First Opium War The
First Opium War broke out in 1839 between
China and
Britain and was fought over trading rights (including the right of
free trade) and Britain's diplomatic status among Chinese officials. In the eighteenth century, China enjoyed a trade surplus with Europe, trading
porcelain,
silk, and
tea in exchange for
silver. Trade between China and Britain was heavily imbalanced in China's favor. As Britain's demands for tea, silk, and porcelain exceeded Chinese demands for British goods, British merchants started exporting opium in India. This shift reversed the balance of trade. By the late 18th century, the
British East India Company (EIC) expanded the cultivation of
opium in the
Bengal Presidency, selling it to private merchants who transported it to China and covertly sold it on to Chinese smugglers. At the time, foreign trade was restricted under the
Canton System, limiting western merchants to a single port and conducting business through specific licensed Chinese merchants. By 1797, the EIC was selling 4,000 chests of opium a year (each weighing ) to private merchants; that is, per year. In earlier centuries, opium was utilised as a medicine with
anesthetic qualities, but new Chinese practices of smoking opium recreationally increased demand tremendously and led to smokers developing addictions. Successive
Chinese emperors issued edicts making opium illegal in 1729, 1799, 1814, and 1831, but imports grew as smugglers and colluding officials in China sought profit. Some American merchants entered the trade by smuggling opium from Turkey into China, including
Warren Delano Jr. and
Francis Blackwell Forbes; in
American historiography this is sometimes referred to as the
Old China Trade. By 1833, the Chinese opium trade soared to 30,000 chests, and the companies prepared to hand over a token amount to placate him.
Charles Elliot, Chief Superintendent of British Trade in China, arrived 3 days after the expiry of Lin's deadline, as Chinese troops enforced a shutdown and blockade of the factories. The standoff ended after Elliot paid for all the opium on credit from the
British government (despite lacking official authority to make the purchase) and handed the 20,000 chests (with ) over to Lin, who had them
destroyed at Humen. Elliot then wrote to
London advising the use of military force to resolve the dispute with the Chinese government. A small skirmish occurred between British and Chinese warships in the Kowloon Estuary on 4 September 1839. The war was concluded by the
Treaty of Nanking (Nanjing) in 1842, the first of the
Unequal treaties between China and Western powers. The treaty ceded the
Hong Kong Island and surrounding smaller islands to Britain, and established five cities as
treaty ports open to Western traders:
Shanghai, Canton,
Ningbo,
Fuzhou, and
Xiamen (Amoy). The treaty also stipulated that China would pay a twenty-one million dollar payment to Britain as reparations for the destroyed opium, with six million to be paid immediately, and the rest through specified installments thereafter. Another treaty the following year gave
most favoured nation status to Britain and added provisions for British
extraterritoriality, making Britain exempt from Chinese law.
Second Opium War . Book illustration from 1873. In 1853, northern China was convulsed by the
Taiping Rebellion, which established its capital at
Nanjing. In spite of this, a new Imperial Commissioner,
Ye Mingchen, was appointed at Canton, determined to stamp out the opium trade, which was still technically illegal. In October 1856, he seized the
Arrow, a ship claiming British registration, and threw its crew into chains.
Sir John Bowring, Governor of British Hong Kong, called up Rear Admiral
Sir Michael Seymour's
East Indies and China Station fleet, which, on 23 October, bombarded and captured the
Pearl River forts on the approach to Canton and proceeded to bombard Canton itself, but had insufficient forces to take and hold the city. On 15 December, during a riot in Canton, European commercial properties were set on fire and Bowring appealed for military intervention. The United States and Russia also became involved in the conflict, primarily through diplomatic efforts, and later obtain similar concessions from China through treaties such as the
Treaty of Tientsin. Britain and France now sought greater concessions from China, including the legalization of the opium trade, expanding of the transportation of labourers (pejoratively called
coolies) to European colonies, opening all of China to British and French citizens and exempting foreign imports from
internal transit duties. The war resulted in the 1858
Treaty of Tientsin (Tianjin), in which the Chinese government agreed to pay
war reparations for the expenses of the recent conflict, open a second group of ten ports to European commerce, legalize the opium trade, and grant foreign traders and missionaries rights to travel within China. As of December 2020, seven of the twelve bronze statues have been found and returned to China. The whereabouts of the remaining five are still unknown. ==See also==