Extra Credits on the First Opium War: A Critique in Five Instalments

Part II: The Righteous Minister

Link to Part I

I: PREAMBLE – A CRASH COURSE IN 40 YEARS OF CHINESE POLITICAL AND DIPLOMATIC HISTORY

We carry on where we left off last time, with - no, hang on. We don’t quite. You see, Extra Credits’ second video doesn’t even provide a date for the first two and half minutes. The first actual point in time we see is 1833, and the only thing about the interim period discussed has been the opium trade. Now, as much as I’d like to start getting into that straight away, it’s important to note that a lot happened between the Macartney Embassy in 1793 and the end of the Company monopoly on Anglo-Chinese trade forty years later, at both the domestic and international levels.

I’m not even sure how they let all that time slip. Imagine if someone was trying to introduce you to the English Civil War by starting with Essex’s failed Irish campaign in 1599, then skipping straight to the First Bishops’ War in 1639, with the only thing covered in between being, say, developments in tax collection. Sure, taxes were an important issue, but far from the only one.

And so, before we even jump into the opium trade issue, we have to first run through 40 years of Chinese political history. Buckle in – we’re in for a ride.

Three years after the Macartney Mission, in 1796, the Qianlong Emperor abdicated. This was less significant than it sounds. This was merely a ceremonial gesture to avoid unfilial by reigning longer than his grandfather, the Kangxi Emperor. For the next three years until his death in 1799, the Jiaqing Emperor would be a mere puppet of his father. (Platt pp. 57-60)

This was, to say the least, inconvenient, given that Qianlong was extremely favourable towards the immensely corrupt Heshen, who as head of the Board of Civil Affairs was effectively head of the civil government, and over the years accumulated a personal fortune worth 80 million taels of silver, equivalent to 40% of the GDP of America at the time and almost the size of the entire Qing budget surplus in 1796. (Platt pp. 95-97) Qianlong’s final years also saw the emergence of a series of crises occurring in a domino effect. A Miao revolt in 1795 warranted the relocation of government troops from Hubei province to Hunan, enabling the rapid spread of the White Lotus Revolt when it broke out in Hubei in 1796. (Philip A. Kuhn, Rebellion and its Enemies in Late Imperial China p. 53) The government response was so mismanaged that it took until 1804 to fully suppress the revolt, by which point hundreds of thousands if not millions of lives had been lost, along with the entire budget surplus. (Platt p. 45-66, 95-104)

The relocation of troops from the coast to the interior in order to fight the White Lotus also meant that there were fewer troops back on the coast to deal with piracy. The establishment of a vast pirate confederation under Ching Shih and Cheung Po Tsai meant the Qing lost control of the coast until said confederation disintegrated in 1810 upon offers of amnesty and naval commissions. (Platt pp. 104-116)

Internal revolts were still rife – one every few years – and at one point in 1811 remnants of the White Lotus even infiltrated the Forbidden City – with the assistance of court eunuchs (!) – intending to assassinate the imperial family. Inconveniently for them, Jiaqing was out at the time, whilst one of his sons, who was present, turned out to be quite a good shot with a hunting piece. (Platt p. 206-208)

Said son became the Daoguang Emperor in 1820, and found himself at the head of a government even more corrupt than upon the accession of his father – the constant revolts had made anti-corruption activities unfeasible.

On top of that, China was facing foreign invasions from the west.

Wait, what?

Yes. But not from ‘the West’ with a capital ‘W’ in the sense of Europe and America, but rather the Central Asian states on the Qing Dynasty’s western border. The Khanate of Kokand in modern-day Uzbekistan launched 4 invasions of Xinjiang in the 19th century, and one attempt in 1821 by Jehangir Khoja saw the massacre of the entire provincial garrison at Kashgar and resulted in a seven year long conflict. (Lovell p. 43) A second war started in 1831 and dragged on until 1835, exacting a number of trade concessions that mirrored those obtained by Britain in 1842. (Dikötter et. al. p. 38)

Meanwhile, Sino-Western relations (this time I do mean Euro-America) varied between extremes. By 1839 there had been six near-misses which could have led to war, sparked chiefly by British people with little experience of China – in 1802, 1808, 1814, 1816, 1831 and 1836. Yet at the same time productive relations, not only commercial but also personal, were being forged between the long-term residents. Robert Morrison, a Protestant missionary whose presence was tolerated by EIC directors initially on the basis that he was too inept in this capacity to cause actual trouble, produced a series of works on China including a Chinese-English dictionary. Howqua, a Hakka merchant who was possibly the richest man in the world at the time, was especially well-acquainted with foreign merchants, particularly American but also British. (Platt pp. 131-132, 143-147, 200-204)

It is easy to forget that not all trade was in opium, either. A variety of foreign luxuries were being imported into China legitimately, including textiles, clocks and other such items. This legitimate trade was already profitable in itself for the individuals involved – Howqua, for example, refused to dirty his hands by association with opium, as did many of the EIC supercargoes – but it was at the national level where it became problematic, as the overall balance had been favouring China. (Platt pp. 214-215)

Got it? Good. It is against this backdrop against which we must see the opium trade: Qing China still in the death throes of a major revolt and facing a number of border conflicts of varying intensity; dissonance between short- and long-term agents in the British camp; and a vast formal trade partnership at Canton. Looking at the opium trade in isolation kills off any sense of nuance about this whole affair – nuance that is sorely needed – and we will find that the opium trade, too, was less straightforward than Extra Credits suggests.

Week 37

 

Here in Italy we do not, of course, celebrate the Fourth of July. There was anyways something up in the air, back in the day, that might feel appropriate but also perhaps appear relevant to other current events and debates – something I must encourage the reader to apply their own judgment to, because drawing such analogies, while sometimes unavoidable, is often not really helpful – on the matter of nationality, sovereignty, independence and federative unions; as the allied nations, Italy included, begun, with the Summer of 1918, to take a more optimistic view of the conflict, of its oncoming end and to conjure in their minds more persistent thoughts of the world after the war.

 

Dear Editor in Chief,

I didn't think, back in the day, that the titles chosen to summarize our newspapers' comments on the agreement signed on May 12^th in the German High Command between Germany and Austria were adequate to the greatness and the importance of the times and the cause we are fighting for. “Subject Austria”, “Austria submitting to Germany”, the “Hapsburg's renounce to sovereignty”, “a Bavarian-ization of Austria”: thus the titles; and still even today that the Austrian defeat on the River Piave makes them yet more subordinate to Germany, those words keep sounding wrong to me. Navarre and Burgundy too submitted to France; the Lombard, Tuscany and the Two Sicilies were accused of Piedmontese-izing as well; even Scotland gave up its own independence by joining England; and the southern states were “forced” to re-enter the northern union, just like Austria would now sadly return to the German federation that a few decades ago had thought in its control. And yet France, Italy, Great Britain and the United States grew to be and remain solid national formations, indissolubly cemented by the will of the peoples that make them.

It would not matter much the reason why Austria is forced to surrender its sovereignty, if the end of [establishing] the union could actually be achieved […] In fact the Central Powers have attempted on May 12^th to solve the one true, great problem of the present war: to replace the indefiniteness, the instability of international relations, the anarchy of so many independent states, leading to frequent wars as well as meager and miserable existences, a larger degree of coordination, a stronger political unity, so that the states would cooperate among themselves, would act together to promote a common life, both spiritual an material, more active and vibrant than before. The current war is an effort towards the unity of the world, towards the creation of a society of the nations. And yet, while we are still at the stage of verbal aspirations, Germany and Austria-Hungary begin the creation of a super-state of Central Europe. It's a gigantic problem; but if we let them do, if we fail to oppose [their] idea with one of our own, if we don't initiate the formation of sounder and better political institutions, then our enemies, albeit pushed [to this] by the misfortunes of one of them, will keep trying to see the end of their immense, but not impossible, trial. To defeat their new super-state, the strength of the arms won't suffice; the strength of a better, of an higher ideal is necessary as well.

The events of the war prove in fact how false is the contradiction declared by those “realist politicians” between the principles of strength and justice. Still in recent times Benedetto Croce in his preface to the third edition of his essays on historical materialism and Marxist economy scoffed at the “flavorless jusnaturalistic ideas, anti-historic and democratic, the so called ideals of '89, moralistic preaches, ideologies and illuministic chatter” and restated his gratitude towards Karl Marx “for teaching us how to escape the Alcinesque seductions of Goddess Justice and Goddess Humanity and for staunchly asserting the principle of strength, of conflict and of power”. And I am taking his side here, and that of Treitschke, because they both want strength and power, that we must arm ourselves with, to be strength and power of minds, of culture, of ethics and economics. I am taking their side because I believe that, if we were inept and cowardly and if we refused to take up arms of fire and steel and proved unwilling to sacrifice our lives, we would have earned our servitude. Why are we today standing in awe in front of the spectacle of France that indomitable wards off the almighty enemy? Yes, we do admire the great leaders and the marvelous soldiers in its army. But we were as much awe stricken by the revelation of a France that we believed decrepit, corrupt, plagued by an untreatable parliamentary degeneration, that instead proclaims loudly: better to die, better to be erased from the numbers of the free nations arms in our hands sacrificing up to the last man, rather than become a fat province of one world empire. It's the revelation of France, willing to fight to the last end, willing to live on, after victory, in poverty, that awakes our pride. It's the eleven battles of the Isonzo River and the resistance on Mt. Grappa and the victory on the River Piave that comfort and secure us in our belief that we too can defend with our armed hands our life ideals. It's an army of four million of English volunteers, of the free enthusiastic answer of Canadians, of South Africans, of Australians; it's the American renounce to the material advantages of neutrality, that give us the serene confidence that we are worthy guardians of our common spiritual inheritance. If we had demanded that the Germans bent their knees before talks of “immortal principles”, we would have been fools. Instead we want to be ourselves strong, mighty, fighting spirits and we want our enemy to witness that, as we are standing still with armed hands.

But what inspired us to take those arms and to sacrifice on a thousand battles' bloodied fields the crimson flowers of our greenest youth? No one is strong, no one is mighty, if they are not moved by some ideal, if their heart is not warmed by the fire of some distant goal. The Goddess Justice and the Goddess Nationality, laughed at by the philosophers of power, the “realist” intellectuals and politicians, who believe, with their thunderous steps in thick soled shoes, to be blessed with the subtle minds of a Machiavelli, have shown themselves to be two true, two great forces, when the peoples of the Entente have begun to sacrifice to their altars not words but blood. Power is never an end in itself, even moral or economical power; it's a mean to reach that ideal goal that the peoples in different times set for themselves. Nowadays that ideal goal is the establishment of justice in international relations. And that ideal is not an empty phrase, it's not chatter, a pure ideological turn of words: it's a force that has imbued our blood, that shapes our minds in its form, that drives us to action. We can proudly contrast the idea of a central European super-state, where the domineering race or class has the ambition to lead scores of subjects towards happiness, with that of a state organism, where the participating nations are truly equal, since in each of them there is an already well established principle of freedom of the citizens and of equality of the citizen to the foreigner. “Strangers enjoy the same civil rights granted to citizens” - here the immortal principle sanctioned by the Italian Civil Code since 1865; and eternal glory for Italy to have proclaimed it true and clear. […]