Imperial Twilight

by Stephen R. Platt

  CHAPTER 14 Will and Destiny

  1. William C. Hunter, The ‘Fan Kwae’ at Canton before Treaty Days, 1825–1844 (London: Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., 1882), pp. 89–90.

  2. Lin Zexu’s diary entry for DG19/5/26 (July 6, 1839) records his receipt of the new regulations. A later entry, for DG/5/19 (July 19, 1839), notes that foreign dealers will be subject to execution. Lin Zexu quan ji, vol. 9, riji, pp. 396, 398.

  3. Elliot to Palmerston, August 27, 1839, in Correspondence relating to China. Presented to both Houses of Parliament, by Command of Her Majesty, 1840 (London: T. R. Harrison, 1840), p. 434; Astell, Braine et al. to Elliot, August 25, 1839, in ibid., p. 436.

  4. Lin Zexu proclamation of August 31, 1839, trans. John Robert Morrison, in Correspondence relating to China (1840), p. 456.

  5. British Opium Trade with China, a pamphlet containing reprints from the Leeds Mercury, 1839–40 (Birmingham, UK: B. Hudson, n.d.), pp. 3–4.

  6. Anna Stoddart, Elizabeth Pease Nichol (London: J. M. Dent, 1899), p. 93.

  7. “The Opium Question,” Northern Star, February 22, 1840.

  8. “The ‘Shopkeepers;’ Their ‘Profit’ and Our ‘Loss,’” Northern Star, January 18, 1840 (changing “principal” to “principle”).

  9. T. H. Bullock, The Chinese Vindicated, or Another View of the Opium Question (London: Wm. H. Allen and Co., 1840), pp. 111–16.

  10. Editorial beginning “The war against China . . . ,” Times, March 23, 1840.

  11. Editorial beginning “The reckless negligence and gross incapacity of the Queen’s Ministers . . . ,” Times, April 7, 1840.

  12. A great number of such petitions are listed in the Mirror of Parliament for 1840, vols. 1–4.

  13. “The Opium War,” Spectator, March 28, 1840; “The Opium War,” Northern Star, April 4, 1840; “Opium War with China,” Times, April 25, 1840.

  14. “The Opium Trade and War,” Eclectic Review, vol. 7 (June 1840): 699–725, quotation on pp. 709–10.

  15. “The Opium War,” Spectator, March 28, 1840.

  16. The Times clearly interpreted it that way: “If the war with China be not stopped, if the criminals who have entailed it on us be not disgraced and dispossessed of power,” they wrote in Graham’s support, “the Chinese quarrel will be but a drop in the vast sea of our calamities.” See editorial beginning “The reckless negligence . . . ,” Times, April 7, 1840.

  17. The cornerstone for the new (current) House of Commons chamber was laid just a few weeks after the start of this debate. Description of temporary chamber from T. H. S. Escott, Gentlemen of the House of Commons (London: Hurst and Blackett, Ltd., 1902), vol. 2, pp. 303–4.

  18. Graham’s full speech is in Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates, 3rd series (London: T. C. Hansard), HC Deb., April 7, 1840, vol. 53, cc. 669–704.

  19. The chancellor of the exchequer reported to the House of Commons on May 15, 1840, that the government’s revenue for the coming year would be £46.7 million, and expenditures £49.4 million, for a deficit of nearly £3 million. See Hansard, HC Deb., May 15, 1840, vol. 54, c. 130; also reported in the Canton Register for September 1, 1840.

  20. Hansard, HC Deb., April 9, 1840, vol. 53, cc. 925–48.

  21. Letter to the editor of the Morning Post, April 31, 1839, reprinted in the Canton Register of August 18, 1840.

  22. Hansard, HC Deb., April 8, 1840, vol. 53, c. 829.

  23. Ibid., c. 828.

  24. Hansard, HC Deb., April 9, 1840, vol. 53, c. 856.

  25. Hansard, HC Deb., April 7, 1840, vol. 53, c. 694, and April 8, 1840, vol. 53, c. 775.

  26. Hansard, HC Deb., April 7, 1840, vol. 53, c. 737.

  27. Hansard, HC Deb., April 8, 1840, vol. 53, c. 836.

  28. “I am in dread”: Roy Jenkins, Gladstone (New York: Random House, 1997), p. 60; a full transcript of Gladstone’s speech is in Hansard, HC Deb., April 8, 1840, vol. 53, cc. 800–825.

  29. As one paper described Napier at this time, he was “as hot-headed, ignorant, presumptuous, and prejudiced a Captain of the Navy, as was ever by virtue of noble birth thrust into an office, for which he was wholly unfit.” See “Narrative of the events which led to the steps taken by the Chinese government for the suppression of the opium-trade,” Colonial Gazette, reprinted in Spectator, March 28, 1840.

  30. “The Chinese Question,” Times, January 27, 1840.

  31. Hansard, HC Deb., April 7, 1840, vol. 53, cc. 675, 676.

  32. Hansard, HC Deb., March 24, 1840, vol. 53, c. 8.

  33. 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. 257.

  34. Staunton’s speech is in Hansard, HC Deb., April 7, 1840, vol. 53, cc. 738–45.

  35. George Thomas Staunton, Memoirs of the Chief Incidents of the Public Life of Sir George Thomas Staunton, Bart., printed for private circulation (London: L. Booth, 1856), pp. 88–90.

  36. “News of the Week,” Spectator, April 11, 1840.

  37. “Sir James Graham’s Motion,” Manchester Courier, April 11, 1840.

  38. “Letter to Lord Palmerston,” from the Morning Post, reprinted in Canton Register, August 18, 1840.

  39. “The Whigs and the Tories on the China Question,” Spectator, April 4, 1840.

  40. Editorial beginning “The House of Commons has been engaged . . . ,” Hampshire Advertiser, April 11, 1840.

  41. “News of the Week,” Spectator, April 11, 1840.

  42. Hansard, HL Deb., May 12, 1840, vol. 54, c. 26.

  43. Ibid., c. 35.

  44. “The Late Mr. Thomas Manning,” Friend of India, July 30, 1840, reprinted in Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register, vol. 33, new series (November 1840): 182–83.

  45. “Thomas Manning, Esq.,” Gentleman’s Magazine, vol. 14, new series (July 1840): 97–100.

  46. Jardine to Palmerston, October 27, 1839, Minto Papers, MS 12058, National Library of Scotland.

  47. Palmerston to Admiralty (secret), November 4, 1839, UK National Archives, Public Record Office, Foreign Office records (hereafter PRO FO), 17/36/76.

  48. Jardine to Palmerston, October 26, 1839, PRO FO 17/35/281–83.

  49. Letter to editor, Canton Register, July 21, 1840.

  50. Julia Lovell, The Opium War: Drugs, Dreams, and the Making of China (London: Picador, 2011), p. 110.

  51. Rick Bowers, ed., “Lieutenant Charles Cameron’s Opium War Diary,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch, vol. 52 (2012): 29–61, see p. 37.

  52. Daoguang edict of August 21, 1840 (DG20/7/24), trans. Chang Hsin-pao in Commissioner Lin and the Opium War (New York: Norton, 1964), p. 212.

  53. Qishan’s memorial is in Qi Sihe et al., eds., Yapian zhanzheng (Shanghai: Xin zhishi chubanshe, 1955), vol. 1, p. 387.

  54. Lord Jocelyn, Six Months with the Chinese Expedition; or, Leaves from a Soldier’s Note-book (London: John Murray, 1841), p. 110.

  55. Ibid., p. 116.

  56. David Brown, Palmerston: A Biography (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010).

  57. Palmerston to Elliot, January 24, 1840, Palmerston Papers, GC/EL/29/1-2, University of Southampton.

  58. Palmerston to Elliot, November 4, 1839 (rec’d April 9, 1840), in Papers Relating to China (Private and Confidential) 1839–40 and 1841, p. 3, Minto Papers, MS 21216A, National Library of Scotland.

  59. Palmerston to Plenipotentiaries, February 20, 1840, ibid., p. 9.

  60. Charles Elliot to Lord Palmerston, July 20, 1842, Minto Papers, MS 21218, National Library of Scotland.

  61. As Elliot wrote to Palmerston, to notify him that he would be departing from his instructions on negotiation, that “if I can secure so much without a blow” it would be better to settle for minor concessions rather than “to cast upon the country the burden of a distant war . . . with its certain consequences of deep hatred.” Quoted in Lovell, Opium War, p. 129.

  62. W. C. Costin, Great Britain and China, 1833–1860 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 193
7), p. 87.

  63. Palmerston to Elliot, private (draft), April 21, 1841, PRO FO 17/45/36–56, see fol. 43.

  64. Palmerston to Elliot, private (draft), April 21, 1841, PRO FO 17/45/36–56.

  65. Hobhouse, Recollections of a Long Life, vol. 6, p. 14; even Queen Victoria expressed bewilderment at Elliot’s behavior, writing to her uncle, “All we wanted might have been got, if it had not been for the unaccountably strange conduct of Charles Elliot . . . who completely disobeyed his instructions and tried to get the lowest terms he could.” Queen Victoria to Leopold, the King of the Belgians, April 13, 1841, in The Letters of Queen Victoria (New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1907), vol. 1, p. 329.

  66. Elliot to his sister Emma Hislop, May 12, 1840, Minto Papers, MS 13135, National Library of Scotland.

  CHAPTER 15 Aftermath

  1. John Horsley Mayo, Medals and Decorations of the British Army and Navy (Westminster: A. Constable, 1897), pp. 255–256; George Tancred, Historical Record of Medals and Honorary Distinctions Conferred on the British Navy, Army & Auxiliary Forces from the Earliest Period (London: Spink & Son, 1891), pp. 270–71. A copy of the original medal is held at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, England.

  2. Mao Haijian, Tianchao de bengkui: yapian zhanzheng zai yanjiu (Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 2012), pp. 416–17; Julia Lovell, The Opium War: Drugs, Dreams, and the Making of China (London: Picador, 2011), p. 162 and passim; D. MacPherson, M.D., Two Years in China. Narrative of the Chinese Expedition from its Formation in April, 1840, till April, 1842 (London: Saunders and Otley, 1842), pp. 230–31; Keith Stewart Mackenzie, Narrative of the Second Campaign in China (London: Richard Bentley, 1842), p. 28; Mark C. Elliott, “Bannerman and Townsman: Ethnic Tension in Nineteenth-Century Jiangnan,” Late Imperial China 11, no. 1 (June 1990): 36–74.

  3. Lovell, Opium War, p. 116.

  4. As reported by Karl Gutzlaff, based on an uncited source, in The Life of Taou-kwang, Late Emperor of China (London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1852), p. 180.

  5. W. H. Hall, Narrative of the Voyages and Services of the Nemesis, from 1840 to 1843, ed. W. D. Bernard (London: Henry Colburn, 1844), vol. 1, p. 334.

  6. Bei Qingqiao, “Duoduo yin,” in Qi Sihe et al., eds., Yapian zhanzheng (Shanghai: Xin zhishi chubanshe, 1955), vol. 3, p. 198.

  7. “quite blackened,” “bespattered”: McPherson, Two Years in China, pp. 73, 74; “many most barbarous things: Journal of Henry Norman, quoted in David McLean, “Surgeons of the Opium War: The Navy on the China Coast, 1840–42,” English Historical Review 121, no. 491 (April 2006): 487–504, see p. 492; “our visitations”: Sir William Parker to Lord Minto, July 30, 1842, quoted in ibid., pp. 497–98; “a war in which”: Charles Elliot to Earl of Aberdeen, January 25, 1842, Minto Papers, MS 21218, National Library of Scotland.

  8. “Letter of Hyu-Ly (Opium-Eater) to Captain Elliot” (reprinted from the Charivari), Times, April 17, 1841.

  9. Editorial beginning “While the public are abundantly convinced . . . ,” Times, June 14, 1841.

  10. Glenn Melancon, Britain’s China Policy and the Opium Crisis: Balancing Drugs, Violence and National Honour, 1833–1840 (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2003), p. 129.

  11. Jonathan Parry, “Graham, Sir James Robert George, second baronet (1792–1861),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004–13).

  12. As per the orders of Lord Stanley, the secretary of state for war and the colonies, the new government wished “to increase the force which has been hitherto employed upon the coasts of China, and to make preparations for an early and vigorous prosecution of the war.” Lord Stanley to the Board of Control, extract, December 31, 1841, in China. Return to two addresses of the Honourable The House of Commons, dated 3 August 1843 (Printed by order of the House of Commons, August 21, 1843), p. 23; see also pp. 20–24, 28, and 32–33 of ibid. for details on troop numbers.

  13. Christmas editorial, beginning “At the present season . . . ,” Times, December 24, 1842.

  14. Editorial beginning “We were scarcely aware of the pain we were inflicting . . . ,” Times, November 28, 1842.

  15. Capt. Granville G. Loch, The Closing Events of the Campaign in China: The Operations in the Yang-tze-kiang; and Treaty of Nanking (London: John Murray, 1843), pp. 173–74.

  16. Hobhouse to Auckland, September 22, 1839, in Broughton Correspondence, British Library, MSS EUR F.213.7, fol. 189; Hobhouse to Auckland, May 4, 1840, in ibid., fol. 342; Hobhouse to Auckland, June 4, 1840, in ibid., fol. 364; Henry St. George Tucker, as quoted in George Thomas Staunton, Miscellaneous Notices Relating to China, and Our Commercial Intercourse with That Country, 2nd ed., enlarged (London: John Murray, 1822–50), p. 35; Glenn Melancon, “Honour in Opium? The British Declaration of War on China, 1839–1840,” International History Review 21, no. 4 (December 1999): 855–74.

  17. As Lord Stanley explained in the House of Commons, “the merchants had been warned that if they chose to violate the laws of China, either by the introduction of prohibited goods into a legalised port, or the introduction of any goods whatever into ports not legalised, they must not expect the protection of the British Government; but must be exposed to the penalties inflicted by the laws of China.” Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates, 3rd series (London: T. C. Hansard), HC Deb., February 10, 1844, vol. 72, c. 473.

  18. Aberdeen to Pottinger, December 29, 1842, as quoted by Robert Peel in Hansard, HC Deb., April 4, 1843, vol. 68, c. 464.

  19. Staunton’s full speech on the suppression of the opium trade is in Hansard, HC Deb., April 4, 1843, vol. 68, cc. 411–24.

  20. Lady Napier to Palmerston, March 12, 1840, Palmerston Papers, GC/NA/18, University of Southampton.

  21. Thomas De Quincey, “The Opium and the China Question,” Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine 47, no. 296 (June 1840): 717–38; Cannon Schmitt, “Narrating National Addictions: De Quincey, Opium, and Tea,” in High Anxieties: Cultural Studies in Addiction, ed. Janet Brodie and Marc Redfield (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002): 63–84. The article was not printed under De Quincey’s name, but confirmation that he was the author can be found in David Masson, The Collected Writings of Thomas De Quincey (Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black, 1890), vol. 14, footnote on p. 146.

  22. Thomas De Quincey, “Postscript on the China and the Opium Question,” Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine 47, no. 296 (June 1840): 847–53, quotation on p. 849.

  23. De Quincey, “The Opium and the China Question,” pp. 723, 728, 735, 738.

  24. Grevel Lindop, “Quincey, Thomas Penson De (1785–1859),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).

  25. Charles Elliot, undated notes in his own defense, 1840s, Minto Papers, MS 21218, National Library of Scotland.

  26. Hansard, HC Deb., April 4, 1843, vol. 68, c. 417.

  27. Hansard, HC Deb., March 17, 1842, vol. 61, c. 786.

  28. Hansard, HC Deb., April 4, 1843, vol. 68, cc. 453–57.

  29. 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. 299.

  30. “Sir Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy, the First Indian Knight,” Asiatic Journal and Monthly Miscellany, vol. 38, new series (August 1842): 376.

  31. Gyan Prakash, Mumbai Fables: A History of an Enchanted City (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010), pp. 37, 51.

  32. Rast Goftar, April 17, 1859, as translated and quoted by Jesse Palsetia in “Merchant Charity and Public Identity Formation in Colonial India: The Case of Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy,” Journal of Asian and African Studies 40, no. 3 (2005): 197–217, see pp. 199–200.

  33. “English Outrage in China,” Youth’s Companion (Boston), March 26, 1841, p. 183, cited by Dael Norwood in “Trading in Liberty: The Politics of the American China Trade, c. 1784–1862” (Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton University, 2012), p. 255.

  34. “China,” Liberator, April 24 1840 (from the “Mer. Journal”).

  35
. “Opium,” Liberator, April 10, 1840 (reprinted from the Boston Weekly Magazine, March 28, 1840).

  36. Howard Malcom, Travels in South-Eastern Asia (Boston: Gould, Kendall, and Lincoln, 1839), vol. 2, p. 160, quoted by Lord Ashley in debate on suppression of opium trade; see Hansard, HC Deb., April 4, 1843, vol. 68, c. 390.

  37. John C. Calhoun, Speeches of John C. Calhoun (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1843), p. 389.

  38. John Quincy Adams, “Lecture on the War with China, delivered before the Massachusetts Historical Society, December, 1841,” Chinese Repository, vol. 11 (May 1842): 274–89, quotation on p. 288 (changing “kotow” to “kowtow”).

  39. Charles Francis Adams, ed., Memoirs of John Quincy Adams (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1876), vol. 11, p. 30.

  40. Ibid., p. 31.

  41. Memoir of John Heard (typescript), Heard Family Business Records, vol. FP-4, p. 36, Baker Library, Harvard Business School.

  42. “Merchants of the United States at Canton, China,” rec’d January 9, 1840, House of Representatives, 26th Congress, 1st Session, Doc. no. 40.

  43. An extract from the commodore’s instructions is in “Memorial of Lawrence Kearny, a Captain in the United States Navy,” U.S. Senate, 35th Congress, 1st session, Mis. Doc. no. 207, pp. 34–35, quoted in Norwood, “Trading in Liberty,” p. 273.

  44. John Murray Forbes, Letters and Recollections of John Murray Forbes, ed. Sarah Forbes Hughes (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1899), vol. 1, p. 115.

  45. John Murray Forbes to Daniel Webster, April 29, 1843, in Letters (supplementary) of John Murray Forbes, ed. Sarah Forbes Hughes (Boston: George H. Ellis, 1905), vol. 1, pp. 40–41 (changing “an hundred” to “a hundred”).

  46. “List of Articles for the Legation to China,” April 11, 1843, in Kenneth E. Shewmaker, ed., The Papers of Daniel Webster; Diplomatic Papers, Volume 1: 1841–1843 (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1983), p. 907.

  47. William J. Donahue, “The Caleb Cushing Mission,” Modern Asian Studies 16, no. 2 (1982): 193–216, see pp. 200–201.