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The First Opium War

© Maria Christensen

Just say no. This simple phrase entered into the American collective consciousness in the 1980s in response to a growing drug problem. The problems with drug addiction and the accompanying criminal, political and economic ramifications are not only not unique to the United States, but are not merely modern problems. China faced this issue over 150 years ago. They lost their drug war, and an entire nation was brought to its knees by the combined efforts of Western military might, the power of silver and greed, and the weight of cultural misunderstanding.

On the face of it, HTM"> the Opium War appears to be a rather straightforward affair. Until the eighteenth century, opium use in China had consisted mostly of medicinal purposes. By the early 1800s, millions of Chinese fell sway to the addictive nature of opium, and a black market thrived in a country where the use, sale and trade of the drug had been illegal for nearly one hundred years. The main purveyors of opium were the British, though merchants from the United States and other European countries with offices in China also participated in the trade. While statistics can sometimes be misleading, in this case they illustrate the growing problem. One chest of opium contained around 135 pounds of the substance, and the importation of chests grew from 5,000 in 1821 to 35,000 in 1837.(1)

At the same time that the British chief superintendent of trade in Canton, Captain Charles Elliot, was putting pressure on the Chinese government to legalize the opium trade, the emperor of China appointed an official to oversee the death of the trade. Commissioner Lin Zexu had battled the problem of drug use in the provinces of Hubei and Hunan and now attempted to eliminate the source. He blockaded the foreign community, stopped trade, ordered Chinese servants to leave, arrested a leading foreign dealer, and demanded that the merchants surrender their inventory of opium. After 47 days, Captain Elliot handed over 20,283 chests to Lin, who destroyed them. In an eloquent and thoroughly Chinese letter to Queen Victoria, in 1839, Lin made the assumption that the British government was not involved in the opium trade, and pointed out that it would be in the best interests of both nations to halt the trade. The letter never reached England.

When a Chinese man met his death at the hands of drunken British sailors, one of the vital issues surrounding the causes of the Opium War surfaced. Extraterritoriality in foreign policy meant, among other things, that a Westerner accused of a crime in China could be tried by the court of his nation's consulate in China, and not in a Chinese court. The sailors involved were punished by Elliot, who refused, however, to hand them over to the Chinese who would have put them to death. The situation escalated until the British sent a naval fleet to China and made their headquarters in Hong Kong. In November 1839, war began. The Chinese were technologically no match for the British, and the military was poorly trained for such a showdown. The Treaty of Nanjing in August 1842, officially ended the brutal war. The treaty, among other things, handed Hong Kong over to the British, opened new ports, guaranteed extraterritoriality, and granted Britain "most favored nation" status. Other foreign powers staked their claims, marking this time period as the era of unequal treaties.