33. Elliot to Palmerston, November 19, 1837, in Correspondence relating to China (1840), pp. 241–42.
34. Elliot to Palmerston, November 18, 1837, in ibid., p. 233.
35. Elliot to Palmerston, November 19, 1837, in ibid., p. 242.
36. Ibid., p. 245.
37. Palmerston to Elliot, June 15, 1838, in ibid., p. 258.
38. A draft of the China Courts Bill is in PRO FO 17/28/48–49.
39. Staunton to Palmerston, May 3, 1838, Palmerston Papers, GC/ST/36, University of Southampton.
40. Staunton to Palmerston, June 10, 1838, Palmerston Papers, GC/ST/37; Palmerston to Staunton, June 10, 1838, Palmerston Papers, GC/ST/46.
41. “I have not forgotten the counting out I experienced five years ago,” he confided to Palmerston, “and am still less disposed than I was then, to address an unwilling audience.” Staunton to Palmerston, June 12, 1838. Palmerston Papers, GC/ST/38.
42. Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates, 3rd series (London: T. C. Hansard), HC Deb., July 28, 1838, vol. 44, c. 744.
43. Hansard, HC Deb., July 28, 1838, vol. 44, c. 745; audience response as per report in Canton Register, December 11, 1838.
44. Elliot to Palmerston, January 2, 1839, in Correspondence relating to China (1840), p. 342.
45. Huang Juezi memorial of DG18/run4/10 (June 2, 1838), in Yapian zhanzheng dang’an shiliao, vol. 1, pp. 254–57, quotation on p. 255.
46. Ibid., p. 256.
47. Yang Guozhen, Lin Zexu zhuan (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1995), p. 197.
48. Mao Haijian, Tianchao de bengkui: yapian zhanzheng zai yanjiu (Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 2012), p. 94.
49. “Jie yan fang,” addendum to Lin Zexu memorial of DG18/5/19 (July 10, 1838), in Yapian zhanzheng dang’an shiliao, vol. 1, p. 274–77. The memorial itself is in ibid., pp. 270–74. Ironically, according to one recent historian the opium ash used in many of these recipes had essentially been processed into heroin, so the treatment was far worse than the original habit; see Zhu Weizheng, Rereading Modern Chinese History, trans. Michael Dillon (Boston: Brill, 2015), p. 172.
50. Yang, Lin Zexu zhuan, p. 195.
51. Lin Zexu memorial of DG8/8/2 (September 20, 1838), in Lin Zexu quan ji, ed. Mao Linli et al. (Fuzhou: Haixia wenyi chubanshe, 2002), vol. 3, zouzhe, pp. 76–79, quotation on p. 79. Translation is that of P. C. Kuo in A Critical Study of the Anglo-Chinese War, with Documents (Taipei: Ch’eng Wen Publishing Co., 1970), p. 85.
52. Dai Xueji, ed., Yapian zhanzheng renwu zhuan (Fuzhou: Fujian jiaoyu chubanshe, 1985), p. 32.
53. Mao Haijian, Tianchao de bengkui, pp. 92–93.
54. Lin Zexu diary entries for December 27, 1838, through January 3, 1839 (DG18/11/11 to DG18/11/18), in Lin Zexu quan ji, vol. 9, riji, pp. 363–64.
55. Chang Hsin-pao, Commissioner Lin and the Opium War (New York: Norton, 1964), p. 120.
CHAPTER 13 Showdown
1. Robert Inglis testimony in Report from the Select Committee on the Trade with China; together with the Minutes of Evidence taken before Them (Printed by order of the House of Commons, June 5, 1840), pp. 17–18.
2. In April 1838, Elliot reported, “In the course of the last two months the number of English boats employed in the illicit traffic between Lintin and Canton has vastly increased, and the deliveries of opium have frequently been accompanied by conflict of fire-arms between those vessels and the Government preventive craft.” Elliot to Palmerston, April 1, 1838, in Correspondence relating to China. Presented to both Houses of Parliament, by Command of Her Majesty, 1840 (London: T. R. Harrison, 1840), p. 299.
3. Palmerston to Elliot, March 23, 1839, in ibid., pp. 317–18.
4. Charles Elliot, for one, was convinced that if the Chinese government had just kept up its pressure on domestic users as it had been doing prior to Lin Zexu’s arrival, the British merchants of opium “would have been for the most part ruined.” In that case, there would have been no grounds for a war. Charles Elliot notes, n.d., defending his conduct in China, Minto Papers, MS 21218, National Library of Scotland. Jardine and others, incidentally, would later claim that the only smooth trade in the drug at the time had been conducted by Deng’s own men in the Pearl River, but there is no evidence that Deng himself was involved. See Jardine testimony in Report from the Select Committee on the Trade with China (1840), p. 101.
5. Jardine to Capt. Jauncey, December 10, 1838, Jardine private letterbook, JM C4/7, Jardine Matheson Archive, Cambridge University.
6. John Slade, Narrative of the Late Proceedings and Events in China (Canton: Canton Register Press, 1839), p. 3A–3C; Elliot to Palmerston, December 13, 1838, in Correspondence relating to China (1840), p. 324; Robert Forbes to Rose Forbes, December 18, 1838, in Letters from China: The Canton-Boston Correspondence of Robert Bennet Forbes, 1838–1840, ed. Phyllis Forbes Kerr (Mystic, CT: Mystic Seaport Museum, 1996), p. 76; William C. Hunter, The ‘Fan Kwae’ at Canton before Treaty Days, 1825–1844 (London: Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., 1882), pp. 73–77 (with incorrect date); Canton Register, “Extra” of December 13, 1838.
7. Palmerston to Elliot, April 15, 1839, in Correspondence relating to China (1840), p. 325.
8. “To the editor of the Canton Press,” Canton Press, February 27, 1839, in Canton Press: Communications and Notes Relating to Chinese Customs, 1826–1840 (n.p.: 1826–40), p. 55.
9. Elliot to Palmerston, January 2, 1839, in Correspondence relating to China (1840), pp. 326–329.
10. “Public Notice to Her Majesty’s Subjects,” December 18, 1839, in ibid., pp. 332–33.
11. Capt. Elliot to the Governor of Canton, December 23, 1838, in ibid., p. 333.
12. Matheson to James A. Stewart-Mackenzie (then governor of Ceylon), January 26, 1839. Matheson private letterbook, JM C5/3, Jardine Matheson Archive, Cambridge University.
13. Canton Register, December 18, 1838.
14. Canton Register, December 25, 1838.
15. Robert Bennet Forbes to Rose Forbes, December 20, 1838, in Forbes, Letters from China, p. 77.
16. Robert Bennet Forbes to Rose Forbes, December 2, 1838, in ibid., pp. 72–73.
17. Robert Bennet Forbes to Samuel Russell, January 12, 1839, cited in He Sibing, “Russell and Company, 1818–1891: America’s Trade and Diplomacy in Nineteenth-Century China” (Ph.D. dissertation, Miami University, Ohio, 1997), p. 108.
18. Robert Bennet Forbes to Rose Forbes, February 27, 1839, in Forbes, Letters from China, pp. 98–99.
19. Jacques Downs, “American Merchants and the Opium Trade, 1800–1840,” Business History Review 42, no. 4 (Winter 1968): 418–42, see p. 441.
20. Jardine to A. Thomson, March 20, 1838, makes mention of Jardine’s plans to leave the following January; Jardine private letterbook, JM C4/7, Jardine Matheson Archive. Deng Tingzhen would send a rather self-serving report to the emperor that Jardine, whom he described as being responsible for most of the foreign opium vessels, had gone home because he was afraid of Deng’s crackdown on smuggling. See Lin Zexu’s memorial of DG19/3/21 (May 4, 1839) confirming Jardine’s departure, in Lin Zexu quan ji, ed. Mao Linli et al. (Fuzhou: Haixia wenyi chubanshe, 2002), vol. 3, zouzhe, pp. 139–40.
21. Canton Register, January 29, 1839.
22. Elliot letter of introduction to Palmerston for William Jardine, January 26, 1839, UK National Archives, Public Record Office, Foreign Office records (hereafter PRO FO), PRO FO 17/30/236–37.
23. “Public Dinner to Mr. Jardine, on the occasion of his departure for Europe,” Canton Register, January 29, 1839.
24. Robert Bennet Forbes to Rose Forbes, January 25, 1839, in Letters from China, p. 88.
25. Canton Register, January 29, 1839; 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), pp. 224–26; Robert Bennet Forbes to Rose Forbes, January 25, 1839, in Letters from China, pp. 87–90.
26. Lei Jin, “Rongcheng xianhua,” in Qi Sihe et al., eds., Yapian zhanzheng (Shanghai: Xin
zhishi chubanshe, 1955), vol. 1, p. 314.
27. Gong Zizhen, “Song qinchai dachen houguan Lin gong xu,” in Hu Qiuyuan, ed., Jindai Zhongguo dui Xifang ji lieqiang renshi ziliao huibian (Taipei: Academia Sinica, Modern History Institute, 1972), vol. 1, pp. 824–25.
28. Lin records the date and weather in his diary entries for February 15, 1839, and dates surrounding, Lin Zexu quan ji, vol. 9, riji, p. 375.
29. Bao Shichen, “Zhi qian Sichuan dubu Su Gong shu,” in Anwu si zhong (n.p., 1888), juan 35, p. 24b.
30. Testimony of Capt.Thacker, Report from the Select Committee on the Trade with China (1840), p. 60.
31. Matheson to Henderson, February 13, 1839, and Matheson to Chas. Smith, February 11, 1839, both in Matheson private letterbook, JM C5/3, Jardine Matheson Archive.
32. Lin Zexu, “Xiaoyu Yuesheng shi shang jun min ren deng su jie yapian gaoshi gao,” in Lin Zexu quan ji, vol. 5, wenlu, p. 107.
33. Chang Hsin-pao, Commissioner Lin and the Opium War (New York: Norton, 1964), p. 129.
34. Robert Bennet Forbes to Rose Forbes, March 11, 1839, in Letters from China, p. 105.
35. Minutes of the meeting are in John Slade, Narrative of the Late Proceedings and Events in China (Canton: Canton Register Press, 1839), pp. 42–46. Abiel Abbot Low, an American who was there at the time, said that everyone knew to take Lin Zexu’s edicts with a grain of salt; see Elma Loines, The China Trade Post-Bag of the Seth Low Family of Salem and New York, 1829–1873 (Manchester, ME: Falmouth Publishing House, 1953), pp. 68–69.
36. Abiel Abbot Low to Harriet Low, April 17, 1839, in Loines, China Trade Post-Bag, p. 68; also Slade, Narrative, p. 49.
37. Robert Bennet Forbes to Rose Forbes, March 25, 1839, in Letters from China, p. 109.
38. Ibid., p. 110.
39. Elliot to Palmerston, March 22, 1839, in Correspondence relating to China (1840), p. 349.
40. His arrival is described in a letter from Matheson to Jardine, May 1, 1839, Matheson private letterbook, JM C5/4, Jardine Matheson Archive. Sword detail is from A. A. Low’s letter in Loines, China Trade Post-Bag, p. 69.
41. Elliot’s notice, and his informal comments afterward, are in Slade, Narrative, pp. 53–54.
42. Slade, Narrative, p. 54 (exclamation point added in place of period, based on his having “exclaimed” this phrase according to Slade).
43. Lin referred to the blockade of Canton as a past precedent for dealing with such situations in his memorial of April 12, 1839, reporting the surrender of the opium. See Lin Zexu quan ji, vol. 3, zouzhe, p. 132.
44. Lin Zexu memorial of DG19/2/29 (April 12, 1839), in Lin Zexu quan ji, vol. 3, zouzhe, pp. 131–34, see p. 132.
45. W. C. Hunter, “Journal of Occurrances at Canton, during the Cessation of Trade at Canton, 1839,” ed. E. W. Ellsworth, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch, vol. 4 (1964): 9–36, see p. 15.
46. Robert Inglis testimony in Report from the Select Committee on the Trade with China (1840), p. 22; Grace, Opium and Empire, p. 236.
47. Robert Bennet Forbes, Remarks on China and the China Trade (Boston: Samuel N. Dickinson, 1844), p. 49.
48. Robert Bennet Forbes, Personal Reminiscences (Boston: Little, Brown, 1882), p. 147; Robert Bennet Forbes to Rose Forbes, March 25, 1839, in Letters from China, p. 111; rice pudding: Robert Bennet Forbes to Rose Forbes, March 29, 1839, in ibid., p. 113.
49. Robert Inglis testimony in Report from the Select Committee on the Trade with China (1840), pp. 7–9.
50. Ibid., pp. 14–15.
51. Matheson to Middleton, April 9, 1839, Matheson private letterbook, JM C5/4, Jardine Matheson Archive.
52. “Private Correspondence,” Times, November 1, 1839. (“Captain Elliot’s receipts for the opium delivered have appeared in the Calcutta money market, under the head ‘Opium Scrip,’ and some were lately sold by public auction at 355 rupees.”)
53. Canton Register, March 26, 1839 (publication delayed to March 27).
54. Robert Bennet Forbes to Rose Forbes, January 31, 1840, in Letters from China, p. 205.
55. Elliot to Palmerston, March 30, 1839 (rec’d August 29, 1839), Correspondence relating to China (1840), p. 357.
56. Nicholas Draper, The Price of Emancipation: Slave-Ownership, Compensation and British Society at the End of Slavery (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 75–113.
57. Slade, Narrative, p. 46.
58. “Remarks on the Opium Question,” Chinese Repository 8, no. 3 (July 1839): 120.
59. Samuel Warren, The Opium Question (London: James Ridgway, 1840), p. 92.
60. Even John Murray Forbes, in America at the time, assumed that Britain’s future trade in China would not include opium, on which count he worried about the effect on the United States of a resumed drain of silver specie into China. John Murray Forbes to Robert Bennet Forbes, December 20, 1839, Forbes Family Business Records, vol. F-8, p. 50, Baker Library, Harvard Business School.
61. Elliot to Palmerston, April 6, 1839, in Correspondence relating to China (1840), p. 386. As Elliot explained privately to his sister, “I was so sensible, that the opium ground was untenable, that I offered to abandon it entirely for the sake of peace and the transaction of the regular trade”: Elliot to his sister Emma Hislop, February 23, 1840, Minto Papers, MS 13135, National Library of Scotland.
62. Elliot to Palmerston, July 18, 1839, in Correspondence relating to China (1840), p. 431.
63. Mao Haijian, Tianchao de bengkui: yapian zhanzheng zai yanjiu (Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 2012), pp. 92–93. Qishan had confiscated 130,000 taels of the drug. A chest of opium contained about 100 catties, or 1,600 taels, of the unprocessed drug (which, after processing, would render about 800 taels of smokable extract).
64. Mao, Tianchao, p. 103. Deng confiscated about 460,000 taels of smokable extract, equivalent to 576 chests of raw opium.
65. Lin Zexu memorial of DG19/2/29 (April 12, 1839), in Lin Zexu quan ji, vol. 3, zouzhe, pp. 131–34.
66. A. A. Low letter to Harriet Low, April 17, 1839, in Loines, China Trade Post-Bag, p. 71.
67. Lin Zexu memorial of DG19/2/29 (April 12, 1839); he specifically recommended 5 jin (nearly 7 pounds) of tea as compensation for each 133-pound chest of opium. Under normal circumstances opium was at least ten times as costly as tea by weight.
68. Elliot to Palmerston (secret), April 3, 1839. PRO FO 17/31/113–17.
69. Elliot to his wife, Clara, April 4, 1839, Minto Papers, MS 13140, National Library of Scotland (changing “Peking” to “Beijing”).
70. The deliveries are recorded in Lin Zexu’s diary for April and May 1839, Lin Zexu quan ji, vol. 9, riji, pp. 386–91.
71. Robert Inglis testimony, Report from the Select Committee on the Trade with China (1840), p. 26.
72. James Matheson to Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy, May 3, 1839, Matheson private letterbook, JM C5/4, Jardine Matheson Archive.
73. The emperor’s reversal is noted in Lin Zexu’s diary for DG19/4/13–18 (May 25–30, 1839), Lin Zexu quan ji, vol. 9, riji, p. 392.
74. Lin Zexu describes the process in a memorial of DG19/5/25 (July 5, 1839), Lin Zexu quan ji, vol. 3, zouzhe, p. 160. Elijah Bridgman’s eyewitness description of the destruction site is in the Chinese Repository 8, no. 2 (June 1839): 70–77. Lin Zexu’s prayer is described in his diary entry for DG19/4/20 (June 1, 1839), Lin Zexu quan ji, vol. 9, riji, p. 392.
75. Letter extract enclosed in John Abel Smith to Palmerston, August 18, 1839, in PRO FO 17/35/14–17.
76. Matheson’s letter to John Abel Smith of April 4, 1839, is noted in Matheson’s private letterbook, JM C5/4. Though the letterbook only summarizes the Smith letter, it describes it as being nearly identical to a fully recorded letter written the same day to Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy in Bombay, which contained identical language to the ostensibly anonymous extract given to Palmerston by Smith.
77. James Matheson to Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy, April 4, 1839, Matheson private letterbook, JM C5/4, Jardine Matheson Archive.
78. Canton Re
gister, July 21, 1840.
79. “As regards India,” wrote Auckland when he learned of the surrender of opium at Canton, “we must for the present look upon the opium revenue as annihilated.” “This will bear heavy on us,” he continued, “but . . . I have always great confidence in the growing resources of India and I would still look cheeringly at our financial prospects.” Auckland to Hobhouse, June 6, 1839, quoted in Glenn Melancon, Britain’s China Policy and the Opium Crisis: Balancing Drugs, Violence and National Honour, 1833–1840 (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2003), p. 99.
80. London petition: PRO FO 17/35/109–10. Bristol petition: PRO FO 17/35/190–91.
81. These petitions are scattered throughout PRO FO 17/35; the Manchester data is at PRO FO 17/35/102.
82. Quotes are from the Manchester petition (PRO FO 17/35/104–5), the Blackburn, Lancashire, petition (PRO FO 17/35/188–89), and the Leeds petition (PRO FO 17/35/120–21).
83. Jardine complained in a letter to Matheson that “many people [here] are for doing nothing; they, very foolishly, mix up the insult & violence with the illicit trade, & are for remaining quiet, pocketing the insult, and refusing to pay for the opium.” Jardine to Matheson, September 25, 1839, quoted in Melancon, Britain’s China Policy and the Opium Crisis, p. 102.
84. Editorial beginning “Proceeding with our view of the ‘opium question,’” Times, October 23, 1839.
85. George Macartney, An Embassy to China: Being the Journal Kept by Lord Macartney during His Embassy to the Emperor Ch’ien-lung, 1793–1794, ed. J. L. Cranmer-Byng (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1963), p. 211.
86. David Brown, Palmerston: A Biography (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010), pp. 217–25; Grace, Opium and Empire, p. 248.
87. Lord Broughton diary, entry for October 1, 1839, British Library, Add. MS 56561.
88. Draper, The Price of Emancipation, pp. 106–8.
89. Lord Broughton diary, entries for September 30–October 1, 1839, British Library, Add. MS 56561.
90. Broughton diary, entry for October 1, 1839.
91. John Cam Hobhouse, Baron Broughton, Recollections of a Long Life, by Lord Broughton (John Cam Hobhouse), ed. Lady Dorchester (London: John Murray, 1911), vol. 5, p. 229.
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