Happy New Year. A History Lesson.

What can we expect in the 21st Century. 

Going into 2023 seems like a good time to give the third decade of the 21st Century an assessment.

 How we live in the 21st century depends on what we learnt from the past. 

The past, where much has happened by way of human endeavours, achievements and deeds. A past that unfolded in a region where we Asians live, a past that can inform us about our history or be condemned to repeat it. 

It started with great disaster manifesting in a Corona apocalypse that has reset the world. In a world that badly needed a reset and quiet riposte from the onset of the 21st Century. 

The world order was set in motion in 2001 with September 11. The events on the attack of the World Trade Center led to the further unleashing of American hubris in the Middle East and the torture chambers of Guantanamo Bay. 

Another major event set in motion in the same year, was the lesser known admission of China into the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

The Phoenix rises...

It is apparent which significant event born in the second year of the 21st century is going to last another century- China's rise. Which should come as no surprise seeing China's economic performance of late but more importantly recognising the fact that China has been leading the world in economic performance, technology, knowledge, culture and the arts for over 4,000 years before 1820.

The West, mainly Portugal, Spain, Great Britain and France traded with China for over a century for tea, silk, porcelain, spices, even basic condiments like salt and sugar. Before that, during the 7th Century, merchants were plying the silk road trading with China during the Tang Dynasty (618-907CE). See China's Golden Age.

Etching by 19th century British artist Thomas Allom showing the Dayuling Pass between Jiangxi and Guangdong, a key transport artery between Jiangnan and Lingnan where merchants passed and where the Gan River flowed. The beautiful scenery was mesmerising. Image: Hsu Chung-mao

From the 1700, the modern world had begun trading with China, first the Portuguese, the Dutch and the Spanish came to the East looking for spices to make their bland tasting meals edible. Then the British came under the guise of The East India Company, enslaved the people of India, Burma, Malaya, Borneo, and Java by defeating and breaking the Portuguese, Dutch and Spanish dominance of the East Indies. 

British dominance grew and so did their demand for Chinese luxury goods especially tea, porcelain and silk. This resulted in a trade imbalance in favour of the Chinese. To counter this imbalance, the British started growing opium in Bengal and allowed British merchants to sell opium to Chinese smugglers for illegal sale in China. The influx of illegal narcotics created increasing numbers of opium addicts that eventually reversed the trade imbalance to Britain's favour by 1820. 

The Most Profitable Commodity in the 19th Century

The sale of opium became Britain's largest single most profitable commodity in the 19th century. It became so big even the American merchants joined the action bringing in cheaper opium from Turkey. The opium demand grew rapidly as Chinese dealers could travel further inland to sell the narcotic to more Chinese. Demand outgrew supply attracting more European dealers to China selling more opium. 

As the opium trade grew so did the expatriate population of European merchants in Canton and Macau and soon the influx of private entrepreuners broke the monopoly of the East India Company. British merchants like William Jardine and James Matheson (later founded Jardine Matheson & Co, British principal opium producer) together with their Indian supplier Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy, formed a trinity of dealing in legal goods at the same time profiting from trafficking opium to China for decades. 

With great wealth comes great influence and the great gains from their illegal sale of opium allowed them to navigate the system and smuggled in more opium to fund their enterprise which in turn funded the Chinese authorities to turn a blind eye. 

Human greed knows no bounds, when soon the wealthy merchants grew contemptuous of Chinese legal systems and began fighting for more trading rights and political recognition by Imperial China. Meanwhile opium addiction grew among the Chinese and officials wrote the following describing the extent of the widespread addiction;

 

At the beginning, opium smoking was confined to the fops of wealthy families who took up the habit as a form of conspicuous consumption, even they knew that they should not indulge in it to the greatest extreme. Later, people of all social strata—from government officials and members of the gentry to craftsmen, merchants, entertainers, and servants, and even women, Buddhist monks and nuns, and Taoist priests—took up the habit and openly bought and equipped themselves with smoking instruments. Even in the center of our dynasty—the nation's capital and its surrounding areas—some of the inhabitants have also been contaminated by this dreadful poison.

The Scholar Official

The Qing Emperor, obviously alarmed at this dilemma issued a decree to stop the illegal opium trade, and appointed Commissioner Lin Xezu to eradicate the problem. Lin, quickly addressed the source and wrote an open letter to the 'Ruler of England' urging the Queen to end the opium trade. He stated that "..foreigners like the British have travelled great distances to come to China to procure goods for their wellbeing and benefit. Then how can the foreigners return injury for the benefit they have received by sending this poison to harm their benefactors?" "Since opium is illegal in the UK, he thinks it is wrong for the Queen to support it's sale in China as well as its cultivation and production in the British territories of Bengal, Patna, Bombay, Madras and Malwa." He further informed the Queen that he intends to "cut the drug forever." There was no response.

Having sworn to carry out his mission, Lin Xezu enforced the ban on the sale of opium and demanded that all supplies be surrendered to Chinese authorities. He closed the Pearl River channel trapping all British traders in Canton, raided all warehouses and ships stockpiling opium and destroyed all the opium seized. 

British Naval officer, diplomat and colonial administrator, Charles Elliot, protested the seizures but he had the good intention to avoid war and convinced the British merchants to cooperate with Chinese authorities. They handed over the stockpile with promise of compensation by the British government, who never agreed to this promise. This ploy further gave rise to British justification for starting the war.  During April and May 1839, British and American dealers surrendered 20,283 chests and 200 sacks of opium. The stockpile was publicly destroyed on the beach outside Canton.

History has proven that the best way to promote any product is to ban it. With the opium ban in force,  the black market for smugglers grew. Foreign ships arrived laden with opium, unaware of the ban had to unload their illegal cargo at Lintin Island. The sharp rise in opium prices made local traders and smugglers more eager to smuggle more opium into China. This was a great damper on Commissioner Lin's efforts to eradicate opium addiction. It seems that the opium scourge has been deeply entrenched for over two decades no thanks to push and pull economics. The British were pushing the narcotic they grew and manufactured in India to the local Chinese merchants' demands, for profit from a huge and growing distribution network. 

Who pays The Price of Progress?

China in the 19th Century seems to already suffer from the ills of progress. A growing population with growing affluence from trading goods the world craves, while she craves for nothing that the world has to offer in goods but illegal opium. 

While the world craves for her wares of fine silk, tea and porcelain, all sorts of characters- sailors, seamen, traders, merchants, of all pedigree would show up on her shores. These men would arrive from  all corners of the globe, principally Britain, Spain, France, Holland and the US, they would bring their silver and their wares to trade with China. The Imperial court foresaw the complications that these trade intrusions would cause and they decreed that trade should only be restricted to the Canton system, which confined incoming foreign trade to the southern port city of Canton.

What do we do with the drunken sailors?

True to form, in July 1839 a group of British merchant sailors got drunk on Chinese rice wine in Kowloon. Two of them got out of hand and beat to death a villager from nearby Tsim Sha Tsui. While Superintendent Elliot arrested the sailors and sentenced them to punishment in Naval court, he also refused to hand them over to Chinese authorities fearing they would be killed. 

Angered by their refusal and lack of respect for Chinese sovereignty, Commissioner Lin had to enforce punitive action as the British were running rough-shod over the Imperial decree yet again. He issued an edict preventing the sale of food to the British and ordered all ships to leave the Chinese coast. By the end of August over 60 British ships and over 2000 people were idling off the Chinese coast, fast running out of provisions. 

A hungry man is an angry man.

On 4 September 1839, Superintendent Elliot sailed into Kowloon for food supplies and encountered three Chinese junks. The Chinese peasants were forbidden to sell food to the British, after an ultimatum given by Elliot met with no response, the British opened fire at the Chinese junks. The junks returned fire and Chinese gunners on land began to fire at the British ships. By nightfall the Chinese junks withdrew allowing the British to desperately procure food supplies bribing local villagers in Kowloon. Thus was the start and end of the day old Battle of Kowloon, the first of many to follow in the first Opium War. 

Mounting pressures from the demand and supply chain in British, Indian and Chinese business owners, coupled with the loss of profits from the confiscation of illegal opium in China, led the British parliament to approve funding for war against China in October 1839. This was in spite of the fact that the public in both Britain and America expressed outrage at the British supporting the opium trade. 

Then member of Parliament, William Ewart Gladstone called it "most infamous and atrocious" referring to the opium trade between China and British India in particular. On the first opium war, Gladstone criticised it as "a war more unjust in its origin, a war more calculated in its progress to cover this country with permanent disgrace."

By November 1839, Foreign Secretary Palmeston instructed the Governor General of India to prepare military force for deployment in China.

The First Opium War 

The war that marked the start of what 20th century Chinese nationalists called the "Century of Humiliation". The ease with which the British forces defeated the numerically superior Chinese armies damaged the dynasty's prestige. The Treaty of Nanking was a step to opening the lucrative Chinese market to global commerce and the opium trade. The interpretation of the war, which was long the standard in the People's Republic of China, was summarised in 1976: The Opium War, "in which the Chinese people fought against British aggression, marked the beginning of modern Chinese history and the start of the Chinese people's bourgeois-democratic revolution against imperialism and feudalism.

 

Started in 1839 and ended with the Chinese losing in 1842 with heavy casualties and an uneven treaty called the Treaty of Nanjing forcing the Chinese to accept punitive terms in further opening up her country and markets to accommodate the Europeans, chiefly the British. Several more wars were to be fought in the ensuing years when unfair terms left one side seething with anger and dissatisfaction. 

Now after a hundred years of being trampled and beaten by foreigners and one hundred and eighty four years since the first opium war, the Chinese have learnt that; ".. if you are unprepared, you will be badly beaten." 

Given the geopolitical situation in the world today, China is very well prepared. The Lion is finally awake. 

*How they did it is a story for another day.

Happy New Year. And Happy Chinese New Year 2023.