The Opium War

by Julia Lovell

  51 Berridge, Opium and the People, 199.

  52 Louise Foxcroft, The Making of Addiction: The ‘Use and Abuse’ of Opium in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Kent: Ashgate, 2007), 68.

  53 Figures from Auerbach, Race, 52 and Foxcroft, The Making of Addiction, 65.

  54 Berridge, Opium, 201.

  55 Ibid., 202.

  56 Auerbach, Race, 146.

  57 Cited in Barry Milligan, Pleasures and Pains (Virginia: University of Virginia Press, 1995), 90.

  58 Ibid., 83.

  59 Berridge, Opium, 200.

  60 Marek Kohn, Dope Girls: The Birth of the British Drug Underground (London: Granta Books, 1992), 144.

  61 Cay Van Ash and Elizabeth Sax Rohmer, Master of Villainy (Ohio: Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1972).

  62 Bickers, Britain in China, 23.

  63 Matthew Shiel, The Yellow Danger (London: Routledge/Thoemmes, 1998), 37.

  64 Ibid., 10.

  65 The Times, 13 September 1898, 13.

  66 Shiel, The Yellow Danger, 201.

  67 Kathryn Castle, Britannia’s Children: Reading Colonialism through Children’s Books and Magazines (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996), 145–6.

  68 Ibid., 136–48.

  69 Jack London, ‘The Unparalleled Invasion’, at http://www.jacklondons.net/writings/StrengthStrong/invasion.html (accessed 17 July 2010).

  70 Conversation with Sir Christopher Frayling, 2 December 2008.

  71 Sax Rohmer, The Mystery of Dr Fu Manchu in The Fu Manchu Omnibus (London: Allison and Busby, 1995), 15.

  72 Ibid., for example 32, 42, 412 and passim.

  73 I owe this insight to Hevia, English Lessons, 319–20.

  74 Sax Rohmer, The Devil Doctor in The Fu Manchu Omnibus, 345.

  75 Ibid., 40.

  76 Rohmer, The Mystery of Dr Fu Manchu, 161. Again, I owe this insight into Sax Rohmer’s work to Hevia’s English Lessons, 319. For further discussion, see also Urmila Seshagiri, ‘Modernity’s (Yellow) Perils: Dr Fu-Manchu and English Race Paranoia’, Cultural Critique 62 (Winter 2006): 162–94.

  77 Rohmer, The Devil Doctor in The Fu Manchu Omnibus, 320.

  78 Ibid., 415.

  79 Ibid., 318.

  80 Castle, Britannia’s Children.

  81 David Scott, China Stands Up: the PRC and the International System (Abingdon: Routledge, 2007), 17.

  82 ‘China Threat Debate’, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hy_snHWdZE (accessed 17 July 2010).

  83 Examples include a discussion on the BBC’s Newsnight to cover Barack Obama’s visit to China in winter 2009; or an article about trade relations with China in the British broadsheet the Daily Telegraph: ‘Obama Faces Potential Chinese Death Trap’, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/globalbusiness/7536025/Barack-Obama-faces-potential-Chinese-death-trap.html30 March 2010 (accessed 31 March 2010).

  84 Bill Gertz, The China Threat: How the People’s Republic Targets America (Lanham: Regnery Publishing, 2000), xiv, 5.

  85 http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/16397_The_Chinese_Dragon_Awakens (accessed 30 November 2009).

  86 http://digg.com/world_news/Is_China_trying_to_poison_Americans_and_their_pets (accessed 30 November 2009).

  87 http://consumerist.com/2007/06/chinese-poison-train-defeats-fda-the-prequel.html (accessed 30 November 2009).

  88 ‘Mattel Apologizes to China for Recall’, at http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/21/business/worldbusiness/21iht-mattel.3.7597386.html (accessed 30 November 2009).

  89 D. J. Enright, ‘Introduction’, The Mystery of Dr Fu Manchu (London: Dent, 1985), viii.

  Seventeen: THE NATIONAL DISEASE

  1 Cited in Felipe Fernández-Armesto, The World: A History Volume 2 (Michigan: Prentice-Hall, 2009), 802. For more on late nineteenth-century modernization, see relevant essays in The Cambridge History of China Volumes 10 and 11 and primary sources collected in Theodore de Bary and Richard Lufrano eds., Sources of Chinese Tradition (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001) Volume 2.

  2 Quoted in Wang Chengren, Li Hongzhang sixiang tixi yanjiu (Systematic Research into the Thought of Li Hongzhang) (Wuhan: Wuhan daxue chubanshe, 1998), 23–4.

  3 Lu Xun, The Real Story of Ah-Q and Other Tales of China, trans. Julia Lovell (London: Penguin Classics, 2009), 16.

  4 J. D. Frodsham ed. and trans., The First Chinese Embassy to the West: the journals of Kuo Sung-t’ao, Liu Hsi-hung and Chang Te-yi (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974), xxxvii.

  5 Benjamin Schwartz, In Search of Wealth and Power: Yen Fu and the West (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990), 29.

  6 Ibid., 94.

  7 ‘John Chinaman’, Punch, 10 February 1877.

  8 ‘To the Tottering Lily’, Punch, 17 February 1877.

  9 Frodsham, The First Chinese Embassy, 75.

  10 Ibid., 73, 43.

  11 Ibid., 73, 100–101.

  12 Ibid., 100.

  13 Zhao, A Nation-State, 48.

  14 For an overview, see Spence, The Search for Modern China, 220–2. See also S. C. M. Paine, The Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895: Perceptions, Power, and Primacy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), for a more detailed account.

  15 Leo Oufan Lee and Andrew J. Nathan, ‘The Beginnings of Mass Culture: Journalism and Fiction in the Late Ch’ing and Beyond’, in Popular Culture in Late Imperial China, eds. David Johnson et al., 364.

  16 Frank Dikötter, The Discourse of Race in Modern China (London: Hurst, 1992), 75.

  17 Jonathan Spence, The Gate of Heavenly Peace (New York: Penguin, 1982), 8. This is an excellent introduction to modern Chinese cultural and intellectual history.

  18 Yan Fu, ‘Yuanqiang’ (The Origins of Strength) in Yan Fu ji (Works of Yan Fu) (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1986) Volume 1, 5–6.

  19 De Bary and Lufrano, Sources of Chinese Tradition Volume 2, 258.

  20 Quoted in Wah-kwan Cheng, ‘Vox Populi: Language, Literature and Ideology in Modern China’, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation (University of Chicago, 1989), 92.

  21 Schwartz, In Search of Wealth and Power, 49.

  22 Cheng, ‘Vox Populi’, 64–5, 69, 70, 77–8.

  23 Ibid., 86, 84, 90.

  24 See Li Yu-ning ed., Two Self-Portraits: Liang Ch’i-ch’ao and Hu Shih (Bronxville: Outer Sky Press, 1992), 5–6.

  25 Philip Huang, Liang Ch’i-ch’ao and Modern Chinese Liberalism (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1972), 31.

  26 Joan Judge, Print and Politics (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996); Huang, Liang Ch’i-ch’ao, 7.

  27 Dikötter, The Discourse of Race, 84.

  28 See, for just one set of examples, Liang Qichao quanji (Collected Works of Liang Qichao) Volume 1 (Beijing: Beijing chubanshe, 1999) Volume 1, 101, 140, 99, 167.

  29 Judge, Print and Politics, 96–7.

  30 Schwartz, In Search of Wealth and Power, 142; Cohen, History in Three Keys, 224; Kirk Denton ed., Modern Chinese Literary Thought: Writings on Literature 1893–1945 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), 74–81.

  31 Barbara Mittler, A Newspaper for China? Power, Identity and Change in Shanghai’s News Media, 1872–1912 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004), 365.

  32 ‘Gengshen Yifen jilue’ (A Record of the Foreign Affairs of 1860), in Qi Sihe et al. eds., Di er ci yapian zhanzheng (The Second Opium War) (Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 1978) Volume 2, 5–27.

  33 Xia, Zhongxi jishi, 53–4; in English, see Edward Parker’s abridged translation, China’s Intercourse with Europe (Shanghai: Kelly and Walsh, 1890), 54.

  34 See, for example, ibid. and also Qi, Di er ci Volume 1.

  35 Xu Guoqi, Olympic Dreams: China and Sports, 1895–2008 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2008), 18–19.

  36 Ma Mozhen, Zhongguo jindu shi ziliao (Materials from the History of Drug Prohibition in China) (Tianjin: Tianjin renmin chubanshe, 1998), 351.

  37 Ibid., 380.

  38 Ibid., 395–6; Dikötter et al., Narcotic Culture, 109.

  39 R. Bin Wong, �
��Opium and Modern Chinese State-making’, in Timothy Brook and Bob Wakabayashi eds., Opium Regimes: China, Britain and Japan, 1839–1952 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 201.

  40 See Lodwick, Crusaders, 35; Dikötter et al., Narcotic Culture, 156; Booth, Opium: A History, 91–2.

  41 Dikötter et al., Narcotic Culture, 124.

  42 Madancy, The Troublesome Legacy of Commissioner Lin, 124.

  43 The Times, 4 April 1908.

  44 Alexander Des Forges, ‘Opium/Leisure/Shanghai’, in Brook and Wakabayashi eds., Opium Regimes, 178.

  45 Ma, Zhongguo jindu shi ziliao, 395–6; Dikötter et al., Narcotic Culture, 109.

  46 Gaodeng xiaoxue zhongguo lishi jiaokeshu (High Level Primary School Textbook on Chinese History) (Shanghai: Shangwu yinshu guan, 1909), 82.

  47 Zhou Yongming, Anti-drug Crusades in Twentieth-Century China: Nationalism, History and State-Building (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 1999), 19.

  48 See Mary Wright, ‘Introduction’ in China in Revolution: The First Phase 1900–1913 (Yale: Yale University Press, 1971).

  49 Joan Judge, Print and Politics, 86.

  50 For key essays on this, see Paul Cohen, Discovering History in China.

  51 Henrietta Harrison, China, 124. See also Frances Wood, No Dogs and Not Many Chinese (London: John Murray, 2000) for an entertaining and informative account of expatriate life in the treaty ports.

  52 I use the term ‘legend’ advisedly, even while I would like to argue that the spirit of the sentiment existed; Robert Bickers and Jeffrey Wasserstrom have shown that no such exact usage featured on signs for Shanghai’s municipal parks, in ‘Shanghai’s “Dogs and Chinese Not Admitted” Sign: Legend, History and Contemporary Symbol’ in China Quarterly 142 (June 1995): 444–66.

  53 See Frank Dikötter, Things Modern (London: Hurst, 2005) for a vivid account of the Chinese fascination with material modernity through this period.

  54 See, for example, Mu Shiying, ‘Five in a Nightclub’, Renditions 37 (Spring 1992): 5–22. For an introduction to Shanghai’s urban culture in the 1930s and 40s, see Leo Lee, Shanghai Modern (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999).

  55 Dikötter et al., Narcotic Culture, 114; Alan Baumler, Worse than Floods and Wild Beasts (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2007), 54–5.

  56 Des Forges, ‘Opium/Leisure/Shanghai’, 167–85.

  57 Wong, ‘Opium and Modern Chinese State-making’, 192.

  58 Lucien Bianco, ‘The Responses of Opium Growers to Eradication Campaigns and the Poppy Tax, 1907–1949’, in Brook and Wakabayashi, Opium Regimes, 307–9.

  59 Dikötter et al., Narcotic Culture, 135.

  Eighteen: COMMUNIST CONSPIRACIES

  1 Karl Marx, ‘Free Trade and Monopoly’, at http://www.marxists.org/ archive/marx/works/1858/09/25.htm (accessed 1 March 2010). See Francis Wheen, Karl Marx (London: Fourth Estate, 1999) for an enjoyable biography of Marx.

  2 Karl Marx, ‘Whose Atrocities?’ at http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/04/10.htm (accessed 1 March 2010).

  3 Karl Marx, ‘Revolution in China and Europe’, at http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1853/06/14.htm (accessed 1 March 2010).

  4 Karl Marx, ‘Trade or Opium?’ at http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1858/09/20.htm (accessed 1 March 2010). These are the anti-opium campaigner R. Montgomery Martin’s words, but Marx quotes them to stand for his own views of the drug trade.

  5 Ibid., and ‘Revolution in China and Europe’.

  6 Marx, ‘Revolution in China and in Europe’.

  7 Marie-Claire Bergère, Sun Yat-sen (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), 208. This is the most recent and complete biography of Sun, although biographies by C. Martin Wilbur and Harold Schiffrin are also informative and interesting.

  8 C. Martin Wilbur, Sun Yat-sen: Frustrated Patriot (New York: Columbia University Press, 1976), 23.

  9 Bergère, Sun Yat-sen, 303.

  10 See ‘The Manifesto of the T’ung-meng-hui, 1905’, in Teng Ssu-yu and John Fairbank eds., China’s Response to the West: A Documentary Survey, 1839–1923 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1979), 227–9.

  11 Wilbur, Sun Yat-sen, 118.

  12 Paul Cohen, ‘Remembering and forgetting’, in China Unbound: Evolving Perspectives on the Chinese Past (London: Routledge, 2003), 158.

  13 Ibid., 161–2.

  14 Ibid., 163.

  15 Lin Yu-sheng, The Crisis of Chinese Consciousness (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1979), 76.

  16 Spence, The Search for Modern China, 292.

  17 Bergère, Sun Yat-sen, 158.

  18 Ma, Zhongguo jindu shi ziliao, 594.

  19 John Fitzgerald, Awakening China: Politics, Culture and Class in the Nationalist Revolution (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), 170, 149. This is an excellent account of the modern Chinese nation-building project.

  20 Wilbur, Sun Yat-sen, 135, 144.

  21 Sun Yat-sen, The Three Principles (Shanghai: North China Daily News and Herald, 1927), 12, 16, 11.

  22 Bergère, Sun Yat-sen, 361.

  23 Dong Wang, China’s Unequal Treaties: Narrating National History (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2005), 65.

  24 Sun Yat-sen, The Three Principles, 33, 31, 39.

  25 Bergère, Sun Yat-sen, 372.

  26 Fitzgerald, Awakening China, 174.

  27 Ibid., 173.

  28 Ibid., 217.

  29 Ibid., 214–60.

  30 See a fine account of this in Henrietta Harrison, The Making of the Republican Citizen: Political Ceremonies and Symbols in China, 1911–1929 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).

  31 Lin Jiasheng, ‘Tan tan yapian zhanzheng’ (A Chat About the Opium War), Ertong zazhi 6 (1936): 4–7.

  32 For a useful introduction to changing representations of the Opium War in Chinese history textbooks, see Liu Chao, ‘Yapian zhanzheng yu Zhongguo jindaishi yanjiu’ (The Opium War and Research into Modern Chinese History), Xueshu yuekan 6 (2007): 146–53. Late Qing and early Republican textbooks that I have sampled include: Zuijin zhinashi (A Recent History of China) (Shanghai: Zhendang shixueshe, 1905); Zhina shi yao (An Outline of Chinese History) (Shanghai: Guangzhi shuju, 1906); Zhongguo lishi jiangyi (Lectures on Chinese History) (Shanghai: Hongwenguan chuban, 1908); Gaodeng xiaoxue zhongguo lishi jiaokeshu (High Level Primary School Textbook on Chinese History) (Shanghai: Shangwu yinshu guan, 1909); Gongheguo jiaokeshu, benguoshi (The Republican Textbook of Chinese History) (Shanghai: Shangwu, 1913); Benguoshi jiaoben (A Textbook for Chinese History) (Shanghai: Zhonghua shuju, 1917); Zhongguo jin bainian shi gangyao (An Outline of Chinese History over the Past Century) (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1927); Chu zhong ben guo shi (Chinese History for Elementary High Schools) (Shanghai: Zhonghua shuju, 1934).

  33 For these and similar quotations see Tian Longjun, ‘Yapian zhanzheng ganyan’ (Some emotional words about the Opium War), Jiangsu sheng li di er nüzi shifan xuexiao xiaoyouhui huikan 8 (1919), 4–5; Zhu Kuiyi, ‘Kexue: Yapian zhi zhan’ (Science: The War of Opium), Jiangsu sheng li di yi nüzi shifan xuexiao xiaoyouhui zazhi 3 (1920): 32–3; Zheng Hongfan, ‘Yapian zhanzheng bainian jinian’ (The Centenary of the Opium War), Zhejiang chao 108 (1940): 132–5; Pan Juemin, ‘Cong Yapian zhanzheng dao wusa can’an diguo zhuyi de zui’e’ (The Evil of Imperialism: From the Opium War to the Massacre of 30 May), Jiangsu dangwu zhoukan 17 (1930): 14–18; Fu Lin, ‘Yapian zhanzheng shimo’ (The Opium War from Beginning to End), Wenxian 4 (1925): 1–2; Bi Shuo, ‘Yapian zhanzheng jiyu women de jiaoxun’ (The Lesson that the Opium War Has For Us) Mingde xunkan 13.3 (1936): 7–8.

  34 See Yang Ren, Gaozhong benguo shi (Chinese History for High Schools) (Shanghai: Beixin shuju, 1930) Volume 2, 55–61.

  35 Zhou Yutong, Kaiming benguoshi jiaoben (Kaiming’s Textbook of Chinese History) (Shanghai: Kaiming shudian, 1932) Volume 2, 75–6.

  36 Yapian zhanzheng (The Opium War) (Shanghai: Shangwu, 1931), 1.

  37 ‘Judu tekan fakan he’ (An opening beration to this
special issue of Prohibition Monthly), Judu yuekan 44 (1930): 28.

  38 Chiang Kai-shek, China’s Destiny and Chinese Economic Theory trans. Philip Jaffe (London: Dennis Dobson, 1947), 97, 105.

  39 Dong Wang, China’s Unequal Treaties, 67.

  40 C. Martin Wilbur and Julie Lien-ying How, Missionaries of Revolution: Soviet Advisers and Nationalist China, 1920–1927 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989), 672–9.

  41 Pan Juemin, ‘Cong Yapian zhanzheng’, 14.

  42 Bi Shuo, ‘Yapian zhanzheng’.

  43 Wu Xuanyi, ‘Judu pingtan: Yapian zhanzheng shibai de yuanyin ji wo guo suo shoudao de yingxiang’ (The Reasons for Our Defeat in the Opium War and Its Impact on China), Judu yuekan 98 (1936): 2–4.

  44 Cao Han, ‘Yapian zhanzheng bainian ji: bainian lai de xuezhai’ (The Centenary of the Opium War: A Century-old Blood Debt), Xingjian 2.4 (1940): 29–32.

  45 See, for example, Chiang, China’s Destiny, 51, 55, 90, 84.

  46 See also, for example, ibid., 83, 97, 155.

  47 Ibid., 51, 89, 101, 90.

  48 Jay Taylor, The Generalissimo (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2009), 261.

  49 Appraisals of the Nationalists’ record in power have changed significantly over the past few decades. The highly critical view espoused by historians such as Lloyd Eastman (in, for example, ‘Nationalist China during the Nanking Decade, 1927–37’ in The Cambridge History of China Volume 13, 116–67) has recently been revised by more positive assessments that find the Nationalist regime relatively successful at state-building despite appalling difficulties, and that emphasize similarities rather than differences between the earlier Nationalist and later Communist states. Key points are made in works such as Hans van de Ven, War and Nationalism in China, 1925–45 (London: Routledge, 2003); William C. Kirby, ‘The Nationalist Regime and the Chinese Party-State, 1928–58’, in M. Goldman and A. Gordon eds., Historical Perspectives on Contemporary East Asia (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000), and Rana Mitter, Modern China: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).

  50 Baumler, Worse than Floods and Wild Beasts, 90.

  51 Edward Slack, Opium, State and Society: China’s Narco-Economy and the Guomindang, 1924–1937 (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2001), 48.