Opium in China

The late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in China were a new chapter in history for the eastern nation. It was an era that brought change upon the once mighty nation, and most of that change was horror, tragedy, and instability caused by the fumes of a single plant: opium. The opium trade introduced by the British was one that impacted China in many ways—including the nation’s culture and habits, trade and economy, and warfare—and left a deep scar on the country’s past.

The opium trade in China caused a new wave of opium culture and pastimes (which also resulted in the serious aftermath of widespread addiction). Document 3 shows a group of opium smokers in Hong Kong. It can be assumed from the setup of the scene and the smokers’ comfortable lounging positions that the dangerous pastime of opium smoking became a recreational norm in the Eastern country. Document 2, a letter from Canton Chinese commissioner Lin Zexu to England’s Queen Victoria, further reinforces this notion, claiming that the introduction of the opium trade in China has “seduced the people of [the] country to smoke it”. Zexu further criticizes the British nation for its involvement in Chinese trade, suggesting that the aftermath of the opium trade was dire. Zexu reproaches the English queen for what her nation has “done” to China, stating, “Now we have always heard that your highness possesses a most kind and benevolent heart, surely then you are incapable of doing or causing to be done unto another, that which you should not whish another to do unto you!”

The trade and economy of China was also violently displaced as a result of the opium trade. Document 1 is a letter from a Chinese emperor to King George of England, written in 1793, a time at which serious opium trade had not truly started in the Chinese nation yet. Nevertheless, the Chinese emperor makes it clear that the British presence in Chinese trade was an unwanted and unnecessary niusance to his country. "...Our Celestial Empire possesses all things in prolific abundance and lacks no products within its own borders. There was therefore no need to import the manufactures of outside barbarians in exchange for our own produce," writes the emperor. Historian Julia Novell's account of the Opium Wars (doc. 8) emphasizes the Chinese emperor's point: "There was nothing...that China needed needed or wanted from the west not their goods, not their ideas and certainly not their company." Even before the commencement of the opium trade in China, England-China trade was largely a one-sided affair, and the benefits went solely to the former country. In response to Chinese indifference to British goods, Novell explains, the British introduced opium to Chinese trade in order to create a need for a British product within Chinese economy. Further documents exemplify the negative manner in which opium impacted China. It is clear that by 1842, in a public agreement made in Canton (doc. 9), the Chinese are already furious at the way the “English barbarians...link[ed] themselves with traitorous Chinese traders” and “carried on a large trade and poisoned our people with opium.” The trade has so been disrupted by the English that the Chinese cry out to “Let us all rise, arm, unite, and go against them.” Raise arms they did, and the result was the bloody splattering of the Opium Wars across the pages of history. The aftermath of the Opium Wars, which the Chinese lost, resulted in an even sharper blow to the country’s—by now weak and unstable—economy. The Treaty of Nanking that ended the Opium Wars made on August 29, 1842 (doc. 5) states the devastating war reparations and other amounts that the Chinese government was obliged to pay Great Britain: “The Emperor