What I Am Reading: "Imperial Twilight" by Stephen R. Platt

This book about the Opium War was mostly about things other than the war itself. Most of the book covers the background and run-up to war; then the war is fought largely off-screen; then a chapter deals with the fallout. This is more important history than the war itself, which basically involved one-sided slaughters of Chinese forces by the British from 1839 to 1842.

The Opium War is remembered as the war fought to open Chinese trade to British opium producers, perpetuating a massive drug problem in the country. The actual story is a little more complex. The British East India Company (EIC) had a trading arrangement with the Qing Empire centered on the port of Canton starting in the mid-18th century. British and other foreign traders were only allowed to work in their small compound, and were hemmed in to the point of not being allowed to learn Chinese, or travel beyond the city. The first part of the book covers this arrangement as it was tested and slightly expanded over a few decades, with the first British Chinese speakers making slight progress in cultural exchange. Diplomatic efforts went less smoothly, with efforts in 1793 by envoy George Macartney and in 1816 by Lord Amherst foundering on the rocks of stilted Qing diplomatic protocol. This was just fine by the East India Company, as they were wedded to the status quo on trade of silks for tea, and any more violent incidents were resolved peaceably as the Chinese threatened to cut off trade.

The book is largely the story of the gradual evolution of this relationship. The decades preceding the Opium War were marked by British ascendance and by Qing stagnation. In Platt's telling, the Chinese, having expanded their territory under the long reign of the Qianlong Emperor in the latter part of the 18th century, were suffering from overpopulation. This was especially a problem for the Mandarin class of scholar-bureaucrats, who administered the empire after passing through a battery of examinations based on Confucian political theory. As a side-note, I'll usually read anything accessible about the Mandarin class; this book wasn't too chronologically far removed from my favorite, The Class of 1761 by Iona Man-Cheong. Anyway, by this time, the scholar-bureaucrats also had a glut of talent, or at least of applicants; and the expenses necessary to network one’s way to a government post meant that graft and corruption were at an all-time high to pay off, essentially, student loans. This was made obvious by a failure to speedily put down the White Lotus Rebellion in the last years of the century, a peasant uprising that was itself caused by burdensome corruption of local officials. Similarly, a pirate uprising in the same era was bought off, and not crushed. These patchwork fixes, and the corruption that both caused them and was fostered by them (with massive sums of imperial money going to armies and militias that only existed on paper), meant that the empire's finances were in disarray. The best that the successive Emperors could do was hold the line, not to enact any reforms or improvements in the face of unrest, famines, depression, or other troubles.

The British, meanwhile, were riding high from beating Napoleon, especially in the realm of naval strength. In an interesting historiography note, Francophobia and the victory over Napoleon played a role in changing British views of China: a positive view of China as rationalist and enlightened, brought back by French missionaries and propagated by writers like Voltaire, was no longer trusted, especially after British embassies to the country foundered on the question of whether they should kowtow in submission to a foreign ruler. Translations of the harsh Qing legal code did not help the popularity contest.

Meanwhile, there was Opium: the drug had in fact been illegal in China for over a century, and at first was mainly a luxury drug for the upper classes. However, in the 1820s, the East India Company massively increased its supply of the drug, to compete with independent Indian suppliers. This expansion meant the drug spread throughout Chinese society. The EIC had a monopoly on British trade between India and Europe, and between Europe and China, but did not have a monopoly on the trade between India and China. Therefore, independent traders were able to run this route, and most of them smuggled opium under the table. The Company did not involve itself in the illegal trade directly, but it was the supplier of the drug.

In the face of increased importation and use, the Chinese, under the Daoguang Emperor, sought a policy solution. It wasn’t just a public health issue: opium was paid for in silver taels (a unit of weight), and this silver legally could not then be turned around to purchase Chinese goods; these could only be purchased with foreign silver (from Latin America usually). Thus, opium was causing a drain on the country's silver supply, leading to inflation of the other Chinese currency, copper coins (used by peasants for smaller units of trade). One Chinese official popular at the time was Bao Shichen, a lower-level Han official who focused more on practical statecraft and administration than the Confucian classics that the imperial examination tested for. He wanted to, among other things, shut down trade entirely, and go full protectionist, in order to fix the silver issue (which was by then exacerbated by a worldwide silver crisis, caused by Latin American independence movements).

The big change, however, came on the British side of the coin, as the East India Company's monopoly on trade was not renewed by Parliament in 1833, in the face of new industrial interests given more power by the Reform Act. One of the book's long-running characters, George Staunton, was by then a member of Parliament; he had been the son of an official on the first British mission in the 1790s, and had been left by his father in China as a young man to learn the language and climb the lonely EIC ladder. Staunton tried to speak in favor of the monopoly, but was such a wallflower that his speech was interrupted because too many Members had left the chamber. Staunton was a recognized China expert, however, and one of those who respected the Chinese. He opposed the kowtow for this reason; while the more mercenary didn't mind if it were performed, as they viewed it as a hollow gesture to placate a less-advanced civilization. Staunton also failed to pass an amendment that would see a transition period so that the Chinese could make agreements and rules concerning new, independent traders. These flooded into Canton, bringing increased Opium traffic with them. They also formed a constituency for a more forceful hand in China, instead of accommodating the rules of the Chinese government. This especially increased in 1834 after a new diplomatic liaison, Lord Napier, overstepped his tightly-proscribed (“don’t rock the boat”) boundaries to demand a meeting with the Chinese regional governor, with the hopes of expanding trade. He was rebuffed, and had his ships shell several Chinese forts, but was forced, without any support, to retreat.

On the opium policy front, the Chinese government had until this point been lenient on users of opium, and their efforts to move against sophisticated smuggling networks was hamstrung by corrupt local officials, distant from the capital’s control. In 1836, a paper by academic Wu Lanxiu proposing legalization of the drug was forwarded to the Emperor by Lu Kun, the governor of the Canton region (whom Lord Napier had been frustrated in his efforts to meet). The cause was then taken up by minister Xu Naiji, but stalled out for several years as enforcement against dealers continued. The new British boss in Canton, Charles Elliot, was no friend of the independent traders (i.e. opium smugglers), and hoped that the widespread opium availability would end their power. Elliot had formerly held the position of Protector of Slaves in British Guyana, part of the administrative prelude to the British Empire's abolition of slavery (many veterans of the cause would come to oppose the opium trade). A staple of British policy, carried over from the EIC days, was that they were going to allow the Chinese to enforce their own laws in their own territory. Instead of legalization, though, the Emperor decided on a greater crackdown on distributors and now consumers, the idea of imperial official Huang Juezi. In Canton, led by new governor Deng Tingzhen, enforcement efforts had effective for a few years in suppressing the trade on the Chinese side, and British traders (who normally handed over the opium early in the process) increasingly put themselves in harm's way. To focus efforts at the source of the opium supply, the Emperor sent wunderkind administrator Lin Zexu, a strong prohibitionist, as his commissioner in 1838. The latter endorsed these legal efforts aimed at the drug users, albeit after a grace period where they were provided medical help to get clean. His work had found success elsewhere in the empire, and ending the problem in Canton was the new priority.

Upon arrival in Canton, Lin Zexu cracked down immediately, including a demand that British merchants hand over their supply. This was backed by use of force, including a blockade of the factory quarter, and executions of dealers staged in the square. Charles Elliot freaked out a bit in the face of this threat, and bought all opium in British hands with unauthorized promissory notes. Envisioning the impending end of the opium trade, Elliot seems to have used the same policy that facilitated the end of slavery: compensation of owners for lost property. The massive amount of cargo handed over seems to have emboldened Lin Zexu, who likely anticipated a token load. However, Canton stayed entirely blockaded while the opium was recalled from the foreign ports it had been scrambled to, which took weeks. Elliot viewed this as a heavy-handed betrayal of terms, bordering on despotism. He joined the independent merchants and free traders (i.e. drug smugglers) in demanding war to open the port back up to legitimate trade.

This forced Foreign Minister Lord Palmerston's hand as nothing else had in the past. His and previous administrations had been satisfied with the restricted Canton status quo, having ordered Napier and others on the spot not to push for any change; but a total shutdown of trade destabilized the situation, and reparations from China could repay the new opium debt that the British government now found itself on the hook for, courtesy of Charles Elliot. Plus, as was always a consideration (especially rhetorically), this pushing around had damaged British national honor and pride. A naval squadron was dispatched in October of 1839. It included orders for Elliot to push for considerable trade access (as free traders had demanded), since this was probably the only chance they'd get to deal with this policy sideshow.

The British public had considerable objection to this "Opium War," and Melbourne/Palmerston's government only survived a motion of no confidence by a few votes. Old China Hand George Staunton supported it; he did not like the opium smugglers and did like the Chinese, but viewed the equal relationship as having been destabilized. Even the eventually-ubiquitous Gladstone, early in his career, opposed the vote, but not quite enough Whigs crossed the aisle on moral grounds. Initially, the war just involved the flotilla blasting its way up the White River, and then Elliot launching into negotiations. However, he did not push the heavy free-trade planks, was recalled for insubordination, and the war resumed. This produced three years of bloody battles where the British sickened themselves by slaughtering the outmatched Chinese, though the Qing government did not receive accurate military reports from its sycophants and never re-calibrated its efforts. A new Conservative government sent more forces, and after Nanjing was threatened, the Chinese capitulated in August of 1842.

The resulting treaty opened five Chinese cities to trade, got the British Hong Kong, and other concessions. The war was never popular (in Britain or in America, despite American traders benefiting), and especially in retrospect it was viewed as a black mark by the British, though it wasn't until the Republican era that the Chinese came to view it as the beginning of their debasement at the hands of foreigners. Opium came to be legalized in China after the second Opium War in 1858, and eventually Chinese and Indian growers would squeeze European traders out of the market, despite a spiraling public health crisis.

I liked this book, or the history within it, because it was about policy: the British policy to accommodate the Canton restrictions in order to maintain lucrative trade (especially in tea); the Chinese policies on opium's legality, and enforcement against its trade; Chinese policy on the use of silver that caused the silver from the drug trade to leave the country; Qing civil service reform (or the lack thereof) and good-enough suppression of festering rebellions. All of it rings true as a picture of the policy-making and administrative process. Change is begrudging, haphazard, incidental, and incremental in the face of the status quo, always too expensive, until things are shaken by a dramatic event (no matter how predictable that event was in hindsight). I especially liked the views into the Chinese government, both from my fascination with the old meritocracy and as a general peek beyond the British perspective. It was a good rendering of a complicated historical event, and I would definitely read the author again.