In 1838, Lin Zexu, the Governor-General of Hunan and Hubei, was commissioned by the central government in Beijing to try to deal with the problem. Below is an excerpt of a letter he wrote to Queen Victoria. What were his motivations and rationale for writing this letter?
Short excerpt:
I am told that in your own country opium smoking is forbidden under severe penalties. This means that you are aware of how harmful it is. . . . . So long as you do not take it yourselves, but continue to make it and tempt the people of China to buy it, you will be showing yourselves careful of your own lives, but careless of the lives of other people, indifferent in your greed for gain to the harm you do to others; such conduct is repugnant to human feeling and at variance with the Way of Heaven. . . . .
On receiving this, Your Majesty will be so good as to report to me immediately on the steps that have been taken at each of your ports.
Source: http://www.victorianweb.org/history/empire/opiumwars/lin.html
The escalation of opium smuggling and its impact on the Chinese people eventually led to conflict. The outcome of the First Opium War (1839 to 1842) was largely determined by the technologically superior British navy, which had ironclad vessels compared to the wooden ships of the Chinese fleet. The Treaty of Nanjing (1842) was largely designed to ensure British access to Chinese ports; it also opened China up to further western encroachment.
Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Destroying_Chinese_war_junks,_by_E._Duncan_(1843).jpgAlt Text: This is a realistic and idealized painting of a naval war scene. There are several Chinese war junks, or ships in the harbour, one of which is currently in flames, presumably from an English cannon. There is debris in the water, as from a ship that has already sunk, and several lifeboats full of people. In the background is a large, British warship.
Caption: Destroying Chinese war junks, by British painter, Edward Duncan (1843). This painting depicts British ironclad vessels (background) destroying Chinese vessels.
How is the imperialistic perspective demonstrated in this treaty? What can it tell us about the relationship between China and Great Britain at this time?
Treaty of Nanjing, 1842
http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/ps/china/nanjing.pdf
After the treaty, which gave Britain possession of Hong Kong, other countries attempted to establish treaty ports.This started what has been called in China the century of humiliation or the long century (110 years), a period that included a Second Opium War and increasing encroachment by other countries on Chinese territory that ended with the Communist Revolution. Consider the following question to help you analyse the image.
Source: Alt Text: The Chinese bureaucrat and the samurai are depicted with distinctly yellow skin and more racist features than the Europeans. China is depicted as a pie, and everyone at the table has a knife or sword to divide it up. Marianne, the symbol of France, is leaning over Russia’s shoulder and Great Britain and Germany appear to be having a staring contest.
Caption: This is a political cartoon published in a French magazine in 1898. It depicts world leaders dividing China as the protests of a Chinese bureaucrat are ignored. From left to right: Queen Victoria of England, William II of Germany, Nicholas II of Russia, Marianne (a symbol of France), and a samurai representing Japan.
British Foreign Secretary Lord Palmerston, a British official who supported the opium trade, believed that the British negotiators had failed. Of Hong Kong, he said it is "a barren rock with nary a house upon it...It will never be a mart for trade."
Definition: Mart - a kind of marketplace
Source: http://www.npr.org/2012/08/21/159363999/deaths-tell-the-story-of-life-in-old-hong-kong
British politician William Gladstone described the war in this way. It was “an unjust and iniquitous war...to protect an infamous contraband traffic...and whilst they, the Pagans, and semi-civilized barbarians have it, we the enlightened and semi-civilized Christians, are pursuing objects at variance with justice, and with religion. I am in dread of the judgement of God upon England for our national iniquity towards China.”
Source: Gladstone by Michael Partridge, pg 46.
The following is an excerpt from a 2007 episode of a BBC show called In Our Time, featuring the host and historians Yangwen Zheng, Xun Zhou, and Lars Laamann discussing Chinese views of the treaty. In the excerpt, one of the historians suggests that her father, a Chinese politician, viewed the British treatment of Chinese in the 19th century as a human rights violation. She explains her father’s reaction to his meeting with Margaret Thatcher, the British Prime Minister in the 1980s.
Host: So you are saying that the Chinese are still very resentful of the Gunboat Diplomacy of the British [...]
Historian: I am saying it is selective memory. It is whoever is in power and what personal emotional baggage...obviously, my father was quite resentful of being lectured by Margaret Thatcher’s delegation on human rights. He came home and said “she has no right to lecture me about human rights.” So you think, this generation of officials, there are some people [who think this way]... For me it is a different story. For my generation.”
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00776k9
Definition: Gunboat Diplomacy - foreign policy that is supported by the use or threat of military force.
In 1849, a Samurai scholar named Mineta Fuko published a book in Japanese called Kaigai Shinwa or New Stories from Overseas. He was using Chinese and Dutch sources coming through Nagaski, to retell the events of the Opium Wars for a Japanese audience. The book in several volumes includes both written accounts and illustrations. Since he most likely had no access to any other visual sources, these woodcuts are imagined based on the Chinese and Dutch texts. His account is largely sympathetic to the Chinese, and he seems to understand the extent of British military might, even including a map that shows Britain’s territories at the time. Much like the Chinese sources he relies on, his work describes great Chinese victories and British losses that are largely fictitious or greatly exaggerated. He also, like his sources, criticizes the incompetence of a corrupt Chinese government, while celebrating the bravery and self-sacrifice of the Chinese common people.
All illustrations and captions are directly taken from this essay: https://ocw.mit.edu/ans7870/21f/21f.027/opium_wars_japan/oje_essay.pdf
Alt Text: A Japanese woodcut showing a British sailing warship surrounded by a dozen rafts which are on fire. The ocean and sky are coloured blue, the British ship is responding with cannon fire, but is starting to burn. There is a port city in the background.
Caption: “Fire-boats Approaching a British Warship” from Mineta Fuko’s Kaigai Shinwa or New Stories from Overseas, 1849. Although the Chinese navy relied heavily on these small floating infernos, which contained explosives and were intended to ignite wooden enemy warships, the tactic in fact proved largely ineffective against the British fleet.
Alt Text: This is a detail from a Japanese woodcut showing a British man with exaggerated features dragging away a Japanese woman. In the background is an Indian man also with exaggerated features, a turban and with his skin coloured black. He is facing the other way, with arms outstretched.
Caption: “Atrocities of the Black and White Barbarians” Kaigai Shinwa, vol. 4. English-language commentaries and graphics dealing with the first Opium War rarely highlighted the fact that a major portion of the British troops that fought in China was composed of men recruited in England’s colony India. They also buried the fact that these forces engaged in pillage and rape. By contrast, Kaigai Shinwa constantly calls attention to the mixed racial composition of the “barbarians,” and frequently mentions their violent abuse of women. This is the only Japanese illustration that emphasizes the “black and white” composition of the foreign forces, however, and also the only one that calls attention to their atrocities.
Alt Text: This is a detail from a Japanese woodcut that shows two British men lying on the ground, clasping their rifles, with curved swords through their backs. There is clearly blood dripping out of their bodies.
Caption: “The Local Braves in Combat” Kaigai Shinwa, vol. 3. Like the Chinese sources on which they are based, Japanese writings on the Opium War emphasize local military actions against the foreign invaders and criticize high officials and officers for failing to support such grassroots initiatives. This dramatic illustration imagines a legendary skirmish near Canton in 1841, in which local militia armed with primitive weapons attacked a detachment of British troops armed with flintlock muskets.
Alt Text: This is a Japanese print in colour. See caption for full description.
Caption: This Japanese print, Beijing Pillow of Dreams, 1884, by Fukuzawa Yukichi, shows a different view of China by the Japanese, one of contempt. The print was produced 40 years after Fuko’s work above. A Chinese giant, lies on a pillow, smoking an opium pipe, with his head propped on classical texts. He is oblivious to the insults of the Western statesmen in the top left, and the tiny French armies who are attempting to bind him.
Source: https://books.google.ca/books?id=xQk97ET1aQMC&pg=PA71&lpg=PA71&dq=Beijing+Pillow+of+Dreams,+1884,+by+Fukuzawa+Yukichi&source=bl&ots=PacFMGaQ__&sig=R454ivxCPU5BWTDo9nYuC0THKwo&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiu06LuiLrPAhVm7YMKHbSPCOUQ6AEIITAA#v=onepage&q=Beijing%20Pillow%20of%20Dreams%2C%201884%2C%20by%20Fukuzawa%20Yukichi&f=false and
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8UxLYo8Y4-yYjY1UWlrbjBuRnRpUGE1c3RqRUYweEtXMU5Z/view?usp=sharing