Land Empires
Qing and Ottoman Empires in the Age of Imperialism 1800-1870
Qing Dynasty: age of imperialism
Qing Dynasty: age of imperialism
Western Europe and Global Trade:
- China drawn into ‘global systems’ through
maritime trade
- increasingly with Britain but other European
powers also involved (German, Dutch among others)
- 18th century, companies like Dutch and British East
India dominating ‘world’ maritime trade from New
Worlds to Old…
Qing Dynasty: age of imperialism
The “Canton System” (1757 – 1842):
- Qing Dynasty wished to limit direct influence
‘foreigners’: mid-18th C. established Canton System
- designated Chinese merchants to handle trade
‘Hong’: directed by Chinese official ‘Hoppo’
representing Emperor
- trade with foreigners confined to Canton, riverport at confluence Han and Yangze Rivers
- Hoppo oversaw affairs of both sides
Qing Dynasty: age of imperialism
Qing Dynasty: age of imperialism
Qing Dynasty: age of imperialism
Canton River Port 1840s
Qing Dynasty: age of imperialism
Hong Merchants lived Opulent Lives
“Hong” Merchant, Canton
Qing Dynasty: age of imperialism
Lavish Living:
House of Chinese
Merchant, Canton
c.1840
Qing Dynasty: age of imperialism
Problems with System:
- from European perspective, too limiting:
wanted direct access to interior markets
- Missions in 1790s (McCartney, Amherst) to
‘Open Up’ markets : failed
- Britain concerned: trade consisted of
ceramics, silks
- but most of all, tea
Qing Dynasty: age of imperialism
18th Century Tea Plantation, China
Qing Dynasty: age of imperialism
Canton Riverfront:
100,000 houseboats
home to Cantonese
“Coolies” carrying
tea in forefrontsmall crafts then
delivered boxes to
clipper ships lying
downriver
Qing Dynasty: age of Imperialism
Crushing Tea Leaves (above)
Tea Carriers (right):136 kilos each
Qing Dynasty: age of Imperialism
Porters in Canton
Carrying Tea to
Shipper
Qing Dynasty: age of Imperialism
European Merchants
sampling tea (China, 19th)
Qing Dynasty: age of imperialism
“Tea Clipper Cutty Sark” – famous for role tea trade with China
Qing Dynasty: age of Imperialism
Unloading Tea at
East India Docks,
London (1877)
40,000 Packages =
20,000 Pounds in Weight
Qing Dynasty: age of Imperialism
Tea-Drinking Europeans: both tea and porcelain originally arrived
from China; British potteries began to compete
Qing Dynasty: age of imperialism
Robert Fortune: sent not only to collect plants for
nursery cultivation but to learn ‘process’ for
making tea ‘corporate espionage’
“Besides the collection of tea plants and seeds from the best
localities for transmission to India, it will be your duty to avail
yourself of every opportunity of acquiring information as to the
cultivation of the tea plant and the manufacture of tea as
practised by the Chinese and on all other points with which it
may be desirable that those entrusted with the superintendence
of the tea nurseries in India should be made acquainted.”
[from “The Great British Tea Heist”, ‘Resources’]
Qing Dynasty: age of imperialism
Botanist Robert Fortune: travelled to China after Treat Nanjing; on behalf
East India Company, brought tea plant to India 1848
Qing Dynasty: age of imperialism
Problems with System:
- China not interested in what Britain had to
offer in return
- demanded silver in return for tea
- posed balance of trade issues for British
Qing Dynasty: age of imperialism
Problems with System:
- introduced trade in Opium
- British East India Company: monopoly on
trade in tea [remember Boston Tea Party] and opium
- opium grown, processed British India
- some returned to England (see ‘laudanum’,
below)
- most destined for China
Qing Dynasty: age of imperialism
Chinese Opium Den, 19th
VIDEO : Opium in China
Qing Dynasty: age of imperialism
The ‘Tea for Opium’ Route
Qing Dynasty: age of imperialism
Indian Workers Processing Opium (n.d.)
Qing Dynasty: age of imperialism
Problems with System: soon resolved for East
India Co.
- silver paid into China for tea was then
being ‘paid back’ for opium
- Company basically kept silver in China:
‘books’ showed actual flows – quickly shifted
in favour of Company/Britain
Qing Dynasty: age of imperialism
Opium Imports from India to China:
One Chest = (apprx.) 140 pounds
1773
1,000 chests
1790
4,000 chests
early 1820s
10,000 chests
1828
18,000 chests
1839
40,000 chests
1865
76,000 chests
1884
81,000 chests (peak)
Qing Dynasty: age of imperialism
Problems with System: created problem for Qing
Emperor
- now his regime was seeing net outflow of
silver for ‘drug’ that proved addictive
- in addition: huge profits accruing to British
company accelerated ‘push’ to grow import
business – undermined Canton system with
bribes, ‘commissions’
- quickly corrupted officials, hong
merchants: corruption spread as far as
Imperial palace
Qing Dynasty: age of imperialism
Solution for Qing: end trade in opium
- Emperor worked both ‘sides’ of problem:
- issued Decree locally threatening everyone
involved in the use and distribution of opium
with death
- those identified give sense of extent of
‘industry’: accomplices, advisers,
participators, receivers, givers (those who
deliver the drug), and boatmen, buyers,
wholesalers, ‘furnace builders’ (to prepare
opium for use…)
Qing Dynasty: age of imperialism
Furnace Keepers or Wholesale Dealers:
Annexed Laws on Banning Opium, July 1839
Whoever shall hereafter open a “furnace,” and connive with and
secretly buy opium of the outside barbarians, storing it up for sale, shall, if
he be the principal, be decapitated immediately on conviction.
The royal authority shall be respectfully produced and the law
executed, were a report is sent to the crown. The head of the offender
shall then be stuck upon a pole, and exposed upon the seacoast as a
warning to all. The accomplices, advisers, participators, receivers, givers
(those who deliver the drug), and boatmen who knowingly receive opium
on board their boats for transport, shall be sentenced to strangulation and
thrown into dungeons to wait the royal warrant for their execution. The
houses and boats of these parties shall be sequestered. . . .
Qing Dynasty: age of imperialism
The Emperor also appealed directly to Queen Victoria to end
Trade as ‘sharing ruler’s concern for people’:
“We have heard that in your honorable nation, too, the people
are not permitted to smoke the drug, and that offenders in this
particular expose themselves to sure punishment. ...”
Qing Dynasty: age of imperialism
But in fact….
- Opium widely used as
medication in England:
“Laudanum”
- 1821 “Confessions of an
English Opium Eater”
made dangers of
addiction public but
did not change opinion
on selling it to China
Qing Dynasty: age of imperialism
First Opium War:
- March 1839: British merchants asked by
Hoppo to give up cargo – concern re: decree
- negotiations, attempt to imprison leading
British trader failed
trade stopped for 6 weeks
- 20,000 chests finally delivered as ‘payoff’
- merchants, ships, cargo released
Qing Dynasty: age of imperialism
Having confiscated more than, 20,000 chests, close to 3 million pounds
raw opium had to be destroyed. Three trenches 7’ deep,150’ long dug:
500 workers dissolved opium in solution water, salt, lime
Qing Dynasty: age of imperialism
First Opium War:
- Emperor’s repeated request to cease
trade in opium refused
- October: British announced that military
naval expedition would reach Canton in
spring 1840
Qing Dynasty: age of imperialism
Despatch from Lord Palmerston to the Minister of the Emperor
of China: [excerpts]
... It appeared that the Laws of the Chinese Empire forbid the
importation of Opium into China, and declare that all opium
which may be brought into the Country is liable to confiscation.
The Queen of England desires that Her Subjects who may go
into Foreign Countries should obey the Laws of those Countries;
and Her Majesty does not wish to protect them from the just
consequences of any offenses which they may commit in foreign
parts. But, on the other hand, Her Majesty cannot permit that
Her Subjects residing abroad should be treated with violence,
and be exposed to insult and injustice; and when wrong is done
to them, Her Majesty will see that they obtain redress.
Qing Dynasty: age of imperialism
...
Now, although the Law of China declared that the importation
of Opium should be forbidden, yet it is notorious that for many
years past, that importation has been connived at and permitted
by the Chinese Authorities at Canton; nay, more, that those
Authorities, from the Governor downwards, have made an
annual and considerable profit by taking money from Foreigners
for the permission to import Opium: and of late the Chinese
Authorities have gone so far in setting this Law at defiance, that
Mandarin Boats were employed to bring opium to Canton from
the Foreign Ships lying at Lintin.
Qing Dynasty: age of imperialism
...The British Government fervently hopes that the wisdom and
spirit of Justice for which The Emperor is famed in all parts of
the World, will lead the Chinese Government to see the equity
of the foregoing demands [i.e. reparations for the opium that
was destroyed and for the cost of sending a British fleet to
China]; and it is the sincere wish of Her Majesty’s Government
that a prompt and full compliance with those demands may lead
to a speedy re-establishment of that friendly intercourse which
has for so great a period of time subsisted between the British
and Chinese Nations, to the manifest advantage of both.
‘Dispatch’ assured armed conflict would follow: First
‘Opium War’ 1839 -1842
Qing Dynasty: age of imperialism
First Opium War 1839-42: ‘Nemesis’
against Chinese Junks
Qing Dynasty: age of imperialism
East India Co.
Nemesis
Steamer &
Other Boats
Destroying
Chinese War
Junks in
Anson’s Bay
(Jan. 1841)
Qing Dynasty: age of imperialism
Treaty of Nanjing 1842: [see ‘Resources’]
- demanded compensation/reparations as
per Palmerston’s original decree
And Much More: among them…
- opening of four more trading ports
- right for Christian Missionaries to operate
- secession of Island of Hong Kong to British
Qing Dynasty: age of imperialism
Treaty also had several long-term consequences,
critical for shaping second half 19th Century:
To be continued….