The Opium Wars

After taking my physics final last friday, I went to the IC Public Library to get myself some not-required reading to celebrate. I came away with four Chinese movies (all of which I have yet to watch) and four books, three of which focus on China.

I immediately began reading The Opium Wars (and I'd like you to all to take a moment to appreciate how well I know how to relax and enjoy myself. Opium Wars). Personally, before going to China the first time I had heard of the Opium Wars but could not really say anything about them. This is not too surprising and should not, perhaps, cause despair for American educational institutions; my grasp on history has never been terribly strong. However, I have since realized that these are Wars which had and continue to have a huge impact on the way that China interacts with the (especially Western) world, and I would probably do well to have some kind of understanding of them.

I am about halfway through the three-hundred page tome and my overall learning so far can be summed up thus: "Foreign relations misadventure today can't hold a candle to the shit that went down two centuries ago." British merchants starting selling India-grown opium in China in the late eighteenth century because, basically, Great Britain had recently fallen in love with Chinese tea, and their government was losing vast sums of silver (the only form of payment China would accept) each year to keep their people in tea. They needed some way to lessen the debt, but were in possession of precisely nothing for which China was interested in trading. So, Parliament stifled its moral objectors and allowed the opium trade to explode.

To keep from writing my own three-hundred page retelling of what happened, here is a brief summary in dialogue-form:

A few people in England: Opium is addictive and does awful things to people! Selling it is very wrong!
The Majority of British merchants: If we don't sell it, someone else will.
Chinese bureaucrats to foreign merchants: Stop selling opium or we will confiscate it and kill you.
Chinese bureaucrats to Chinese: Stop using opium. We'll help you for 18 months and if you're still using, we'll kill you.
Chinese Emporer to Queen Victoria: Please stop this immoral trade. I hope you can appreciate, with your small barbarian mind, the horror you are wreaking on my country.
Queen Victoria: *never got the letter, as one copy was lost in the mail and the sailor who delivered the second was told by a member of Parliament the the Queen wouldn't be interested*
Chinese Bureaucracy/Army: *confiscates and destroys twenty thousand chests of British opium*
British Army: *begins invading China with vastly superior military and equipment, suffers almost no losses and massacres Chinese civilians as well as soldiers*
Chinese Bureaucracy to Chinese Emperor: You're the best! The British are running away!
Everyone: Why won't you all acknowledge my innate superiority and do what I say?!

I don't mean to belittle the events or people involved by saying I completely understand their motives or the way these wars affected lives, but that's what I've got so far. Diplomats and military leaders on both sides were repeatedly fired for not having produced the results their governments wanted, and were replaced by people with even less understanding of the foreign culture they were interacting with. Eventually China was forced to cede major ports and allow opium to be pumped into the country ad nauseum. The country broke down in a lot of ways, as millions and millions of people became addicted to opium. When Chinese thinkers/officials asked British government or merchants to please stop bringing in this devastating drug, the reply they received was to tell their people not to use it anymore. I am so glad we don't live in that world anymore, friends.

(The next book I get to read is called What Does China Think? (中国怎么想）and appears ready to give me much hope for the future...)