114 BRITAIN FORCES OPIUM ON CHINA December 14, 1932 I HAVE told you, at considerable length, of the effect of the Industrial and Mechanical Revolutions on India, and of how the new imperialism worked in India. Being an Indian, I am a partisan, and I am afraid I cannot help taking a partisan view. But I have tried, and I should like you to try, to consider these questions as a scientist impartially examining facts, and not as a nationalist out to prove one side of the case. Nationalism is good in its place, but it is an unreliable friend and an unsafe historian. It blinds us to many happenings, and sometimes distorts the truth, especially when it concerns us or our country. So we have to be wary, when considering the recent history of India, lest we cast all the blame for our misfortunes on the British. Having seen how India was exploited in the nineteenth century by the industrialists and capitalists of Britain, let us go to the other great country of Asia, India's old-time friend, that ancient among nations, China. We shall find here a different type of exploitation by the West. China did not become a colony or dependency of any European country, as India did. She escaped this, as she had a strong enough central government to hold the country together till about the middle of the nineteenth century. India, as we have seen, had gone to pieces more than 100 years before this, when the Moghal Empire fell. China grew weak in the nineteenth century, but still it held together to the last, and the mutual jealousies of foreign Powers prevented them from taking too much advantage of China's weakness. In my last letter on China (it was number 94) I told you of the attempts made by the British to increase their trade with China. I gave you a long quotation from the very superior and patronizing letter written by the Manchu Emperor Chien Lung in answer to the English King George III. This was in 1792. This date will remind you of the stormy times that Europe was having then—it was the period of the French Revolution. And this was followed by Napoleon and the Napoleonic wars. England had her hands full during this whole period and was fighting desperately against Napoleon. There was no question thus of an extension of the China trade for her till Napoleon fell and England breathed with relief. Soon after, however, in 1816, another British embassy was sent to China. But there was some difficulty about the ceremonial to be observed, and the Chinese Emperor refused to see the British envoy, Lord Amhurst, and ordered him to go back. The ceremony to be performed was called the kotow, which is a kind of prostration on the ground. Perhaps you have heard of the word " kow-towing ". So nothing happened. Meanwhile a new trade was rapidly 444 growing—the trade in opium. It is not perhaps correct to call this a new trade, as opium was first imported from India as early as the fifteenth century. India had sent in the past many a good thing to China. Opium was one of the really bad things sent by her. But the trade was limited. It grew in the nineteenth century because of the Europeans, and especially the East India Company, which had a monopoly of the British trade. It is said that the Dutch in the East used to mix it with their tobacco and then smoke it as a preventive against malaria. Through them opium-smoking went to China, but in a worse form, for in China pure opium was smoked. The Chinese Government wanted to stop the habit because of its bad effect on the people, and also because the opium trade took away a lot of money from the country. In 1800 the Chinese Government issued an edict or order prohibiting all importation of opium for any purpose whatsoever. But the trade was a very profitable one for the foreigners. They continued to smuggle opium into the country and bribed Chinese 445 officials to overlook this. The Chinese Government thereupon made a rule that their officials were not to meet foreign merchants. Severe penalties were also laid down for teaching the Chinese or Manchu languages to any foreigner. But all this was to no purpose. The opium trade continued, and there was probably a great deal of bribery and corruption. Indeed, matters became worse after 1834, when the British Government put an end to the monopoly of the East India Company in the China trade, and threw this open to all British merchants. There was a sudden increase in opium-smuggling, and the Chinese Government at last decided to take strong action to suppress it. They chose a good man for this purpose. Lin Tsehsi was appointed a special commissioner to suppress the smuggling, and he took swift and vigorous action. He went down to Canton in the south, which was the chief centre for this illegal trade, and ordered all the foreign merchants there to deliver to him all the opium they had. They refused to obey the order at first. Thereupon Lin forced them to obey. He cut them off in their factories, made their Chinese workers and servants leave them, and allowed no food to go to them from outside. This vigour and thoroughness resulted in the foreign merchants coming to terms and handing over to the Chinese 20,000 cases of opium. Lin had this huge quantity of opium, which was obviously meant for smuggling purposes, destroyed. Lin also told the foreign merchants that no ship would be allowed to enter Canton unless the captain gave an undertaking that he would not bring opium. If this promise was broken, the Chinese Government would confiscate the ship and its entire cargo. Commissioner Lin was a thorough person. He did the work entrusted to him well, but he did not realize that the consequences were going to be hard on China. The consequences were : war with Britain, defeat of China, a humiliating treaty; and opium, the very thing the Chinese Government wanted to prohibit, forced down their throats. Whether opium was good or bad for the Chinese was immaterial. What the Chinese Government wanted to do did not much matter; but what did matter was that smuggling opium into China was a very profitable job for British merchants, and Britain was not prepared to tolerate the loss of this income. Most of the opium destroyed by Commissioner Lin belonged to British merchants. So, in the name of national honour, Britain went to war with China in 1840. This war is rightly called the Opium War, for it was fought and won for the right of forcing opium on China. China could do little against the British fleet which blockaded Canton and other places. After two years she was forced to submit, and in 1842 the Treaty of Nanking laid down that five ports were to be opened to foreign trade, which meant especially the opium trade then. These five ports were Canton, Shanghai, Amoy, Ningpo, and Foochow. They were called the " treaty ports ". Britain also took possession of the island of Hongkong, near Canton, and extorted a large sum of mon6y as compensation for the opium 446 that had been destroyed, and for the costs of the war which she had forced on China. Thus the British achieved the victory of opium. The Chinese Emperor made a personal appeal to Queen Victoria, England's Queen at the time, pointing out with all courtesy the terrible effects of the opium trade which was now forced on China. There was no reply from the Queen. Just fifty years earlier his predecessor, Chien Lung, had written very differently to the King of England ! This was the beginning of China's troubles with the imperialist Powers of the West. Her isolation was at an end. She had to accept foreign trade; and she had to accept, in addition, Christian missionaries. These missionaries played an important part in China as the vanguard of imperialism. Many of China's subsequent troubles had something to do with missionaries. Their behaviour was often insolent and exasperating, but they could not be tried by Chinese courts. Under the new treaty, foreigners from the West were not subject to Chinese law or Chinese justice. They were tried by their own courts. This was called " extra-territoriality ", and it still exists, and is much resented. The converts of the missionaries also claimed this special protection of " extra-territoriality ". They were in no way entitled to it; but that made no difference, as the great missionary, the representative of a powerful imperialist nation, was behind them. Thus village was sometimes set against village, and when, exasperated beyond measure, the villagers or others rose and attacked the missionary, and sometimes killed him, then the imperialist Power behind swooped down and took signal reparation. Few occurrences have been so profitable to European Powers as the murders of their missionaries in China ! For they made each such murder the occasion for demanding and extorting further privileges. It was also a convert to Christianity who started one of the most terrible and cruel rebellions in China. This was the Taiping Rebellion, started about 1850 by a half-mad person, Hung Hsin- Chuan. This religious maniac had extraordinary success and went about with the war-cry " Kill the idolaters ", and vast numbers of people were killed. The rebellion devastated more than, half China, and during a dozen years or so it is estimated that at least 20,000,000 people died on account of it. It is not right, of course, to hold the Christian missionaries or the foreign Powers responsible for this outbreak and the massacres which accompanied it. At first the missionaries seemed to bless it, but later they repudiated Hung. The Chinese Government, however, continued to believe that the Christian missionaries were responsible for it. This belief makes us realize how greatly the Chinese resented missionary activities then and later. To them the missionary did not come as a messenger of religion and good-will. He was the agent of imperialism. As an English author has said : " First the missionary, then the gunboat, then the land-grabbing—this is the procession of events in the Chinese mind." It is well to bear this in mind, as the missionary crops up often enough in Chinese troubles. 447 It is extraordinary that a rebellion led by a mad fanatic should have had such great success before it was finally suppressed. The real reason for this was that the old order in China was breaking up. In my last letter on China, I think I told you of the burden of taxation and the changing economic conditions and the growing discontent of the people. Secret societies were rising everywhere against the Manchu Government, and there was rebellion in the air. Foreign trade, the trade in opium and other articles, made matters worse. Foreign trade China had had, of course, in the past. But now the conditions were different. The big machine-industry of the West was turning out goods fast, and these could not all be sold at home. So they had to find markets elsewhere. This was the urge for markets in India as well as in China. These goods, and especially opium, upset the old trade arrangements, and thus made the economic confusion worse. As in India, the price of articles in the Chinese bazaars began to be affected by the world prices. All this added to the discontent and misery of the people and strengthened the Taiping Rebellion. This was the background in China during these days of growing arrogance and interference by the western Powers. It is not surprising that China could do little to withstand their demands. These European Powers and much later Japan, as we shall see, took full advantage of China's confusion and difficulties to extort privileges and territory from her. China, indeed, would have gone the way of India, and become the dependency and empire of one or more of the western Powers and Japan, but for the mutual rivalry of these Powers and their jealousy of each other. I have strayed from my main story in telling you about this general background during the nineteenth century in China, of economic breakdown, Taiping Rebellion, missionaries, and foreign aggression. But one must know something of this to be able to follow intelligently the narrative of events. For events in history do not just happen like miracles. They occur because a variety of causes lead up to them. But these causes are often not obvious; they lie under the surface of events. The Manchu rulers of China, till recently so great and powerful, must have been amazed at the sudden change of fortune's wheel. They did not see, probably, that the roots of their collapse lay in their own past; they did not appreciate the industrial progress of the West and its disastrous consequences on China's economic system. They resented greatly the intrusions of the " barbarian " foreigners. The Emperor at the time, referring to these intrusions, used a delightful old Chinese phrase : he said that he would allow no man to snore alongside of his bed ! But the wisdom and humour of the old classics, though they taught a serene confidence and a magnificent fortitude in misfortune, were not enough to repel the foreigner. The Treaty of banking opened the door to Britain in China. But Britain was not going to have all the fat plums to herself. France and the United States stepped in and also made commercial treaties with China. China was helpless, and this compulsion 448 exercised on her did not make her love or respect the foreigner. She resented the very presence of these " barbarians". The foreigner, on his side, was still far from content. His appetite for exploiting China grew. The British again took the lead. It was a very favourable time for the foreigners, as China was busy with the Taiping Rebellion and could offer no resistance. So the British set about to find a pretext for war. In 1856 the Chinese Viceroy of Canton had the Chinese crew of a ship arrested for piracy. The ship belonged to the Chinese, and no foreigner was involved. But it flew the British flag because of a permit from the Hongkong Government. As it happened, even this permit had expired. None the less, as in the fable of the wolf and the lamb at the river, the British Government made this the excuse for war. Troops were sent to China from England. Just then the Indian Revolt of 1857 broke out, and all these troops were diverted to India. The China War had to wait till the Revolt was crushed. In 1858 this second China War began. The French, meanwhile, had also discovered a pretext for taking part in it, for a French missionary had been killed somewhere in China. So the English and the French swooped down on the Chinese, who had their hands full with the Taiping Rebellion. The British and the French Governments tried to induce Russia and the United States of America to join them, but they did not agree. They were quite prepared, however, to share in the loot. There was practically no fighting, and new treaties, extorting more privileges, were signed by all the four Powers with China. More ports were opened to foreign trade. But the story of the Second China War is not yet over. There was another act to the play, with a still more tragic sequel to it. When treaties are made it is customary for the governments concerned to ratify or confirm them. It was arranged that this ratification of the new treaties should take place within a year at Peking. When the time came for this, the Russian envoy came direct to Peking, overland from Russia. The other three came by sea and wanted to bring their boats up the river Peiho to Peking. This city was being threatened by the Taiping rebels just then, and the river had been fortified. The Chinese Government therefore asked the British, French and American envoys not to come by the river route, but to travel by a land route farther north. It was not an unreasonable request. The American agreed to it. Not so the British and French envoys. They tried to force their way up the Peiho river in spite of the fortifications. The Chinese fired upon them and forced them back with heavy losses. Arrogant and over-proud governments, which would not even listen to a request from the Chinese Government to change their travel route, could not tolerate this. More troops were sent for to take vengeance. In 1860 they marched on the old city of Peking, and their vengeance took the form of the destruction and looting and burning of one of the most wonderful buildings in the city. This was the Imperial Summer Palace, the Yuen-Ming-Yuen, completed in the reign of Chien Lung. It was full of rare treasures of 449 art and literature, the finest that China had produced. There were old bronzes of great beauty, and amazingly fine porcelain, and rare manuscripts, and pictures and every kind of curio and work of art for which China had been famous for 1000 years. The Anglo-French soldiery, ignorant vandals that they were, looted these treasures and destroyed them in huge bonfires which kept burning for many days ! Is it any wonder that the Chinese, with a culture of thousands of years behind them, looked upon this vandalism with anguish in their hearts, and considered the wreckers ignorant barbarians who only knew how to kill and destroy ? And memories of the Huns and the Mongols and many other old-time barbarian wreckers must have come to them. But the foreign " barbarians " cared little what the Chinese thought of them. They felt secure in their gunboats and with their modern weapons of war. What did it matter to them that the rich and rare treasures which had been collected during hundreds of years were no more ? What did they care for Chinese art and culture " Whatever happens, We have got The Maxim gun, And they have not I " jawaharlal_nehru_glimpses_of_world_history (1) https://mubi.com/films/the-opium-war