#318 - Opium War 3: Up In Smoke

You're listening to an Airwave Media Podcast. Hello, and welcome to the History of China. Episode 318 Up in Smoke A war more unjust in its origin, a war more calculated in its progress to cover this

country with permanent disgrace I do not know and have not read of. William Gladstone, the House of Commons, 1839. By what reason then should these foreigners send in return a poisonous drug which involves in destruction those very natives of China?

Lin Zaxu to Queen Victoria, 1840. If your people are virtuous, they will desist from the evil practice. And if your officers are incorruptible and obey their orders, no opium can enter your country.

Sir Henry Pottinger, to chain negotiators, 1842. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious.

I'm ready for anything. Obi-Wan Kenobi to Luke Skywalker, year zero BBY. Last time we went through the odyssey of Lord Napier's three weeks in China,

culminating with him trying his level best to touch off a war all by himself, only to quickly succumb to malaria. Napier's unmitigated failure,

as grandiose in ambition as it was doomed from the outset, nevertheless left both empires with lasting lessons. For the Qing government, they understood the incident as a reaffirmation

of their system and methods of controlling the barbarians, that the British were, at the end of the day, just like any other foreign traders, subject to the immutable laws of the realm and able to easily be held hostage should

China but blockade access to the Canton Factory District. The Englishmen had, after all the racket they'd stirred up, eventually towed the line and removed Napier back to Macau where he belonged. They had complied.

Therefore, the system had held. The British, on the other hand, took a markedly different lesson away from William Napier's humiliating failure. been forced to back down alright, but not because his aims had been particularly off, or even wrong.

Young Brash Napier, many in Britain and especially among its traders felt, had had his heart in the right place, even if he had technically gone against his standing orders. In essence, it wasn't that Napier had broken the law that was the problem. In British it was much more that the Chinese had been impetent enough to actually enforce those laws against him.

And the reason that he'd failed, and thus the union's reputation and prestige itself had been so tarnished, wasn't because he'd done anything out of sorts, or broken the law. No, it was just that he didn't have enough backup to pull it off. He'd been absolutely right about the Canton system.

It sucked, and it kept Britain out of the very Chinese markets they were desperate to sell to. to. It had to go. The goods must be allowed in. The opium must flow. And who were the Ching to try to stop it? Rather, the British's great mistake in 1834, according to their own understandings, was that Napier hadn't had access to enough shock and awe to actually

get the job done. And they resolved they wouldn't come so ill-equipped the next time they might need to force their way past the poor authority. Now in the immediate aftermath of the Napier Affairs fallout, the British did make a show of falling back into line like good little tributary petitioners.

They achieved this through the appointment of John Francis Davis as the poor late Napier's replacement as Chief Superintendent. Davis, as we left off with last time, had won the job by assuring the foreign Secretary, Lord Palmerston, that he, unlike Napier's brash impetuousness, would pursue

quote, absolute silence and quiescence, end quote, toward the Qing government, while ever awaiting further instructions from home. He was in almost every respect precisely the man that the British government had said that they'd wanted for the post at Canton.

And as a result, he was quickly despised by the greater part of his fellow countrymen. From Wakeman, quote, This quiescent policy did not please the country traders in Canton, and after enduring three months of their carping criticism of his spinelessness, Davis resigned.

His successor served quietly throughout 1835 and 36, waiting for instructions that never came. He had only one thought, keep trade going, even if this meant accepting all its restrictions. End quote.

This of course didn't sit well with the British free traders at all. The markets were booming now more than ever before, and they demanded a far freer hand than whatever thin pittance the Hoppo, as a reminder the Canton customs had, allowed them.

Trade had increased significantly in naked dollar value since the abolition of the East India Company monopoly, but that was largely not due to increased volume of sales, but to soaring prices in Canton itself. The total value of American and English imports increased by 64% in just five years between

1832 and 37 to more than $37 million, while exports grew by 79% to nearly $35 million per year. But this wasn't all good news. In fact, despite the number lines going up, it was actually quite worrying.

Quote, the English traders were having a hard enough time underselling the millings of Lowell, Massachusetts, not to speak of having to pay higher and higher prices for Chinese goods. This inflation was a sign of Western trading weakness for the abolition of the English monopoly really meant the end of effective corporate bargaining power

and credit devices which had kept prices down." They didn't know how good they'd had it in their economic monopoly hot house, until they broke it and accidentally let the ruthlessness of a free market back in.

It turns out you don't get better deals as 1,000 freelancers all vying against one another than as a single unified block. But it's got worse from there. With no more EIC Monopoly, there was no longer any single group of English company representatives

to aid in the protection of the individual Hongists from the levees of the Hoppo. Free trade therefore removed an important prop from Chinese mercantilism and thereby through the Canton system entirely out of order.