Title: The Opium War – Drugs, Dreams and the Making of China
Author: Julia
Lovell
Publisher: Picador
2012 (First published: 2011)
ISBN: 9780330457484
Pages: 456
China is one of the few great civilizations that keeps the continuity of
its ancestral civilization to the present. Any narrative of an event in Chinese
history is hence bound to be extrapolated to the current day. Julia Lovell, a
professor of history in London, has authored many books on China besides
translating several works into English. As a Chinese scholar herself, the book
narrates the history of Opium Wars in its two installments and examines the
legacy of the war that ended China’s isolationism, paving the way for the vast
country’s modernization drive. Every conflict has two competing sides and hence
two versions of the story. Earlier descriptions of the war relied solely on
English works, thereby keeping one eye firmly shut. Lovell opens the other eye
too, with her command of the Chinese language. The author compares the standard
descriptions with Chinese ones and brings out the gulf that separates them in
vivid detail. The Chinese were addicted to opium and the British to tea, which
both of them couldn’t live without. The war that resulted opened up Chinese
society. Readers are encouraged to draw their own conclusions on the striking
similarity between the opium wars and the first war of Indian Independence
(1857) which coincided with the second opium war. Both countries boasted of an
ancient civilization and were forcibly opened up as a result of the trouncing
experienced in the war at the hands of a common foe – the British. Being
outside the scope of the book, Lovell does not undertake this survey, but other
authors may find it worthwhile to work on it.
By the middle of the 18th century, England far outgrew its
insular position imposed on it by nature and rose to be a world power in its
own right. It controlled the major part of international maritime trade and
London turned to be the emporium of the world. Britons developed a taste for
Chinese tea around this time. Drinking tea became a national habit. This called
for more and more import from China, along with its famous silk. Britain hoped
that the numerous mechanical inventions made in its home ground by the era of
inventions would find appeal among the Chinese who would then buy British
products. Unfortunately, Imperial China which considered itself to be a
celestial empire having all other nations in the world as its vassals. In a
vein of arrogance and superiority, the emperor turned down offers of trade and
consigned the sample pieces to the waste bin. Now the English had only one
option to maintain the flow of tea and silk to Europe – buy the merchandise
using hard cash in the form of silver. This huge drain on its treasury
exasperated the empire. Luckily for them, opium began to be cultivated in the
English East India Company’s newly acquired Bengal province in India. The
excellent quality of the product immediately ensured consumption in China. Company
officials vied with private traders in dealing with the drug. Large chunks of
Chinese society succumbed to the addiction, sometimes even soldiers being
impotent to fight under the stupefying effects of the narcotic. China banned
opium, which helped create an underground distribution system and larger
margins of profit. Smuggling went unabated for decades that helped Britain
maintain the balance of payment in silver coins. Consumption of opium in China
multiplied an astronomical ten times in the 40 years from 1800 to 1840. At
last, Emperor Daoguang decided to end the trade once and for all and appointed
an incorruptible commissioner Lin Zexu to see to the finer details to stop and
imprison the deviant traders. Lin’s effective action put a halt to the trade
and infuriated the British colonial establishment. A full fledged war ensued in
which China suffered a humiliating defeat and had to open her ports other than
Canton to foreign merchant vessels.
Globalization and international
free trade are two ideas that are generally ascribed to the last two decades of
the 20th century. But if we peer deep into the murky pool of
history, we can discern clear patterns of globalization taking shape in the 15th
century itself, when a brand ‘New World’ was thrown open to economic
exploitation by the pioneering explorers. Tilts of the economic balance in one
country thus began to affect the prospects of not only neighbouring countries,
but distant nations in other continents as well. Lovell explains how the
scarcity of silver imported from South America indirectly supplied one of the
reasons for the outbreak of Opium War. During the 18th century, most
of the world’s silver used for coinage came from the New World. (It still is,
as in 2013, almost half (49%) of the world’s silver production was extracted
from American mines). By the second and third decades of the 19th
century, silver-producing countries in Latin America were in the grip of
freedom movements that had a tellingly adverse impact on industrial output and
silver shipments dwindled. This caused a world wide scarcity for the metal and
payments were defaulted in many places. All countries tried to preserve their
existing stock, by putting curbs on import of non-essential items. This aspect
is also to be considered in the background compulsions that forced the Emperor
of China to put his foot firmly down on the opium trade that was draining the
country white of silver as well as leading to a physically and mentally
debauched society.
The book overemphasizes the
psychological impact of an alien rule on the majority population of China, the
descendants of Han. The Manchu regime, which was considered to be
semi-barbarian by the Chinese, faced a string of rebellions while facing the
British militarily. The idea being conveyed by the juxtaposition of civil wars
and British aggression is that the common people were equally offended by one
outsider as the other. Numerous cases are cited in which the locals readily
changed sides at the transfer of a triflingly little amount of money and worked
for the British with as much relish as they had previously served their Manchu
masters. What is drowned in these copious examples of defections is the
unmitigated enmity felt by the common people, in Canton in particular, against
the white conquerors. The incidents at Sanyuanli is played down as the natural
response of the natives when the British went on a spree of pillage and rape
around the countryside and dug up ancestral graves, in search of booty. Though
Lovell describes the events with her usual condemning tone against aggression,
readers feel that the author had failed to illuminate the sheer gravity of the
crime which went against all international ethics and law. The reaction to this
wanton act may be compared to the consternation that would result if some enemy
soldiers were to dig up the graves in Westminster Abbey during a conflict. By
the same token, the author fails to convince the reader about the sheer
ferocity of violence the occupying British met at the hands of the local
population. The resistance of the civilians was heroic while that of their
Manchu masters had been cowardly. What the Cantonese felt about the British is
clearly evident in their conception of the English as “born and grew up in wicked and noxious villages beyond the pale of
civilization, have wolfish hearts and brutish faces, the looks of the tiger and
the suspicion of the fox” (p.249). A part of the xenophobia should be
attributed to the feeling of superiority, while a larger part must be accounted
to the equally strong sense of primacy the British harboured in their minds in
all dealings with non-white societies.
The book presents a blow by blow
account of the first Opium War, but gives only a half-hearted narration of the
second, which in fact produced even more lasting effects on China’s economic,
political and social spheres. Brutally forced to step down from their ivory
towers, Chinese emperors opened up the country to foreign business. Five new
ports in addition to Canton were allowed to carry on foreign trade, equal
status was accorded to the British in its dealings with the emperor and
consular access granted to foreign merchants. This deeply depressed national
self esteem, but indirectly paved the way for the enlightenment and
modernization of China. A good part of the book is dedicated to tell the story
of a giant waking up from slumber that lasted a couple of thousands of years.
Growth of national sentiment, news papers, modern communication methods,
revamping of military and political institutions ensued. The aging Qing empire
tried in vain to stem the tide with earthen dams of weak repressive measures.
Hardly a century after the first war, China turned to a stage in which
nationalistically motivated revolutions acted out in full swing. The Communists
gained ascendancy in the 1920s and began a systematic campaign to rewrite the
history books with adaptations and re-interpretations of flawed Marxian ideals.
Lovell has been successful in exposing the Communist bluff and doublespeak. She
cites instances in which the Chinese Communist Party itself dabbled in opium
trade to generate much wanted income during its initial phase, at the same time
excoriating the West for forcing the habit on China. Another strong point for
the book is its exposition of the role of the missionary in opium deals. Many
openly colluded with the pedlars and served as spies of the attacking imperialists.
What differentiates the book from
generic ones are the few chapters in the end in which the legacy of the war in
present Chinese society is analyzed in detail, with personal observations of
the author underlining the relevance of the argument. A common feature of
autocratic regimes in general and Chinese Communist power in particular is the
unease the rulers feel when a mass unrest occurs. This is correctly understood
and explained. The Communist party went into an overdrive to whip up
nationalist frenzy after the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989. To divert
public attention from the heinous crime they had committed on their own
citizens, the Communists trumpeted patriotic fervor by re-interpreting the
opium wars as national humiliation of the Chinese nation at the hands western
imperialists. A series of anti-foreign protests were staged across Chinese
cities after 1989 which were craftily choreographed by the regime. But the
moment it identified the uneasy conclusion that the protests have been
ingrained into the masses and a true public outrage is beginning to get
expressed in the streets, it quickly stepped in to dampen the spirit and herded
the angry public safely back to their corrals.
The book is highly recommended.
Rating: 3 Star
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