November 23, 2009 • 19 mins
In the 19th century, Britain tried to remedy a trade deficit with China by hooking the country on opium. Tensions rose as more and more Chinese citizens became opium addicts, eventually leading to war. Learn more about the Opium Wars in this episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Katie Lambert and I'm Sarah Dowdy. And as most
of you know, Katie and I love Victorian literature and
(00:21):
nineteenth century British novels and poetry, and we were talking
about it recently. The character of the opium addict or
the opium eater so many helps up a lot, doesn't it.
And for a while I thought that was just sort
of the easy thing to go to, like I need
an extra character. Who should I put in? I know,
the opium eater. But then I realized it was an
(00:41):
actual problem in British society, a major problem in Victorian England.
There were a lot of opium addicts. But it turns
out that is nothing compared to the problem the Victorians
forced on the Chinese at the same time. So let's
talk about opium history and how it got to China
and Britain in the first place. Opium is great for
(01:04):
relieving tension and pain. Not that we're recommending this, because
we're absolutely not, but that's why it became popular. The
ancient Assyrians used it as a pain killer. So did
for century Greeks, and there don't seem to be any
addictions in those old stories, and that maybe because of
how they were taking it, which was in pills or
added to drinks. Turkish and Arab traders brought opium to
(01:26):
China in the sixth or seventh century, but the seventeenth
century marks when we learned how to smoke it. Helpful
Westerners had seen Indians smoking tobacco in pipes and thought, hey,
why don't we add a little opium to the tobacco,
realized it was fantastic for what they were looking for,
and quickly got addicted and brought it over to China,
(01:48):
and the Portuguese started making a killing bringing opium from
India to China. In the seventeen hundreds, the West is
using opium laudanum and paregoric in those wonderful quackery kind
of patent medicines, and in sevente it's a huge problem
in China, and the emperor at the time outlaws the
sale and the smoking of opium. But it doesn't end,
(02:11):
and we're going to talk a little bit about why
and how it got there, which would be thanks to
the British so the British have a very unequal trade
relationship with the Chinese. And part of this has to
do with the Manchu emperors believing that the Middle Kingdom
already had everything it needed, they don't need to import
stuff from the British. But that's a pretty valid belief
(02:33):
in a way. On the one hand, you have the
British who are obsessed with tea there they can't get
enough tea from China, and Columbia University actually estimates that
the average Londoner spent five per cent of the total
household budget on tea, which is a lot more than
I spend on my earl, Greg, I don't know about
pretty hefty price. And it's not just tea. They can't
(02:55):
get enough of the China where the sciences, candy, silk. Meanwhile,
the British the goods. They have to offer our manufactured items,
which the Chinese dismisses toys they don't really need them,
and then a lot of woolen goods and most people
in China don't need these hefty wool sweaters and such
(03:18):
from Britain. So you have this really imbalanced trade agreement
where the British are importing tons of stuff from China,
and because they can't trade, they have to pay in silver,
so while their silver is going to China and China
is not getting anything from them. And so the Brits
again have been trying for years to open the Chinese market,
and everything they bring over the Chinese aren't interested in,
(03:40):
nor are they really interested in dealing with them, and
they have super strict rules about trade for foreigners. Foreign
factories are only allowed in Canton, for example, only certain
ports are open. They can't even enter the cities that
they're in. So if you're a foreigner trying to break
into the Chinese market, it's just not going to happen
for you at this particular time. So enter opium, which
(04:03):
is how the British finally figure out to wiggle into
the market because there is a growing demand and the
supply comes from an English colony, India, So they even
go as far as offering free samples out trying to
get people addicted to opium, so that China gets this
insatiable thirst for opium. Tisk tisk to the British. Yeah,
(04:26):
and it really gets out of hand quickly. Addictions a
huge problem by seventeen seventy three, the British have surpassed
all other sellers are the leading suppliers to the Chinese,
and by sevent the Emperor outlaws importing and cultivating opium
as well, because it's again a huge problem and they're
trying their best to stop it. So how did the
(04:46):
British get around these laws? Though? While the East India
Company is of course not allowed to carry opium since
it's illegal, so they hire these country traders who sell
opium to smugglers in China, collect golden silver for it,
and then hand it over to the East India Company,
who then takes the golden silver and buys things in
China that they can sell for a profit in England,
(05:08):
which is pretty slick East India Company. So the trade
imbalance has now shifted because of this growing demand for opium,
which China right, that's depleting their silver stores, right. And
so China decides that it not only has to save
its people from opium, it also needs to learn how
to control the Brits in their country. So in eighteen
(05:30):
thirty nine, the Emperor designates Commissioner Lynn to sue and
this is going to be our introduction to pronunciation warnings Um,
we got a little help from a colleague. But we're
telling you right now some of these pronunfusions may not
be correct. Kind emails if you have pronunciation corrections. Anyways,
(05:54):
Commissioner Lynn is appointed by the Emperor as the Imperial Commissioner,
and he's authorized do whatever is necessary to end the
traffic of opium. And he does some things you might expect,
like rounding up the opium addicts and forcing them into treatment,
punishing domestic drug dealers, and the domestic drug dealers were
punished pretty steeply. Um. But he also goes to Canton
(06:17):
where he seizes the opium off of ships and dumps
it into the sea. And this radical act happened at
the same time as the murder of a Chinese villager
by drunk sailors. All of this got tensions brewing, and
the British government won't hand over the sailors who killed
the Chinese man to the Chinese government because they didn't
(06:38):
trust the government, which of course makes the Chinese angry.
So things aren't going well. And about the same time,
Commissioner Lynn says that China will completely cut off trade
with Britain if the opium stuff doesn't happen, and in
February forty the Brits decide to hell with it. That's
the end of it. They're getting their military involved and
they're going to get in that market. So Lord Ormerston,
(07:00):
the British Prime Minister, initiates war, and this is the
first opium war in China. He wants full compensation for
the opium dumped in the sea. But there's a problem
with this war. China's a severe disadvantage because of the
British gun power right, and the British Royal Navy is
absolutely fantastic, and the Chinese military simply isn't equipped or
(07:23):
trained to be fighting against the sort of thing they're
fighting against. In June eighteen forties, sixteen British warships show
up at Hong Kong. A man named Charles Elliott starts
negotiating for the Brits and there's an agreement in January
eighteen forty one, but both sides hate it and neither
one of them wants to go with it. And in
May eighteen forty one, the British attack the walled city
(07:44):
of Guangzhou Canton and get a six million dollar ransom
and the Cantonese check them back, but again, the navy
is simply too good and the Chinese don't have an
effective way to fight back. They're offering rewards for British heads,
but it's just not happening. And the tricky British propaganda
of the time was putting it across like this that
(08:06):
they weren't there to fight the Chinese people. They were
just there to fight the Chinese government and the soldiers
who abused the people. And opium question out of it entirely,
and there were some riffs in society that they could
play off at the time, definitely well, there were also
riffs in the British society about this war. I think
Katie and I initially went into this thinking that British
(08:29):
people were all raw raw about the opium war and
trading with China, but that's not the case. A lot
of people are against it and they see it as
uh something to be ashamed about forcing opium, a drug
that is illegal in England, onto the Chinese. It's denounced
in Parliament by a young William Gladstone as an unjust
(08:52):
and inequitous war, and he even accuses the Prime Minister
of fighting a war to protect an infamous contraband traffic,
and there's outrage on the pulpits and in the press
in America and England. Actually, the outrage is so strong
in America that a lot of the merchants, they're kind
of back off from it, Uh, get out of the
(09:13):
trade entirely, even though we've been selling the Turkish stuff
to China as well. This is when we started to
back off. Commissioner Lynn was also trying to push this
moral argument. He wrote a letter to Queen Victoria, and
it's uncertain if she even read this, but in it
he was very frank, surprisingly frank for writing to Victoria.
(09:35):
He writes, the wealth of China is used to profit
the barbarians. That is to say, the great profit made
by barbarians is all taken from the rightful share of China.
By what right do they then, in return use the
poisonous drug to injure the Chinese people? Even though the
barbarians may not necessarily intend to do us harm, yet
in coveting profit to an extreme, they have no regard
(09:56):
for injuring others. Let us ask, where is your con chance?
And I'm sure Victoria loved her people being called barbarians.
But you can't underestimate the human cost of what was
going on at the time. The Chinese end up losing
the war. Elliott's successor, Henry Pottinger, captures several of their cities,
including Shanghai, and at Nanjang they give in. And this
(10:20):
is where the Treaty of Nanjang assigned in August forty two.
It's the first treaty ever signed by China with any
European power, and it's the first of what's known as
the Unequal Treaties. And there's a reason for that, beginning
a century of such treaty. Right, China gives Hong Kong
to Britain. They also open more ports to British trade,
(10:40):
They agree to equal official recognition, and they pay an
indemnity of twenty one million dollars um. Some of that
was payment for the opium that Commissioner Lynn had destroyed.
And they also give the right of British citizens to
be tried by British courts, and they lower tariffs. And
this is especially awful part other Western countries quickly demand
(11:02):
their own privileges after seeing you, So, yeah, we want
to be able to trade too, And everybody jumps in
to get their piece of the pie. To be part
of the most Favored Nation clause. That's what everyone wants.
And oddly, considering that this entire war is about opium,
opium is not mentioned anywhere in this treaty, and this
will come back to haunt us, as we'll see a
(11:24):
little later. This treaty also sets up the Treaty ports system,
which means that in treaty ports, Westerners weren't subject to
China's laws. They could do their own things, that up
their own legal situation, and pretty much do things however
they wanted. The major treaty ports in China were Shanghai
and Guangshu. But however, this is the one thing the
Chinese did keep. Foreigners still weren't allowed in the interior
(11:47):
of China. So the First Opium War is over, but
the problems aren't over because opium is still an issue.
The question of opium isn't resolved in the treaty at all. Right.
Trade is still an issue, and the Chinese are still
very unhappy about having the British in their country, and
the British are unhappy because they still don't have all
of the rights and the wages they would like exactly.
(12:08):
So a man named Chi Yang is put in place
as Imperial Commissioner, and he believes in appeasement. So things
run smoothly for a while, but trade doesn't increase the
way the British thought it would, and again the opium
things still isn't settled. Yeah, you'd think with this sweet
treaty they've worked out that, you know, everything would be
(12:29):
more conducive to higher opium trade, but that doesn't happen now,
and the question of whether foreigners should be allowed into
the walled city of guang Jou still isn't settled. After
the treaty was declared open, but it never happened because
the Chinese are really resistant to letting the barbarians as
they thought of them, into their walled city. And the
Cantonese finally promised the British they could come in in
(12:50):
eighteen forty nine, but they really aren't happy about it,
and as eighteen forty nine approaches, the protests begin because
no one wants British in there. The British give in
the Beijing Court grants temporary entrance, but the Cantonese have
won this round and I can't help rooting for China
at this point, and there's a lot of xenophobia in China,
(13:12):
a lot of anti foreign sentiment, and it only grows.
And with the anti foreign sentiment comes anti government sentiment,
and some of this ends up carrying into the Taiping Rebellion,
which is a radical political and religious at people that
goes on from eighteen fifty to sixty four. And Katy
and I might want to talk about this some more later.
(13:34):
It's we're not gonna give you too much, want too
much away, But it's a pretty wild thing. It takes
an estimated twenty million lives, and it permanently alters the
um Qing or Manchu dynasty and the way that the
Chinese government has worked for so long. But an interesting
thing about the Taiping Rebellion is their very anti Opium.
(13:55):
They are. It's actually a Christian rebellion. Um the leader
believes that he's the son of God, which surprisingly that
does not mean Jesus. He believes he's Jesus younger brother.
But he's very anti Opium. And all of the Taiping's
credos are really Old Testament. It's not about New Testament
(14:18):
style forgiveness and such it's um, anti opium, anti alcohol,
and tobacco, prostitution, foot binding. So this radical social and
government change is happening also leading up to the Second
Opium War. Right, so there's this huge social rift that's
(14:38):
going on from eighteen fifty to eighteen sixty four, that's
how long the Typing rebellion lasted. And the West steps
in again and helps put the rebellion down because they're
afraid that the China the typing we're advocating, would be
even more resistant to Western influences. So we're very good
at looking after and their anti opium, which you know,
really wouldn't help us trade all about. At the end
(15:01):
of the day, and this is when the Second Opium
War starts. You thought it was over, but it's not.
In eighteen fifty six, Chinese officials get on the ship Arrow,
which was Chinese owned but British registered, and they charged
the crew with piracy and smuggling and lower the British flag.
And the Brits want to get more trading rights in
China anyway, so they basically used this incident to start
(15:24):
the fight, and the French joined forces with the British
using is their excuse the murder of a French missionary
in the interior of China. But it's really not about
the missionary that it's about the opium in the trading.
The Russians and Americans get in on the game and
send their representatives, and military actions against China start. In
(15:44):
eighteen fifty seven. Guangzhou is occupied, the Dagou for it
is taken and the Chinese are forced to sign the
Treaties of Tianjin, which call for residents in Beijing, for
foreign envoys travel in the interior, and freedom of movement
from missionaries, as well as opening of new ports. And
they're also forced to legalize the import of opium in
eighteen fifty eight, which is just I mean not to
(16:07):
be able judging about history, but seriously so, the Chinese
unsurprisingly refused to ratify these treaties, which are even more
inequal than the earlier ones. So in retaliation, the Allies
capture Beijing and then plunder and burn one of the
emperor's palaces. You want, Main Garden. So in eighteen sixty
the Chinese signed the Beijing Convention saying that they will
(16:29):
in fact observe the treaties, and during this time Russia
has also maneuvered its way into a nice beneficial place
to be by acting as China's buddy throughout these various negotiations,
and China seeds to Russia the territory between the Surre
River and the sea, so everyone but China gets what
they want. Yeah, so out of the second Opium more
we end up with more foreign privileges, Christians being allowed
(16:54):
to come in and evangelize um, and a kind of
threat to the more all in cultural values of China,
right because Confucianism was what they were observing at the time.
And allowing someone to come in and threaten your moral
and cultural values that way well, and not to mention,
the imperial rule by this point has just been battered.
(17:17):
They have fallen every time when they come up against
the British. So they're at a at a threat two
forces from their own people. And in case you're wondering
what happened with Opium, the trade routes just keep on
keeping on. As I put in my notes, um, we
had figured out how to get morphine from opium and
(17:38):
around eighteen o four and use it on soldiers during
the Civil War, and so end up with plenty of
addicts of our own, and we figure out heroin in
eight which quickly becomes very popular and still is. But
in the early nineteen hundreds, China starts to get control
of opium trade, at least within its borders, and the
country signs the Ten Years Agreement with India in nineteen
(18:00):
o seven, which basically says that China forbids the cultivation
and consumption of opium and India agrees to cease exporting
it completely in ten years. So by nineteen seventeen we've
pretty much stopped that. Yeah, but by night Burma gains
independence and they're all about producing the opium. And this
(18:21):
even goes into the beginning of communism in China. When
the communists come to power in nineteen forty nine, they
stop all the opium business, completely shut it down, but
it just moves elsewhere. In the sixties and seventies, that's
when the Golden Triangle comes up the border of Myanmar,
Laos and Thailand, and the UN starts a drug control
(18:44):
program to limit activity in the area, but they just
switched to mess and the opium goes to Afghanistan and stuff,
and we know about the wars there too, so opium
just keeps on ravaging people across the centuries here and oddly,
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(19:07):
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(19:28):
home page
Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Katie Lambert and I'm Sarah Dowdy. And as most
of you know, Katie and I love Victorian literature and
(00:21):
nineteenth century British novels and poetry, and we were talking
about it recently. The character of the opium addict or
the opium eater so many helps up a lot, doesn't it.
And for a while I thought that was just sort
of the easy thing to go to, like I need
an extra character. Who should I put in? I know,
the opium eater. But then I realized it was an
(00:41):
actual problem in British society, a major problem in Victorian England.
There were a lot of opium addicts. But it turns
out that is nothing compared to the problem the Victorians
forced on the Chinese at the same time. So let's
talk about opium history and how it got to China
and Britain in the first place. Opium is great for
(01:04):
relieving tension and pain. Not that we're recommending this, because
we're absolutely not, but that's why it became popular. The
ancient Assyrians used it as a pain killer. So did
for century Greeks, and there don't seem to be any
addictions in those old stories, and that maybe because of
how they were taking it, which was in pills or
added to drinks. Turkish and Arab traders brought opium to
(01:26):
China in the sixth or seventh century, but the seventeenth
century marks when we learned how to smoke it. Helpful
Westerners had seen Indians smoking tobacco in pipes and thought, hey,
why don't we add a little opium to the tobacco,
realized it was fantastic for what they were looking for,
and quickly got addicted and brought it over to China,
(01:48):
and the Portuguese started making a killing bringing opium from
India to China. In the seventeen hundreds, the West is
using opium laudanum and paregoric in those wonderful quackery kind
of patent medicines, and in sevente it's a huge problem
in China, and the emperor at the time outlaws the
sale and the smoking of opium. But it doesn't end,
(02:11):
and we're going to talk a little bit about why
and how it got there, which would be thanks to
the British so the British have a very unequal trade
relationship with the Chinese. And part of this has to
do with the Manchu emperors believing that the Middle Kingdom
already had everything it needed, they don't need to import
stuff from the British. But that's a pretty valid belief
(02:33):
in a way. On the one hand, you have the
British who are obsessed with tea there they can't get
enough tea from China, and Columbia University actually estimates that
the average Londoner spent five per cent of the total
household budget on tea, which is a lot more than
I spend on my earl, Greg, I don't know about
pretty hefty price. And it's not just tea. They can't
(02:55):
get enough of the China where the sciences, candy, silk. Meanwhile,
the British the goods. They have to offer our manufactured items,
which the Chinese dismisses toys they don't really need them,
and then a lot of woolen goods and most people
in China don't need these hefty wool sweaters and such
(03:18):
from Britain. So you have this really imbalanced trade agreement
where the British are importing tons of stuff from China,
and because they can't trade, they have to pay in silver,
so while their silver is going to China and China
is not getting anything from them. And so the Brits
again have been trying for years to open the Chinese market,
and everything they bring over the Chinese aren't interested in,
(03:40):
nor are they really interested in dealing with them, and
they have super strict rules about trade for foreigners. Foreign
factories are only allowed in Canton, for example, only certain
ports are open. They can't even enter the cities that
they're in. So if you're a foreigner trying to break
into the Chinese market, it's just not going to happen
for you at this particular time. So enter opium, which
(04:03):
is how the British finally figure out to wiggle into
the market because there is a growing demand and the
supply comes from an English colony, India, So they even
go as far as offering free samples out trying to
get people addicted to opium, so that China gets this
insatiable thirst for opium. Tisk tisk to the British. Yeah,
(04:26):
and it really gets out of hand quickly. Addictions a
huge problem by seventeen seventy three, the British have surpassed
all other sellers are the leading suppliers to the Chinese,
and by sevent the Emperor outlaws importing and cultivating opium
as well, because it's again a huge problem and they're
trying their best to stop it. So how did the
(04:46):
British get around these laws? Though? While the East India
Company is of course not allowed to carry opium since
it's illegal, so they hire these country traders who sell
opium to smugglers in China, collect golden silver for it,
and then hand it over to the East India Company,
who then takes the golden silver and buys things in
China that they can sell for a profit in England,
(05:08):
which is pretty slick East India Company. So the trade
imbalance has now shifted because of this growing demand for opium,
which China right, that's depleting their silver stores, right. And
so China decides that it not only has to save
its people from opium, it also needs to learn how
to control the Brits in their country. So in eighteen
(05:30):
thirty nine, the Emperor designates Commissioner Lynn to sue and
this is going to be our introduction to pronunciation warnings Um,
we got a little help from a colleague. But we're
telling you right now some of these pronunfusions may not
be correct. Kind emails if you have pronunciation corrections. Anyways,
(05:54):
Commissioner Lynn is appointed by the Emperor as the Imperial Commissioner,
and he's authorized do whatever is necessary to end the
traffic of opium. And he does some things you might expect,
like rounding up the opium addicts and forcing them into treatment,
punishing domestic drug dealers, and the domestic drug dealers were
punished pretty steeply. Um. But he also goes to Canton
(06:17):
where he seizes the opium off of ships and dumps
it into the sea. And this radical act happened at
the same time as the murder of a Chinese villager
by drunk sailors. All of this got tensions brewing, and
the British government won't hand over the sailors who killed
the Chinese man to the Chinese government because they didn't
(06:38):
trust the government, which of course makes the Chinese angry.
So things aren't going well. And about the same time,
Commissioner Lynn says that China will completely cut off trade
with Britain if the opium stuff doesn't happen, and in
February forty the Brits decide to hell with it. That's
the end of it. They're getting their military involved and
they're going to get in that market. So Lord Ormerston,
(07:00):
the British Prime Minister, initiates war, and this is the
first opium war in China. He wants full compensation for
the opium dumped in the sea. But there's a problem
with this war. China's a severe disadvantage because of the
British gun power right, and the British Royal Navy is
absolutely fantastic, and the Chinese military simply isn't equipped or
(07:23):
trained to be fighting against the sort of thing they're
fighting against. In June eighteen forties, sixteen British warships show
up at Hong Kong. A man named Charles Elliott starts
negotiating for the Brits and there's an agreement in January
eighteen forty one, but both sides hate it and neither
one of them wants to go with it. And in
May eighteen forty one, the British attack the walled city
(07:44):
of Guangzhou Canton and get a six million dollar ransom
and the Cantonese check them back, but again, the navy
is simply too good and the Chinese don't have an
effective way to fight back. They're offering rewards for British heads,
but it's just not happening. And the tricky British propaganda
of the time was putting it across like this that
(08:06):
they weren't there to fight the Chinese people. They were
just there to fight the Chinese government and the soldiers
who abused the people. And opium question out of it entirely,
and there were some riffs in society that they could
play off at the time, definitely well, there were also
riffs in the British society about this war. I think
Katie and I initially went into this thinking that British
(08:29):
people were all raw raw about the opium war and
trading with China, but that's not the case. A lot
of people are against it and they see it as
uh something to be ashamed about forcing opium, a drug
that is illegal in England, onto the Chinese. It's denounced
in Parliament by a young William Gladstone as an unjust
(08:52):
and inequitous war, and he even accuses the Prime Minister
of fighting a war to protect an infamous contraband traffic,
and there's outrage on the pulpits and in the press
in America and England. Actually, the outrage is so strong
in America that a lot of the merchants, they're kind
of back off from it, Uh, get out of the
(09:13):
trade entirely, even though we've been selling the Turkish stuff
to China as well. This is when we started to
back off. Commissioner Lynn was also trying to push this
moral argument. He wrote a letter to Queen Victoria, and
it's uncertain if she even read this, but in it
he was very frank, surprisingly frank for writing to Victoria.
(09:35):
He writes, the wealth of China is used to profit
the barbarians. That is to say, the great profit made
by barbarians is all taken from the rightful share of China.
By what right do they then, in return use the
poisonous drug to injure the Chinese people? Even though the
barbarians may not necessarily intend to do us harm, yet
in coveting profit to an extreme, they have no regard
(09:56):
for injuring others. Let us ask, where is your con chance?
And I'm sure Victoria loved her people being called barbarians.
But you can't underestimate the human cost of what was
going on at the time. The Chinese end up losing
the war. Elliott's successor, Henry Pottinger, captures several of their cities,
including Shanghai, and at Nanjang they give in. And this
(10:20):
is where the Treaty of Nanjang assigned in August forty two.
It's the first treaty ever signed by China with any
European power, and it's the first of what's known as
the Unequal Treaties. And there's a reason for that, beginning
a century of such treaty. Right, China gives Hong Kong
to Britain. They also open more ports to British trade,
(10:40):
They agree to equal official recognition, and they pay an
indemnity of twenty one million dollars um. Some of that
was payment for the opium that Commissioner Lynn had destroyed.
And they also give the right of British citizens to
be tried by British courts, and they lower tariffs. And
this is especially awful part other Western countries quickly demand
(11:02):
their own privileges after seeing you, So, yeah, we want
to be able to trade too, And everybody jumps in
to get their piece of the pie. To be part
of the most Favored Nation clause. That's what everyone wants.
And oddly, considering that this entire war is about opium,
opium is not mentioned anywhere in this treaty, and this
will come back to haunt us, as we'll see a
(11:24):
little later. This treaty also sets up the Treaty ports system,
which means that in treaty ports, Westerners weren't subject to
China's laws. They could do their own things, that up
their own legal situation, and pretty much do things however
they wanted. The major treaty ports in China were Shanghai
and Guangshu. But however, this is the one thing the
Chinese did keep. Foreigners still weren't allowed in the interior
(11:47):
of China. So the First Opium War is over, but
the problems aren't over because opium is still an issue.
The question of opium isn't resolved in the treaty at all. Right.
Trade is still an issue, and the Chinese are still
very unhappy about having the British in their country, and
the British are unhappy because they still don't have all
of the rights and the wages they would like exactly.
(12:08):
So a man named Chi Yang is put in place
as Imperial Commissioner, and he believes in appeasement. So things
run smoothly for a while, but trade doesn't increase the
way the British thought it would, and again the opium
things still isn't settled. Yeah, you'd think with this sweet
treaty they've worked out that, you know, everything would be
(12:29):
more conducive to higher opium trade, but that doesn't happen now,
and the question of whether foreigners should be allowed into
the walled city of guang Jou still isn't settled. After
the treaty was declared open, but it never happened because
the Chinese are really resistant to letting the barbarians as
they thought of them, into their walled city. And the
Cantonese finally promised the British they could come in in
(12:50):
eighteen forty nine, but they really aren't happy about it,
and as eighteen forty nine approaches, the protests begin because
no one wants British in there. The British give in
the Beijing Court grants temporary entrance, but the Cantonese have
won this round and I can't help rooting for China
at this point, and there's a lot of xenophobia in China,
(13:12):
a lot of anti foreign sentiment, and it only grows.
And with the anti foreign sentiment comes anti government sentiment,
and some of this ends up carrying into the Taiping Rebellion,
which is a radical political and religious at people that
goes on from eighteen fifty to sixty four. And Katy
and I might want to talk about this some more later.
(13:34):
It's we're not gonna give you too much, want too
much away, But it's a pretty wild thing. It takes
an estimated twenty million lives, and it permanently alters the
um Qing or Manchu dynasty and the way that the
Chinese government has worked for so long. But an interesting
thing about the Taiping Rebellion is their very anti Opium.
(13:55):
They are. It's actually a Christian rebellion. Um the leader
believes that he's the son of God, which surprisingly that
does not mean Jesus. He believes he's Jesus younger brother.
But he's very anti Opium. And all of the Taiping's
credos are really Old Testament. It's not about New Testament
(14:18):
style forgiveness and such it's um, anti opium, anti alcohol,
and tobacco, prostitution, foot binding. So this radical social and
government change is happening also leading up to the Second
Opium War. Right, so there's this huge social rift that's
(14:38):
going on from eighteen fifty to eighteen sixty four, that's
how long the Typing rebellion lasted. And the West steps
in again and helps put the rebellion down because they're
afraid that the China the typing we're advocating, would be
even more resistant to Western influences. So we're very good
at looking after and their anti opium, which you know,
really wouldn't help us trade all about. At the end
(15:01):
of the day, and this is when the Second Opium
War starts. You thought it was over, but it's not.
In eighteen fifty six, Chinese officials get on the ship Arrow,
which was Chinese owned but British registered, and they charged
the crew with piracy and smuggling and lower the British flag.
And the Brits want to get more trading rights in
China anyway, so they basically used this incident to start
(15:24):
the fight, and the French joined forces with the British
using is their excuse the murder of a French missionary
in the interior of China. But it's really not about
the missionary that it's about the opium in the trading.
The Russians and Americans get in on the game and
send their representatives, and military actions against China start. In
(15:44):
eighteen fifty seven. Guangzhou is occupied, the Dagou for it
is taken and the Chinese are forced to sign the
Treaties of Tianjin, which call for residents in Beijing, for
foreign envoys travel in the interior, and freedom of movement
from missionaries, as well as opening of new ports. And
they're also forced to legalize the import of opium in
eighteen fifty eight, which is just I mean not to
(16:07):
be able judging about history, but seriously so, the Chinese
unsurprisingly refused to ratify these treaties, which are even more
inequal than the earlier ones. So in retaliation, the Allies
capture Beijing and then plunder and burn one of the
emperor's palaces. You want, Main Garden. So in eighteen sixty
the Chinese signed the Beijing Convention saying that they will
(16:29):
in fact observe the treaties, and during this time Russia
has also maneuvered its way into a nice beneficial place
to be by acting as China's buddy throughout these various negotiations,
and China seeds to Russia the territory between the Surre
River and the sea, so everyone but China gets what
they want. Yeah, so out of the second Opium more
we end up with more foreign privileges, Christians being allowed
(16:54):
to come in and evangelize um, and a kind of
threat to the more all in cultural values of China,
right because Confucianism was what they were observing at the time.
And allowing someone to come in and threaten your moral
and cultural values that way well, and not to mention,
the imperial rule by this point has just been battered.
(17:17):
They have fallen every time when they come up against
the British. So they're at a at a threat two
forces from their own people. And in case you're wondering
what happened with Opium, the trade routes just keep on
keeping on. As I put in my notes, um, we
had figured out how to get morphine from opium and
(17:38):
around eighteen o four and use it on soldiers during
the Civil War, and so end up with plenty of
addicts of our own, and we figure out heroin in
eight which quickly becomes very popular and still is. But
in the early nineteen hundreds, China starts to get control
of opium trade, at least within its borders, and the
country signs the Ten Years Agreement with India in nineteen
(18:00):
o seven, which basically says that China forbids the cultivation
and consumption of opium and India agrees to cease exporting
it completely in ten years. So by nineteen seventeen we've
pretty much stopped that. Yeah, but by night Burma gains
independence and they're all about producing the opium. And this
(18:21):
even goes into the beginning of communism in China. When
the communists come to power in nineteen forty nine, they
stop all the opium business, completely shut it down, but
it just moves elsewhere. In the sixties and seventies, that's
when the Golden Triangle comes up the border of Myanmar,
Laos and Thailand, and the UN starts a drug control
(18:44):
program to limit activity in the area, but they just
switched to mess and the opium goes to Afghanistan and stuff,
and we know about the wars there too, so opium
just keeps on ravaging people across the centuries here and oddly,
some of the most popular articles on the how stuff
Works Health channel are the drug articles. So if you'd
like to learn how math works, or crack cocaine, or
(19:07):
the dangers of using marijuana, come to our homepage at
www dot how stuff works dot com. For more on
this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works
dot com. Let us know what you think, send an
email to podcast at how stuff works dot com, and
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(19:28):
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