The Great British Drug Cartel.

The British Opium trade. This is a chapter of British colonial history that is often left unread. As Briton heads towards Brexit, it seeks to re-strengthen its “ties” with its old colonial counterparts. This makes it imperative to understand why Britons colonial past may impede its relationship with China in the future. It does a disservice to our understanding of the British empire and Britons relationship with China to ignore Britons illegal opium trade of the 18th and 19th centuries.

The remnants of the trade can be linked to 1792, where failed British war efforts for North American territory, meant that the British treasury was almost empty. As a result of this, the British empire was in dire need of new sources of income. Britons industrial revolution and economy were verging on collapse. As China was a global leader in exports, Briton considered China to be a potential trading partner.

China was an obvious candidate as Chinese products were coveted and in very high demand in British markets. British imports of Chinese goods where vast, imports ranged from cuisine to silk, porcelain and tea. These goods and materials were some of the driving materials behind Britons industrial revolution. Despite this demand, China exercised an isolationist stance to global economics. The Emperor, Qianlong, saw Western traders as a potentially destabilising interest to China and consequently China placed strict controls on foreign trade. This was possible by limiting trade to a number of controlled ports in China. There were only a handful number of cities where British traders could trade, the rest of China was off-limits. On top of this, all trade had to go through the Hong. The Hong was a guide of Chinese merchants who operated an import-export monopoly in the South East of China. They were permitted to tax and trade with the British as they saw fit.

In the middle of the 18th Century, the Hong took these restrictions further and restricted British trade to a single port in Canton. This led to frustration as the British, and the West, saw China as a goldmine of opportunity. But with the burden of 9 months of travel, the British wanted better trade terms. However, attempts by employees of the East India Company to communicate with the emperor directly meant that these restrictions were tightened as the foreign traders had broken Chinese protocol.

As there where huge imports into Briton and few exports from Britain into China, Britain was running a huge trade deflect. As China traded in silver, when Briton had been cut off from the silver mines of South America, Britons ability to trade with China become significantly impaired. Even the East Indian Company, a state established British company that controlled the Indian Sub-continent, was running into debt. For all the might and power of the British empire, it did not have the finance to continue its expensive tea habit. As Britain realised its dire economic platform, an official diplomatic visit by British officials was made to China. The main aim of this visit was to negotiate the easing of the trade barriers; however, the visit did not bear much in the way of its intentions.

Economically Britain was leaking money, it had a huge trade deficit with China, Britons silver reserves were quickly depleting, and the East India Company was over £4 billion (inflation-adjusted pounds) in debt. Britain thus needed to find something that would sell in China if it was to save its empire and continue its industrial revolution. The answer that the British found was opium.

Opium is a highly addictive drug that at the time was illegal in China. Whilst Opium had been introduced into China by Turkish and Arab trader in the late 6th and early 7th Century, when in 1773 the British discovered that opium could be used as a means of trade, the trade of the drug skyrocketed.

As the East India Companies’ conquest in the India sub-continent was not materialising the return that was envisioned, the Empire had to reinvasion how it would use the land in India. Britain decided that it would grow poppies in India, turn the poppy into opium and sell the opium in China at a profit, in return for silver. It would then use the silver from the illegal opium sales to buy tea from China and sell the tea in Britain at a profit.

This was Britons desperate attempt to stop the economic growth of the empire from slowing down. Whilst economically this plan would bring prosperity to the empire, the issue was that this plan would require the British to push opium, a drug that was illegal in China, on an unheard-of scale. Despite the British empires knowledge that the opium trade was illegal in China, they still went ahead with it.

To give the empire plausible deniability the East India Company would set up shop in Calcutta, the region in India closest to China that the East India Company controlled. From Calcutta, the East India Company would sell the opium to anyone and everyone. The British would then use smugglers to cross the broader and sell its opium illegally in China. Thus, one of the biggest corporations in history was backed by the biggest national economy at the time, to trade illegal drugs into China.

As British opium was more potent than any other available opium, there was a huge demand for the product. By 1835, around 3,064,000 lbs. of opium were being moved into China a year. In 1833, the British government decided to do away with the East India Companies monopoly on the trade and took a hands-on approach to sell the illegal opium itself. This allowed the opium to be sold on a much larger scale and as supply was increased, the price of opium tumbled. This made opium even more accessible as more people in China could afford it. By 1839, almost 5,639,000 lbs. of opium were being smuggled into China.

As addiction swept across China, Chinese Emperor DaoGuang appointed Lin Zexu to contain and put an end to this illicit drug trade. Due to how immensely profitable the opium trade was the Emperor had to be sure that Commissioner Lin was strong in his morals and was incorruptible, which would turn out to be true.

As the drug epidemic grew, the effects of opium addiction began to show across Chinese society. There were illegal opium drug dens dotted around port cities and opium pipes and overdosed bodies could be found laying died in the streets. As Commissioner Lin witnessed the effects of opium addiction in China, he decided that the only way to fix the problem was the complete removal of the drug and the reiteration of the ban on opium in China.

By March 1839, Commissioner Lin had started to clamp down on the new source of opium inflow, the British controlled port of Canton. Commissioner Lin arrested thousands of Chinese opium traders, forced addicts into rehabilitation programmes, confiscated opium pipes and closed opium dens. Zexu then turned his attention to the West. Lin wrote a letter to Queen Victoria appealing to her conscious, a plea as opium addiction was having a catastrophic effect on Chinese society. However, it is very unlikely that Queen Victoria ever got the letter, but whether Queen Victoria got it or not, there was no response.

Due to the lack of a response, Commissioner Lin demanded that the British surrender their stores of opium. At first, the British merchants resisted but when Commissioner Lin persisted the merchants gave up small stores of opium. Lin knew that what had been surrendered was nowhere near the full extent of their stores. As Lin knew that addiction was getting worse with each day that passed, he marched his troops to the foreign warehouses and set up a siege. The merchants held up for a month and a half but eventually caved. Inside the warehouses, Commissioner Lin found 21,000 chests of opium, the value of which today would be in the billions.

The quantity of seized opium was staggering, in 1839 the value of the opium amounted to 1/6th of the British empire, which is the largest empire in history, spent on its military in the previous year. It took 500 workers more than 3 weeks to destroy all the seized opium. On top of destroying the illegal British opium, the Chinese also wanted all the opium merchants to leave China. The local Superintendent of British Trade, Charles Elliot, who was personally against the opium trade, promised the British merchants that the British government would cover their loses if they left China peacefully, a promise the British government never fulfilled.

Due to the enormity of the British loss, and with a lot of people going bankrupt as a result of it, the domestic outcry from the illegal seizure of the illegal British opium began to grow. Along with the seizure of the opium, a reprehensible incident took place where two drunken British soldiers beat a Chinese man to death. The combination of these two events sparked a great deal of animosity between the British and Chinese. Commissioner Lin Zexu demanded the execution of a British soldier in recompense for the death of the Chinese man. Charles Elliot, who was sympathetic to Zexu, compensated the victim’s family for their loss.

However, issue came when Charles Elliot only sentenced the men to hard labour in Britain. Zexu was extremely discontent with this. The point of Zexu’s demand was to show that foreigners could not violate Chinese law, to show that breaking Chinese laws reaps severe repercussions. As a result of this, Commissioner Lin banned all food imports to the British and ordered the Portuguese to eject all Brits from Macaw. The British were forced to retreat and seek refuge on a barren island off the coast of China, Hong Kong.

As the food crisis for the British soldiers became dire, Captain Elliot sent a request for food sales to resume, the response of which was delayed. In an attempt to get food, British soldiers were sent ashore China. However, on the way back these provisions were seized by Chinese officials. Soon after a firefight erupted between the British ships and the blockading Chinese “junk boats”.

Whilst shots had been fired, there was no full-scale war. However, from then on, the animosity between the British and Chinese became less diplomatic and more militaristic. There was then an odd period of silence. Some believed that with 9 months of travel, the British were too far to fight a war. But in that period the British was preparing to attack China. The British sent expeditionary forces to China and attacked and occupied the city of Canton by May 1841. This was the start of what has been coined the “Century of Humiliation” for China. Following further British expansion, Charles Elliot and Commissioner Lin agreed and signed the Treaty of Nanjing. By its terms, China was to pay Britain a large indemnity for the destroyed illegal opium (an estimated 6 hundred million inflation-adjusted pounds), cede Hong Kong to Briton and increase the number of ports the British could use in China to 5. However, China still stood firm and opposed the legalization of opium in China. This was the first of the so-called “Unequal Treaties”.

Despite Charles Elliot and Commissioner Lin striking this deal with limited loss of life, neither country was happy. The British believed that China should have paid more in reparations, that there should be more British ports in China and that opium should have been legalised in China. Despite negotiating from a weaker position, the Chinese emperor was displeased with Qishan, Commissioner Lin’s successor, and ordered his execution for treason. The Emperor was displeased as he believed that China had done nothing wrong in destroying the illegal British opium and thus did not see why China had to meet any of the British demands.

With both parties opposing the Treaty, and with Elliot and Qishan being disbanded, the tensions between the two empires really began to rise. Both sides took a very nationalist approach to the conflict and would not back down. From then on, the conflict only had two courses, either the Chinese would eject the British and clamp back down on trade or the British would defeat the Great Chinese Empire and force the Chinese to trade on their terms.

Following the events of May 1841, where the Chinese were setting fire to British factories in Canton, the British were no longer interested in ceasefires, truces or talks of peace. They were focused on taking Chinese territory by force. The British forces began to take land to the East and North of Canton. Along the way, the British ensured to capture fortresses. Each fortress acted as a stronghold for the British and symbolised to Chinas’ emperor that the British were advancing.

By the middle of June 1842, Shanghai had been taken and in July, Zhenjiang. The next town on Britons agenda was Nanking. Nanking would essentially be the final battleground. If the British took Nanking, they would have control of the river that flows through China, from which all trade to the capital took place. If Chinese access to Nanking was cut off, the capital would starve.

At this point, the Chinese Emperor realised that China was at a tipping point. If Nanking was taken, there would be no going back. As a result of this, the Emperor sent an official to the British to negotiate. At first, these talks beard no fruit. But eventually, as the British opened up to peace talks, the treaty of Tianjin was agreed. China conceded its position as it was losing the war. In the end, China paid Briton £21 million(2.39 billion inflation-adjusted pounds) in reparations for the illegal opium that they had destroyed, China would grant Britain several new ports, the Hong Monopoly would be abolished and tariffs would be mutually agreed by Chinese and British officials. The region of Hong Kong was conceded to Briton, the residents of which would live under British law, free from Chinese jurisdiction. Finally, Briton had strong-armed the Chinese into finally legalising opium after the Second Opium War.

The British opium trade in China shows the economic vs ethical valuation of the British Empire. This was a time where the British empire would go to extreme lengths to protect its economic interests. As a direct result of this trade, 15 million Chinese men, women and youths, from all sectors of society, were addicted to opium. The atrocious actions of the British where wickedly genius. Instead of exporting a product that was superior in quality or was in demand in China, by exporting an addictive drug, it created a dependency from the Chinese on the British and as more people got addicted, demand only grew.

From the opium trade, it is clear that the reality of the British Empire is not how it is usually portrayed in British society. It has a dark history which Briton seems to suffer from amnesia towards. Britain created, perpetuated and profited from illegal drug sales to feed its tea habits and to churn the gears of its industrial revolution. Not only did the British empire create a drug addiction epidemic, but it also strong-armed the Chinese to pay reparations for simply enforcing their laws. When the Chinses did not concede to the wishes of the British, the British took to brute force to take the whole country.

What is surprising is the fact that the truth of the British Empire is never taught in British schools or known by most of the British public. Many people, including myself, had no idea of the truths of the British Empire. It has always been portrayed as this holier-than-thou empire, but the history of the imperial rule is littered with brutality, greed and murder. The same way that German children learn about WW 1 and WW 2, British children need to learn the realities of the British empire.