The Opium War

by Julia Lovell

  52 These figures and details are drawn from ibid., probably the best, most detailed account of opium policy in Republican China.

  53 Ibid., 45.

  54 Ibid., 61.

  55 Ibid., 83.

  56 Ibid., 63.

  57 Ibid., 91.

  58 Ibid., 92.

  59 ‘Judu tekan fakan he’.

  60 ‘Opium Evil as China’s Greatest Peril’, North China Herald, 12 February 1936, 257.

  61 Slack, Opium, 94.

  62 Dikötter et al., Narcotic Culture, 143.

  63 Baumler, Worse than Floods, 204.

  64 Slack, Opium, 102.

  65 See, for example, Mark S. Eykholt, ‘Resistance to Opium as a Social Evil in Wartime China’, in Brook and Wakabayashi eds., Opium Regimes, 362; and description in Dikötter et al., Narcotic Culture, 188. See Chiang, China’s Destiny, 91, for a denunciation of Japan’s ‘poison policy’.

  66 Timothy Brook, ‘Opium and Collaboration in Central China, 1938–40’, in Brook and Wakabayashi eds., Opium Regimes, 323.

  67 Zheng Hongfan, ‘Yapian zhanzheng bainian jinian’, 134–5.

  68 See John Jennings, The Opium Empire: Japanese Imperialism and Drug Trafficking in Asia, 1895–1945 (Westport: Praeger, 1997), 85; ‘Illicit Trade in North China’, in North China Herald, 5 February 1936, 213; ‘Korean Rascals in Tsangchow’, in North China Herald, 13 November 1935, 273.

  69 See, for example, Rana Mitter, The Manchurian Myth: Nationalism, Resistance, and Collaboration in Modern China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 118–19.

  70 The Times, 9 August 1939, 12 August 1939.

  71 Cao Han, ‘Yapian zhanzheng bainian ji’.

  72 ‘ “Lin Zexu” gaiming “Yapian zhanzheng” ’ (Lin Zexu Changes Title to The Opium War), Shanghai yingxun 2.13 (1942): 307.

  73 Parks M. Coble, Facing Japan: Chinese Politics and Japanese Imperialism, 1931–37 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991), 102.

  74 Fitzgerald, Awakening China, 329, 257.

  75 Ibid., 19.

  76 Alisa Jones, ‘Changing the Past to Serve the Present: History Education in Mainland China’, in Edward Vickers and Alisa Jones eds., History Education and National Identity in East Asia (New York: Routledge, 2005), 72.

  77 Mao Zedong, ‘The Chinese Revolution and the Chinese Communist Party’, at http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selectedworks/volume-2/mswv2_23.htm (accessed 10 February 2010).

  78 Mao Zedong, ‘Orientation of the Youth Movement’, at http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-2/mswv2_14.htm (accessed 10 February 2010).

  79 Mao Zedong, ‘The Chinese Revolution and the Chinese Communist Party’; Mao Zedong, ‘On Contradiction’, http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_17.htm (accessed 10 February 2010).

  80 Bainian shihua (A Narrative of the Past Century) (Shanghai: Pingming chubanshe, 1951), 1.

  81 Zhongguo jindai jianshi (A Concise Modern History of China) (Beijing: Lianhe tushu chubanshe, 1950), 1–6.

  82 Mao, ‘The Chinese Revolution’.

  83 Zhou Yongming, ‘Nationalism, Identity, and State-Building’, in Brook and Wakabayashi eds., Opium Regimes, 381.

  84 See Chen, ‘The Blooming Poppy’, 267; Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, Mao: The Unknown Story (London: Jonathan Cape, 2005), 283.

  85 Chen, ‘The Blooming Poppy’, 270.

  86 Ma, Zhongguo jindu shi ziliao, 1611.

  87 Zhou, ‘Nationalism’, 382.

  88 Ibid., 393.

  Nineteen: CONCLUSION

  1 Michael White, ‘Why Denouncing China is Hypocritical’, at http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/blog/2009/dec/29/china-akmal-shaikh-execution (accessed 12 January 2010).

  2 http://www.fco.gov.uk/en/news/latest-news/?view=News&id=21498748 (accessed 12 January 2010).

  3 http://www.chinese-embassy.org.uk/eng/sghd/t648674.htm (accessed 12 January 2010).

  4 http://china.globaltimes.cn/diplomacy/2009–12/495554.html (accessed 12 January 2010).

  5 http://news.xinmin.cn/rollnews/2010/01/02/3232072.html (accessed 12 January 2010).

  6 ‘Zhongguo ren kan le gaoxing’ (The Chinese People are Delighted), at http://blog.huanqiu.com/?uid-89545-action-viewspace-itemid-406290 (accessed 12 January 2010).

  7 http://comment.news.163.com/news_guonei4_bbs/5RMR30DG0001124J.html (accessed 12 January 2010).

  8 White, ‘Why Denouncing China’.

  9 Mark Lynas, ‘How Do I Know China Wrecked the Copenhagen Deal? I Was in the Room’, at http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/22/copenhagen-climate-change-mark-lynas (accessed 10 January 2010).

  10 Con Coughlin, ‘China Will Soon Have the Power to Switch off the Lights in the West’, at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/6924710/China-will-soon-have-the-power-to-switch-off-the-lights-in-the-West.html (accessed 12 January 2010).

  11 ‘All Politics is Local’, at http://www.newsweek.com/2010/01/03/allpolitics-is-local.html (accessed 12 January 2010).

  12 Zhongguo lishi (Chinese History) Volume 3 (Beijing: Renmin jiaoyu chubanshe, 1982), 3, 4, 7.

  13 Bonnie McDougall, interview, 10 July 2002.

  14 Haiyan Lee, ‘The Ruins of Yuanmingyuan’, Modern China (March 2009): 161. See also a special issue of China Heritage Quarterly on the ruined garden and palace (December 2006), at http://www.chinaheritagequarterly.org/editorial.php?issue=008 (accessed 21 August 2010).

  15 China Quarterly 120 (December 1989): 919–46.

  16 Anne-Marie Brady, Marketing Dictatorship: Propaganda and Thought Work in Contemporary China (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2008), 42. This is a fascinating account of how contemporary China’s propaganda machine has adapted to new media since 1989.

  17 Ibid., 45.

  18 Quru yu kangzheng (Humiliation and Resistance) (Qinhuangdao: Zhongguo shehui yu zhongxue chubanshe, 1993), 1, 3, 45, 102, 4.

  19 Zhang Haifeng et al., Yapianzhanzheng yu zhongguo xiandai hua (The Opium War and China’s Modernization) (Beijing: Zhongguo shehui chubanshe, 1991), 3.

  20 Zhao, A Nation-State, 219.

  21 Zhang Jiangming, ‘Aiguo zhuyi he jianshi you Zhongguo tese shehuizhuyi’ (Patriotism and Building Socialism with Chinese Characteristics) Qiushi, November 1994: 22.

  22 See Callahan, China, 34 and passim for a thorough and lively discussion of the discourse of national humiliation in modern and contemporary China.

  23 Richard McGregor, The Party: The Secret World of China’s Communist Rulers (London: Allen Lane, 2010), 236. This offers eye-opening insights into the workings of the Chinese Communist Party.

  24 Callahan, China, 38–47.

  25 Ma Zhibin, interview, 15 November 2007.

  26 Callahan, China, 50.

  27 See analysis in ibid., 4–52.

  28 Zhao, A Nation-State, 338–41.

  29 See tables in Martin Jacques, When China Rules the World: The Rise of the Middle Kingdom and the End of the Western World (London: Allen Lane, 2009), 392–4.

  30 Han Zhongkun, ‘Zhongguo, bushi yibaijiujiu’ (This Is No Longer the China of 1899) People’s Daily, 12 May 1999. The analogies during the 1999 protests to the Allied invasion of 1900 (during the Boxer Rebellion) were also marked. See discussion in Jeffrey Wasserstrom, ‘Student Protests in Fin-de-siecle China’, in the New Left Review (September/October 1999): 52–76; and China’s Brave New World and Other Tales for Global Times (Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2007). Peter Hessler’s Oracle Bones (London: John Murray, 2006) offers additional sharp analysis of these events.

  31 ‘British Invasions Probed as Root Cause of Tibetan Separatism’, 8 April 2008, at http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2008-04/08/content_6598211.htm (accessed 2 March 2009).

  32 ‘Patriotic Voices: Comments from the Global Times Online Forum’, at http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2008/05/patriotic-voices-comments-from- the-global-times-online-forum/ (accessed 2 March 2009).

  33 For a terrific introduction to the fenqing phenomenon, see Evan Osnos, ‘Letter
from China: Angry Youth’, in the New Yorker, 28 July 2008, at http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/07/28/080728fa_fact_osnos (accessed 17 November 2009).

  34 Interview obtained by private communication with Evan Osnos, 14 November 2007.

  35 For expertise on the Chinese Internet, visit essential digital resources such as China Digital Times, http://chinadigitaltimes.net/; Danwei, www.danwei.org; China Media Project, http://cmp.hku.hk/; Rebecca Mackinnon’s blog, http://rconversation.blogs.com/. Among many fascinating works, see also Yang Guobin, The Power of the Internet in China: Citizen Activism Online (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009); Xu Wu, Chinese Cyber Nationalism (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2009); Shaun Breslin and Simon Shen, ‘Online Chinese Nationalism’, http://www.chathamhouse.org.uk/files/17307_0910breslin_shen.pdf.

  36 Susan Shirk, Fragile Superpower (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 239.

  37 Brady, Marketing Dictatorship, 55; Peter Hays Gries, China’s New Nationalism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 51.

  38 Zhang Xiaobo, interview, 30 September 2007.

  39 Ren Xue’an, interview, 18 December 2007.

  40 ‘Lust, Caution is rejected in Utopia’, at http://zonaeuropa.com/ 200711b.brief.htm_008 (accessed 30 November 2007).

  41 Wang Ningwen, interview.

  42 Ibid.

  43 Ibid.

  44 Ibid.

  45 Ren, interview.

  46 Given the strictures currently governing public memory of Communist-manufactured traumas, it is not surprising, perhaps, that so much feeling is diverted into (authorized) recalling of the wounds, for example, of the Japanese invasion. See Vera Schwarcz, ‘The Black Milk of Historical Consciousness’, in Fei Fei Li, Robert Sabella and David Liu eds., Nanking 1937: Memory and Healing (New York: M. E. Sharpe, 2002), 183–204.

  47 For insight into the anarchic world of China’s young, Internet-savvy nationalists, see for example Mara Hvistendahl, ‘China’s Hacker Army’, in Foreign Policy, 3 March 2010, at http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/03/03/china_s_hacker_army?page=full (accessed 21 August 2010).

  48 Ren, interview.

  49 Shirk, Fragile Superpower, 171.

  50 Lishi 1 – putong gaozhong kecheng biaozhun shiyan jiaokeshu (History 1: Standard Textbooks For the Universal High School Curriculum) (Beijing: Renmin jiaoyu chubanshe, 2007), 76–7.

  51 See, for example, James Farrer, ‘Nationalism Pits Shanghai Against its Global Ambition’, in YaleGlobal, 29 April 2005, at http:// yaleglobal.yale.edu/content/nationalism-pits-shanghai-against-its-global- ambition (accessed 21 August 2010).

  52 For an introduction to Guo, see Mara Hvistendahl, ‘Conscience of a Nationalist’, at http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/conscience-nationalist (accessed 12 January 2010).

  53 ‘Beijing Tries to Rein in Nationalist Beast’, at http://chinadigitaltimes.net/tag/carrefour/ (accessed 2 March 2009).

  54 ‘Be Patriotic? First Be Cool!’ at http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2008/04/be-patriotic-first-be-cool/ (accessed 11 April 2009).

  55 Isabel Hilton, ‘Will China Implode?’ at http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-07-28/will-china-implode/ (accessed 1 July 2010).

  56 ‘Blind Pursuit of Profit Causes Mass Incidents’, China Daily, 25 December 2009 at http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/opinion/2009-12/25/content_9228967.htm (accessed 1 January 2010).

  57 Private communication with Jonathan Fenby, 18 January 2010.

  Selected Bibliography

  The principal Chinese-language collections of primary materials on the Opium Wars are to be found in:

  Qi Sihe et al. ed. Yapian zhanzheng (The Opium War) (Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 1954). A varied collection of official edicts and memorials, combined with personal diaries, narrative accounts, poems and letters, and translations of some British materials into Chinese.

  Yapian zhanzheng dangan shiliao (Archive Materials on the Opium War) (Tianjin: Tianjin guji chubanshe, 1992). The most comprehensive collection of Qing official sources (memorials, edicts and so on) from the Opium War period.

  Chouban yiwu shimo Daoguang chao (On the Handling of Foreign Affairs; Reign of Daoguang) (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1964). A collection of memorials on the subject of foreign relations during Daoguang’s reign.

  Lin Zexu. Lin Zexu ji (The Works of Lin Zexu) (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1962–65).

  —. Lin Zexu quanji (Collected Works of Lin Zexu) (Fuzhou: Haixia wenyi chubanshe, 2002).

  Qingshi lu (Annals of the Qing) (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1986). The most complete, day-to-day record of Qing court business and notifications from the provinces sent to the court.

  Qingshi gao (Draft History of the Qing) (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1976). The draft ‘official’ history of the Qing based on the court annals and written up in the twentieth century.

  A Ying ed. Yapian zhanzheng wenxueji (Literary Anthology from the Opium War) (Beijing: Guji chubanshe, 1957). An invaluable collection of poems, essays and fiction about opium and the Opium War.

  Liang Tingnan. Yifen wenji (Foreign Affairs) (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1997). Liang’s account, along with that of Wei Yuan below, offers one of the key narratives to the events of the Opium War.

  Wei Yuan. ‘Daoguang yangsou zhengfu ji’ (Daoguang’s Campaign Against and Soothing of the Foreign Boats) in Wei Yuan quanji (Complete Works of Wei Yuan) Volume 3 (Changsha: Yuelu shu she, 2005), 586–620. A slightly abridged translation of this text is published as A Chinese Account of the Opium War: A Translation of the Last Two Chapters of the Shengwu ji translated by Edward Parker (Shanghai: Kelly & Walsh, 1888).

  Xia Xie. Zhongxi jishi (A Record of Sino-Western Relations) (Hunan: Xinhua, 1988). An abridged translation of this text (the original was completed after the second Opium War) is published as China’s Intercourse with Europe translated by Edward Parker (Shanghai: Kelly and Walsh, 1890).

  In addition, there are Chinese-language collections that focus on a particular geographical centre to the war, such as:

  Sanyuanli renmin kangyi douzheng shiliao (Historical Materials on the Sanyuanli People’s Struggle for Resistance) (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1978).

  Yapian zhanzheng zai zhoushan shiliao xuanbian (A Selection of Historical Materials from the Opium War on Zhoushan) (Hangzhou: Zhejiang renmin chubanshe, 1992).

  English translations of some Chinese sources are available in the Parliamentary Papers and Foreign Office dispatches, and in some of the British army accounts listed below (such as Bingham’s Narrative) and the Chinese Repository. But see also translations published in:

  Kuo, P. C. A Critical Study of the First Anglo-Chinese War with Documents (Shanghai: The Commercial Press, 1935).

  Swisher, Earl. China’s Management of the American Barbarians: A Study of Sino-American Relations, 1841–1861, with Documents (New Haven: Far Eastern Publications, 1953).

  Teng Ssu-yu. Chang-hsi and the Treaty of Nanking (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1944).

  Waley, Arthur. The Opium War Through Chinese Eyes (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1958).

  See also key Chinese secondary works for further guidance on the wealth of Chinese-language materials available on the conflict, for example:

  Mao Haijian. Tianchao de bengkui (The Collapse of a Dynasty) (Beijing: Shenghuo, 1995).

  Xiao Zhizhi. Yapian zhanzheng shi (History of the Opium War) (Fujian: Fujian renmin chubanshe, 1996).

  Yao Weiyuan. Yapian zhanzheng shi shikao (An Investigation into the History of the Opium War) (Wuhan: Wuhan daxue chubanshe, 2007).

  On the British side, many of the dispatches from China are collected together in relevant volumes of Parliamentary Papers through the 1830s and 1840s – see in particular Correspondence Relating to China (1840).

  The Foreign Office microfilms of dispatches are available at the National Archives in Kew, London, in the FO 17 series. An edited set of these dispatches is published in Ian Nish ed., British Documents on Foreign Affairs: Reports and Papers from the Foreign Office Confidential Print
, Part 1, Series E, Asia, Volume 16, Chinese War and Its Aftermath, 1839–1849 (Frederick, Md.: University Publications of America, 1994).

  Parliamentary debates are available online at: http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/

  In addition, there are many first-hand accounts written by those who participated in the campaigns, including:

  ‘A Field Officer’. The Last Year in China to the Peace of Nanking (London: Longman, 1843).

  Belcher, Edward. Narrative of a Voyage Round the World Performed in Her Majesty’s Ship Sulphur During the Years 1836–1842 (London: Henry Colburn, 1843).

  Bingham, John Elliot. Narrative of the Expedition to China 2nd ed. (London: Henry Colburn, 1843).

  Hall, W. H. and W. D. Bernard. Narrative of the Voyages and Services of the Nemesis 2nd ed. (London: Henry Colburn, 1845).

  Lord Jocelyn. Six Months with the Chinese Expedition (London: John Murray, 1841).

  Loch, Granville. The Closing Events of the Campaign in China (London: John Murray, 1843).

  McPherson, Duncan. Two Years in China: Narrative of the Chinese Expedition, from Its Formation in April, 1840, to the Treaty of Peace in August, 1842 2nd ed. (London: Saunders and Otley, 1843).

  Murray, Alexander. Doings in China: Being the Personal Narrative of an Officer Engaged in the Late China Expedition, from the Recapture of Chusan in 1841 to the Peace of Nankin in 1842 (London: Richard Bentley, 1843).

  Ouchterlony, John. The Chinese War: An Account of All the Operations of the

  British Forces from the Commencement to the Treaty of Nanking (London: Saunders and Otley, 1844).

  For secondary English-language accounts of the Opium War, see the general bibliography below; books by Peter Ward Fay, Edgar Holt, Brian Inglis and James Polachek are, amongst others, particularly helpful.

  In addition, the following works were consulted:

  A Resident in China. The Rupture with China and Its Causes (London: Gilbert and Piper, 1840).

  Appleton, William. A Cycle of Cathay: The Chinese Vogue in England during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (New York: Columbia University Press, 1951).

  Auerbach, Sascha. Race, Law and “The Chinese Puzzle” in Imperial Britain (Palgrave Macmillan: New York, 2009).