38. Ibid.
39. Ibid.
40. Heat wave reported in the Commercial Advertiser, January 19, 1835.
41. Eliza Morrison, Life and Labours, vol. 2, p. 524.
42. As Palmerston wrote to Napier’s widow in 1840, “I think Lord Napier misconceived the Instruction to go to Canton; which meant only that he should go thither in the usual manner, and was not intended to imply that he should go up from Macao without the ordinary Formalities of Passports, etc.” Palmerston to Elizabeth Napier, April 5, 1840. Palmerston Papers, GC/NA/20/enc 1, University of Southampton.
43. Eliza Morrison, Life and Labours, vol. 2, p. 526.
44. As related in memorial from Lu Kun, DG14/8/28 (September 30, 1834), in Qi Sihe et al., eds., Yapian zhanzheng (Shanghai: Xin zhishi chubanshe, 1955), vol. 1, p. 119.
45. Napier to Palmerston, August 8, 1834, in Correspondence relating to China (1840), p. 8.
46. Ibid., p. 9.
47. George Thomas Staunton, Remarks on the British Relations with China, and the Proposed Plans for Improving Them (London: Edmund Lloyd, 1836), p. 38.
48. Correspondence relating to China (1840), pp. 25, 47, 62, 65 (capitalization changed for consistency).
49. Napier to Margaret Heron Maxwell, August 6, 1834, letter in possession of the Clan Napier Society.
50. Napier to Charles Grant, August 14, 1834, in Napier notebook, “Letters to Earl Grey, Lord Palmerston and Others.”
51. Napier to Palmerston, August 14, 1834, in Correspondence relating to China (1840), pp. 11–15, see p. 12.
52. Ibid., pp. 12–14.
53. Napier to Palmerston, August 27, 1834, in Correspondence relating to China (1840), p. 29.
54. “Present state of relations between China and Great Britain—Interesting to the Chinese merchants—A true and official Document,” in Correspondence relating to China (1840), p. 33.
55. Per account given in Johnston to Astell, October 11, 1834, PRO FO 17/12/180–85.
56. Napier letter for communication to the Chinese authorities and Hong merchants, September 8, 1834, in Correspondence relating to China (1840), pp. 35–36.
57. Duke of Wellington to Lord Napier, February 2, 1835, PRO FO 17/8/2. Wellington was serving briefly as foreign secretary after a change of government, though after yet another change Palmerston would soon be returned to the position.
58. John F. Davis to George Staunton, October 20, 1834, PRO FO 17/12/101–3. In his eyewitness account, Davis said each vessel fired 350 rounds of shot.
59. James Goddard, Remarks on the Late Lord Napier’s Mission to Canton; in Reference to the Present State of our Relations with China, printed for private circulation (London, 1836), pp. 8–9.
60. Napier to Palmerston (postscript), August 17, 1834, in Correspondence relating to China (1840), pp. 15–16, quotation on p. 16.
61. Napier’s widow was especially angry at the other British for turning against her husband. Lord Napier’s negotiations, she wrote in a letter home, would have succeeded “had not selfish interests and party spirit interfered, and given the Chinese courage to hold out by showing them that disunion prevailed among the British merchants.” Their refusal to support Napier, she added, “is well known here.” Lady Napier to Alexander Hunter, November 4, 1834, PRO FO 17/12/191–95.
CHAPTER 11 Means of Solution
1. Joyce Madancy, The Troublesome Legacy of Commissioner Lin: The Opium Trade and Opium Suppression in Fujian Province, 1820s to 1920s (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2003), p. 51, citing Lin Renchuan, “Qingdai Fujian de yapian maoyi,” Zhongguo shehui jingji yanjiu, vol. 1 (Xiamen: Fujian xinwen): 62–71, see pp. 63–65.
2. Philip Kuhn, Rebellion and Its Enemies in Late Imperial China: Militarization and Social Structure, 1796–1864 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971), pp. 106–7; “Yin bingding xishi yapian zhishi lianzhou jinbing buneng deli zhaozhong chu Li Hongbing deng shangyu,” in Yapian zhanzheng dang’an shiliao (Shanghai: Renmin chubanshe, 1987), vol. 1, p. 130; James Polachek, The Inner Opium War (Cambridge, MA: Council on East Asian Studies/Harvard University Press, 1992), p. 109.
3. “Formosa,” Canton Register, October 24, 1833.
4. “Formosa,” Chinese Courier and Canton Gazette, March 22, 1832.
5. Philip Kuhn and Susan Mann, “Dynastic Decline and the Roots of Rebellion,” in The Cambridge History of China, vol. 10, Late Ch’ing, 1800–1911, Part 1, ed. John K. Fairbank and Denis Twitchett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), pp. 107–62 and passim; Ts’ui-jung Liu, “A Retrospection of Climate Changes and their Impacts in Chinese History,” in Nature, Environment and Culture in East Asia: The Challenge of Climate Change, ed. Carmen Meinert (Leiden: Brill, 2013), pp. 107–36, see p. 132.
6. Lin Man-houng, China Upside Down: Currency, Society, and Ideologies, 1808–1856 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2006), p. 107.
7. Ibid., pp. 86–87.
8. William T. Rowe, “Money, Economy, and Polity in the Daoguang-Era Paper Currency Debates,” Late Imperial China 31, no. 2 (December 2010): 69–96, see p. 70.
9. Hosea Ballou Morse, The Chronicles of the East India Company Trading to China, 1635–1834 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1926), vol. 4, pp. 259–60. On the melting down of sycee in London, see John Phipps, A Practical Treatise on the China and Eastern Trade (London: Wm. H. Allen and Co., 1836), p. 168.
10. Richard von Glahn, “Cycles of Silver in Chinese Monetary History,” in The Economy of Lower Yangzi Delta in Late Imperial China, ed. Billy K. L. So (New York: Routledge, 2013), pp. 17–71, see pp. 45–46.
11. Ibid., p. 54; Rowe, “Money, Economy, and Polity,” pp. 71–72.
12. Lin, China Upside Down, pp. 107–14. According to Lin, by the 1850s China’s own silver supplies would recover, even as far more opium was by then being purchased from abroad, lending weight to the argument that the opium trade had in fact been only incidental to the monetary crisis of the 1830s.
13. Daoguang edict of DG14/9/3 (October 5, 1834), in Da Qing Xuanzong Cheng (Daoguang) huangdi shilu (Taipei: Taiwan Huawen shuju, 1964), juan 256, pp. 3b–5b, quotation on p. 4b.
14. Lu Kun memorial of DG14/10/3 (November 3, 1834), in Qi Sihe et al., eds., Yapian zhanzheng (Shanghai: Xin zhishi chubanshe, 1955) (hereafter YPZZ), vol. 1, pp. 118–19.
15. Liang Tingnan, Yifen wenji, in YPZZ, vol. 6, pp. 1–104, see p. 7.
16. Wu Lanxiu, “Mihai,” in Liang, Yifen wenji, in YPZZ, vol. 6, pp. 6–7.
17. Liang, Yifen wenji, in YPZZ, vol. 6, p. 7.
18. Paul Howard, “Opium Suppression in Qing China: Responses to a Social Problem, 1729–1906” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1998), pp. 104–5.
19. Report from the Select Committee of the House of Commons on the Affairs of the East-India Company, 16th August, 1832 (London: J. L. Cox and Son, 1833), p. 89. Staunton registered his “entire disapproval” of that resolution in George Staunton, Corrected Report of the Speech of Sir George Staunton, on Sir James Graham’s Motion on the China Trade (London: Edmund Lloyd, 1840), p. 10.
20. Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates, 3rd series (London: T. C. Hansard), HC Deb., June 13, 1833, vol. 18, c. 770.
21. Charles Marjoribanks, Letter to the Right Hon. Charles Grant, President of the Board of Controul, on the Present State of British Intercourse with China (London: J. Hatchard and Son, 1833), p. 16.
22. Ibid., p. 17.
23. As Gutzlaff wrote in 1838, “The illicit trade in opium cannot be excused in any way. The drug is destructive of health, and highly demoralizing to the consumer; thousands, by a momentary enjoyment, lose the happiness of a whole life, and find a premature grave.” Charles (Karl) Gutzlaff, China Opened (London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1838), vol. 2, p. 73.
24. Robert Philip and Thomas Thompson, No Opium! or: Commerce and Christianity Working Together for Good in China (London: Thomas Ward and Co., 1835); the pamphlet was anonymous, but authorship is given in a memoir of Robert Philip by his son. See Robert Philip, M
anly Piety: A Book for Young Men (London: William P. Nimmo, 1879), p. 36.
25. Phipps and Thompson, No Opium!, p. 7.
26. Ibid., pp. 10, 13.
27. Ibid., p. 56.
28. “The Petition of the Undermentioned British Subjects at Canton,” December 9, 1834, UK National Archives, Public Record Office, Foreign Office records (hereafter PRO FO), 17/12/251–52.
29. Houqua to John Perkins Cushing, October 10, 1834, Forbes Family Business Records, vol. F-5, p. 98, Baker Library, Harvard Business School.
30. John Murray Forbes to Joshua Bates, September 20, 1834, ibid., vol. F-6, p. 23.
31. John Murray Forbes to John Perkins Cushing, December 22, 1834, ibid., vol. F-6, n.p. (changing “Viceroy” to “governor-general”).
32. John Barrow to John Backhouse (private), March 13, 1834, PRO FO 17/12/172–73.
33. John F. Davis, trans., The Fortunate Union: A Romance (London: Printed for the Oriental Translation Fund, 1829), p. vi.
34. Palmerston to Napier, January 25, 1834, states that any vacancies in the committee should be filled with other members of the former Company factory; PRO FO 17/5/69.
35. John F. Davis to George Staunton, October 20, 1834, PRO FO 17/12/101–2.
36. Davis to Palmerston, January 19, 1835, in Correspondence relating to China. Presented to both Houses of Parliament, by Command of Her Majesty, 1840 (London: T. R. Harrison, 1840), pp. 78–80, quotation on p. 80.
37. Davis to Palmerston, January 2, 1835, ibid., p. 76.
38. “Imperial Edict, against extortions of Hong Merchants under the name of Duties, and against incurring debts to Foreigners,” enclosure to ibid., p. 77.
39. Lady Napier to Alexander Hunter, Macao, November 4, 1834, PRO FO 17/12/194.
40. Richard J. Grace, Opium and Empire: The Lives and Careers of William Jardine and James Matheson (Montreal and Kingston: McGill–Queen’s University Press, 2014), p. 166.
41. Matheson to Jardine from London, July 8, 1835, Jardine Matheson Archive, JM B-10, Cambridge University.
42. See, for example, her letter to Palmerston of April 20, 1835, PRO FO 17/12/257–59.
43. Lady Napier to Palmerston, Castle Craig, July 14, 1835, PRO FO 17/12/346–48.
44. Matheson to Jardine, August 24, 1835, in Alain Le Pichon, ed., China Trade and Empire: Jardine, Matheson & Co. and the Origins of British Rule in Hong Kong, 1827–1843 (Oxford: Oxford University Press for the British Academy, 2006), p. 271.
45. Matheson to Jardine from London, August 1, 1835, Jardine Matheson Archive, JM B-10, Cambridge University.
46. Lady Napier to Hugh Hamilton Lindsay, January 18, 1836, Lindsay Papers, D(W)1920-4-1, Staffordshire Records Office, Stafford, England.
47. Le Pichon, China Trade and Empire, p. 376, n. 65.
48. James Matheson, The Present Position and Prospects of the British Trade with China (London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1836), p. 1.
49. Ibid., quotations from pp. 5, 6, and 79–80.
50. Hugh Hamilton Lindsay, Letter to the Right Honourable Viscount Palmerston on British Relations with China (London: Saunders and Otley, 1836), quotations from pp. 3, 4, 6, and 19.
51. George Staunton, Remarks on the British Relations with China, and the Proposed Plans for Improving Them (London: Edmund Lloyd, 1836), quotations from pp. 1, 7, 11, and 24.
52. Ibid., p. 28.
53. Xu Naiji, “Yapian yan lijin yuyan liubi yuda yingji qing biantong banli zhe,” in Qi Sihe, ed., Huang Juezi zoushu, Xu Naiji zouyi hekan (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1959), pp. 216–18.
54. Dai Xueji, ed., Yapian zhanzheng renwu zhuan (Fuzhou: Fujian jiaoyu chubanshe, 1985), p. 38; “Teng T’ing-chen,” in Arthur W. Hummel, ed., Eminent Chinese of the Ch’ing Period (Taipei: SMC Publishing, Inc., 1991), vol. 2, pp. 716–17.
55. Deng Tingzhen memorial in response to Xu Naiji, in Chouban yiwu shimo, ed. Wen Qing et al. (Beijing: Gugong bowuyuan, 1929–30), Daoguang juan 1, pp. 5b, 6b.
CHAPTER 12 The Last Honest Man
1. Charles Elliot report of March 7, 1832, from Office of Protector of Slaves, in Papers Presented to Parliament, by His Majesty’s Command, in Explanation of the Measures Adopted by His Majesty’s Government for the Melioration of the Condition of the Slave Population in His Majesty’s Possessions in the West Indies, on the Continent of South America, and at the Mauritius (Printed by order of the House of Commons, August 8 1832), pp. 241–44, see p. 244. On Elliot’s becoming an abolitionist: as he wrote to a friend in government in 1832, “What should be given to the Slaves is such a state of FREEDOM as they are now fit for.” Charles Elliot to Lord Howick, 1832, excerpt, in Kenneth Ball and W. P. Morrell, eds., Select Documents on British Colonial Policy, 1830–1860 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1928), p. 382.
2. Charles Elliot to his sister Emma Hislop, January 25, 1834, Minto Papers, MS 13135, National Library of Scotland.
3. Ibid.
4. Elliot to his sister, May 10, 1834, ibid.
5. Elliot’s promotion: “Official Notification,” Canton Register, October 28, 1834. Strong liking: as Elliot bragged to his sister, “Our intercourse has been very intimate, and publicly very confidential”: Elliot to his sister, January 19, 1835, Minto Papers, MS 13135, National Library of Scotland. “Duck my head”: Elliot to George Lenox-Conyngham, March 18, 1837, UK National Archives, Public Record Office, Foreign Office records (hereafter PRO FO), 17/20/56–57. Resigned preemptively: John F. Davis to George Staunton, October 20, 1835, PRO FO 17/12/101–3. Right kind of “temper”: Davis to Palmerston, December 9, 1834, PRO FO 17/6/222. Better if Elliot had been superintendent: Davis to John Barrow, November 8, 1834, PRO FO 17/12/176. “Uneasy for the state of affairs”: Davis to Palmerston, June 26, 1835, PRO FO 17/12/341.
6. Elliot to George Lenox-Conyngham, January 28, 1836 (rec’d at Foreign Office June 6, 1836), PRO FO 17/15/7–13, see fol. 13; W. C. Costin, Great Britain and China, 1833–1860 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1937), p. 32.
7. Petition from the “East India and China Association,” June 29, 1836, PRO FO 17/16/142–44.
8. Palmerston to the Treasury, November 8, 1836, PRO FO 17/17/160–64.
9. Elliot to his sister, April 28, 1835, Minto Papers, MS 13135, National Library of Scotland; Susanna Hoe and Derek Roebuck, The Taking of Hong Kong: Charles and Clara Elliot in China Waters (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press, 1999), p. 46.
10. Daoguang’s edict approving of Elliot coming to Canton under the taipan regulations, dated DG17/zheng/18 (February 12, 1838), is in Yapian zhanzheng dang’an shiliao (Shanghai: Renmin chubanshe, 1987), vol. 1, p. 226.
11. Elliot to Palmerston, December 14, 1836 (rec’d May 1, 1837), in Correspondence relating to China. Presented to both Houses of Parliament, by Command of Her Majesty, 1840 (London: T. R. Harrison, 1840), p. 139.
12. Clara Elliot to Emma Hislop, November 4, 1839, Minto Papers, MS 13137, National Library of Scotland.
13. Elliot to Palmerston, January 25, 1836 (rec’d June 6, 1836), PRO FO 17/15/3–7, quotation on fol. 5.
14. Elliot to Palmerston, February 2, 1837 (rec’d Jul. 17, 1837), in Correspondence relating to China (1840), p. 153.
15. PRO FO 17/24 is fully dedicated to Gutzlaff’s reports from 1835 to 1837.
16. “Remarks on the Opium Trade with China,” Chinese Repository 5, no. 6 (November 1836): 300.
17. “If my private feelings were of the least consequence,” he wrote to Palmerston at one point, “. . . I might justly say, that no man entertains a deeper detestation of the disgrace and sin of this forced traffic on the coast of China than the humble individual who signs this despatch.” He saw “little to choose between it and piracy.” Elliot to Palmerston, November 16, 1839, in Additional Papers Relating to China. Presented to both Houses of Parliament by Command of Her Majesty, 1840 (London: T. R. Harrison, 1840), pp. 3–5, quotation on p. 5.
18. Elliot to Palmerston, February 21, 1837, in Correspondence relating to China (1840), pp. 189–90.
19. William C. Hunter, Bits of Old China (Lo
ndon: Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., 1885), p. 270.
20. Harriet Low Hillard, Lights and Shadows of a Macao Life: The Journal of Harriett [sic] Low, Traveling Spinster, ed. Nan P. Hodges and Arthur W. Hummel (Woodinville, WA: The History Bank, 2002), vol. 1, pp. 14–15.
21. John Murray Forbes to his wife, Sarah Forbes, February 20, 1835, in Reminiscences of John Murray Forbes, ed. Sarah Forbes Hughes (Boston: George H. Ellis, 1902), vol. 1, p. 192.
22. John Murray Forbes to Sarah Forbes, July 11, 1835, in John Murray Forbes, Letters (supplementary) of John Murray Forbes, ed. Sarah Forbes Hughes (Boston: George H. Ellis, 1905), vol. 1, p. 22.
23. John Murray Forbes to Sarah Forbes, March 25, 1836, in ibid., vol. 1, p. 26.
24. Robert Bennet Forbes to Thomas Handasyd Perkins, October 25, 1831, Forbes Family Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society.
25. John Murray Forbes to Sarah Forbes, August 1836, describes Houqua as “horror struck” when John tells him he will return home. Reminiscences of John Murray Forbes, vol. 1, p. 227; see ibid., p. 273, for “moderate competency.”
26. Forbes, Reminiscences of John Murray Forbes, vol. 1, pp. 245–47. The figure of $100,000 is from John Murray Forbes’s letter to Robert Bennet Forbes, June 19, 1836, Forbes Family Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society. Half a million of Houqua’s money: Reminiscences of John Murray Forbes, vol. 1, p. 273.
27. Wu Yixiong, “Deng Tingzhen yu Guangdong jinyan wenti,” Jindaishi yanjiu (2008, no. 5): 37–55, see p. 41.
28. Jardine to Capt. Rees on the Austen, April 25, 1837, Jardine private letterbook, JM C4/6, Jardine Matheson Archive, Cambridge University.
29. Jardine to Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy, November 27, 1837, Jardine private letterbook, JM C4/6.
30. Jardine to Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy, January 8, 1838, Jardine private letterbook, JM C4/6.
31. Jardine to H. Fawcett in Bombay, February 21, 1838, Jardine private letterbook, JM C4/7.
32. Extract of letter from Charles Elliot to George Lenox-Conygnham, June 12, 1837, PRO FO 17/28/269–70.
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