How Opium War, Colonization, Trade War, Opioid Crisis, Fentanyl, and Cryptocurrency Shaped the Global Trade in the Modern World (Part 2)

by Peter Lassalle-Klein

Trade has often been ascribed as one of the core building blocks of a successful and healthy society. This remains true today, as there are a plethora of trade relations branching all around different parts of the world. However, many of these relations connect to a country that has a scarring history of trade deals: China. The most notorious of which is known as the Opium Wars. 

​The Opium War

The Opium Wars are the two conflicts that occurred in China from 1839-1842 and 1856-1860 during the Qing Dynasty due to the British Empire’s want to force a trade with the Dynasty. The effects of this conflict can be felt even today through China’s attitude towards trade deals, the presence of opium in China, and even the western families who got rich off of selling opium to the Chinses populace.
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To start, the British were the ignition of the fire that spewed the cloud of opium into China. The British Empire had just come out on the losing side of a war with its colonies, the newborn United States, and was hemorrhaging money due to the sheer cost of the war, as well as the loss of their cotton production in the West. They desired the rare items of trade from China: porcelain, silk, and most of all, tea. The British addiction to tea made up a notable amount of the Empire’s economy, and with only silver to offer and a single port that trade could take place in (Canton), China had little interest in the Empire’s dealings. However, at the beginning of the 19th century, the British Empire realized that India (which was currently occupied by the Empire) could produce mass amounts of poppies. These poppies could be refined into opium, a highly addictive and destructive drug which was in extreme demand in China, and also happened to be outlawed in. It was so addictive that, as Professor Jack Patrick Hayes of Chinese and Japanese history at Kwantlen Polytechnic University states, “Many people who stopped ingesting opium suffered chills, nausea, and cramps, and sometimes died from withdrawal.” Even with the prohibition of opium, the British Empire set the East India Company to work, a militant trading company under the command of the crown to handle all trading in East Asia. The Company took advantage of its domination over India and created a monopoly on the drug trade, mass-producing opium out of the province of Bengal. In the early 1800s, the substance was smuggled into China through both British and U.S. ships off the coast of Guangzhou. By 1830, there were over 100 Chinese smuggling ships running opium illegally into China, brought from India by private British and U.S. traders under the command of the Honorable East India Company. Although the East India Company lost its monopoly over the opium trade in 1834, the illegal trade was in full force with over 40,000 chests of the drug flowing in per year.

A smuggling boat, or a sloop, that could hold 50 to 60 men to run opium into China. “Fast Boat or Smuggler,” from Captain E. Belcher, Narrative of a Voyage Round the World (1843), p. 238 via Visualizing Cultures

In a response by 1839, the Dynasty took action by cracking down on opium smugglers, destroying the shipments of opium by dumping them into the sea and pushing the traders from Britain and the U.S. to a desolate island which would one day be known as Hong Kong. Despite the knowledge of opium being illegal in China, opium merchants in English India, Britain, and the East India Company were outraged at the destruction of their contraband with compensation, as the Dynasty was not willing to pay for destroying a substance that was outlawed. This gave politicians in Britain the justification they needed to take more aggressive imperialist action to gain “recompense”, and in 1839, the first battle of the First Opium War took place between East India Company and Chinese ships.​

The Nemesis (far right), the first British Steam Warship, destroying a Chinese Junk off the coast of Hong Kong during the First Opium War. Source: National Maritime Museum, London. via Wikimedia Commons

The First Opium War painted a clear picture for the Chinese about their Imperialist invaders: they were technologically outmatched. The war only spanned three years from 1839 to 1842, and despite the Chinese constantly outnumbering the British, the Dynasty’s troops could not withstand the Empire’s barrage of cannons and superior naval ability. The Chinese Junks (ancient Chinese sailing ships) were constantly decimated the Empire’s new steam warship, the Nemesis, which carved a bloody path through Chinese waters. The war ended with the Emperor’s surrender and the Treaty of Nanjing, which is often referred to as one of the “Unequal Treaties” that the Chinese had to sign at figurative gunpoint. The Treaty gave the British many exorbitant benefits, such as:

• The complete ownership of the Island of Hong Kong, just off the coast of China, which would stay in British hands until 1997 (only 22 years ago).
• A massive indemnity to be paid to both the British government and the British merchants, which cut a deep hole into the Chinese treasury.
• Five new trading ports in Guangzhou (also known as Canton), Shanghai, Xiamen (also known as Amoy), Ningbo, and Fuzhou, as compared to the previous one in Guangzhou.
• Immunity to Chinese law for British citizens, and that these citizens would be instead subject to British law in the ports.
• The “most favored nation” article, which automatically gave the British Empire the same benefits that any other nation had with China that the British did not already.

Even with this defeat, opium was still outlawed in China. It seemed that the Chinese were still subject to their own will, until 1856, when the Second Opium War broke out between the British and the French against the Chinese. The Chinese lost again due to their broken economy and lack of military technology, as the capital, Beijing was finally captured. This is what many Chinese nowadays see as the completion of their humiliation by the British Empire, as the second unequal treaty was implemented. This treaty came with a slew of new insulting demands that they were forced to meet, such as:

• Another round of indemnities which severely weakened China’s economy as a whole.
• A whopping eleven new ports to be open to the British in Yingkou (also known as Niuzhang), Tianjin (also known as Tientsin), Dengzhou, Zhenjiang, Nanjing (also known as Nanking), Hankou, Jiujiang, Taipei, Kaohsiung, Shantou, and Haikou.
• An opening to Christian missionary work to be allowed into China.
• The absolute legalization of opium and the opium trade throughout China.

The memory of these treaties is a large part of China’s approach to trade deals and business abroad today. They are wary due to their history of being taken advantage of by the traders from the west, as they were practically forced to accept opium into their country and become subjected to a Dynasty-wide epidemic of opioid addiction. The discord caused by the wars and the frustration many felt resulted in many bloody uprisings following the treaties: the Taiping Rebellion in 1851 to 1864, the Nian Rebellion in 1851 to 1868, and the Boxer Rebellion in 1899 to 1901.
Famous and “respected” families got their start from smuggling opium illegally into China during these wars. The Astors, who are notable members of the British government, were originally known to be the first American smugglers that brought some of the first opium into Canton, China, before quickly leaving the trade as things began to grow tense. The Delano Family, whose descendant is Franklin Delano Roosevelt himself, sold opioids on the Pearl River in China. Warren Delano Jr., the man who headed this business, argued that the sale of such crippling drugs was “fair, honorable, and legitimate.” Even the Forbes family, the same Forbes who founded the massively successful Forbes Magazine, got their massive wealth by being one of the prime opium traders that smuggled the drug into China in the 1830s to the 1840s. All of these families, all of these deals, came off the suffering of the people of China through the sale of an incredibly addictive and destructive drug that was forced upon the populace through war. The people of China make an effort to never forget this humiliation of their strength and culture, especially with the current Trade War taking place between the U.S. and China. In response to the increase in tariffs between the U.S. and China in May, China’s People’s Daily, a known state mouthpiece said: “The text must be balanced and expressed in terms that are acceptable to the Chinese people and do not undermine the sovereignty and dignity of the country.” The government remembers the embarrassment, as well as its people. Li Xuewei, a Chinese medical student from Shandong, commented on the similarities between the current Trade War and the Opium Wars: “We used to be so behind. Everything was destroyed by those invaders . . . I think China isn’t scared of anything anymore. Whatever happens with the trade war, I don’t think we’ll lose.” Through these families that became rich off the exploitation of drug trade and China’s position on trade with the west, the echoes of the Opium Wars live on today.


References

1. “The Opium Wars in China - Asia Pacific Curriculum.” 2019, https://asiapacificcurriculum.ca/sites/default/files/2019-02/Opium%20Wars%20-%20Background%20Reading.pdf. Accessed 24 Aug. 2019.
2. “The First Opium War: The Anglo-Chinese war of 1839-1842. Essay by Peter C. Perdue - Massachusetts Institute of Technology.” 2011, https://visualizingcultures.mit.edu/opium_wars_01/ow1_essay04.html. Accessed 24 Aug. 2019.
3. “Unequal Treaties with China - ENHE.” 2016, https://ehne.fr/en/article/europe-europeans-and-world/europe-and-legal-regulation-international-relations/unequal-treaties-china. Accessed 24 Aug. 2019.
4. “5 Elite Families Who Made Their Fortune in the Opium Trade - AlterNet.” 5 June, 2015, https://www.alternet.org/2015/06/5-elite-families-fortunes-opium-trade/. Accessed 23 Aug. 2019.
5. “The Signing and Sealing of the Treaty of Nanking by F.G. Moon - Brown University Library.” 1846, https://library.brown.edu/cds/catalog/catalog.php?verb=render&id=1249001214271904. Accessed 24 Aug. 2019. 
6. “Destroying Chinese War Junks by E. Duncan - National Maritime Museum, London.” 1843, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Destroying_Chinese_war_junks,_by_E._Duncan_(1843).jpg. Accessed 24 Aug. 2019.
7. “Fast Boat or Smuggler by Captain E. Belcher - Visualizing Cultures.” 1843, https://visualizingcultures.mit.edu/opium_wars_01/ow1_gallery/pages/1843_belcher_238_FastBoat.htm. Accessed 24 Aug. 2019.
8. “As trade war escalates, Chinese remember ‘national humiliation’ - Los Angeles Times.” 13 May, 2019, https://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-china-trade-war-tariffs-colonialism-humiliation-20190513-story.html. Accessed 25 Aug. 2019.​​

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