LETTER
TO QUEEN VICTORIA (1839)
Seventeenth-century
Jesuit missionaries had promoted an image of the Chinese as builders of a great
civilization that warranted respect, admiration, and even emulation by
Europeans–more so than any other living civilization. Beginning in the eighteenth century, however, some authors and
philosophers of the Enlightenment challenged that image. This rethinking of China was reinforced by
trade tensions that had been growing since the 1720s between China and the European
colonial powers, especially Britain.
The Qing dynasty that ruled China responded to the growing number of
foreign merchants visiting its shores by placing heavy restrictions on trade
between China and the European powers: all trade was restricted to the port of
Guangzhou (formerly Canton), foreigners could reside in that city only from
October through March, and all trade (and official contact) had to be conducted
through the Hong merchant guild.
Despite these restrictions, when the British East India Company began to
consolidate its authority over the Indian subcontinent in the 1760s, British
merchants used their Indian bases to seek further trade with China. As they sent large sums of silver bullion
into China to obtain growing quantities of silks, porcelains, and teas, British
merchants became concerned that a serious trade deficit had developed for
themselves, especially because the Qing state actively discouraged the
importation of European manufactured goods.
In their new Indian territories, however, the British discovered a
product that would find a large market in China‑opium.
The
opium poppy grew luxuriantly in regions of northern India, and the British soon
organized the production and sale of opium as a cash crop that brought profits
to the East India Company. In 1773, the
British transported to China about 1,000 chests of opium (each chest contained
130 to 160 pounds of opium), and by 1790, British merchants had increased their
sales to 4,000 chests. Trade grew
slowly during the wars of the French Revolution and Napoleon, reaching only
around 5,000 chests in 1815, but afterward trade boomed, reaching 7,000 chests
by 1823, 13,000 by 1828, 23,600 by 1832, and 40,000 by 1838. By the 1820s, enough British opium was
entering China to sustain the habits of 1 million addicts, and Qing officials
became increasingly alarmed. British
officials also were becoming concerned with opium consumption in Britain
itself, where the drug was unregulated and widely consumed as a sedative and
for many ailments. By the 1830s, the
Parliament launched investigations into opium use in Britain, especially among
the lower classes. Nevertheless, for
British merchants and the East India Company, the opium trade had become an
exceptionally profitable enterprise that had to be defended. For the Qing dynasty, the opium trade had
become a problem to which it had to respond.
THE OPIUM
CRISIS
In
the 1830s, the scholar-bureaucrats who governed China debated among themselves
how best to respond to the growing opium crisis. Some factions believed that the opium trade should be legalized,
regulated to prevent its worst abuses, and taxed to benefit a government in
constant need of revenues. By the late
1830s, however, as the influx of opium continued to rise, the Emperor Daoguang
sided with scholar‑bureaucrats who favored stronger, and more strongly
enforced, prohibitions on the trade. In
1838, Daoguang issued a new decree banning all traffic in opium and appointed
Lin Zexu “special imperial commissioner” to implement his will.
When
he arrived in Guangzhou in March 1839, Lin acted quickly to suppress the opium
trade. He punished Chinese participants
in the drug trade and issued an edict that required foreign merchants to hand
over all opium on board their ships within three days. When the merchants refused, Lin issued an
arrest warrant for one of the most prominent British merchants, Lancelot
Dent. Supported by the merchant
community and by the British superintendent, Charles Elliot, Dent refused to
hand himself over to the imperial commissioner, which led Lin to blockade the
foreign settlement in Guangzhou. Elliot
then ordered the British merchants to deliver their 20,000 chests of opium to
him, and he handed over the opium to Lin.
The blockade remained for forty‑seven days until all the opium was
delivered. Lin destroyed the
confiscated opium and further demanded that the foreign merchants sign bonds
that they would never again participate in the opium trade, on pain of death.
Prior
to the dramatic events of 1839, the opium trade was little known in
Britain. A small anti-opium clique, led
by Protestant missionary societies, had decried the trade on moral grounds but
to little public notice. After the
actions of Commissioner Lin, however, public debate within Britain grew with
regard to the opium trade and the appropriate British response to the Chinese
seizure of British property. The
British merchants in Guangzhou designated William Jardine as their agent in
London to lobby for government intervention to support the opium trade. They provided Jardine with $20,000‑one
dollar for each chest of confiscated opium to wage a propaganda war in the
London newspapers in favor of the trade and to demand financial compensation
from Parliament for the 20,000 chests of opium the merchants had handed over to
Elliot, an official of the British government, who had handed it over to the
Chinese. These debates continued
throughout the period of military conflict, which the British government
decided to launch in the fall of 1839 under
pressure from British mercantile interests and in favor of free trade.
Lin Zexu
Lin Zexu (1785‑1850)
was a well‑respected scholar and government official when appointed
“special imperial commissioner” by the Emperor Daoguang. In Guangzhou, Lin used legal authority,
coercion, reason, and moral suasion to attack the trade and use of opium by
both the Chinese and the “barbarian” British.
After his seizure of British opium in 1839, Lin wrote a letter to Britain's
Queen Victoria, excerpted below, that appealed to her moral responsibility to
control her subjects' activities.
The
kings of your honorable country by a tradition handed down from generation to
generation have always been noted for their politeness and submissiveness. We have read your successive tributary
memorials [1] saying, “In general our countrymen who go to trade in China have
always received His Majesty the Emperor's gracious treatment and equal
justice,” and so on. Privately we are
delighted with the way in which the honorable rulers of your country deeply
understand the grand principles and are grateful for the Celestial grace. For this reason the Celestial Court [2] in
soothing those from afar has redoubled its polite and kind treatment. The profit from trade has been enjoyed by
them continuously for two hundred years.
This is the source from which your country has become known for its
wealth.
But
after a long period of commercial intercourse, there appear among the crowd of
barbarians [3] both good persons and bad, unevenly. Consequently there are those who smuggle opium to seduce the
Chinese people and so cause the spread of the poison to all provinces. Such persons who only care to profit themselves,
and disregard their harm to others, are not tolerated by the laws of heaven and
are unanimously hated by human beings.
His Majesty the Emperor, upon hearing of this, is in a towering rage....
We
find that your country is sixty or seventy thousand li [4] from
China. Yet there are barbarian ships
that strive to come here for trade for the purpose of making a great
profit. The wealth of China is used to
profit the barbarians. That is to say,
the great profit made by barbarians is all taken from the rightful share of
China. By what right do they then in
return use the poisonous drug to injure the Chinese people? Even though the
barbarians may not necessarily intend to do us harm, yet in coveting profit to
an extreme, they have no regard for injuring others. Let us ask, where is your conscience? I have heard that the smoking of opium is very strictly forbidden
by your country;' that is because the harm caused by opium is clearly
understood. Since it is not permitted
to do harm to your own country, then even less should you let it be passed on
to the harm of other countries‑how much less to China! Of all that China exports to foreign
countries, there is not a single thing which is not beneficial to people: they
are of benefit when eaten, or of benefit when used, or of benefit when resold:
all are beneficial. Is there a single
article from China which has done any harm to foreign countries? Take tea and
rhubarb, for example; the foreign countries cannot get along for a single day
without them. If China cuts off these
benefits with no sympathy for those who are to suffer, then what can the
barbarians rely upon to keep themselves alive?
Moreover the woolens, camlets, and longells [6] of foreign countries
cannot be woven unless they obtain Chinese silk. If China, again, cuts off this beneficial export, what profit can
the barbarians expect to make? As for
other foodstuffs, beginning with candy, ginger, cinnamon, and so forth, and
articles for use, beginning with silk, satin, chinaware, and so on, all the
things that must be had by foreign countries are innumerable. On the other hand, articles coming from the
outside to China can only be used as toys.
We can take them or get along without them. Since they are not needed by China, what difficulty would there
be if we closed the frontier and stopped the trade? Nevertheless our Celestial Court lets tea, silk, and other goods,
be shipped without limit and circulated everywhere without begrudging it in the
slightest. This is for no other reason
but to share the benefit with the people of the whole world.
The
goods from China carried away by your country not only supply your own
consumption and use, but also can be divided up and sold to other countries,
producing a triple profit. Even if you
do not sell opium, you still have this threefold profit. How can you bear to go further, selling
products injurious to others in order to fulfill your insatiable desire?
...
We
have further learned that in London, the capital of your honorable rule, and in
Scotland, Ireland, and other places, originally no opium has been
produced. Only in several places of
India under your control...has opium been planted from hill to hill, and ponds
have been opened for its manufacture.
For months and years work is continued in order to accumulate the
poison. The obnoxious odor ascends,
irritating heaven and frightening the spirits.
Indeed you, O King, can eradicate the opium plant in these places, hoe
over the fields entirely, and sow in its stead the five grains. [7] Anyone who dares again attempt to plant and
manufacture opium should be severely punished.
This will really be a great, benevolent government policy that will
increase the common weal and get rid of evil.
For this, Heaven must support you and the spirits must bring you good
fortune, prolonging your old age and extending your descendants....
Now
we have set up regulations governing the Chinese people. He who sells opium shall receive the death
penalty and he who smokes it also the death penalty. Now consider this: if the barbarians do not bring opium, then how
can the Chinese people resell it, and how can they smoke it? The fact is that the wicked barbarians
beguile the Chinese people into a death trap.
How then can we grant life only to these barbarians? He who takes the
life of even one person still has to atone for it with his own life; yet is the
harm done by opium limited to the taking of one life only? Therefore in the new regulations, in regard
to those barbarians who bring opium to China, the penalty is fixed at
decapitation or strangulation. This is
what is called getting rid of a harmful thing on behalf of mankind....
May
you, O King, check your wicked and sift your vicious people before they come to
China, in order to guarantee the peace of your nation, to show further the
sincerity of your politeness and submissiveness, and to let the two countries
enjoy together the blessings of peace.
How fortunate, how fortunate indeed!
1.
What
different types of arguments (e.g., ethical, religious, economic, etc.) does
Lin make to convince Victoria to act against the opium trade?
2.
How
does Lin try to establish China's superiority over Great Britain?
3.
How
does Lin establish the Chinese Emperor as a moral example that Victoria should
follow?
4.
What
authority does Lin assume that Victoria has as ruler? Why might he make those assumptions?