China: Understanding Its Past

2. China, Britain, and Opium, 1839–1842

China, Britain, and Opium, 1839–1842 2 Section T his section focuses on opium and how the Opium War changed China. It includes a story about the effect of opium on an ordinary Chinese family, excerpts from a letter a Chinese official wrote to Queen Victoria asking for her help in suppressing the opium trade, portions of a diary written during the Opium War, and sections from the Treaty of Nanjing, the first of many unequal treaties China was forced to sign, first with Britain and then with other countries, including Japan. Some place names in this section are in the foreign spellings used in the documents themselves, such as the Treaty of Nanjing and the excerpts from a diary kept by the Chinese poet Chushiyuan. The three images that follow were created between 1825 and 1840. Art works such as these can give us some idea of what life was like in Guangzhou at that time. Analyze each image using the steps listed below. 1. Look at the image carefully for two minutes to form an overall impression. 2. Divide the image into quadrants in your mind’s eye and study each quadrant to see what new details become visible. 3. List the people, objects, and activities in the image. 4. Based on what you observed, list three things you might infer from the image. 5. What questions does the image raise in your mind? 6. Where might you find answers to those questions? 7. Write a caption for each image and share the captions with the class. Activity: Life in Guangzhou 8. After you share your captions, your teacher will give you some information about each image. Compare what you wrote with this information and evaluate your response in light of it. Were you on the right track or did you misinterpret the image because you did not have enough information? Gouache (opaque watercolors), by unknown Chinese artists, circa 1825–1830.Courtesy of Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA. Section 2: China, Britain, and Opium, 1839–1842 93 Reading: The Opium Trade 9. How can images such as these help us learn about a given place at a given time? What are the dangers of using images like these as historical documents? Do they really show what Guangzhou looked like from 1820 to about 1840? How do images such as these Oil on canvas, by an unknown Chinese painter, circa 1825–1835. Courtesy of Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA. differ from photographs as historical documents ? Which can be considered more accurate historically? Why? Procedure for image analysis adapted from an exercise created by the Education Branch, Office of Public Programs, National Archives. Long after Lord Macartney’s 1793 mission failed, foreigners still sent emissaries to China asking emperors to lift some of the restrictions on trade and to allow foreigners into ports besides Guangzhou. The response to all these requests was an unequivocal no. Foreign traders continued to be confined to the factories in Guangzhou from October to March, returning to their families in Macao when the winter shipping season was over. In 1836 the Daoguang emperor issued an edict reiterating the restrictions on foreigners: “As the port of Guangzhou is the only one at which the Outer Barbarians are permitted to trade, on no account can they be permitted to wander and visit other places in the Middle Kingdom.” Foreigners tolerated these limitations because they wanted China’s goods—its silks and porcelains and, especially in the case of the British, its tea. By the late 1820s England had become a nation of tea drinkers, consuming thirty million pounds of tea every year—enough to supply every man, woman, and child in England with two pounds of tea. China, however, had no interest in trading its tea for Britain’s woolen cloth or other manufactured goods. So Britain tried to balance its trade by trafficking in a substance long forbidden in China, yet smuggled in from India: opium. Although opium had been forbidden in China as early as 1729, it flourished despite the severe punishments imposed on those found guilty of smoking it. In the early 1800s, for example, when the emperor discovered that even some of the officers in his bodyguard were opium smokers, he ordered that they be dismissed, flogged one hundred lashes, and made to wear the cangue for two months. 94 Chapter 2: Civilizations in Collision: China in Transition, 1750–1920 Foreign...