English Historical Review Vol. CXXIII No. 505
Advance Access publication on November 10, 2008
© The Author [2008]. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1093/ehr/cen275
Space as an integral dimension of life had inspired rich repertoires of
cultural constructs in the ancient world. Chinese fengshui (‘wind and
water’; geomancy), for instance, began as an exercise to manipulate the
physical and metaphysical features of environmental space for human
benefit.1 Shorn of its occult flavour and supernatural verbiage, demystified
fengshui has in more recent times attracted an international following of
architects, interior designers, landscape artists, business consultants and
others with an interest in harmony-inducing spatiality. Space as a requisite
of political power was also recognised. Before the Qin state’s founding of
China’s first empire in 221 B.C., a famous verse in the Confucian classic
Shijing (The book of odes) already intoned: ‘Under the wide heaven, all
is the king’s land’ (Putian zhi xia mo fei wangtu).2 The king’s command
was metaphorically conceived to be co-extensive with heaven’s infinite
expanse, and the catholicity of his rule had since been established as an
axiomatic principle in Chinese political thought. So ingrained still was
this habit of the mind more than 2,000 years later that Lu Xun, a foremost
critic of tradition in the early Republic (est. 1912), poked fun at it. In his
short story ‘Cai wei’ (Gathering vetch), Boyi and Shuqi, proud recluse
brothers of royal descent from Guzhu, a vassal state of Shang, were so
distraught at the Zhou conquest of Shang that they decided to eschew
Zhou patronage at all cost. After being reminded that the wild vetch they
gathered for daily food, like all other edibles, was now found on Zhou
land, they refused to eat and starved themselves to death.3
* I wish to thank the anonymous readers of an earlier draft for their thoughtful comments,
Rosemary Howard for her help in obtaining research materials and Dr Jack M. C. Kwong, Dr Lester
M. K. Kwong, Julia Lin Zhu and, above all, Esther Lau Chun for their support of this project.
1. For a comprehensive discussion of fengshui, see Liu Peilin, Fengshui Zhongguoren di huanjing
guan (Wind and water, the Chinese view of the environment) (Shanghai, 1995); also, Xiang
Bosong, Zhongguo shui chongbai (The Chinese water worship) (Shanghai, 1999), 256–69. Another
traditional Chinese term for fengshui is kanyu (the way of heaven and earth), which also suggests
an all-inclusive spatiality. See Ciyuan (Dictionary of etymology) (4 vols., Beijing, 1979), i, 618.
2. Shijing (The book of odes), in Sishu wujing (The Four Books and Five Classics) (3 vols.,
Beijing, 1985), i, 102. The English translation is in J. Legge, The Chinese classics (5 vols., Hong
Kong, 1960), iv, The She King, 360–62. This verse was quoted in such ancient works as Zuozhuan
(The Zuo commentary on the Spring and Autumn Classic), in Sishu wujing, iii, 428, and Mengzi
zhangju jizhu (Mencius annotated), ibid., i, 71.
3. Lu Xun, Gushi xinbian (Old stories retold) (Taibei, 1989), 61–88; also, his comments in
Huagaiji xubian (Sequel to Trapped and doomed) (Hong Kong, 1958), 47. The suicide-by-starvation
episode was reported in Sima Qian, Shiji (Records of the grand historian) (Beijing, 1959), 2123.
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The Chinese Myth of Universal Kingship and
Commissioner Lin Zexu’s Anti-Opium Campaign
of 1839*
COMMISSIONER LIN ZEXU’S ANTI-OPIUM CAMPAIGN
4. Foucault’s idea of ‘the political investment of the body’ may be borrowed here to explain the
body as a vehicle and site of the king’s power. See M. Foucault, Discipline and punishment, tr. Alan
Sheridan (New York, 1995). For discursive uses of the body in the Chinese context, see Robin
Yates, ‘Body, space, time and bureaucracy: boundary creation and control mechanisms in early
China’, in J. Hay, ed., Boundaries in China (London, 1994), 56–80; N. Sivin, ‘State, cosmos, and
body in the last three centuries B.C.’, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, lv (June, 1995), 5–37;
R. McNeal, ‘The body as metaphor for the civil and martial components of empire in Yi Zhou Shu,
Chapter 32’, Journal of the American Oriental Society, cxxii (2002), 46–60; A. Zito, Of Body and
Brush (Chicago, 1997); A. Zito and T. Barlow, eds., Body, Subject and Power in China (Chicago,
1994), various essays.
5. See, for example, Mengzi zhangju, 111.
6. For baojia in Chinese history, see the classic work by Wen Juntian, Zhongguo baojia zhidu
(China’s household registration system) (Shanghai, 1935). For its implementation under Chiang
Kai-shek, see also L.J. Harris, ‘“Recycling” the baojia in Republican China: A Study of Baojia
Under the Guomindang, 1927–1949’, Occasional Papers in East Asian Studies, vi (2002), 46–79.
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1471
Lu Xun’s satirical device was the Shijing verse cited above which he
reinvented as a curse of doom. Space alone, however, does not suffice,
and the Shijing writer duly completed the prescription in the next verse:
‘Within the sea-boundaries of the land, all are the king’s servants’
(Shuaitu zhi bin mo fei wangchen). Apart from his dominance of all
mundane space under heaven, the king was also master to all others
living within it. The Shijing depiction of all, save the king, as the king’s
‘servants’ conjures up images of exploited, servile, labouring ‘bodies’
that occupied space and in turn, politicised it through their submission
to the king.4 Despite arguments put forward by ancient thinkers like
Mencius (c. 371–289 B.C.) to redress the disparity in power between the
ruler and ruled,5 this Chinese belief in royal or imperial absolutism had
held firm. Accordingly, the king’s supremacy was seen to hinge upon
his control both of territory and population, land and people, without
which his rule would be no more than an empty boast. Political space
and subject bodies were thus inextricably linked not only in the
articulation of what constituted sovereign power but also in the early
formulation of the Chinese view of universal kingship.
Two aspects of this ideological construct may be noted. Nothing quite
demonstrates the space-body duality in action as clearly as the policy of
baojia (local registration) in Chinese history. Although the term first came
into use only during Wang Anshi’s reform administration under the Song
emperor Shenzong (r. 1067–85), the practice to group a set number of
local households in a unit for mutual aid and for service to the state had
begun early. Acquiring their decimal organizing principle from the Qin
in the third century B.C., variants of baojia had provided the dynastic
states through the imperial period and later, Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist
regime of the twentieth century with a useful tool of local control; 6 their
principal aim, invariably, had been to attach the subject bodies of the
state to their respective locations of domicile for surveillance and policing.
Law and order aside, the notion of universality did not entail the
proposition that the Chinese domain and the known world were one and
the same. Ancient Chinese sources like Shanhai jing (Survey of mountains
7. See, for instance, Yuan Ko, ed., Shanhai jing jiaozhu (Annotated edition of Survey of
mountains and seas) (Shanghai, 1980). The translation of jing in the title as ‘survey’ and not ‘classic’
follows Yuan’s analysis, 181–3.
8. For an early account of Zou Yan’s life and thought, see Sima Qian, Shiji, 2344.
9. The expression serves as the key to Zhang Yimou’s 2002 cinematic tour de force, Hero
(Yingxiong) and is translated as ‘our land’ in the English sub-titles. The explanatory note before
the credits at the end of the film states: ‘But even now when the Chinese speak of their country
they call it Our Land’. Because of its established familiarity in English, the translation of tianxia as
‘all under heaven’ will be retained in this essay, except in instances where ‘our world’ seems a more
appropriate rendition.
10. The translation of Sancai follows Mathews’ Chinese-English Dictionary (Cambridge, Mass.,
1943), 747.
11. The discussion here owes a great debt to the writings of Mircea Eliade, for instance, The
Sacred and the Profane, tr. W. Trask (New York, 1959).
12. A more recent reappraisal of this idea is Ge Jianxiong, Putian zhi xia (All under heaven)
(Changchun, 1989). Still insightful are the essays in the classic volume J.K. Fairbank, ed., The
Chinese World Order (Cambridge, Mass., 1968).
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1472
THE CHINESE MYTH OF UNIVERSAL KINGSHIP AND
and seas) had long acknowledged the co-existence of other ‘states’ (guo)
and communities,7 and the third-century B.C. thinker Zou Yan even
theorised that the ‘nine provinces’ (jiuzhou) into which the Great Yu of
Xia had supposedly divided ‘the earth’ were, in fact, only one of the
eighty-one parts of the actual world.8 What distinguished the Chinese
realm, then, was its presumed advantage in superior space and bodies
over the lesser others. The celebrated Chinese expression tianxia (all
under heaven) may, therefore, be translated in a more finite sense as
‘our world’,9 to denote the totality of significant space and privileged
bodies relative to the marginal and the inferior elsewhere. By the same
token, universal kingship did not postulate, as its end goal, Chinese
hegemony over the whole world but only the Chinese core’s civilising
influence over the rest through reciprocal gestures of accommodation.
While conducive to the rhetoric and ambitions of empire, this ideal
owed its strength not to military might but to the flexibility of its barebones outline, one that could survive the worst of historical vicissitudes.
Basic to its skeletal conception was the Chinese concern with the
interactions between heaven (tian), earth (di) and humanity (ren), or
the so-called Three Powers (Sancai),10 in sustaining life in a hierarchical
order that culminated at the pinnacle in the Chinese ruler. The claim to
universal kingship, in this sense, was a secular rendition of the sacred
inherent in the Sino-centric worldview.11 Cherished in the upper
reaches of the imagination, it embodied the cosmic and moral imageries
of power enshrined in Chinese cultural traditions. The enduring
language and the cumulative corpus of classical and philosophical
writings were the chief resources by which engagement in its discourse
was kept alive.
Scholars have observed, with justified cynicism, that universal
kingship was little more than a political myth in Chinese history.12
While its resilience from pre-Qin to early Republican times is proof of
its great historical significance, to discuss it in the Qing context
involving the alien Manchus will require a word of explanation. No
COMMISSIONER LIN ZEXU’S ANTI-OPIUM CAMPAIGN
13. P.K. Crossley, Orphan Warriors: Three Manchu Generations and the End of the Qing World
(Princeton, 1990) and A Translucent Mirror: History and identity in Qing Imperial Ideology
(Berkeley, 1999); E. Rawski, The Last Emperors: A Social History of the Qing Imperial Institutions
(Berkeley, 1998); J.A. Millward, Beyond the Pass: Economy, Ethnicity, and Empire in Qing Central
Asia, 1759–1864 (Stanford, 1998); M.C. Elliot, The Manchu Way: The Eight Banners and Ethnic
Identity in Late Imperial China (Stanford, 2001); P.C. Perdue, China Marches West: The Qing
Conquest of Central Asia (Cambridge, Mass., 2005).
14. See his edict in the reprint of Dayi juemi lu (Writings to awaken the misled to vital
principles) in Shanghai shudian chubanshe, ed., Dayi juemi tan (On Writings to awaken the misled
to vital principles) (Shanghai, 1999), 133.
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1473
assumption is advanced here that the Qing empire (1644–1912) was
merely another replica of some ageless Chinese dynastic prototype,
with all of its ideological trappings. Historical research of the last two
decades, such as that exemplified in the fine volumes by Crossley,
Rawski, Millward, Elliot and Purdue,13 has greatly enriched our
understanding of the Qing project, and its varying degrees of success,
to uphold the Manchu identity while managing the volatile forces of a
multi-ethnic Inner Asian empire. The valuable insights do not, of
course, displace the received wisdom that the most pressing task for the
Manchu rulers after 1644 remained the governing of the predominantly
Han Chinese regions (or, so-called China proper) and the harnessing of
their resources for the larger imperial enterprise. Financial ones aside,
cultural assets were also available for appropriation. When the
Yongzheng emperor (r. 1723–35), for instance, remarked on the grandeur
of ‘great unification’ (da yitong) under him by invoking the expression
putian shuaitu (the wide heaven, all across the land), the opening
phrases of the two Shijing verses cited above,14 his language of universal
kingship would have gladdened the heart of any Han Chinese ruler in
the past. His great grandson, the Daoguang emperor (r. 1821–50), was
no less capable of such self-aggrandizing statements but only found it
increasingly difficult to match them in policy. With the arrival of more
European and North American traders at the eastern seaboard, the
Qing government had in the mid-eighteenth century restricted all
coastal trade with Westerners to Guangzhou in the southern Guangdong
province. In official parlance, it was a policy innovation to accommodate
these ‘men from afar’ (yuanren) within the Qing framework of universal
embrace; in practice, it was a spatial solution to the issues that had
arisen from the venture of uninvited ‘outsiders’ (or unassimilated
bodies) into Qing space. This essay seeks to explain how the traffic in
illegal opium soon subverted the Guangzhou trade apparatus and
frustrated the Qing efforts to restore its efficacy. In 1839, the Daoguang
emperor sent Commissioner Lin Zexu to Guangdong to settle the
opium problem once and for all. Lin’s actions gave Britain the pretext
for reprisal, and the famous Opium War (1839–42) ensued. As will be
discussed, by dismantling the Qing barriers erected in South China to
regulate maritime relations, the Treaty of Nanjing signed to end the war
Our inquiry into the vast subject of Chinese spatiality has to be very
selective and will begin with a brief survey of Chinese spatial or place
terms that had been used interchangeably with the dynastic name in
referring to a dynastic state. Although of varying origins and meanings,
these quasi-official labels captured the two recurrent features that
Chinese writers attributed to their land as privileged space: horizontally,
its ‘central’ or ‘middle’ (zhong) locus in the mundane world and
vertically, its unique connections to ‘heaven’ (tian). Archeological
evidence traces the earliest use of the Chinese hieroglyph zhong to Shang
oracle-bone and bronze inscriptions (c. 1570–1045 B.C.). Initially to
transcribe the Shang king’s summons of his army and people, it was
later incorporated into Zhong Shang (the Shang at the centre) to
indicate Shang suzerainty over the vassal states (fangguo), which occupied
15. For criticisms of the use of the Western challenge to explain late imperial China’s
transformation, see P.A. Cohen, Discovering History in China (New York, 1984), especially chapters
1 and 4.
16. Tu Wei-ming, ‘Cultural China: The Periphery as the Center’, Daedalus, iv (1991).
17. L.S.K. Kwong, ‘The Rise of the Linear Perspective on History and Time in Late Qing
China c.1860–1911’, Past and Present, clxxiii (2001), 157–90, at 170–80.
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1474
THE CHINESE MYTH OF UNIVERSAL KINGSHIP AND
repudiated, in a decisive manner, the space-body premises of Qing
authority and prestige. In the wake of this irreversible setback, the Qing
government found it no longer possible to dictate foreign contact on its
own terms, and Lin’s earlier mission to enforce those terms in Guangzhou
may thus be seen, in hindsight, to signal the last stand of universal
kingship in Chinese history.
It is hardly a novel exercise to assign an epochal significance to the
Opium War, and the effort may well invite criticism for reviving interest
in what some scholars have rejected as an obsolete viewpoint.15 My
purpose here is not to reopen the historiographical debate but simply to
highlight the war’s effects in redefining what Tu Wei-ming has called
‘the Problematique for the Chinese intellectual’.16 One such effect was
the growth of Chinese historical consciousness around the consequences
of Lin’s 1839 mission. Without use yet of the now familiar label Yapian
zhanzheng (The Opium War), late Qing commentators already
interpreted the war as marking a major turning-point in Chinese history.
The once-predominant dynastic cycle was now contested by a linear
perspective that recast the whole of China’s past into a periodization of
successive ages. The cyclical-linear bifurcation of Chinese temporality
has been explored elsewhere.17 This essay proposes to examine yet
another casualty of the war, one that betokened the formal clash between
Qing China’s claim to universal kingship and Britain’s (and other
Western nations’) aggressive global border-crossing since the early
‘voyages of discovery’. The clash, in short, was one between rival
modalities of space and body.
COMMISSIONER LIN ZEXU’S ANTI-OPIUM CAMPAIGN
1475
the ‘four lands’ (situ) in the ‘four cardinal directions’ (sifang). On
replacing the Shang to become suzerain (1045 B.C.), the Zhou leaders
proclaimed their destined rise to greatness in these words: ‘The majestic
heaven had bestowed the peoples and the lands of zhongguo on our
royal ancestors’.19 The Zhou statement invoked heaven (tian) as the
ultimate arbiter in human affairs; the award of heaven’s mandate
(tianming) transformed the Zhou king into the ‘son of heaven’ (tianzi),
whose rule extended to ‘all under heaven’. The mention of zhongguo, a
term still in use today as the shortened name for the People’s Republic
of China, did not then allude to a single or unified political system but
to the configuration of ‘central’ (zhong) or Zhuxia (many Xias) states in
northern China that owed their allegiance to the Zhou or earlier, to the
Shang.20 The Zhou rulers took their claim to centrality very seriously
and adduced proof for it. By measuring the shadow cast by a specially
made ‘jade tablet’ (tugui) at the summer solstice, Zhou officials
determined Yangcheng in present-day Henan province to be the ‘central
land’ (zhongtu or dizhong), where heaven and earth, the ‘four winds’,
rain, yin and yang interacted in perfect harmony.21
The Zhou project synthesised pre-existing ideas of cosmography in
demonstrable coherence and produced a schema of cosmic-terrestrial
space that survived the Zhou’s fall into the first empire of the Qin and
Han (221 B.C.–A.D. 220). Sustained by such cultural resources as the
Qin standardization of the written script and the Han revival of interest
in pre-Qin learning, the Shang-Zhou discourse on universal kingship
also persisted, with its idiom subtly adjusted to the changed
circumstances. Zhongguo no longer referred to the multiplicity of
‘central states’ in north and central China but to the imperial system
18
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18. Here I follow the interpretation of Yu Shengwu, ‘Xi Zhongguo’ (On the etymology of
Zhongguo), in Zhonghua shuju bianjibu, ed., Zhonghua xueshu lunwenji (Essays on Chinese
culture) (Beijing 1981), 5–9. See also Hu Houxuan, Jiaguxue Shangshi luncong chuji (First collection
of essays on the oracle bones and Shang history) (Jinan, 1944), 1–4; N. Di Cosmos, ‘The Northern
Frontier in pre-imperial China’, in M. Loewe and E.L. Shaughnessy, eds., The Cambridge History
of Ancient China (Cambridge, 1999), 907–9, 947–51; Wang Zhenfu, Zhongguo jianzhu di wenhua
licheng (The cultural meaning of Chinese architecture) (Shanghai, 2000), 152–62. These themes
may well have begun with the earlier Xia period, the historicity of which is discussed in K.C.
Chang, ‘China on the Eve of the Historical Period’, in Loewe and Shaughnessy, Ancient China,
71–3.
19. See Shujing (The book of documents), in Sishu wujing, i, 94.
20. This is only one of the earliest meanings of zhongguo. For a more comprehensive discussion
of the origins and meanings of the term, see Yu Shengwu, ‘Xi Zhongguo’; Hu Axiang, ‘Zhongguo
minghao kaoshu’ (Investigation into the term Zhongguo), Lishi dili (Historical geography), xvii
(2001), 82–97; Wang Ermin, Zhongguo jindai sixiangshi lun (Essays on the history of modern
Chinese thought) (Taibei, 1977), 441–80; M. Loewe, ‘The Heritage Left to the Empires’, in Loewe
and Shaughnessy, Ancient China, 992–7.
21. See Yu Shengwu, ‘Xi Zhongguo’, 3. For the Zhou method to determine the ‘central land’,
see J. Needham, Science and Civilisation in China (6 vols., Cambridge, 1954–86), iii, 286–7. For an
in-depth discussion of the political implications of cosmological concepts in ancient China, see
Aihe Wang, Cosmology and Political Culture in Early China (Cambridge, 2000).
22. In Lydia H. Liu, The Clash of Empires, the Invention of China in Modern World Making
(Cambridge, Mass., 2004), passim, the term zhongguo is translated as ‘central states’ as it applies to
post-Qin China. While this rendition reflects the multi-state configuration before the Qin
unification, it is questionable if later Chinese elites thought of zhongguo in the plural sense.
23. For an explanation of these terms, see Ciyuan, i, 83, 84, 87, 88, 683, 691; Wang Shumin,
‘Zhonghua minghao shuyuan’ (The origins of the term zhonghua), in Shi Nianhai, ed., Zhongguo
lishi dili luncong (Essays on China’s historical geography) (Xian, 1985), II, 6–16; Li Dexian, ‘Huaxia
yishuo’ (Conjectures on the term Huaxia), ibid., 17–35; S. Wells Williams, The Middle Kingdom
(2 vols., New York, 1883), i, 4–5; R.J. Smith, ‘Mapping China’s World: Cultural Cartography in
Late Imperial Times’, in Wen-hsin Yeh, ed., Landscape, Culture, and Power in Chinese Society
(Berkeley, 1998), 53. No attempt is made here to include all the Chinese terms ever used in
traditional times for collective identity. The ones cited here are chosen for their spatial connotations
directly pertinent to this study. My discussion has been facilitated by access to the electronic text
of Ershiwu shi (Twenty-five histories) available from the Academia Sinica in Taiwan (http://www.
sinica.edu.tw/ftms-bin/ftmsw3).
24. The statement that there was ‘the absence of a single word in Chinese up until the nineteenth
century for China’ can, therefore, be misleading. See C. Shirokauer, et al., A Brief History of Chinese
and Japanese Civilizations (Belmont, 2006), 6. Contrary to what is claimed in Laura Hostetler,
Qing Colonial Enterprise (Chicago, 2001), 27 and idem., ‘Qing Connections to the Early Modern
World: Ethnography and Cartography in Eighteenth-Century China’, Modern Asian Studies, xxxiv
(2000), 623–662, at 659, the Qing dynasty did alternatively address itself as Zhongguo, or Zhong
for short, in the Chinese version of the treaties signed with Russia in 1689–1792 and with the
Western powers in the nineteenth century. See Wang Tieya, ed., Zhongwai jiu yuezhang huibian
(Compilation of old Sino-foreign treaties) (3 vols., Beijing, 1957), i.
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THE CHINESE MYTH OF UNIVERSAL KINGSHIP AND
that exercised unitary control far beyond the Yellow River valley;22
zhongtu ceased to designate the one propitious area in the former Zhou
and alluded, more broadly, to the heartland regions of the imperial
domain; tianxia, never quite exact as to its boundaries, now stood
conveniently for empire. The shifts in meanings and nuances were
accompanied by the rise of derived terms. By the Three Kingdoms and
Jin periods (220–420), expressions like zhongzhou (the central domain),
zhongxia (the central Xia), zhonghua (the central land of efflorescence),
zhongyuan (the central plain) and tianchao (the celestial dynasty) had
gained currency and retained their cognate predecessors’ emphasis
either on central location or celestial ties.23 While at best approximate
in geographical reference, the application of these terms enhanced the
shared sense of community of the emergent ethnic Han Chinese. A
dual system of naming for the dynastic state had also formed. Apart
from the official name chosen by the dynastic founder like the Tang or
Ming, a dynasty would also be known contemporaneously by such
trans-dynastic spatial or place labels as zhongguo, zhongtu and the like.24
The dual practice attested to the interplay of synchronic and diachronic
forces in the formation of a dynastic identity: The often violent
disjuncture of political change was mitigated by efforts to replicate, in
name at least, a spatial identity of ostensibly primordial antiquity.
Where the myth of cosmogony ended, the myth of political succession
(juntong) began, with the transmission of power sequentially traced
from the world’s first parents (Fuxi and Nuwa) through the mythical
culture heroes of the Three Kings and Five Emperors to the leaders of
COMMISSIONER LIN ZEXU’S ANTI-OPIUM CAMPAIGN
1477
Xia, Shang, and Zhou, and beyond. The continued celebration of this
political genealogy by the Han Chinese served to reinforce their belief
that their ancestral homeland was a special place: cosmically pivotal,
centrally located, self-contained, culturally superior, and, despite its
human and geographical diversities, homogenised by the rule of the
‘son of heaven’.
Chinese space so idealised necessitated the contrast with ‘the other’. In
the pre-Qin world made up of ‘zones and hierarchies’,26 the siyi (peripheral
peoples in the four cardinal directions) provided the immediate counterpoint.
At the outer fringes of the ‘central states’ were settled the Eastern Yi
(Dongyi), Southern Man (Nanman), Western Rong (Xirong) and Northern
Di (Beidi), or, generically, the yi, yidi or manyi; still further away, conceivably,
were groups that were little known or unknown. Denied proximity to the
Zhou core, they all inhabited ‘the reverse side of virtue and morality’.27 The
sharply drawn distinctions conveyed the Chinese conception both of the
world’s spatial structure and of the typology of bodies that populated its
political landscape. The peripheral peoples were considered deficient in
nature (like ‘birds and beasts’) and vulgar in nurture (like wearing their hair
loose and long and folding their robes to the left).28 In both physical body
and the ‘attire’ extension of the body (like clothing and hairstyle),29 they
were deemed inferior to the inhabitants of the ‘central states’. All bodies,
however, whether near or far, cultivated or uncouth, were to assume the
submissive posture as ‘servants’ to the focally positioned ‘son of heaven’.
Beyond the conviction of ideological shibboleths, however, ambiguities
prevailed. The marked contrast between the centre and periphery had
never deterred interactions across the political, geographical and cultural
divides,30 and the Han Chinese identity was itself testimony to the
continuing process of ethnic mixing that had begun since the earliest
25
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25. A pictorial representation of this sequence is found in a stone relief mural from the Han
dynasty, reproduced in K.C. Chang, Art, Myth, and Ritual (Cambridge, Mass., 1983), 3. See also
idem., ‘China on the Eve’, 55. Earlier classical sources that contributed to this conception of
political succession include Mengzi. See Sishu wujing, i, 117–18.
26. An expression used in Loewe, ‘Heritage’, 991–7. The legendary Great Yu, founder of the
Xia, is said to have reorganised the world into wufu (five submissive regions). The Zhou kept a
similar five-part and a more elaborate nine-part division (jiufu) of political space. See the text and
annotations in Shujing, in Sishu wujing, i, 37–8, 120.
27. N. di Cosmo, Ancient China and its Enemies: The Rise of Nomadic Power in East Asian
History (Cambridge, 2002), 93–126; the quote is at 100.
28. See Confucius’ praise of the statesman Guan Zhong for upholding cultural standards
against ‘barbarian’ customs in Lunyu (The analects), in Sishu wujing, i, 61. For a discussion of the
‘barbarian’s’ image in Chinese classical sources, see F. Dikötter, The Discourse of Race in Modern
China (Stanford, 1992), 2–6.
29. For a relevant discussion of the cultural significance of the body and its attire in the Chinese
context, see D. Ko, ‘The body as attire: the shifting meanings of footbinding in seventeenthcentury China’, Journal of Women’s History, viii (1997), 8–27.
30. See the comments of the Chinese ethnologist Pan Guangdan who culled the classical
sources for information on Chinese-yi interactions in his Zhongguo minzu shiliao juibian (Historical
sources on the Chinese ethnicity), ed. Pan Naimu, et al. (Tianjin, 2005), 142–3. Also, his diary
entry, 1 April, 1963, in Pan Guangdan, Pan Guangdan quan ji (Complete works of Pan Guangdan)
(14 vols., Beijing, 1993–2000), xi, 507–8.
31. Mengzi in Shishu wujing, i, 60. The Zhou ancestors had also lived for generations among the
Rong and the Di (Sima Qian, Shiji, 112), but their humble origins did not prevent their descendants
from leading the coalition campaign of the ‘central states’ to overthrow the Shang suzerain.
32. See the 1814 argument by Guangdong’s provincial treasurer Zeng Yu and his colleagues in
Guo Tingyi, Jindai Zhongguo shi (Modern Chinese history) (2 vols., Taibei, 1976), i, 398; and the
1832 reply of the Shanghai taotai Wu Qitai to Hugh Hamilton Lindsay of the British East India
Company, in Xu Dishan, ed., Dazhong ji (Collected documents) (Hong Kong, 1969), 51–4.
33. See James Hevia, Cherishing Men from Afar (Durham, 1995), 120. The problem of translation
is also central to Lydia Liu’s argument about the British invention of the yi/barbarian super-sign
in the 1858 Treaty of Tianjin (Clash of empires, especially ch. 2). She cites Chinese usage, as well as
Manchu and English translations of the term (41–2, 86–8), to support her view that yi meant
‘foreigners’ and not ‘barbarians’. It should be noted, however, that for obvious reasons of sensitivity
and pride, both the Manchus and the supracargoes of the East India Company probably chose a
less offensive rendition of the term.
34. Yu Rongchun, ‘Zhongguo yici di youlai yanbian ji qi yu minzu di guanxi’ (The origins and
evolution of the term zhongguo and its relations to ethnicity), Nei Menggu shehui kexue (Social
sciences journal of Inner Mongolia), ii (1986), 75–80. Understandably, not all Chinese writers
abided by this practice, especially those motivated by a strong sense of Han Chinese patriotism.
For a discussion of this periodic crisis in Chinese historiography, see Rao Zongyi, Zhongguo shixue
shang di zhengtong lun (The theory of legitimacy in Chinese historiography) (Hong Kong, 1977);
Hu Axiang, ‘Zhongguo’, 93–4; C. Holcombe, ‘Re-imagining China: The Chinese Identity Crisis
at the Start of the Southern Dynasties Period’, Journal of the American Oriental Society, cxv (Jan.–
Mar., 1995), 1–14; J. Fincher, ‘China as a Race, Culture, and Nation: Notes on Fang Hsiao-ju’s
Discussion of Dynastic legitimacy’, in D. Buxbaum and F. Mote, eds., Transition and Permanence:
Chinese History and Culture (Hong Kong, 1972), 59–69.
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1478
THE CHINESE MYTH OF UNIVERSAL KINGSHIP AND
times. Nor did the Confucian sage Mencius hesitate to sing the praise of
culture heroes such as King Shun and King Wen of Zhou for their political
wisdom, even though both had hailed from the land of the eastern and
western yi, respectively.31 By its varied pre-Qin usage, yi had acquired at
least a twofold meaning: as a value-neutral and as a value-laden label of
the space-body deviations from the norms of the ‘central states’. The lack
of a single definition allowed vagueness and also, room for polemical
maneuver. When coastal Qing officials of the early nineteenth century
called Western traders yi and manyi and were accused of insult, they
protested their innocence by retreating behind the terms’ neutral
meanings.32 Foreign misgivings were not thereby dispelled, especially
when these selfsame officials were the ones who carried out their
government’s restrictive measures against the maritime visitors. Recent
scholarship that attempts a fresh interpretation of traditional Sino-foreign
relations and elects to translate yi as ‘foreign people’ rather than ‘barbarians’
seems to privilege one, and not the other, of the term’s historical usages.33
It would also seem odd indeed if the chronic nomadic threat since at least
the Zhou period had not intensified the pejorative sense of yi in Han
Chinese consciousness. In any case, the dynamics of Chinese-yi contact
aside, a higher principle was at stake when alien invaders gained partial or
complete control of Chinese territory and set up a rival or conquest
regime. Chinese writers who tackled the issue of legitimacy in such
circumstances tended to assign rightful succession, irrespective of the ethnic
factor, to the state that had control of ‘the central plain’ (zhongyuan) along
the lower Yellow River valley.34 The territorial core in question harked
COMMISSIONER LIN ZEXU’S ANTI-OPIUM CAMPAIGN
1479
back to the pre-Qin political geography and evoked powerful emotions
associated with the Han Chinese mythical and historical narratives of
origins and descent. If the yi usurper of Chinese space could be so forgiven,
the transformative power of the centre, according to this school of thought,
transcended the narrow confines of Han chauvinism.
35. Gertraude Roth Li, ‘State Building Before 1644’, in W.J. Peterson, ed., The Cambridge History
of China (15 vols., 1978), ix, Part 1 (2002), 37–8. For the diverse cultural sources of the Qing polity as
manifested in state rituals and ceremonies, see Rawski, Last Emperors. Ho Ping-ti has emphasised
Manchu efforts at sinicization both before and after conquest in ‘In Defense of Sinicization: A Rebuttal
of Evelyn Rawski’s “‘Reenvisioning the Qing”’, Journal of Asian Studies, lvii (1998), 123–55.
36. For a description of these activities, see Rawski, Last Emperors, 203.
37. For a discussion of the symbolic meanings of the Altar of Heaven, see Wang Zhenfu, Dadi
shang di yuzhou’ (The cosmos on earth) (Shanghai, 2001), 71–3.
38. See the authoritative volume with exquisite photography by Yu Zhuoyun, ed., Zijincheng
gongdian (The palaces of the Forbidden City) (Hong Kong, 1982).
39. See, for instance, Rawski, Last Emperors, 198–9, 234–6.
40. D.M. Farquhar, ‘The Origins of the Manchus’ Mongolian Policy’, in Fairbank, Chinese
World Order, 200–1. See, also, Perdue, China Marches West, 122–7.
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The alien Manchus who succeeded the Ming as China’s ruler furnished
another test case. The rise of the Jurchen tribes to be a formidable power
in northeast Asia had begun in the early seventeenth century with the
unifier Nurhaci (1559–1626), whose ‘conceptual empire building’ forged
a composite polity based on Manchu shamanistic, Mongol theocratic,
Tibetan Buddhist and Chinese imperial precepts and practices.35
Manchu appropriation of Chinese imperial culture peaked in 1644 when
the Shunzhi emperor, still a minor, entered the Ming capital Beijing and
formalised his ascent to the Chinese throne in rites and ceremonies
performed at two key imperial venues.36 One was the Altar of Heaven,
constructed as a miniature representation of the tripartite cosmos
comprising the celestial, terrestrial and human realms, or the Three
Powers (Sancai).37 The other was the Forbidden City, the palace complex
to the north located on the same north-south axis, which had been built
according to felicitous principles of fengshui, of heaven-human
correspondence, and of the centre’s vital coordination with the cardinal
directions.38 Replete with cosmic and spatial symbolisms, the two sites
showcased a Chinese template of universal kingship, which the Manchus
now found particularly opportune and inspiring. While pertinent
concepts like spatial centrality and heavenly mandate were not a Chinese
monopoly and Manchu parallels could be identified,39 a notable shift
towards Chinese usage and interpretation occurred after 1644. David
Farquhar, who has emphasised Manchu cultural distinctness (if often
through Mongol mediation), reported that the Manchu texts of the early
reigns of Shunzhi and Kangxi employed translated Chinese terms for
emperor and ‘son of heaven’ to designate the Qing ruler of China.40 In
motivation, language, and circumstance, the impetus was there for the
Manchus to persevere in their pursuit of universal kingship.
1480
THE CHINESE MYTH OF UNIVERSAL KINGSHIP AND
Proceeding on the Ming groundwork of inter-state relations, the
Manchus sought to become suzerain in the existing tributary system.
Their initiative took the form of an identical communication, save for
the addressee, sent in Shunzhi’s name to the kingdoms of Liuqiu, Annam
and Lusong. The message to the Liuqiu king, for example, reads:41
The offer of patronage came in a veiled threat, one that the recipient
was not likely to refuse. Shunzhi’s message contextualised the Manchu
conquest in familiar Chinese language and invoked, in rapid succession,
‘the central plain’, ‘all under heaven’ and ‘the central state’ as approximate
or interchangeable references for the newly acquired Ming domain. By
taking possession of this heaven-blessed locus of power, the Manchus
had augmented their spatial identity from its regional roots in Manchuria
to the vast expanse of the traditional Sinic world. The return of the old
seal and the award of royal title were reciprocal gestures that signified
the Qing centre’s preparedness to assimilate the periphery through a
transaction in differential status and prestige.
Other features of the symbolic overlay to the Qing construction of
empire may be noted. The Han Chinese population was brought under
submission not only through coercion and administrative measures like
baojia, which the Manchus quickly revived in 1644, but also through
other mandatory observances. All Han men were to adopt the Manchu
hairstyle of the shaven head and the braid, and Han women, to refrain
from the age-old Chinese practice of footbinding.42 The exterior of the
Han Chinese body, being the most accessible for control, was to
conform to Manchu standards to signal the master-servant relationship.43
41. Da Qing Shizu Zhang (Shunzhi) huangdi shilu (The veritable record of the Shunzhi reign)
(Taibei, 1968), juan 32, 18. For a discussion of the Liuqiu connectiuon, see Wu Yuanfeng, ‘Qing
chu cefeng Liuqiu guowang Shangzhi shimo’ (An account of the conferment of royal title on the
Liuqiu king Shangzhi in the early Qing), in Lishi dang’an (Historical archives), iv (1996), 75–83.
42. For the Qing baojia policy, see Kung-chuan Hsiao, Rural China (Seattle, 1960), especially
chs. 2 and 3 and Wen Juntian, 201–363. On the symbolic significance of the Qing regulations
regarding hairstyle and footbinding, see Ko, ‘Body as Attire’.
43. A parallel case was the Qing policy to award legal status to Korean settlers in Manchuria
who were willing ‘to shave their heads and change their style of dress’ according to Qing regulations.
They were issued land permits and recognised as ‘naturalised’ (ruji) subjects. Those refusing to
comply were forbidden to cultivate the land and forced to return to Korea. See Sun Chunri, ‘Lun
Qing zhengfu dui fanjin Zhaoxian kenmin di tudi zhengce’ (On the land policy of the Qing
government towards Korean settlers who violated the restrictions), in Manzu yanjiu (Studies on
the Manchu ethnicity), iii (2002), 33–40.
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I have pacified the ‘central plain’ (zhongyuan) and embraced ‘all under
heaven’ (tianxia) as one family. Considering how Liuqiu has served the
‘central state’ (zhongguo) for many generations since antiquity and observed,
without fail, the custom of sending tribute missions, I now decree as follows:
If you will abide by heaven’s will, follow the correct principle, and return to
us the imperial seal previously awarded by the now deposed Ming, I will, in
accord with tradition, confer the royal title on you.
COMMISSIONER LIN ZEXU’S ANTI-OPIUM CAMPAIGN
44. See Zhang Deze, Qingdai guojia jiquan kaolue (A brief inquiry into the government organs
of the Qing dynasty) (Biejing, 1981), 145–56, 249–61; J. Fletcher, ‘Ch’ing Inner Asia c. 1800’, The
Cambridge History of China, x, part. 1, ed. J.K. Fairbank (Cambridge, 1978), 35–106; David Bellow,
Opium and the Limits of Empire, Drug Prohibition in the Chinese Interior, 1729–1850 (Cambridge,
Mass., 2005), 64–113. Rawski also discusses various Qing methods of socialization of the native
elites in Last emperors, passim.
45. For the Chinese version of the treaties, see Wang Tieya, i, 1–30. For a discussion of the
Sino-Russian negotiations, see Guo Tingyi, Jindai Zhongguo, i, 32–79.
46. For the Baykov Mission, see M. Mancall, Russia and China: Their Diplomatic Relations to
1728 (Cambridge, Mass., 1971), 44–53; E. Clubb, China and Russia (New York, 1971), 24; Lo-shiu
Fu, A Documentary Chronicle of Sino-Western Relations, 1644–1820 (Tucson, 1966), 20, 435 n.105;
Guo Tingyi, Jindai Zhongguo, i, 7–9. For an interpretation of kowtow, see J. Hevia, ‘Sovereignty
and Subject: Constituting Relations of Power in Qing Guest Ritual’, in Zito and Barlow, Body,
Subject and Power, 181–200.
47. J.L. Cranmer-Byng, ed., An Embassy to China, Being the Journal Kept by Lord Macartney
During His Embassy to the Emperor Ch’ien-lung, 1793–1794 (London, 1962); Hevia, Cherishing Men;
H.B. Morse, The International Relations of the Chinese Empire (London, 1910–8), ii, 53–8.
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1481
Beyond the predominantly Han Chinese regions, the Qing consolidation
of power in the north, west and southwest yielded an outer layer of
empire consisting of diverse ethnic groups and extensive borderland
spaces. The general Qing practice was to entrust local administration in
these areas to indigenous leaders, like the banner princes in Mongolia,
the begs in Xinjiang, and the Dalai Lama and Panchen Lama in Tibet,
who were incorporated into the imperial framework by applicable
organizing and naming methods of the Manchu banner system. While
the conferment of noble titles and ranks, the bestowal of gifts, the
recognition of hereditary rights and marital alliances added symbolic
touches to the Qing strategy of inclusion, the native elites, in return,
were expected to pledge their allegiance and perform attendance and
tribute duties.44 In these sub-sections of empire, the delegation of power
was carefully negotiated to magnify the overarching authority of the
Manchu ‘son of heaven’ over the composite structure of significant
space, or of the Qing tianxia.
Vaguely reminiscent of the Zhou world of ‘zones and hierarchies’, the
Qing pattern of universal kingship did not preclude other approaches
to foreign relations. With Czarist Russia, for instance, border issues
were settled by treaty agreements.45 Yet state rituals from the Qing
perspective sometimes got in the way. Shunzhi’s court rejected the
Russian mission of Fedor Baykov (1656) on account of his refusal
to perform the kowtow, full prostration on the ground, whether to
the emperor’s seal or at the temple before Beijing’s city gate.46 The
contentious body posture of the foreign envoy in Qing space
foreshadowed, more than a century later, British frustrations in the
Macartney and Amherst missions.47 Western traders who came on their
own did not at first call for a Qing policy response beyond that of
allowing them, as the Ming had done with the Portuguese, to settle in
the small Macao peninsula in Guangdong and to trade at the provincial
48. For a history of the Portuguese settlement in Macao, see C.A. Montalto de Jesus, Historic
Macao (Hong Kong, 1984) and A. Ljungstedt, An Historical Sketch of the Portuguese Settlement in
China; and of the Roman Catholic Church and Mission in China (Hong Kong, 1992). For the
Chinese perspective on Macao’s past, see Zhang Yulin, Aomen jilue (A brief account of Macao)
(Taibei, 1967); Deng Kaisong and Huang Qichen, eds., Aomengang shi ziliao huibian
(A documentary history of the port of Macao) (Guangzhou, 1991).
49. For the Flint affair, see Chang Dechang, ‘Qingdai Yapian zhanzheng qian zhi Zhongxi
yanhai tongshang’ (Sino-Western trade on the China coast before the Opium War), in Wu
Xiangxiang, et al., eds., Zhongguo jindaishi luncong (Essays on modern Chinese history) (Taibei,
1956), I, iii, 91–132.
50. The size of the area is reported in W. Hunter, The ‘Fan Kwae’ at Canton (London, 1882), 20.
Morse, however, estimated the area to be 1,000 feet × 700 feet in International relations, i, 71. The
discrepancy possibly reflects the expansion of the factory district over time. For the original regulations
of the Guangzhou trade proposed by the governor-general Li Shiyao in 1759, see Shiliao xunkan
(Historical sources, thrice-monthly) (Taibei, 1963), 307–9. For a chronological survey of subsequent
revisions of these regulations in 1809, 1831 and 1835, see Guo Tingyi, Jindai Zhongguo, i, 377–429; also,
Jiang Tingfu, ed., Jindai Zhongguo waijiaoshi ziliao jiyao (Documents on modern China’s foreign
relations) (Taibei, 1977), 15–19. For the Co-hong system, see Liang Jiabin, Guangdong shisanhang kao
(An examination of the Co-hong system in Guangdong) (Shanghai, 1937); Liang Tingnan, Yue haiguan
zhi (An account of the Guangdong customs), in Zhongguo shixuehui, ed., Yapian zhanzheng (The
Opium War) (6 vols., Shanghai, 1954), i, 181–92. The Chinese dates of the Daoguang reign given in
this and the following notes are abbreviated as DGyear/month/day. For examples of the violation of
the Guangzhou trade regulations, see the memorials by Zhao Zhenghu (DG11/3/8) and by Qingbao,
et al. (DG11/11/17), in Zhongguo diyi lishi dang’anguan, ed., Yapian zhanzheng dang’an shiliao (Archival
materials relating to the Opium War [hereafter, YZDS]) (7 vols., Tianjin, 1992), i, 73–5, 106–8.
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THE CHINESE MYTH OF UNIVERSAL KINGSHIP AND
capital Guangzhou about eighty miles to the north.48 Then, in 1759,
after James Flint’s unsuccessful attempt on the behalf of the British East
India Company (EIC) to seek trade at other ports,49 the Qing court
expressly restricted all Western commercial activities on the coast to
Guangzhou, or more precisely, to the riverfront ‘factory district’
(yangguan) outside the city wall.
The specificity of site enhanced control, and stringent rules applied.
The ‘western ocean yi’ (xiyang yi), whose complexion, eye and hair
colours and costumes readily fitted them into residual Chinese categories
of the barbaric, even the fiendish, were permitted each year, at the onset
of the southwestern monsoon, to pass through Humen at the mouth of
the Pearl River to the Huangbu anchorage and Guangzhou for trade.
The trading season ended with the start of the northeastern monsoon
when foreigners were expected to leave either for their home countries
or for Macao, where they waited out the winter for next year’s return.
While in Guangzhou, foreign traders were to sojourn without their
wives, conduct their daily life within the factory district’s approximately
1,000 feet × 300 feet area, meet all of their business and everyday needs
through the Co-hong agents appointed by the Qing court, possess and
bear no firearms, and refrain from fraternizing with the natives or
learning their language.50 Containment, segregation and surveillance
were the key components of Qing spatial control; the seasonal
restrictions, the designated areas of activity, the set routes and mode of
travel between Guangzhou and Macao, and the stipulated rules of
conduct all purported to sanitise the outsiders in coastal contact.
COMMISSIONER LIN ZEXU’S ANTI-OPIUM CAMPAIGN
The classic studies by Morse, Greenberg and Chang have ably
examined the role of opium as British leverage in balancing trade with
China.53 Suffice it to note that the Qing ambiguity of treating opium as
both contraband and medicinal import finally ended in the early 1830s
when the Daoguang emperor enforced absolute prohibition. The
renewed commitment, however, did not solve the problem. The
continued influx of Indian opium and the ‘oozing out of fine silver’,54
both against Qing law, attested to the breakdown of the control
51. For use of the expression, see the memorials by Lu Kun, et al. (DG14/8/?) and by Shen
Qixian (DG18/5/2), YZDS, i, 146, 262. An important ancient work that stressed the inner-outer
duality in terms of mythology, geography, and biology is Shanhai jing in Yuan Ko.
52. A cursory glance through the memorials and edicts in YZDS confirms the customary use of these
traditional spatial or place labels for the Qing empire. The two famous memorials by Xu Naiji
(DG16/4/27) and by Huang Juezi (DG18/inter.4/10) in the court debate on opium may be cited as
examples. While Xu used tianxia (all under heaven), zhongyuan (the central plain) and tianchao (celestial
dynasty), Huang employed tianxia and zhongguo (the central state). See YZDS, i, 200–2, 254–7.
53. Morse, International relations, i, 171–211; M. Greenberg, British Trade and the Opening of
China 1800–42 (Cambridge, 1951); and Hsin-pao Chang, Commissioner Lin and the Opium War
(Cambridge, Mass., 1964), 16–50. For more recent studies, see G. Blue, ‘Opium for China: The
British Connection’, and C. Munn, ‘The Hong Kong Opium Revenue, 1845–1885’, both in T.
Brook and Bon Wakabayashi, eds., Opium Regimes: China, Britain, and Japan, 1839–1952 (Berkeley,
2002), 31–54, 105–26.
54. An expression used in Hunter, ‘Fan Kwae’, 106.
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1483
The creation of the Macao-Humen-Guangzhou corridor as a policy
zone echoed the Zhou principle of separation between the ‘central’ and yi
states (yixia zhi fang), which the Qing court articulated in the comparable
terms of a ‘divide that keeps the inner and outer realms apart’ (zhongwai
zhi fang).51 While the foreigners in Macao and Guangzhou delimited an
immediate, miniature ‘outer’ realm, the rest of Qing China, otherwise
known by self-referential terms as the ‘celestial dynasty’, ‘all under
heaven’, ‘the central state’ and so on,52 formed the ‘inner’ realm. Keeping
the two distinct was the ‘divide’ that connected spatially specific locations
in the Pearl River estuary. Conceptually tidy and ideologically compelling,
this tripartite structure entailed human corollaries as objects of control.
The ‘outer realm’—not so much Macao at empire’s southern edge as the
factory district adjoining the provincial hub Guangzhou—admitted only
foreigners who were male, segregated, contained, unarmed, and, despite
all their unsavory qualities, safely regimented. The vital ‘divide’ was
entrusted to the Co-hong personnel and Guangdong’s officials, whose
vigilance and integrity would keep the cordon sanitaire intact. Finally,
the emperor’s multitudinous subjects who inhabited the ‘inner’ realm
would be loyal, self-disciplined and sensible enough to desist from
unlawful contact with foreigners. The ideally subservient body, whether
Qing or Western and whatever its particular location in the three-part
spatial scheme, furnished the tangible unit of control. As the illicit traffic
in opium escalated from the late eighteenth century on, the space-body
coordinates of imperial rule were put to a rigorous test.
55. Bribes for low-ranking officials and the water forces were set, in the summer of 1838, at the
rate of $75 per chest (about 133 lbs). See Chinese Repository (Apr. 1839), 610.
56. See the memorials by Lu Kun, et al. (DG14/10/3), by Zhong Xiang (DG17/1/18), and by
Deng Tingzheng, et al. (DG17/9/23), YZDS, i, 166, 225, 241.
57. For the Lindsay mission, see Zhang Dechang, ‘Hu Xiami huoquan laihua jingguo ji qi
yingxiang’ (Hugh Lindsay’s mission and its consequences), in Wu Xiangxiang, et al., ed., Zhongguo
jindaishi luncong (Essay on modern Chinese history) (Taibei, 1958), II, i, 1–16; also, J. King
Fairbank, Trade and Diplomacy on the China Coast (Cambridge, Mass., 1953), 66–9. For a collection
of interesting documents relating to Lindsay’s interactions with the Chinese on this journey, see
Xu Dishan, Dazhong ji, 1–63. For official reports on Lindsay’s activities, see the memorials by Wei
Yuanlang (DG12/4/29) and by Tao Shu, et al. (DG12/7/20), in YZDS, i, 110–11, 121–2. For other
comments on the foreign ship’s agility ‘now suddenly to disappear, now suddenly to reappear’
(huyin huxian), see the memorial by Leshan, et al. (DG15/4/20), YZDS, i, 177.
58. Memorial by Yihao, et al. (DG12/11/30), YZDS, i, 131–2.
59. Memorial by Zhong Xiang (DG18/7/14), YZDS, i, 336.
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mechanisms in the Guangzhou trade. The Co-hong merchants failed to
suppress foreign involvement in the opium traffic and to prevent
unauthorised Chinese from visiting the factories where they arranged
opium delivery outside the Pearl River. Guangdong’s officials and water
police fared no better and were known to turn a blind eye to opium
smuggling for a fee.55 With the collapse of the crucial ‘divide’, the
‘outer’ realm fell into disarray. Some of the most prominent factory
residents, like the British merchants Lancelot Dent and William Jardine,
or Dian-di and Cha-dun to Chinese authorities, were successful opium
traders. As the opium crisis intensified, the Qing court recognised, in
increasing clarity, the ocean’s complicity in the real threat.
The coast of Guangdong was administratively divided into the
southern, central and eastern approaches (lu). Only the central, guarded
by the Humen forts, was legally open to foreign passage to Guangzhou.
Yet foreign vessels were often spotted engaging in suspicious activities
in the southern and eastern approaches, as well as offshore at other
maritime provinces like Fujian, Zhejiang and Jiangsu.56 The foreigner’s
adroitness at sea and its implications for maritime security also came
into view. When Hugh Hamilton Lindsay undertook his EIC mission
in 1832–3 to gauge the potential of coastal trade beyond Guangzhou,
local officials were uniformly astonished by the skills with which Lindsay
and his crew maneuvered their ship ‘to come and go at will’ (laiqu
miding), ‘showing no predictable course of movement’ (zongji
michang).57 In early 1833, the naval officers in Manchuria chased a
foreign vessel ‘out of our territory’ (chujing) and dutifully watched until
the intruder vanished from sight.58 On another occasion, the governorgeneral Zhong Xiang of Fujian and Zhejiang reported how his water
forces pursued an English ‘barbarian ship’ until it crossed over to the
other side of ‘the red line shown on the foreign map’.59 In the two
instances cited, coastal defense seemed effective, but the Qing maritime
border was either visually established at some vantage point near shore
or ironically, determined according to the symbols found on a foreign
navigation chart. Indeed, the ocean extension of the ‘outer’ realm
COMMISSIONER LIN ZEXU’S ANTI-OPIUM CAMPAIGN
60. See the imperial edicts (DG17/12/7; DG18/4/22; DG18/9/7) and Qishan’s memorial
(DG18/9/19), YZDS, i, 243, 252, 388, 391–3.
61. Memorial by Xi’en, et al. (DG11/10/29) and the imperial edicts (DG18/9/8; DG18/10/29),
YZDS, i, 102–4, 389, 417.
62. See the report by Tao Shu, et al. (DG18/10/3), YZDS, i, 402–5.
63. Memorials by Tao Shu, et al. (DG11/6/29) and by Li Hongbin, et al. (DG11/9/8) and the
imperial edict (DG18/11/4), in YZDS, i, 90, 96–8, 420. For a discussion of poppy cultivation in the
southwestern and western regions, see Bellow, Opium and the Limits of Empire, chs. 5–6.
64. For a discussion of the meaning and application of the term, see F. Wakeman, Jr., Strangers
at the Gate (Berkeley, 1966), 49–51, and idem, ‘Hanjian (traitor)! Collaboration and Retribution in
Wartime Shanghai’, in Wen-hsin Yeh, ed., Becoming Chinese (Berkeley, 2000), 298–325.
65. Memorials by Xu Naiji (DG16/4/27) and by Shen Qixian (DG18/5/2), YZDS, i, 200, 260.
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beyond the Macao-Humen-Guangzhou corridor exhibited dynamics
that rendered the spatially mobile ‘barbarians’ difficult to contain.
Consequently, the ‘inner’ realm was adversely affected. No region of
the empire, however remote, was safe from opium’s ubiquitous reach,
not even the Qing ancestral homeland in Manchuria.60 Palace eunuchs
violated the ban, as did Manchu dignitaries, like Prince Yigeng and
Prince Fuxi, who lost their titles for life and their allowances for two
years for the habit.61 The traffic also thrived under cover of timehonoured social networks. The Jiaying huiguan (native-place association)
outside Suzhou city in Jiangsu, for example, harboured a smuggling
ring that originated hundreds of miles away in eastern Guangdong.62
Prohibition suffered another setback when peasants in the southwestern
and coastal provinces, lured by profits ‘ten times that of planting the
rice crop’, cultivated the poppy.63 Domestic production of opium
competed for land use and naturally alarmed a government that already
faced the problem of feeding a population of 400 million.
In stigmatizing Qing social and economic spaces, opium
contaminated the emperor’s subjects and delineated two objectionable
types: the culpable and the afflicted. The culpable were those who had
illegal contact with foreigners, especially opium-related, or members
of the Co-hong or government personnel who condoned or abetted
such contact, and the offenders were readily branded hanjian, literally,
‘traitors of the Han’.64 Use of the stock Chinese label was, of course, a
burden of history, which the Manchus, being non-Han, and the Han
Chinese, serving the alien Manchus, both quietly bore. But its broad
application during the Daoguang reign suggested not lucid legal
thinking but the desperate need to explain, in terms of human agency,
why and how the Qing-yi, inner-outer ‘divide’ had broken down. The
afflicted, on the other hand, were the regular opium smokers, who
were routinely depicted in Chinese sources as physically and mentally
decrepit, with a skeletal frame, a grey complexion, weak stamina,
stained teeth, diminishing will power and a lack of incentive to
work.65
66. Lu’s memorial (DG14/10/3), YZDS, i, 165–6.
67. Xu’s memorial (DG16/4/27), YZDS, i, 200–2. In drafting his memorial, Xu drew on his
decade-long services as an official in Guangdong, as well as an essay written on the subject by Wu
Lanxiu, an instructor at Guangzhou’s Xuehai Academy. For Wu’s essay, see Zhongguo shixuehui,
Yapian zhanzheng, vi, 6–7. For the view that Xu had intended his memorial to advance a friendly
court faction’s interest, see J. Polachek, The Inner Opium War (Cambridge, Mass., 1992), 113–19.
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THE CHINESE MYTH OF UNIVERSAL KINGSHIP AND
The widespread use of opium thus exposed the weaknesses of the
Qing state as enforcer of its own will. Since prohibition had not checked
opium’s advances, legalization seemed an obvious alternative. In 1834,
the governor-general of Liangguang Lu Kun broached the idea in a
memorial but masked it as a local opinion that he felt duty-bound to
report.66 Opium could be sanctioned as a legal import solely for the
exchange of Chinese goods, so that the outflow of Chinese silver could
be halted. Lu’s attempt was ineffectual but presaged the bold plea put
forward by the court official Xu Naiji two years later.67 Xu revived the
earlier categorization of opium as medicinal substance and argued for
government supervision over its import strictly for barter, not cash sales,
so as to plug the silver drain. He also proposed to relax the universal
proscription of opium use, except for government officials, soldiers
and civil service examination candidates. In his view, most people would
abstain of their own accord; only the ignorant, the lowly, the unemployed
and the slothful, or, in short, only those who ‘do not matter one way or
another’ to the state (bu zu zhongqing) were likely to indulge and should
be left to their own devices. In an attached sub-memorial (pian), Xu
proposed to lift the ban on poppy cultivation, so long as this would not
interfere with the peasants’ annual two-crop food yield. Opium extracted
from native-grown poppy, Xu opined, was less potent than the Indian
varieties and could be tolerated as a cheaper, less pernicious substitute.
Xu did not formulate his argument as diametrically opposed to
prohibition, for certain restrictions would still apply. Nor did he
question the space-body measures instituted in the Guangzhou-HumenMacao region for ‘barbarian’ control; presumably, the single-port trade
system would be left intact. By re-classifying opium as medicine, Xu
sought to rehabilitate the numerous culpable bodies and criminal sites
under the existing law. To allow poppy cultivation without detriment to
food supply would also restore state jurisdiction over agricultural spaces
that had been abused for illicit profit. Xu offered no remedy for the
opium-afflicted body, and his seeming disregard for the socially
disadvantaged betrayed his elitist bias. Yet the importance he attached
to self-discipline and conscience as extra-legal mechanisms of control
was fully in accord with the long-standing Confucian concern with the
moral self in the social reproduction of the body.
Xu’s proposals generated some discussion at court but no revision of
policy. Convinced of opium’s harm, the Daoguang emperor was reluctant
to tolerate it and looked instead for a more effective means of prohibition.
COMMISSIONER LIN ZEXU’S ANTI-OPIUM CAMPAIGN
68. Huang Juezi’s memorial (DG18/inter.4/10), YZDS, i, 254–7.
69. The use of baojia in suppressing opium had been suggested before. See the memorials by
Eshan (DG11/10/1), by Zhou Zhiqi (DG15/12/19) and by Wuergonge (DG15/12/20), YZDS, i, 100,
194, 195–6.
70. The replies can be found in the official source, Chouban yiwu shimo (A complete account of
the management of barbarian affairs) (8 vols., Taibei, 1972), i, 26–90. The citations below, however,
will be made of the archival version reproduced in YZDS.
71. See his memorial (DG18/5/26), YZDS, i, 299–300.
72. See, for instance, the memorials by Jingebu (DG18/5/7), by Funiyanga (DG18/5/24) and by
Qishan (DG18/5/26), YZDS, i, 264, 291, 294.
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His search took a promising turn in May 1838 when the minister of the
Court of State Ceremonial Huang Juezi recommended draconian
measures.68 Huang advanced no fresh argument, and the litany of woes
he recited of opium use bordered on platitudes. Two aspects of his
memorial, however, merit a mention. First, he raised the stake uniformly
high for all opium offenders. After a year’s grace period, even smokers
would be punished by death. Second, he proposed to reinvigorate the
baojia registration as an arm of control: Households belonging to the
same baojia unit would be held collectively accountable for any opium
infraction.69 Whereas the old system grouped ten households to a unit,
the improved method would reduce the number to five for maximal
effect. Disclosure of opium violations would be rewarded, and
concealment, punished. In urban areas where transients could easily
disappear in anonymity, shop owners, innkeepers, restaurateurs and
business managers would be required to keep watch on their patrons and
report suspicious activities. Unlike Xu Naiji, who chose to de-criminalise
the countless opium-related bodies and sites through legalization, Huang
radicalised the deployment of the space-body coordinates by committing
the entire population to reconstituted local spaces for surveillance and
control. To him, the total war against opium was to start locally in baojia
units, with the body, under pain of death, made the last line of defense.
The Daoguang emperor had copies of Huang’s memorial forwarded
to all the leading provincial officials for comment. Of the twenty-nine
joint and individual replies that he later received, only ten endorsed
Huang’s recommendation of capital punishment for users and nineteen
rejected it as excessive.70 Some diverted attention by focussing on
Huang’s other suggestion regarding baojia. The governor-general Yutai,
for instance, supported not only baojia on land but also its extension to
Chinese vessels plying the coastal waters.71 Still others questioned baojia
effectiveness and dismissed it as likely to encourage mutual cover-up, if
not blackmail, extortion, vengeance and litigation.72 Whether in
agreement with Huang or not, several respondents mentioned body
tattoos as a form of punishment. The governor Chen Luan, who
favoured the death penalty, suggested tattooing the two Chinese
characters yanfan (opium criminal) on the offender’s right arm during
the first six months of the grace period and on the face after that before
73. The memorial by Chen Luan (DG18/7/11) and also those by Liang Zhangju (DG18/6/22)
and by Zhong Xiang (DG18/7/14), YZDS, i, 323, 335, 337. For the uses of body tattoo in traditional
China, see C.E. Reed, ‘Tattoo in Early China’, Journal of the American Oriental Society, cxx (2000),
360–76.
74. For the imperial edicts (DG18/9/6; DG18/9/9), see YZDS, i, 388, 391.
75. For Daoguang’s favourable assessment of Lin’s ability, see his remarks at imperial audiences
as reported in Lin’s diary entries, DG2/4/26 and DG3/11/8–9, in Lin Zexu, Lin Zexu ji riji (The
collected works of Lin Zexu, diary), ed. Zhongshan daxue lishixi, et al. (Beijing, 1962), 93, 111; also,
Daoguang’s vermilion endorsement in response to Lin’s memorials (DG12/2/24; DG12/2/27), in
Lin Zexu, Lin Zexu ji zougao (The collected works of Lin Zexu, memorial drafts), ed. Zhongshan
daxue lishixi, et al. (Beijing, 1965), 24, 25, 28. For Lin’s life and career, see Yang Guozhen, Lin Zexu
zhuan (A biography of Lin Zexu) (enlarged edition; Beijing, 1995), and idem., ‘Lin Zexu yanjiu
zhong di jige wenti’ (Several problems in the study of Lin Zexu), in Fujian shehuikexueyuan
lishiyanjiuso, ed., Lin Zexu yu Yapian zhanzheng lunwenji (Essays on Lin Zexu and the Opium
War) (Fuzhou, 1985), 1–14; Lai Xinxia, Lin Zexu nianpu (A chronological biography of Lin Zexu)
(Shanghai, 1985); Lin Qingyuan, Lin Zexu ping zhuan (A critical biography of Lin Zexu) (Nanjing,
2000). A recent study of the effects of Lin’s anti-opium campaign on his native province Fujian,
see J.A. Madancy, The Troublesome Legacy of Commissioner Lin (Cambridge, Mass., 2003).
76. Lin’s memorial (DG18/5/19), YZDS, i, 270–7.
77. Lin Zexu, Riji, 315–16. In the entry (DG18/11/18), Lin mentioned a total of eight interviews
that he had had with the emperor since he arrived in Beijing. Hsin-pao Chang, however, reports
that Lin ‘was admitted to imperial audience nineteen times’ (Commissioner Lin, 120), while
Fairbank also reports ‘nineteen interviews’ (Trade and Diplomacy, 80).
78. See the imperial edict (DG1811/15), YZDS, i, 424.
79. Chang, Commissioner Lin, 120.
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THE CHINESE MYTH OF UNIVERSAL KINGSHIP AND
execution would become mandatory in a year’s time.73 No one who
replied to Daoguang advised him of anything other than prohibition;
all regurgitated the need to target the body and its communal site for
control.
The distance brainstorming was not a democratic exercise, and
Daoguang was not bound by the majority rule. In late October 1838,
clearly inspired by Huang’s proposal, Daoguang instructed the leading
court ministers to draft a new set of regulations for the ‘strictest’
prohibition of opium.74 He also summoned the governor-general of
Huguang Lin Zexu for an audience. No explanation was given for this
command, but Lin had clearly emerged as a choice candidate for heading
the new campaign. Apart from his meritorious service of close to twenty
years,75 Lin, in his recent review of Huang’s memorial, not only
supported the death penalty for smokers but also demonstrated his
proactive stance by enclosing in his reply four herbal cures for the opium
craving, which he said he had promoted in his jurisdiction.76 Lin
subsequently met with Daoguang on eight consecutive days (27
December 1838–3 January 1839),77 and after the fifth interview, he was
named imperial commissioner ‘to go by the courier route (yi) to
Guangdong to settle the sea port (haikou) affair’.78 The edict of Lin’s
appointment has been described as ‘very terse’,79 so terse, in fact, that it
did not even mention opium. The sparse wording nevertheless captured
the reductionist argument that had long dominated the Qing discourse
on the subject. Persistently, officials had called for the throne’s resolve
‘to block the source’ (seyuan), ‘to extract the roots’ (baben) and ‘to purify
COMMISSIONER LIN ZEXU’S ANTI-OPIUM CAMPAIGN
1489
the origins’ (qingyuan), as if the opium menace could indeed be
explained in terms of monogenesis, then schematically tracked back to
its one point of illegal entry in Guangdong and dealt with accordingly.
The reverse, linear, single-cause reasoning gave credence to the usual
lament that opium had made aggressive inroads only because the
protective barrier in South China had broken down. By repairing it, the
Qing empire would again be whole. Lin also conceived of his mission as
one ‘to expel the external threat and to restore the internal order’ (rangwai
jingnei).81 Implicit in this binary language was the threefold strategy Lin
was to adopt. The ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ realms, as well as the ‘divide’
between them, would bear the brunt of his intervention.
80
80. Emphasis added. See, for example, the memorials by Feng Zanxun (DG12/8/26), by Lu
Kun (DG12/8/27), by Li Panliu (DG17/6/11), by Wuergonge (DG18/6/6), by Husonge
(DG18/6/24), by Su Tingyu (DG18/9/25), by Yang Dianbang (DG18/10/28) and by Cai Qiong
(DG18/11/4), in YZDS, i, 124, 126, 229, 304, 326, 395, 415, 418. Huang Juezi’s famous memorial
made selou (to plug the leak) its central theme. See the opening statement in his memorial in
YZDS, i, 254. For an explicit argument of this kind, see the memorial by Chen Shuzeng (DG18/7/6),
YZDS, i, 333–4. From the little that is known of their meetings, Lin Zexu was instructed by
Daoguang to do his utmost ‘to extirpate the source’. See Lin’s letter to Ye Shenxiang (DG20/11/29),
in Yang Guozhen, ed., Lin Zexu shujian (Lin Zexu’s letters) (Fuzhou, 1981), 156–7.
81. See his public notices (DG19/2/?; DG19/3/?) in Lin Zexu, Lin Zexu ji gongdu (The collected
works of Lin Zexu, official correspondence), ed. Zhongshan daxue lishixi, et al. (Beijing, 1963), 52,
82. Emphasis added.
82. DG19/1/11, in Lin Zexu, Gongdu, 47–50.
83. DG19/2/4, ibid., 56–8.
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Before reaching Guangzhou on 10 March 1839, Lin sprang into
vanguard action. He dispatched an advance notice to the provincial
treasurer and provincial judge of Guangdong to emphasise that his first
duty as imperial commissioner was to seek out and punish the region’s
most wanted hanjian ‘traitors’ (shouzai yan na hanjian).82 Appended to
his message was a list of such culprits that he had compiled from various
sources. Divided into two groups either for immediate arrest or for
thorough investigation, the fifty-odd names, mostly with home or
workplace addresses attached, identified the most notorious opiumrelated bodies and sites in the Pearl River delta. His hunt for hanjian
continued after he arrived in Guangzhou and broadened to include the
Co-hong merchants and their subordinates. In a joint statement issued
after he had interrogated them separately, he berated them for their
dereliction of duty. Short of explicitly accusing them of treason, Lin
ominously observed, ‘It cannot be ascertained that they are not hanjian
themselves’.83 The double negative was hardly cause for comfort, for in
nearly the same breath, Lin warned that he would set an example by
executing one or two of the Co-hong merchants and confiscating their
assets. The death threat was not carried out, but when the merchants
next met with the foreigners at the factories on 23 March, all of them
appeared without their ‘official buttons’. Two of the senior members,
84. The Chinese Repository (Apr. 1839), 623. See, also, Chang, Commissioner Lin, 148.
85. For the new regulations later announced, see Zhongguo shixuehui, Yapian zhanzheng, i,
557–80 and Daoguang’s edict (DG19/5/5) endorsing them, in YZDS, i, 597–8.
86. See Lin’s various public notices (DG19/2/?) in Lin Zexu, Gongdu, 52–4, 77–8.
87. Lin Zexu, Gongdu, 55–6.
88. Elliot’s circular paraphrased in the 27 Mar., 1839 entry in W.C. Hunter, ‘Journal of
Occurrences at Canton’, in Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 4 (1964),
9–41, at 16. Elliot soon chose to ‘enjoin and require all Her majesty’s subjects now present in
Canton forthwith to make a surrender to me, for the service of her said Majesty’s Government, to
be delivered over to the Government of China’. See enclosure 3 in Elliot to Palmerston (8 July,
1839), in Great Britain, Parliamentary Papers, Correspondence Relating to China (1840), 431.
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THE CHINESE MYTH OF UNIVERSAL KINGSHIP AND
Howqua and Mowqua, wore small, loose chains around their necks,
while their sons and a third merchant, Gowqua, had been thrown in
jail.84 As Lin reclaimed the ill-kept ‘divide’ of maritime contact, the
body of the traitor, real or imagined, served notice of his ultimatum.
Lin next dealt with problems of the ‘inner’ realm. Without the new
guidelines yet to be promulgated from Beijing,85 Lin improvised his
own. He set a two-month timetable to rid Guangdong of opium through
education, moral appeal, reward/punishment and distribution of antiopium herbal prescriptions. Smokers were enjoined to surrender their
opium and opium accessories for clemency.86 Consistent with Huang
Juezi’s earlier proposal, Lin mobilised the baojia system in his campaign.
Aside from warning those in supervision against lapses and abuses, he
singled out the academy students, the examination degree holders and
the rank and file of Guangdong’s water forces for special grouping into
five-men units. The province and tangibly, all of its constituent bodies
and residential and business sites were put on the opium alert, with
baojia as the chief instrument ‘to dry up its source and to cut off its flow’
(se qiyuan er jie qiliu).87 No victory, to pursue Lin’s metaphor, was more
spectacular than that of dissipating a destructive torrent in motion.
No measure of control, short of imprisonment, was more direct than
affixing the body, through the mediation of the family and
neighbourhood, to local space.
No other aspect of Lin’s campaign was as well publicised and, in the
long run, as explosive as his actions against the ‘outer’ realm. Ten days after
he arrived in Guangzhou, he required all foreign denizens of the factories
to give up their opium inventories and to sign a bond that they would
never bring opium to China again or face execution for doing so. Before
his demands were met, on 24 March, Lin stopped all foreign activities of
trade, travel and communications in the Guangzhou-Huangbu area.
Consequently, about 350 foreigners, including the British Superintendent
of Trade Captain Charles Elliot, were stranded in virtual captivity for six
weeks. Captain Elliot intervened on the behalf of British nationals, who
had the lion’s share both of the legal and illegal trade, and instructed them
to turn their opium over to him ‘for the use of Her British Majesty’s
government to be delivered to the Commissioner’.88 He then notified Lin
COMMISSIONER LIN ZEXU’S ANTI-OPIUM CAMPAIGN
89. For the day-to-day life of the captives from 24 Mar. to 5 May, see Hunter, ‘Journal’, 14–36;
A.A. Low’s letter to Harriet Low Hillard (17 Apr., 1839) in E. Loines, ed., The China Trade Post-bag
of the Seth Low Family of Salem and New York (Manchester, Maine, 1953), 68–72; also, Chinese
Repository (Apr., 1839), 628.
90. For Johnston’s ‘petition’ (DG19/3/7) and Lin’s reply of same date, see Lin Zexu, Gongdu,
89–90.
91. See his instructions (DG19/3/23) in Lin Zexu, Gongdu, 98–100.
92. Hunter, ‘Journal’, 20.
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of 20,283 chests to be handed over at the receiving depot Lin had set up at
Humen. While in no physical danger and supplied with food and fresh
water at monitored intervals, the detainees had to cope with the anxiety
and boredom of their plight.89 When enough opium had been turned
over to show good faith, the siege eased and finally ended on 4 May, with
the bond issue still pending.
Lin’s method to exact compliance closely mirrored the original design
of the Guangzhou trade system, which he restored with a vengeance.
Large numbers of soldiers and coolies surrounded and patrolled the
factory district and imposed an aggressive form of spatial confinement
in which foreigners were reduced en masse to submissive bodies. The
entrances of the streets running parallel in the area were completely
bricked up, leaving only the heavily guarded southern end of Jingyuan
(Old China) Street accessible for official business. Since the waterway
crisscrossed the distance between Guangzhou and Macao, the river craft
signalled to both sides a key to the siege. Chinese officials had all foreign
vessels in the factories’ vicinity hauled on shore or disabled with their
rudders and sails removed, while Chinese boats formed a three-line
blockade along the riverfront to forestall any escape attempt. The
sampan (sanban) or passage boat, in particular, became a contested
item. Lin agreed that he would permit a limited run of sampans again,
once half of the opium as promised by Elliot was delivered. Sensing
what he perceived to be Lin’s weakness, the British Deputy Superintendent
A. R. Johnston, who had been released in early April to go to Macao to
coordinate the surrender of opium, deliberately stalled and requested an
early resumption of sampan transport in exchange for expeditious
delivery.90 The impasse, born of Johnston’s miscalculation of his own
leverage, quickly unraveled to Lin’s satisfaction.
Some of Lin’s policies continued after the blockade ended. While
most of the soldiers and coolies had withdrawn, the barricades that had
been erected earlier were now reinforced by Lin’s orders.91 The south
entrance of Jingyuan Street remained open, but the temporary
checkpoint had turned into a permanent guard station complete with a
gateway and a low wall. Display of a ‘wooden pass attached to the waist’
(yaopai), a security measure introduced earlier, was mandatory for
passage in and out of the factory district.92 The Chinese shops in the
neighbourhood were ordered to close up and move away; Chinese
residents could stay but were placed under tight baojia surveillance. Lin
An eerie sense of incomplete closure had, therefore, haunted Lin
before it materialised in military threat in June 1840 when the British
expeditionary forces arrived and captured Dinghai in Zhejiang
93. For the province of Guangdong, some 1,600 opium offenders had been arrested; 38,600
pounds of opium, 42,741 pipes and a large number of sundry accessories had been confiscated. See
Lin’s memorial (DG19/5/25) in Lin Zexu, Zougao, 653–5. Many of Lin’s memorials in this period
were co-signed by the governor-general and governor of Guangdong, but as imperial commissioner,
Lin was chiefly responsible for the reports on the anti-opium campaign.
94. See his reply, co-issued with the governor-general Deng Tingzhen, to Captain Elliot
(DG19/9/21) in Lin Zexu, Gongdu, 169; also, his instructions to the vice-prefect of Macao
(DG19/8/21), ibid., 139.
95. Chinese Repository (Oct., 1839), 327, 328.
96. James Matheson’s letter to William Jardine (May, 1839) quoted in Greenberg, British Trade,
204.
97. See the two reports by Lin, et al. to the throne (DG19/11/9, 12/4), in Lin Zexu, Zougao,
711–13, 724–6.
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THE CHINESE MYTH OF UNIVERSAL KINGSHIP AND
invited foreigners to return as long as they were willing to abide by the
trade regulations, including the most recent requirement of the bond,
which they could settle on re-entry at Humen. Under the revamped
system, the admissible yi to Guangzhou was still the male, segregated,
contained, seasonal sojourner, now avowedly clear of any opium
connection but, as always, a regulated body in controlled space.
By mid-May, two months after Lin had arrived on the scene, the
results on record seemed impressive.93 Yet in all three spatial subdivisions of empire that he had attacked, problems still lurked in
unfathomable depths. His pursuit of hanjian traitors who had subverted
the ‘divide’ appeared fruitful, but, as he grudgingly admitted, the more
he investigated, the more hanjian emerged (yuefang yueduo), with no
end in sight.94 Purging the ‘inner’ realm of opium also had to continue,
for smokers were still at large, and more of the banned substance and
accessories had to be seized. Finally, control of the ‘outer’ realm beyond
the physicality of the factories and the Macao-Humen-Guangzhou
passage proved the most vexing. Five months after the siege, the Chinese
Repository reported ‘on good authority’ that about twenty opium vessels
again operated regularly outside the Pearl River and that the prospects
of suppressing the traffic were ‘now darker than ever’.95 Captain Elliot,
whose earlier intervention in the opium surrender had set a ‘snare’ for
Lin of making the Qing government ‘directly liable to the British
Crown’,96 resumed his fight both in words and deeds. Anticipating
British reprisal on account of Lin’s recent actions, his recalcitrance
turned Macao, Hong Kong and the adjoining sea into contested space,
so much so that Lin had to visit Macao in early September to ascertain
Portuguese intentions. Later, finding Elliot to be impervious to reason,
Lin declared that as of 6 December 1839, the Qing government would
terminate all trade with the British and expel them permanently from
China.97
COMMISSIONER LIN ZEXU’S ANTI-OPIUM CAMPAIGN
1493
province. At the news of Dinghai’s fall, the Daoguang emperor
rebuked Lin for having provoked the British attack: ‘Externally, you
pledged to stop the [opium] trade, but the trade has persisted; internally,
you undertook to hunt down the criminals, but the criminals are still at
large’.99 Lin’s failure, worded in poignant spatial imageries, seemed
complete, and he was subsequently banished to a frontier outpost. Lin’s
disgrace did not tarnish his reputation for posterity. Ever since the midnineteenth century, Chinese writers have variously praised Lin for his
patriotism, his enlightened outlook, and his quest for the nation’s
progress and modernity.100 Even Mao Zedong, in rehearsing the Chinese
Marxist interpretation of China’s historical transition from the ‘feudal’
to ‘modern’ era, mentioned Lin in a 1957 speech as the historical figure
who had started China’s struggle for democracy.101 Lin’s image as a
champion of democracy does seem odd, but Mao’s possible verbal slip
in naming Lin instead of the Opium War as marking the inauguration
of China’s fateful quest did confirm Lin’s iconic stature in history.
The historical accolades, however, reveal little of the tensions that
beset Lin’s mission in 1839. Other than the very brief terms of his
assignment, Lin had to mediate at every stage of his campaign between
the throne’s expectations, opium’s elusive complexity, local resistance
and contingent events. Without resorting to the either-or or all-ornothing argument, it would be useful to distinguish two levels of Lin’s
engagement in Guangdong. For practical results, he was capable of
eschewing cultural misgivings to seek help from the ‘outer’ realm. To
ensure that his Chinese message to Queen Victoria was faithfully
communicated, he asked foreigners in Guangzhou to check his
subordinates’ English translation for inaccuracies.102 To reinforce
Guangdong’s defense capabilities, he installed Western guns at the
98
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98. For an account that focusses on the naval aspects of the Sino-British hostilities, see P.W.
Fay, The Opium War, 1840–1842 (New York, 1976).
99. See Daoguang’s remarks in his vermilion endorsement on Lin’s report (DG20/6/21), in
YZDS, ii, 179; emphasis added.
100. See, for example, G. Chen, Lin Tse-hsu: Pioneer Promoter of the Adoption of Western Means
of Maritime Defense in China (New York, 1968); Lai, Nianpu, 198; Chen Shenglin, ‘Lin Zexu di
yisheng’ (On Lin Zexu’s life), in Sanlian shudian, ed., Zhongguo jindai renwu luncong (Essays on
historical figures in modern China) (Beijing, 1965), 1–28 and idem., Lin Zexu yu Yapian zhanzheng
lungao (Essays on Lin Zexu and the Opium War) (Guangzhou, 1985), 26. The historian Jiang
Tingfu stands as one of the few dissenting voices and criticises Lin’s performance as an official. See
his Jindai Zhongguo, 82.
101. Mao Zedong, ‘Jianding di xiangxin qunzhong di daduoshu’ (Have firm faith in the
majority of the people), in Mao Zedong xuanji (Selected works of Mao Zedong) (5 vols., Beijing,
1977), v, 490.
102. See Hunter, ‘Fan Kwae’, 139–40; also, Chang, Commissioner Lin, 137–8. Lydia Liu argues
that Lin did not intend yi in his message to Queen Victoria to mean ‘barbarians’ because it would
have been ‘a comical and somewhat grotesque mockery’ of the solemn occasion (Clash of Empires,
94). However, since Lin was unfamiliar with Western diplomatic practices, any incongruity of
language in his communication to the British monarch, especially in alluding to foreign opium
traders, is understandable. Besides, Lin’s original Chinese message does not read as awkwardly with
yi meaning ‘barbarians’ as the English translation.
103. For the episode, see Jonathan Spence, To Help China (Harmondsmith, 1980), 48.
104. See, for example, Lin’s memorials (DG19/1/27; DG19/2/29; DG19/4/6; DG19/4/12;
DG19/7/24), in Lin Zexu, Zougao, 626, 631, 638, 645, 673; also, his instructions to the foreign
merchants (DG19/2/12) and to the vice-prefect of Macao (DG19/7/14) in Lin, Gongdu, 65, 131.
105. See his memorials (DG19/2/29; DG19/4/6) in Lin Zexu, Zougao, 632, 640; also, his
instructions to the foreign merchants and his message to the British ruler (DG19/2/4; DG19/2/12;
DG19/6/24), in Lin Zexu, Gongdu, 58, 65,126.
106. His memorial (DG19/7/24) in Lin Zexu, Zougao, 676. Lin’s view was consistent with a
contemporary opinion, as expressed in Wang Wentai, ‘Hongmaofan Yingjili kaolue’ (On the redhaired English barbarians), in A Ying, ed., Yapian zhanzheng wenxueji (Literary sources on the
Opium War) (Beijing, 1957), 758.
107. For his account of his visit to Macao, see Lin Zexu, DG19/7/26, Riji, 351.
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THE CHINESE MYTH OF UNIVERSAL KINGSHIP AND
Humen forts and sponsored translation projects to gather intelligence
on foreign countries. In the same pragmatic vein, he sought medical
relief for his hernia by obtaining, in an amusingly roundabout manner,
a truss from the American missionary Dr Peter Parker.103 Other than
finding the best solution to the problem at hand, Lin never for a moment
forgot that his primary duty as imperial commissioner was ‘to settle the
sea port affair’ in which Western traders were the chief culprits.
Lin devised his tactics on the combined basis of Daoguang’s
instructions, his own on-site observations, and contemporary Chinese
lore of the ‘ocean barbarians’. His official writings at this time portrayed
Westerners as mostly crass, greedy, capricious, beyond the pale of
civilization (huawai) and even sub-human, like ‘dogs and sheep’ (quan
yang).104 Since they needed Chinese tea and rhubarb to survive and
Chinese raw silk to manufacture warm and elegant fabrics,105 the
suspension of trade, he advised, would bring them to their senses. Lin
was not unduly perturbed by the prospect of a ‘barbarian’ invasion.
Clad in tight uniforms, foreign soldiers suffered from the chronic
conditions of a stiff back and rigid legs and could hardly march long
distances, much less fight protracted battles. Their warships were indeed
superior in ocean conveyance but once near shore or in shallow waters,
could maneuver only with great difficulty.106 So convinced was Lin of
the ‘barbarian’s’ dietary and bodily peculiarities that the chance of a
culture shock greatly diminished when he visited Macao’s European
settlement.107 Foreign dress looked undignified, even ghastly to him.
Men wore short coats and tight trousers, which reminded him of the
hare and fox costumes of the Chinese theater; women sported light
garments on top and heavy skirts below, while shamelessly exposing
their naked shoulders. The dark complexion of some, ‘blacker than
lacquer’, appalled him, as did the profusion of men’s facial hairs. The
curly beards and mustaches gave them a frightful look, which the
Cantonese had aptly likened to that of ‘the devil’ (guizi). Disgust turned
into contempt when Lin remarked that Westerners arranged their
marriages between partners, not families, and did not shun having a
spouse with the same surname, ‘a truly barbaric custom’ (zhen yisu).
COMMISSIONER LIN ZEXU’S ANTI-OPIUM CAMPAIGN
108. See Lin’s reply (DG19/6/?) to the Dutch consul’s ‘petition’ in Lin Zexu, Gongdu, 129. The
British foreign secretary Lord Palmerston objected to calling British communications to Chinese
authorities bing (petition). See his letter to Elliot (13 June, 1839), in Britain, Parliamentary papers,
142.
109. Lin to Johnston (DG19/3/7), Lin Zexu, Gongdu, 90.
110. Lin to Elliot (DG19/8/21), Lin Zexu, ibid., 141–2.
111. See Lin’s instructions to the prefect of Guangzhou and the magistrates of Nanhai and of
Panyu (DG19/2/8), in Lin Zexu, ibid., 60. He also made this distinction clear to the foreigners in
Guangzhou (DG19/2/4), ibid., 59.
112. See his replies to Elliot (DG19/2/15) and to Senn van Basel (DG19/2/?), ibid., 68, 70.
113. Not by ‘torch’, as suggested in Polachek, Inner Opium War, 151, but in a mixture of water,
salt and lime.
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Managing the ‘ocean barbarians’, then, meant for Lin managing
intrinsic difference. In the siege of the factories and later, in the expulsion
of the British and the termination of their trade, Lin resorted to coercion
and punishment as a method. His other two approaches were gentler.
When a faux pas occurred and Lin judged it to be a sign of ignorance
rather than defiance, he remonstrated to educate. He criticised the
Dutch Consul Senn van Basel for inappropriately elevating the character
He for Holland one position above the rest of his ‘petition’ (bing) to
indicate his country’s superior prestige, while leaving only an empty
space before ‘Your Highness’ (Daren) to acknowledge Lin’s lower
esteem.108 In the sampan incident, he chided Deputy Superintendent
Johnston not only for his foolish attempt to bargain but also for his
violation of protocol, at that late date, to send his ‘petition’ not through
the Co-hong but by messenger directly to Lin at Humen.109 When after
the blockade Captain Elliot appealed to Lin for calm in settling disputes
so that the ‘mutual harmony’ (xianghe) between Britain and China for
two hundred years would not suffer, Lin fumed at his use of language.
The ‘celestial dynasty’, he declared, had always treated people from afar
like ‘an elder [or, the strong] caring for the young [or, the weak]’ (yida
zixiao), with no thought of favours or gains in return.110 Elliot’s blunt
wording implied a reciprocity that did not exist.
Reproach gave way, where appropriate, to positive inducement. Lin
urged his colleagues to distinguish between the good and bad (liangyou)
‘barbarians’, so that the good ones could be preferentially treated.111 On
learning Captain Elliot’s willingness to turn over more than 20,000
chests of British-owned opium, Lin showed approval by sending the
factory detainees an assortment of 250 animals for food.112 As the opium
started arriving in Humen, he offered five catties of tea (about 6.7 lbs)
for each chest handed over, not to compensate but to recognise
co-operation. When a group of ten Americans, including the Rev. E. C.
Bridgman, the Rhode Island merchant Charles W. King, and his wife,
requested permission to visit the facilities where the seized opium was
being destroyed,113 Lin quickly assented and graciously received
Bridgman and King for a two-hour interview, while Mrs King, furnished
114. For a record of the encounter, see Chinese Repository (June, 1839), 70–7; Lin Zexu, DG19/5/7,
Riji, 343; Lin’s memorial (DG19/5/25), Zougao, 656.
115. See Lin Zexu, DG19/7/26, Riji, 351; Chinese Repository (Sept., 1839), 268.
116. See Lin Zexu, DG19/11/11, Riji, 362.
117. Based on an examination of his diary for DG19 and DG20. For the occasion when he
offered incense on board his vessel, see Lin Zexu, DG19/3/15, Riji, 338. For the three deities in
question, see Xiang, Shui chongbai, 74–80; Zhu Jieqin, Zhongwai guanxishi lunwenji (Essays on
Sino-foreign relations) (Zhengzhou, 1984), 52–69; J.L. Watson, ‘Standardization of the Gods: The
Promotion of T’ien Hou (“Empress of Heaven”) Along the South China Coast’, in D. Johnson, et
al., eds., Popular Culture in Late Imperial China (Berkeley, 1985), 292–324; Liang Qichao, Zhongguo
lishi yanjiufa fu bubian (Research methods in Chinese history, with supplementary section)
(Taibei, 1964), 141–2; Prasenjit Duara, ‘Superscribing Symbols: The Myth of Guandi, Chinese
God of War’, Journal of Asian Studies, xlvii (Nov., 1988), 778–95; Zheng Tuyou, Guangong xinyan
(The cult of Lord Guan) (Beijing, 1995).
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THE CHINESE MYTH OF UNIVERSAL KINGSHIP AND
‘with tea and sweetmeats’, waited outside.114 When the party took leave
to return to Macao, he sent ‘a large collection of presents’ after them. At
the reception on his visit to Macao, Lin lavished such gifts on the
Portuguese governor and his soldiers as silk, teas, silver coins, pigs and
bullocks with horns decorated with red ribbons.115 In December 1839,
after questioning fifteen shipwreck foreign seamen brought before him,
he gave them food, prompting them, in his words, to remove their hats
to salute in gratitude.116
Gift-giving or reward (banshang) alternated with the iron fist and
avuncular persuasion to complete the three faces of Qing paternalism.
The carrot-and-stick approach, interspersed with edifying admonitions,
aimed to tame the ‘barbarians’ of the ‘outer’ realm into submission, so
that the ‘divide’ and the ‘inner’ realm could be restored to order and
peace. Lin’s task required that he exercise the vast imperial powers
invested in him and mobilise all other available resources. A little noticed
but no less significant pattern of Lin’s activities in Guangdong illustrated
this latter recourse. Although Lin had set up his headquarters in
Guangzhou, he operated from other locales when necessary. Apart from
his brief visit to Macao in early September, he spent considerable time
at Humen, first in May and June during the surrender and destruction
of opium and later, from September to December, to inspect the military
installations and the water forces’ maneuvers. Unlike Guangzhou, where
the depth of its bureaucratic-administrative infrastructure afforded him
ample support, Humen, like Macao, was a border site physically exposed
to the outer ocean whence the ‘barbarians’ came. Not so much in
Guangzhou but regularly at Humen, Lin visited the local temple to
offer incense to the Heavenly Consort (Tianhou), the Ocean God
(Haishen) and the deified Lord Guan (Guandi), or, if in transit, then at
a shrine on board his vessel.117 The Heavenly Consort and the Ocean
God were popular patron deities in South China, where access to the
sea was a major source of livelihood for many. The cult of Lord Guan
began with the military exploits of the historical figure Guan Yu
(A.D.162–220), whose legendary courage and righteousness had inspired
COMMISSIONER LIN ZEXU’S ANTI-OPIUM CAMPAIGN
118. See Lin Zexu, DG19/4/7, DG19/4/20, Riji, 341, 342. For the text of the ode, see Lin Zexu,
Yunzuo shanfang wenchao (Essays from the Yunzuo Studio), in Lin Wenzhong gong quanji (The
complete works of Lin Zexu) (Taibei, 1963), juan 3, 20–21.
119. Lin Zexu, DG19/5/5, Riji, 343.
120. Lin Zexu, DG19/5/13, ibid., 344.
121. Lin Zexu, DG18/11/16, ibid., 316 and Gongdu, DG19/2/4, 58–60.
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popular worship over the centuries. Lin’s visits took place on the first
and fifteenth days of the lunar month when the moon’s wane and wax
had long given rise to a great variety of Chinese folk and religious
observances. Special occasions did not go unnoticed. Before the
destruction of opium began, Lin composed a sacrificial ode (jiwen) to
the Ocean God and formally dedicated it in a ceremony in supplication
that the aquatic creatures in the region would be safe when the
decomposed opium was released into the river and sea.118 Thirteen days
into the project fell the Duanwu Festival, traditionally to commemorate
the protest suicide by drowning of the ancient Chu statesman and poet
Qu Yuan (c. 340–278 B.C.) and now internationally celebrated by the
festive dragon boat races. Lin ordered a day of rest and ceased
contaminating the river and sea in honour of Qu Yuan’s spirit.119 Near
the end of his task was Lord Guan’s birthday. Although not time for a
regular visit, Lin proceeded at dawn to the temple to burn incense.120
As Lin reenacted the grand narrative of Qing absolutism at Humen’s
border site, he did not neglect to empower his actions with the historical,
regional and local narratives of the supernatural and sublime. His halfday tour of Macao in September followed a tight schedule, but it was no
excuse for oversight. Before he met with the Portuguese governor in the
commodious courtyard outside the local Lord Guan Temple, he first
worshipped inside. When he reached the southern end of Macao’s
peninsula, he again offered incense at the Temple of the Heavenly
Consort located there. The stopovers at temple grounds, amid the
vulgar distractions of ‘barbarian’ men in hare and fox costumes and
‘barbarian’ women baring their shoulders, inscribed Lin’s effort to mark
his territory, so to speak, on empire’s behalf. Through the haze of incense
smoke and the imperial mystique that he embodied, he re-consecrated
the borderland at Macao, as he did at Humen, in his defense of Qing
China’s discrete, privileged space.
There can be no gainsaying about Lin’s sense of spatial boundary; his
official seal as imperial commissioner (qinchai dachen guanfang) was a
constant reminder. Carved in both Chinese and Manchu languages in
1751 during the Qianlong reign, it had been used, as Lin solemnly noted,
in previous pacification campaigns in the western border regions
(pingding waiyu luli qigong).121 The ‘border’ reference drove home an
instructive parallel, one that heightened the urgency of his mission. In
his memorials to the throne, Lin spoke often of the ‘barbarian side’
(yijie), the ‘barbarian ocean’ (yiyang) and the ‘hundreds, even thousand
Analogous thinking can, therefore, be a source of misapprehension.
The historical stereotypes through which Lin and the imperial court
perceived the outsider captured few of the changed realities that
repudiated the Qing claim to universal kingship. The ultimate surprise,
when it did come, took the shape of a rival space-body paradigm. Before
Lin’s blockade of the factories began, Captain Elliot had warned that
the Chinese government might force foreigners into ‘unsuitable
concessions and terms, by the restraint of their persons, or by violence
upon their lives or property’.125 In his public notices then and in his
reports to the foreign secretary Lord Palmerston, Elliot represented the
siege and the forced surrender and destruction of opium as Chinese
endangerment of British ‘life, liberty and property’.126 The British
merchants who had endured the ordeal in Guangzhou voiced a similar
complaint.127 Distilled through the language of protest were the
122. See, for example, his memorials to the emperor (DG19/2/29; DG19/4/6; DG19/6/24), in
Lin Zexu, Zougao, 628, 640, 665.
123. For some of the translated materials that he commissioned, see Zhongguo shixuehui,
Yapian zhanzheng, ii, 523–43. His friend Wei Yuan soon incorporated these in his compilation
Haiguo tuzhi (An illustrated gazetteer of the maritime countries) (3 vols., Changsha, 1998), i,
253–4; iii, 1956–96. For a discussion of Lin’s translation projects, see Lai, Nianpu, 195–6.
124. Xu Naiji (DG16/4/27), in YZDS, i, 201.
125. See his 23 March, 1839 ‘Public Notice to British subjects’, in Chinese Repository (Apr., 1839),
626; also, in John Slade, ed., Narrative of the Late Proceedings and Events in China (Wilmington,
1972), 53–4.
126. See, for instance, his reports with enclosures to Palmerston and his public notices (30 Mar.,
2 Apr., 3 Apr., 6 Apr., 11 May, 1839), Britain, Parliamentary Papers, 358, 360, 386, 407, 414; also,
Chinese Repository (May 1839), 24–5; Slade, Narrative, 93–4.
127. ‘Memorial from Her Majesty’s subjects to Viscount Palmerston’ (23 May, 1839) as enclosure
in Elliot to Palmerston (29 May, 1839), in Britain, Parliamentary Papers, 420–2; also, see Chinese
Repository (May 1839), 32–5; Slade, Narrative, 106–9.
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THE CHINESE MYTH OF UNIVERSAL KINGSHIP AND
barbarian island kingdoms’ that scattered beyond the Qing seaboard.122
Yet like colleagues before him, he was vague on the maritime frontier.
The cartographic and geographical data that he had translated from
Hugh Murray’s Encyclopaedia of Geography (1839) did not seem to
enhance discernment, and his mapping of Qing China’s spatial primacy
basically retraced the contours of an ancient cosmography.123 Nor did
the static categories that he upheld of the ‘inner’, ‘outer’ and ‘divide’
prove capable of thwarting opium’s invasive energy. Xu Naiji hinted at
the problem in 1836 when he opposed the proposal to suppress opium
by terminating all maritime contact with Westerners; the indiscriminate
move, he argued, would only devastate the ‘several hundred thousand’
(shushiwan) coastal inhabitants whose livelihood depended on the legal
trade at Guangzhou.124 The economic nexuses that had proliferated
around illegal opium could not have been any less encompassing. As
native and foreign interests intersected, commodified opium had created
a shadow empire of its own, delimited not by any Qing barriers or
boundaries but by the emergent patterns and forces of global trade.
COMMISSIONER LIN ZEXU’S ANTI-OPIUM CAMPAIGN
128. Peter Gay speaks of the ‘anglomania’ of continental philosophes in The Enlightenment: An
Interpretation (New York, 1968), 12, 382–3.
129. See Elliot to Palmerston (22 Mar., 1839), in Britain, Parliamentary Papers, 351. Lin was also
described as ‘irresponsible’ in Chinese Repository (Apr., 1839), 624. For the French analogy, see
W. D. Bernard, Narrative of the voyages and services of the Nemesis (London, 1844), 188–9.
130. For the record of the 7–10 Apr., 1840 Commons debate, see Hansard’s Parliamentary
Debates (London, 1831–91), III, 670–995. For a lively account of the debate, see Brian Inglis, The
Opium War (London, 1979), 135–64.
131. The notion of a ‘just’ war was popularised in a pamphlet by Hugh Hamilton Lindsay, Is the
War with China a Just One? (London, 1840).
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principles of social contract and free trade, which thinkers like John
Locke and Adam Smith had successfully disseminated in the Englishspeaking world and which the political economy of industrial Britain
had ardently embraced. While anglophile philosophes of continental
Europe incorporated them as part of the Enlightenment outlook,128 the
American colonists rebelled in the name of these as ‘inalienable rights’
and ‘self-evident truths’. Calling Lin ‘unjust and menacing’, or, to bring
the anti-French sentiment to bear, ‘the Robespierre, the Terrorist, the
reckless despot’,129 only rendered British retaliation all the more
justifiable. Palmerston and his Whig government thus found the needed
munitions to defend their China policy in Parliament. With the
Radicals’ support, they defeated the Tory motion of censure by a narrow
margin of nine votes.130 Whatever the vote-count, however, the ‘just’
war against China had to run its course.131 The British merchants’ loss
of ‘property’ (opium) had to be compensated (thanks to Elliot’s
intercession), such funds could, and should, only be forthcoming from
the Chinese government, and, confounding the sequence of events, the
British naval expedition was already well under way when the Commons
debate took place (April 1840).
Life, liberty and property pertain to one’s rights of access to physical,
political and economic spaces and suggest, in this context, more than
the citizen’s legal protection against arbitrary government action. In
nascent form, these very principles had furnished the ideological
platform on which European countries launched their worldwide
expansion after 1492. Western nations’ eventual global domination may
indeed be seen as the cumulative results of the profit-driven dynamics
of capitalism and colonialism, but in human terms, the process had
begun with the spadework of small groups of explorers, conquistadors,
sailors, missionaries, traders and adventurers, who, by staking out
national spaces in faraway places with their bodily presence, contributed,
intentionally or willy-nilly, to the project of overseas empire-building.
Ocean explorations thus deployed European-style space-body
coordinates to other regions of the world and generated tensions, both
creative and destructive, that played out in infinitely varied local
circumstances. When the Manchus established themselves as rulers
south of the Great Wall in 1644, China’s demographic and fiscal profiles
132. Bernard, Nemesis, ‘Preface’, v. For a description of the vessel, see 6–10.
133. For the English version of the treaty, see Treaties, Conventions, etc., between China and
Foreign States (2 vols., Shanghai, 1917), i, 351–6; for the Chinese version, see Wang Tieya, i, 30–3.
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THE CHINESE MYTH OF UNIVERSAL KINGSHIP AND
had already exhibited the effects of the adoption of New World food
crops and the influx of Peruvian silver. The scale and depth of these
inter-continental patterns may have eluded the Qing rulers who
continued to lay claim, in apt Chinese fashion, to universal kingship. In
dealing with Western merchants who came by sea, the Qing government
implemented the Guangzhou trade system, which did not, however,
shepherd all the border-crossing agents along the authorised channels.
By Daoguang’s reign, psychoactive substances like China teas and South
Asian opium had enmeshed Qing China, Britain and British India in a
complex triangular trade. The unilateral Qing decision to disengage
afforded Britain the opportunity to correct, through a demonstration of
naval power, what it perceived to be abnormalities in inter-state relations.
As the new age of steam navigation dawned on Chinese horizon in 1840
with the arrival of the British warship Nemesis, ‘the first Iron Steamer
that ever doubled the Cape of Good Hope’,132 Qing China’s spatial
identity was about to undergo a profound transformation. Not only did
Commissioner Lin’s earlier squabble with Deputy Superintendent
Johnston over the sampan suddenly seem trite and passé; there also came
the Qing reckoning, long overdue, that the ocean had joined China to
destinies beyond its control.
The Treaty of Nanjing (1842) signed to end the hostilities addressed
British concerns for financial reparations, and more.133 As the first of the
so-called ‘unequal treaties’ that Qing China accepted, the terms signalled
the formal collapse of the Qing approach to maritime control. The five
treaty ports to be established at Guangzhou, Fuzhou, Xiamen, Ningbo
and Shanghai allowed the British year-round residence with families and
trade ‘with whatever persons they please’. The British consuls replaced
the Co-hong brokers as the ‘medium of communication’ with Qing
authorities on an equal footing. In addition, the island of Hong Kong
was ceded to Britain in perpetuity, adding yet another foreign foothold
that rendered the seasonal male sojourner in Guangzhou’s confined
space obsolete. Furthermore, the Daoguang emperor granted amnesty
to all his subjects who had lived or worked under the British, or who had
been imprisoned for similar reasons. Many of those whom Commissioner
Lin would have peremptorily condemned as hanjian traitors were now
immune from government prosecution. Finally, the treaty skirted the
issue of opium smuggling, and the silence bespoke frustrated Qing
efforts to purge the empire of opium-related bodies and sites.
The crippling effect of the first treaty became permanent when
supplementary agreements with Britain and new treaties with the
United State and France were concluded in 1843–4. By a legal provision
COMMISSIONER LIN ZEXU’S ANTI-OPIUM CAMPAIGN
1501
called extraterritoriality, the treaty powers were able to protect their
nationals in China under their own laws and consuls and to shield them
from Chinese jurisdiction. Foreign autonomy expanded as the treaty
ports grew from the original five in the 1840s to over seventy by the end
of the dynasty in 1912.135 Sixteen of these developed into bustling urban
‘settlements’ or ‘concessions’ (zujie) that mimicked the earlier Qing
policy of containment and segregation, except that power in these areas
was now exercised by foreign municipal administrators rather than by
Qing agents. Some like treaty-port Shanghai flourished into cosmopolitan
centres against a predominantly native landscape and manifested traits
of the postmodern city before its time: mixed histories and ethnicities,
pastiche, intertextuality, schizophrenia, incoherence, disjunction and
cultural chasms.136 Qing authority eroded further when large numbers
of the emperor’s subjects migrated to these foreign enclaves for
opportunities of work, business, pleasure and education and in times
of political turmoil, as during the Taiping Rebellion (1850–64), for
sanctuary.137 As virtual outsiders or second-class citizens in a foreigndominated environment, they were liable to degrading and discriminatory
treatment. The reversal of fortune was complete when a plaque outside
a park in Shanghai’s International Settlement forbade the entry of ‘dogs
and Chinese’.138 The alleged insult parodied the age-old Chinese
disparagement of ‘barbarians’ as beast-like. With the tables turned, the
Chinese were now reduced to regulated bodies under foreign control in
what was still legally, in most instances, Chinese space.
Marginalization proved a deeply ambivalent experience. Humiliation
not only fueled the Chinese nationalist sentiment but also ignited a
feverish desire to transform China in the West’s image. The so-called
134
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134. The best study of extraterritoriality in China remains W.R. Fishel, The End of
Extraterritoriality in China (Berkeley, 1952).
135. For a concise discussion of the foreign presence in China after the Opium War, see A.
Feuerwerker, The Foreign Establishment in China in the Early Twentieth Century (Ann Arbor,
1976).
136. For these conditions and the general argument, see A.D. King, ‘The times and spaces of
modernity (or who needs post-modernism?)’, in M. Featherstone, et al., eds., Global Modernities
(London, 1995), 108–23. The sources on Shanghai’s development into a modern metropolis are
numerous. See, for instance, the classic work by R. Murphey, Shanghai, Key to Modern China
(Canbridge, Mass., 1953). For Shanghai’s city life from a Chinese perspective, see Dianshizhai
huabao (The Dianshizhai pictorial) (1884–98). I consulted the bound volumes of this serial at the
Cheng Yu Tung East Asian Library at the University of Toronto. For a discussion of this
publication, see Ye Xiaoqing, The Dianshizhai Pictorial: Shanghai Urban Life 1884–1898 (Ann
Arbor, 2003). See also Shanghai tongzhiguan qikan (The Shanghai gazetteer quarterly), 8 issues
(June 1933–Mar. 1935) (3 vols., Hong Kong, 1965).
137. For the example of Shanghai, see the collection of essays in F. Wakeman, Jr. and Wen-hsin
Yeh, eds., Shanghai Sojourners (Berkeley, 1992).
138. ‘Current scholarship’, according to one author, ‘doubts that the sign was ever used’. See
Ranbir Vohra, China’s Path to Modernization (Upper Saddle River, 2000), 57. But there is enough
contemporary evidence to suggest that such a plaque was in place. See Yao Gonghe, Shanghai
xianhua (Anecdotes about Shanghai) (1917; Shanghai, 1989), 11; also, the sources cited in Xu
Guoliang and Yu Xiao, ‘Chenzhong di mupai’ (The heavy wooden plaque) in Dangshi wenhui
(Essays on Party history), 7 (1995), 24–6.
139. Chinese writers in the early decades of the twentieth century spoke often of modeng (the
modern) and associated it with Western institutions and practices. (The argument that
modernisation and Westernisation should be separate processes would not have meant much to
them.) There was, however, no consensus among them on what modernity exactly was. One of my
current projects attempts to unravel this complex problem.
140. The embryonic idea of Zhonghua minguo was evident in the constitution of the
Revolutionary Alliance (Tongmeng hui), which Sun Yat-sen and others established in Japan in
1905. See Sun Zhongshan, Sun Zhongshan quan ji (Complete works of Sun Yat-sen) (11 vols.,
Beijing, 1981–6), i, 284–5. A contemporary explanation of the term’s meaning is Zhang Binglin,
‘Zhonghua minguo jie’ (An explanation of zhonghua minguo), Min bao (People’s herald), 15 (July
1907), 2413–29.
141. For an example of this phrase written in Sun’s calligraphy, see the reproduction in Ng Lun
Ngai-ha, et al., eds., Historical Traces of Sun Yat-sen’s Activities in Hong Kong, Macao and Overseas
(Hong Kong, 1987), 139.
142. See the famous passage in Liji (Book of rites) in Sishu wujing, ii, 120.
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THE CHINESE MYTH OF UNIVERSAL KINGSHIP AND
progressive elements of the late Qing, namely, the reformers and
revolutionaries, never ceased equating Western values and practices with
the imperative of modernity.139 As the periphery threatened the now
defensive centre, the collapse of boundaries left in its wake a spatialtemporal warp that spawned rival visions. The spectrum of opinions
crystallised into endless Chinese debates: the old vs. the new, essence
(ti) vs. utility (yong), spirit vs. matter, metaphysics vs. science, xenophobia
(paiwai) vs. xenophilia (meiwai), China vs. the West. Intellectual
discourse was no longer confined within the parameters of classical
scholarship, and the exploration of issues relating to China often
employed a comparative perspective that included other countries and
cultures in the context of discussion. Chinese tradition, now reified as
an object of inquiry like ‘the West’, was subject to impassioned efforts
of deconstruction and reconstruction (zhengli). The ancient spatial or
place signifiers by which the dynastic states had been known also came
into focus. When the Revolution of 1911 overthrew the Qing, the new
republic was christened Zhonghua minguo (Republic of China), a
juxtaposition of novel populist values and familiar spatial themes like
‘the central land of efflorescence’ (zhonghua) and ‘central state’ (zhongguo)
that aimed to refurbish the subject bodies from ‘servants’ to ‘citizens’ or
‘nationals’.140 Sun Yat-sen, reputedly its chief architect, popularised ‘the
common good for all under heaven’ (tianxia wei gong) as motto of the
new era.141 The phrase was as old as the Confucian classic Liji (Book of
rites), with tianxia—‘our world’—now denoting either the post-imperial
Chinese polity or the early twentieth-century global community.142
Other labels like ‘the central plain’, ‘the central land’ and ‘the central
domain’ remained in use but mostly as evocative devices of nostalgia,
literary flourish and historical romance. Meanings again shifted. No
resuscitated claim to the primeval locus in all of heaven and earth was
evident, and China’s political identity was reinvented anew against a
fond montage of imagined places.
Post-war China’s ideological landscape thus displayed fissures both old
and new. Spatial fragmentation, a far cry from the unitary vision of empire,
COMMISSIONER LIN ZEXU’S ANTI-OPIUM CAMPAIGN
University of Lethbridge
LUKE S. K. KWONG
143. For the quote, see the caricature of the Statue of Liberty, ‘A Statue for Our Harbor’, in The
Wasp (11 Nov., 1881), 320; rpt. in P.P. Choy, et al., eds., The Coming Man (Hong Kong, 1994), 136.
For the Enlightenment view of China, see J.D. Spence, The Chan’s Great Continent (New York,
1998), 81–100.
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1503
had always been a function of the centrifugal tendency embedded in
China’s localisms and regionalisms. Debunking the myth of universal
kingship after the Opium War was not only the treaty-port anomaly,
foreign privileges, the superiority of Western wealth and power and the
eager Chinese catch-up vision; the changing pattern of Chinese resettlement
abroad also contributed. As impoverished Chinese, mostly from
Guangdong and Fujian, left home to furnish a cheap source of labour in
Western countries and colonies after slavery was abolished, Chinese
emigration branched out from its pre-war concentration to Southeast
Asia, Korea and Japan to other regions of the world. The infamous coolie
trade, the quest (to some degree, continued to this day) for overseas ‘gold
mountains’ (jinshan), the Chinatown ghettoes, the improvised chopsuey
cuisines and the worldwide Chinese diaspora are by now familiar subplots
of an epic saga. As delightful Chinoiseries of eighteenth-century
Enlightenment sensibility decayed into the Chinaman’s ‘filth, immorality,
and diseases’,143 the Manchu man’s hairstyle of the ‘pigtail’, the skin
pigment, the exotic costumes and opium smoking affixed the Chinese in
racist stereotypes. These settlers of distant ‘frontiers’, semi-stateless and
vulnerable, reciprocated earlier Western encroachments on China with
counter space-body coordinates that provoked ‘white’ hostilities and
confounded the Qing policy frame of the ‘inner’ and ‘outer’. The
Daoguang emperor foresaw none of this when he sent Commissioner Lin
to Guangzhou. Lin, for his part, in trying to salvage a fractured world
order, knew not that his bold strokes would only hasten its collapse.