In the 18th century, Britain finally turned India into a colony. In Southeast Asia, there is only one major entity left - the Qing Empire. China, rich and developed, was closed off from the world. And England decided to conquer him with Bengali opium.
In the Middle Ages, China was ahead of Europe in development. The Chinese used blast furnaces to smelt pig iron 1,500 years before they appeared in Europe. In the 8th century they were already building hydraulic hammers, and at the end of the 13th century they switched to vertical water wheels. The Chinese ocean junks outnumbered all ships that Europe built before 1400. In the 18th century, China was the richest country in Asia: large, self-sufficient and independent. Chinese goods were snapped up all over Europe.
But already in the 19th century, the empire suffered a humiliating defeat, from which it was able to recover only after 100 years. For the first time she submitted to those who were called barbarians in China. That is, the Europeans.
Why did the West dislike China?
England of the XVIII century - the leader of international trade. In Europe, a fashion for the East appeared: Europeans bought silk, porcelain products, art objects, Chinese tea, exotic trinkets and decorative dogs. China accepted only precious metals - gold and silver - and almost never bought foreign goods. The outflow of silver undermined the financial system of England - the pound sterling began to depreciate.
The Chinese authorities refused to maintain a trade balance and foreign relations: they imposed severe restrictions on foreign traders. They even banned maritime trade under the pretext of fighting piracy. Foreigners could only arrive at the port of Guangzhou. And it was forbidden to leave it. 12 Chinese companies traded with overseas, so the Europeans could not sell their goods directly. Trade was complicated by Chinese officials: they changed customs tariffs on the spot.
Emperor Qianlong did not want to cooperate with Europe: China believed that he did not need the goods of "barbarians". The country did not develop external relations and lived in a sense of its own domination, albeit in isolation.
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The inhabitants of Victorian England reciprocated: for them China was an exotic country that was alien to European values and orders - that is, uncivilized. But after the industrial revolution, European markets were overcrowded. There was nowhere to sell English goods, and China is a free promising market. England was struggling to find a new product that would be popular in China and would change the balance of power in Europe's favor - making trade more profitable. And at some stage, England found such a product - it was opium!
The Chinese were already familiar with this drug: poppy was used for medicinal purposes, and from the 16th century they began to be mixed into tobacco.
It was first smoked by traders in southern China. From them, the habit passed to the aristocracy of Central China. In the 17th century, the emperor realized that opium was dangerous: it is addictive and corrupts the local government. But millions of Chinese people managed to get used to the drug: the military, officials, the aristocracy.
In 1729 and 1799, opium was banned by imperial decrees - both trade and smoking. But drugs continued to flow to China: addicted officials helped smugglers, and the gold and silver of the Celestial Empire flowed to Europe.
In the 1770s, England helped the East India Trading Company buy a monopoly on the opium poppy trade from Bengal, a province of India, and ship the drug to China. Sales in China began to grow: England sold 1.5 tons of opium a year.
By the 1830s, the drug was bringing in such profits that England abolished the monopoly of the East India Company. Thousands of European traders with a cargo of opium went to China - the volume increased to 2 thousand tons per year. Europeans stockpiled drugs right on the water near the coast. The local authorities warned if an inspection was planned from the capital.
Opium destroyed China's society and economy. The UK received a positive trade balance and a stable pound sterling: finally, China bought more than it sold. The drug was used by everyone: aristocrats, officials, rich and common people. In the capital, 10-20% of officials sat on opium, in the provinces - 50-60%. By the beginning of the First Opium War, several thousand cases of opium were smuggled into China every year.
The Empire Strikes Back
The tension between England and China was growing. In 1839, the emperor appointed Lin Zexu as emergency representative for the fight against opium smuggling.
Zexu forced British and American merchants in the port of Guangzhou to hand over a large smuggling of opium and refuse in writing to import the drug into China. The merchants did not obey, and then Zexu blocked the warehouses with the help of troops. As a result, 19 thousand boxes and 2 thousand bales of opium were seized.
Those close to the emperor were divided into two camps: some advised to leave the business alone, while others - to drive the Europeans with opium out of China. Zexu understood that isolation would only give rise to a war, but Emperor Daoguang did not obey and closed China to foreign trade.
The war began, which China quickly lost. Not surprisingly, its military was fragmented, its equipment was outdated, and the army was in poor shape due to the addiction of officers and soldiers to opium. Drug dealers sent large consignments to the Chinese army for almost nothing: England's victory promised to pay back. At the same time, England had only 4 thousand soldiers against 880 thousand Chinese. Nevertheless, the British won.
In 1842, China signed the Nanking Treaty. He paid England 15 million lians of silver and another 6 million for the destroyed opium, gave Hong Kong and opened five ports for British ships: Guangzhou, Xiamen, Fuzhou, Shanghai and Ningbo. The emperor stopped fighting opium and sent Lin Zexu into exile. In 1844, due to the threat of a new war, China signed two more treaties - with the United States and France - on the same terms as with England.
We must repeat
In 1854, England, France and the United States decided to revise the Nanking Treaty in order to gain access to river ports and remove all restrictions on trade. China refused. Then England decided to repeat its success and began to look for a new reason for war.
In 1856, the Chinese authorities arrested and charged with piracy the ship Arrow, which was registered in Hong Kong. That is, in England. The British accused China of aggression and attacked Guangzhou and Tianjin. As a result, China signed the Tianjin Treaties: it agreed to open new ports for Europe and allow foreigners to move freely around the country.
But the contract had to be approved by the emperor. China was playing for time and fortifying the approaches to the capital. The West got tired of waiting and continued the war. In October 1860, the British and French robbed the emperor's summer palace and approached Beijing. The Qing army was demoralized. She couldn't resist. Emperor Xianfeng had to flee, and the Chinese capital was saved by Russian troops and diplomat Nikolai Ignatiev - mediators in new negotiations between China and the West.
In 1860, China, Britain and France signed the Beijing Treaty. The Qing government paid another 8 million lians of silver and opened Tianjin for trade. Britain and France now had the opportunity to take the Chinese workers to their colonies. Great Britain received the southern part of the Kowloon Peninsula. The opium trade became legal, and poppy cultivation began in China.
After the Opium Wars, Europe and America in terms of economic and technological development are far away from China. The diplomatic, military, and commercial actions that Western countries experienced during the Opium Wars allowed them to maintain this dominance in the 19th and 20th centuries.
But the British did not succeed in trading in the Chinese market: traders complained that the Chinese spend all their silver on opium and hardly buy European goods. China's economy has weakened greatly. People were sick and did not want to work. From the richest country in East Asia, China turned into a semi-colony of the West: resources and labor were siphoned out of it.
China has been in decline for decades. By the middle of the 20th century, opium poppy was planted on a million hectares and smoked by tens of millions of Chinese. The situation changed only with the advent of the communists under the rule of Mao Zedong.