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"China, like Japan, still stood aside from the main currents of events, almost hermeticaly sealed off, except for one occurrence. The forced opening of five ports to European trade at the end of the Opium War between China and Britain impressed contemporaries little, but looms large a century later." (Talmon, Romanticism and Revolt: Europe 1815-1848, p. 15).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars
The Opium Wars were:
- First Opium War (1839–1842)
- Second Opium War (1856–1860), also known as the "Arrow War"
First Opium War
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Opium_War
The First Opium War (1839–42), also known as the Opium War and as the Anglo-Chinese War, was fought between Britain and China over their conflicting viewpoints on diplomatic relations, trade, and the administration of justice for foreign nationals.[3]
In the 17th and 18th centuries, the demand for Chinese goods (particularly silk, porcelain, and tea) in the European market created a trade imbalance because the market for Western goods in China was virtually non-existent; China was largely self-sufficient and Europeans were not allowed access to China's interior. European silver flowed into China when the Canton System, instituted in the mid-17th century, confined the sea trade to Canton and to the Chinese merchants of Thirteen Hongs. The British East India Company (E.I.C.) had a matching monopoly of British trade. E.I.C. began to auction opium grown on its plantations in India to independent foreign traders in exchange for silver. The opium was then transported to the China coast and sold to Chinese middlemen who retailed the drug inside China. This reverse flow of silver and the increasing numbers of opium addicts alarmed Chinese officials.
In 1839, the Daoguang emperor, rejecting proposals to legalize and tax opium, appointed Lin Zexu to solve the problem by abolishing the trade. Lin confiscated around 20,000 chests of opium (approximately 1210 tons or 2.66 million pounds) without offering compensation, blockaded trade, and confined foreign merchants to their quarters.[4] The British government, although not officially denying China's right to control imports of the drug, objected to this arbitrary seizure and used its naval and gunnery power to inflict quick and decisive defeat.[3]
In 1842, the Treaty of Nanking—the first of what the Chinese later called the unequal treaties—granted an indemnity and extraterritoriality to Britain, the opening of five treaty ports, and the cession of Hong Kong Island. The failure of the treaty to satisfy British goals of improved trade and diplomatic relations led to the Second Opium War (1856–60).[5] The war is now considered in China as the beginning of modern Chinese history.
Second Opium War
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Opium_War
The Second Opium War, the Second Anglo-Chinese War, the Second China War, the Arrow War, or the Anglo-French expedition to China,[1] was a war pitting the British Empire and the Second French Empire against the Qing dynasty of China, lasting from 1856 to 1860. It was fought over similar issues as the First Opium War.
Names
"Second War" and "Arrow War" are both used in literature. "Second Opium War" refers to one of the British tactical objectives: legalising the opium trade, expanding coolie trade, opening all of China to British merchants, and exempting foreign imports from internal transit duties. The "Arrow War" refers to the name of a vessel which became the starting point of the conflict. The importance of the opium factor in the war is in debate among historians.
Outbreak
The 1850s saw the rapid growth of European and American imperialism. Some of the shared goals of the western powers were the expansion of their overseas markets and the establishment of new ports of call. The French Treaty of Huangpu and the American Wangxia Treaty both contained clauses allowing renegotiation of the treaties after 12 years of being in effect. In an effort to expand their privileges in China, Britain demanded the Qing authorities renegotiate the Treaty of Nanking (signed in 1842), citing their most favoured nation status. The British demands included opening all of China to British merchant companies, legalising the opium trade, exempting foreign imports from internal transit duties, suppression of piracy, regulation of the coolie trade, permission for a British ambassador to reside in Beijing and for the English-language version of all treaties to take precedence over the Chinese language.
The Qing dynasty court rejected the demands from Britain and France, which would in turn lead to the start of the second Opium War.
With regard to the British demands and pressure, the Chinese authorities were reluctant to keep to the terms of the Treaty of Nanking. They had tried to keep out as many foreign merchants as possible and had victimized Chinese merchants who traded with the British at the treaty ports. To protect those Chinese merchants who were friendly to them in Hong Kong, the British granted their ships British registration in the hope that the Chinese authorities would not interfere with vessels carrying the British flag. In October 1856, Chinese authorities in Canton seized a vessel called the Arrow, which had been engaged in piracy. The Arrow had formerly been registered as a British ship and still flew the British flag. The British consul in Canton demanded the immediate release of the crew and an apology for the insult to the flag. Chinese authorities argued that the Arrow was a pirate ship and had no right to fly the British flag as its British registration had expired. This event came to be known as the Arrow Incident[2] and provided the alternative name of the ensuing conflict.
Once the crew of the Arrow had been released and with no apology forthcoming from the Chinese, the British governor of Hong Kong, without first consulting with his superiors in London, ordered warships to bombard Canton. The British Prime Minister, Palmerston, later supported the actions of his officials, who claimed to be upholding British prestige and avenging the insult to the flag. Moreover, Palmerston may have been seeking to force the Chinese into accepting full-scale trade with Britain.
Operations were commenced against the Barrier Forts on the Canton River. From 23 October to 13 November, these naval and military operations were continuous. The Barrier Forts, the Bogue Forts, the Blenheim Forts, and the Dutch Folly Forts, and twenty-three Chinese junks, were all taken or destroyed. The suburbs of Canton were pulled, burnt, or battered down, that the ships might fire upon the walls of the town.[3]
Faced with fighting the Taiping Rebellion, the Qing government was in no position to resist the West militarily.
References and Resources
- Romanticism and Revolt: Europe 1815-1848 by J. L. Talmon. History of European Civilization Library, General Editor: Geoffrey Barraclough. Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc., c. 1967. Reprinted 1970.
- China - The Opium War, 1839-42
- England and China: The Opium Wars, 1839-60, The Opium Trade, Seventh through Nineteenth Centuries.
- The British East India Company — the Company that Owned a Nation (or Two)