wasted time and ammunition. However, the Chinese blocked their path and once more the British would take the war to the forts that were lining the river. Things had changed since the last time, though, and the Chinese had figured out how to fire their cannons properly. After having studied Western battle tactics, the Chinese soldiers were much more effective in their style of warfare. Where previously it would have been a walk in the park, 519 sailors were killed and 456 were wounded. These numbers are a massive increase from the first attempts during the first war, where there would be just a few casualties on the British side.

Prince Gong, a son of the emperor, was the
lead on the negotiations at the end of the second
war. So, so many irresistible "gong show puns".

Amidst all this fighting, the British sent a negotiating party up the river to talk out this treaty. Here, the Chinese made a terrible mistake, and one that goes back to ancient history in the "things you shouldn't do" column. They captured and tortured the negotiating party. This gave the British as much moral ammunition as they could possibly need, and in retaliation they reached the emperor's Summer Palace and looted the heck out of it. Afterwards, the prisoners were promptly returned. Twenty of the thirty were still alive; the rest were literally tortured to death.

Two days later the treaty would be ratified. This Treaty of Beijing amped up much of the costs they were originally meant to pay, allowed for an established embassy, freedom to travel all across China, a greater piece of the area around Hong Kong, and of course, the legalization of opium. It would be around 1949 that opium would begin to see a major downturn, and not until 1997 that Hong Kong would be returned to Chinese control.

Geez. No one comes out looking good in this story. Between the infighting, corruption and selfishness of many of the Chinese military and the British imperialist way of going into a foreign country and deciding that they were to buy their drugs or take a bullet, the "good guy" is largely absent.