ESPAÑA POSICIONES

JOHN BULL IN THE CHINA CLOSET

During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries the British, having failed to persuade China to alter its business and diplomatic practices to their own liking, and aghast that the Chinese would dare attempt to interdict British narcotics trafficking, simply bullied their way into China and imposed their will on the hapless nation through brute force. The Opium War, fought between the two nations from 1840 to 1841, ended with British victory and the Treaty of Nanking, which compelled Qing China to cede the island of Hong Kong to the British crown in perpetuity, pay Britain an enormous war indemnity, and open several coastal cities to British residence and trade. The Opium War and its aftermath inaugurated China’s “Century of Humiliation,” which endured until 1949 and the final victory of the Chinese Communist revolution. During this long and challenging cen- tury, the British, and also other foreign powers following at their heels,

dominated but never quite subjugated the Chinese. China did manage to escape the utter ignominy of India, which was completely con- quered and incorporated into the British empire.

The main grievances the British had with the Chinese concerned commerce and diplomacy. Much to the dismay of anxious British merchants and investors, the Chinese trade restrictions were myriad. Since the mid-eighteenth century, trade had been restricted to the single port city of Canton (Guangzhou) in southern China, where trade could

be conducted only from October through January. British ships sailing to Canton were required to submit to numerous inspections, measure- ments, fees, and irregular tariffs. Venal Chinese functionaries hinted broadly that generous “presents” or bribes would grease the gears of commerce. Other expenses incurred involved the hiring of Chinese go-betweens, ship pilots, and linguists who communicated with the Westerners in a puerile language known as “pidgin” English, which applied English vocabulary to Chinese word order (which fortunately was largely the same as English). Items to be traded had to have been cleared and contracted for a year in advance, and prices for the goods were fixed by Chinese merchant guilds without open competition or bidding, to the great frustration of British and other Western traders who coveted maximum profit for their transactions. Western merchants had “factories” (actually warehouses) where they could stay while they traded, but they were not permitted to tarry in Canton for long and were expected to leave the city soon after they had concluded their business. They were not allowed to bring their wives to Canton, and their mobility in the city was restricted to a few hundred yards around their factories. They were also forbidden to communicate with Chinese government officials, draw undue attention to themselves, or learn the Chinese language. Qing law was another source of apprehension for the British, who found it incomprehensible and were terrified of the penalty (usually death by garroting) meted out for any number of legal infractions.

The British found it difficult and frustrating to communicate with the Chinese government about their grievances with the trading pro- cedure. On the two notable occasions when the British did present their grievances and requests directly to the Chinese government, dip- lomatic tensions arose when the two peoples discovered that their models and notions of diplomacy were vastly dissimilar. For the Brit- ish, as well as all other Western nations, diplomacy was conducted between equally sovereign and independent nation-states, each of which stationed full-time residential diplomats in other nations’ capital cities to facilitate official government-to-government contacts. This was not at all the way Qing China conducted foreign relations with its neighbors. The Chinese considered their country the center of world civilization, and all people were naturally drawn to China because of its wealth, prestige, and power. Accordingly, foreign coun- tries would dispatch envoys to China as humble tribute bearers who meekly petitioned for an audience with the emperor. While in China, the envoys would naturally perform the kowtow to the emperor. And when their diplomatic functions were concluded, the foreign envoys

might graciously be allowed to remain in China for a few days of trad- ing and sightseeing before being required to return to their native lands. Any notion of other nations being China’s equals or of foreign diplomats remaining in China indefinitely would have been unthink- able. Furthermore, the Qing government viewed involvement with commerce as beneath the dignity of the Chinese government; com- merce involved private contact between petty men concerned with profit, a somewhat ignoble motive in traditional Confucian moral esti- mations, and did not require government-to-government contact.

In short, neither nation had a full appreciation of the diplomatic sensibilities and norms to which the other subscribed. This became quite apparent in June 1793, when the British government sent Lord Macartney to the Qianlong emperor (r. 1736–1796) with a wish list for, among other things, residential diplomatic representation in Beijing, trade throughout China, and exemption for British subjects from Chinese legal jurisdiction. The Qing government received Macartney and his retinue as tribute bearers coming to congratulate the Qianlong emperor on the occasion of his 83rd birthday. Macartney, however, steadfastly refused to perform the kowtow, which would have led to a considerable diplomatic contretemps for both sides had the emperor not ultimately dispensed with the requirement.

The substance of Macartney’s requests were summarily denied in a highly condescending missive from Qianlong to King George III. One might well imagine how badly the smug ethnocentricity of this letter would have clashed with what the French have called la morgue britan- nique, or British haughtiness.

AN IMPERIAL EDICT TO THE KING OF ENGLAND:

You, O King, are so inclined toward our civilization that you have sent a special envoy across the seas to bring our Court your memorial of con- gratulations on the occasion of my birthday and to present your native products as an expression of your thoughtfulness. On perusing your memorial, so simply worded and sincerely conceived, I am impressed by your genuine respectfulness and friendliness and greatly pleased.

As to the request made in your memorial, O King, to send one of your nationals to stay at the Celestial Court to take care of your country’s trade with China, this is not in harmony with the state system of our dynasty and will definitely not be permitted.. . . There has never been a precedent for letting them do whatever they like.

The Celestial Court has pacified and possessed the territory within the four seas. Its sole aim is to do its utmost to achieve good government and to manage political affairs, attaching no value to strange jewels and precious objects. The various articles presented by you, O King, this

time are accepted by my special order to the office in charge of such functions in consideration of the offerings having come from a long dis- tance with sincere good wishes. As a matter of fact, the virtue and pres- tige of the Celestial Dynasty having spread far and wide, the kings of the myriad nations come by land and sea with all sorts of precious things. Consequently there is nothing we lack, as your principal envoy and others have themselves observed. We have never set much store on strange or ingenious objects, nor do we need any more of your coun- try’s manufactures.(Teng and Fairbank 1963, 19)

In 1816 Britain made one last attempt to alter China’s business and diplomatic practices peacefully. Lord Amherst, a former governor of India, traveled to China with a wish list more or less identical with Macartney’s. Like Macartney, he refused to perform the kowtow and was ultimately unsuccessful in his mission.

THE OPIUM WAR

The balance of Sino-British trade was very much in China’s favor throughout the eighteenth century. The Chinese commodity the British most desired was tea, but they also purchased large quantities of silk and porcelain. The Chinese purchased a few odd woolens and knick- knacks from the British, but it was mostly silver that flowed out of Britain and into China. Finally the British hit upon one commodity for which the Chinese would pay most handsomely: opium, a highly addictive narcotic that was usually smoked. British opium was pro- duced in Bengal and then sold to smugglers who ran the drug into Chinese harbors in small, fast boats under cover of night. Opium flowed into China in insignificant amounts during the eighteenth cen- tury, but by the early decades of the nineteenth century the opium habit began taking hold in southern China, and addiction rates soared exponentially, first equalizing the balance of trade between the two countries and then tipping it massively in Britain’s favor by the early 1830s. By the middle 1830s southern China’s opium problem was reaching crisis proportions. The British East India Company claimed all the while not to have anything officially to do with the opium trade, but it was an open secret that the British were now essentially dope pushers who were growing enormously wealthy at the expense of an addicted Chinese populace that would do and pay just about anything to sustain its drug habit. (Not to be outdone by their erstwhile colonial masters, some Americans in wealthy New England families increased their fortunes by selling opium made in Turkey to the Chinese.)

In 1834 the British East India Company was disbanded, and private traders made their moves to get in on the lucrative opium trade. Knowing that a multiplication of private British traders would require greater governmental facilitation, the British government sent Lord William John Napier to China as superintendent of trade, an official government position. Napier, a pompous and overbearing man from a family line that served British imperialist interests, was overly anx- ious to extend the dignity of the British crown and his own office to the Chinese. In presenting himself to the Chinese authorities in Canton he violated just about every Chinese sensibility and regulation imagi- nable, and when they were taken aback by his brusque demeanor he blustered that Britain was quite ready for war with China. He called in British warships and announced that he would “hand his name down to posterity as the man who had thrown open the wide field of the Chinese Empire to the British Spirit and Industry” (Hsu¨ 1990, 175). The spirited captains of British industry and commerce were con- siderably less enthusiastic about his saber rattling and the disruption of trade it produced, and they refused to support him. Napier eventu- ally backed off and returned in September to Macao, where he died the next month. After the Napier incident, the British government appointed Captain Charles Elliot superintendent of trade in 1836 and instructed him to be less confrontational in dealing with the Chinese. Elliot eventually engaged in open military conflict with China over opium.

By the late 1830s the Qing government decided, after a brief flirta- tion with the idea of legalizing the opium trade, to interdict opium. A fiery and energetic Chinese official named Lin Zexu was appointed imperial commissioner and sent to Canton as the emperor’s personal representative to rid China of the opium problem once and for all. Commissioner Lin arrived in Canton in March 1839 and gave the foreigners (mainly the British) a deadline for surrendering all their stockpiles of opium. When his deadline passed with no action, Lin blockaded the foreign factory area in Canton, trapping several foreigners inside, including Charles Elliot himself. After several weeks passed, a crisis atmosphere emerged as foreigners in the surrounded factories began running out of food and supplies. Then a remarkable idea dawned on Elliot: he would simply give Commissioner Lin exactly what he wanted. In his official capacity, Elliot issued a proclamation making all of the opium in Canton the property of the British crown, and no longer the property of the private traders. His motive was simple: if Commissioner Lin trifled with Crown property, it would be sheer

effrontery to Her Majesty. This in turn would constitute a Chinese provocation and serve as a perfect pretext and justification for war with the Chinese.

Now I, the said Chief Superintendent. . . do hereby, in the name and on the behalf of Her Britannic Majesty’s Government, enjoin and require all Her Majesty’s subjects now present in Canton, forthwith to make a surrender to me, for the service of Her Said Majesty’s Government, to be delivered over to the Government of China, of all the opium belonging to them or British opium under my control. . . and I. . . do now, in the most full and unreserved manner, hold myself responsible, for and on the behalf of Her Britannic Majesty’s Government, to all and each of Her Majesty’s subjects surrendering the said British-owned opium into my hands to be delivered over to the Chinese government.(H. Chang 1964, 264–65)

On June 6 (the Opium Prohibition Day formerly celebrated annually in Nationalist China), Commissioner Lin accepted the surrendered opium and destroyed it. Elliot then reported this “outrage” to the British government, and in the late 1839 he learned that a British expeditionary force would be sent to China. In early 1840, Britain declared war on China.

The expeditionary force did not arrive until June 1840, when British warships took the fight right to the emperor’s doorstep, anchoring off the shore of Tianjin, Beijing’s outlet to the sea. When Qishan, the Manchu governor-general of the region, persuaded the British to return south to Canton for talks without firing a shot, he was hand- somely rewarded by the Qing government and appointed to deal with the British. When the talks began, Qishan was aghast at British demands for payment of an indemnity for the lost opium and perma- nent cession of the island of Hong Kong, demands he knew Beijing would never accept. Ultimately unable to placate the British any further and unsuccessful at preventing a resumption of Sino-British hostilities, Qishan was recalled in disgrace and exiled to northern Manchuria.

Eventually a British naval force sailed up the Yangtze River to the city of Nanjing and poised itself to bombard the city if a formal peace agree- ment were not forthcoming. The thought of this was more than the Qing government could bear, and in August 1841 the Treaty of Nanking was concluded aboard a British ship anchored outside Nanjing. The treaty provided for the formal cession of Hong Kong in perpetuity to the British Crown, the opening of five other port cities along China’s

southern and eastern coasts to British trade, payment to a large indem- nity, abolition of the trade restrictions disliked by the British, and a uni- form tariff. A subsequent agreement gave the British some measure of extraterritoriality, or exemption from Chinese legal jurisdiction.

For the Chinese, the Opium War was about just that: opium. They had not asked the British to come to China, after all, and yet they were willing to accommodate Britain’s insatiable appetite for commerce as long as the British respected Chinese ways and ceased selling danger- ous and addictive narcotics. The British, on the other hand, insisted that the Opium War was fought because of China’s obstreperous impedance of commerce, indignities offered the Crown, and refusal to bend to Britain’s diplomatic norms. The British pretended that opium itself was a mere epiphenomenon compared to these larger issues, and they won their point through simple force of arms.

As the first of the humiliating “unequal treaties” imposed on China by imperialist powers, the Treaty of Nanking endures in infamy in the modern Chinese nationalistic consciousness. This was the treaty that began it all, that led to China’s descent from the rarified heights of the Celestial Court to a terrestrial nadir as the “Sick Man of Asia.” The British had drawn first blood in China, and soon other Western nations smelled the blood in the water. In July 1844 the Treaty of Wanghsia was concluded with the Americans, and in October 1844, the Treaty of Whampoa with the French. The rest of the nineteenth century was a time of sustained nibbling away at the edges of the Qing empire by imperialist powers (mainly Britain, Russia, and Japan) in specific instances too numerous to discuss in detail in this brief narra- tive. With the Treaty of Nanking, China’s Century of Humiliation had begun, one that would be compounded synergistically in future deca- des by internal upheavals.

The Opium War did not solve all of the friction between Britain and China, and the Treaty of Nanking did not provide for Britain’s ulti- mate goal of diplomatic representation in Beijing itself. Even though other coastal cities or “treaty ports” were opened to British commerce and residence as per the Treaty of Nanking, the city of Canton refused to admit the British. Attempts to open Canton and extend trade to other Chinese cities were unsuccessful, and by the mid-1850s the British had concluded once again that only war would convince China to bend to their demands. All the British needed was a causus belli, a provocation to justify military action. This came on October 8, 1856, not this time as an indignity to the Crown, but to the flag. The Arrow, a Chinese-owned but British-registered ship flying the British flag, was boarded near Canton by Chinese forces searching for a wanted

pirate. When the British protested the boarding, the Chinese coolly informed them that this was none of their affair: the ship was owned by Chinese and was boarded by Chinese in Chinese waters. The ship’s flag was all that mattered to the British, and in response they shelled Canton for five days in late October. After this the British sent Lord Elgin (who had been Governor-General of Canada from 1847 to 1854) at the head of another expeditionary force, this time joined by the French, to chastise the Chinese. In December 1857, marines under Elgin’s command stormed Canton, captured the defiant and xenopho- bic governor-general who resided there, and carried him away in cap- tivity to British India. Elgin’s force then sailed northward to Tianjin in early 1858 and menaced the city. The terrified Qing government sent negotiators to deal with the British, and Elgin bullied them into sign- ing the Treaty of Tientsin on June 26, 1858. The treaty provided for res- idential British diplomacy in Beijing, the opening of several new ports, indemnities for Britain and France, and unrestricted travel through all parts of China for all foreigners, including Protestant and Catholic missionaries. (Before the treaty, missionaries and other foreigners had been allowed only in the treaty ports.)

But the fighting was not over yet. In March 1859 the Qing government