Opium Wars and Economic Imperialism

To understand how two drugs changed the world in the nineteenth century, you first need to understand something called economic imperialism.

There was a lot of formal, direct imperialism in the nineteenth century. If you look at the map below, you can see lots of areas in pink and green. Those areas were controlled directly by industrial empires, where people in Africa, South Asia, Australia, and other areas experienced colonialism as direct control by a foreign government. However, in the map below, you can also see a lot of places—such as the Ottoman Empire, China, and most of Latin America— that aren’t green or pink, where these lands weren’t conquered by industrial empires, and they experienced colonialism indirectly, through economic imperialism.

Economic imperialism is when an empire has indirect control or influence over another country. Often, empires did this to protect their existing colonies, to expand their economic reach, or because the places they wanted to control would have been too difficult to conquer militarily. Let’s explore one of the most important examples of economic imperialism and the two drugs that shaped the history of the British and Qing empires.

A tale of two drugs

In the early nineteenth century, Britain’s rapid industrialization, its powerful navy, and its control of India gave it a lot of influence over global trade. Yet there was another, much older empire standing in its way: China.

For most of recorded history, the dynasties of China stood among the most powerful states on Earth, and even when Chinese states were weak, Chinese industry was the engine of the world economy. Trade flowed from China across the Silk Roads and Indian Ocean, and money streamed back in. At the start of the nineteenth century, it was China—not Britain—that was the world’s strongest economy. This is where we encounter the first of the two drugs: caffeine. Or, to be more precise, the tea that delivered the caffeine. 

China controlled the global tea industry in the early 1800s and at the same time, British consumers were demanding more and more tea. Britain’s thirst for tea created a massive trade imbalance with China. (A trade imbalance is when a country is importing more than it’s exporting.) The average person in London was spending five percent of their budget on tea. From 1821 to 1830, the British East India Company (EIC) spent over 19 million pounds on Chinese goods. More than 90 percent of that was spent on tea.

In contrast, the British had almost nothing the Chinese wanted, since China produced its own cotton and silk. The only British trade good the Chinese were interested in was silver, which the Chinese used to make coins and pay taxes. Slowly, British reserves of silver were depleted as British consumers demanded more tea, silk, porcelain, and other consumer goods. In the 1750s, the Qing Emperor had restricted the activities of foreign merchants, making it difficult for Europeans to access Chinese consumer goods. From about 1760 to 1842, foreign merchants were only allowed to do business in the port city of Guangzhou (which Europeans called Canton).

This is where our second drug enters the story. In the late eighteenth century, the EIC—which ruled most of India at the time—found something that Chinese consumers did want: opium.

The business of addiction

While caffeine went on to appear in coffee and tea shops everywhere, the opium drama played out differently. Opium is a drug made from the seeds of the poppy plant, which the British grew in India. It is incredibly addictive. Chemicals from opium are also used in the production of heroin and morphine. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, opium began to decimate Chinese society. Up to 10 percent of China’s population was using the drug. The Chinese government repeatedly outlawed opium. Nonetheless, the British had finally found something they could trade for Chinese tea, and they weren’t willing to stop just because it was illegal and harming tens of millions of people.

When the Chinese government outlawed the opium trade, the EIC hired Chinese smugglers to sneak opium into China and sell it for silver. The EIC used this silver to buy tea, silk, and other goods to sell to British consumers. The result was a rapid reversal of the trade imbalance between China and Britain. By the 1820s, silver was flowing out of China as the British smuggled in more opium. In the century between 1730 and 1830, the volume of opium entering China increased by 20,000 percent.

The Opium Wars

By 1838, the Qing Emperor knew something had to be done. He sent one of his most capable officials to Guangzhou to end the opium trade. The official’s name was Lin Zexu. He cracked down on addicts and drug dealers. Punishments were harsh, and many opium dealers were executed. Negotiations with foreign merchants proved to be more challenging. Lin Zexu destroyed 20,000 chests of British opium, burning the drugs or dumping them into the sea. Tensions increased when a group of British sailors murdered a Chinese man and British officials refused to hand over the murderers to 
Chinese authorities. Lin Zexu banned Chinese merchants from selling food to the British and refused to pay British merchants for the destroyed opium. Fighting started in September 1839. In 1840, the British government in London ordered a fleet to China.

The First Opium War lasted from 1839 to 1842. When the British fleet arrived, it soon became clear that the Chinese were outgunned. Industrialization had provided Britain with powerful new weapons and steam-powered ships. Chinese ships were no match, and many Chinese soldiers were armed with bows and old flintlock muskets. The British fleet won victory after victory and bombarded Chinese port cities into submission. By the summer of 1842, the British fleet was approaching the city of Nanjing, and the Chinese were forced to accept a treaty to end the war.

The Treaty of Nanjing launched a period in Chinese history known as the “unequal treaties” era. Later, Chinese politicians would call the period that followed China’s “century of humiliation.” The treaty forced China to open five new ports to British merchants; it required that China pay the British for the cost of the war and the opium that Lin Zexu had destroyed, and it stated that British citizens didn’t have to obey Chinese law. Instead, they were now subject only to British law while in China. The British also seized control of the island of Hong Kong, which they continued to rule until 1997. As a result of the war, British ships were permitted to transport Chinese migrant laborers to British colonies and the United States. After the abolition of slavery in British colonies, Chinese migrant laborers often did the work once done by enslaved people.

Other European nations, Japan, and the United States soon followed Britain’s example and enforced their own unequal treaties on China. From 1856 to 1860, Britain and France fought a second Opium War against China. China lost again and its ports were further opened. After this conflict, the United States, Russia, and Japan all increased their influence and military presence in China. In the case of Japan, the example of China’s humiliating experience in the Opium Wars motivated the Japanese to adopt policies aimed at their own country’s rapid industrialization.

A century of humiliation

The opium trade and the conflicts that followed marked a turning point in world history. This was the first time that a European empire was able to reverse the trade imbalance between China and the rest of the world. Europeans had been trying to accomplish since they first arrived in the Indian Ocean in the late fifteenth century. Why did this happen? Why did China enter the period often called its “century of humiliation”?

The British certainly had advantages. Industrialization gave Britain weapons that outmatched anything the Chinese had. Indian opium gave Britain a trade good that Chinese consumers would buy. The choices by British and Chinese officials set the course of this conflict, but that’s not the whole story.

In the early nineteenth century, China was also beginning to face internal pressures that weakened the Qing state at this critical time. In the eighteenth century, the Qing Dynasty was incredibly powerful. It encouraged trade in neighboring regions and expanded China’s territory and influence to its greatest extent. By 1800, however, China had entered a period of isolationism and dynastic decline. The opium trade and wars made these weaknesses worse. From 1850 to 1864, the Taiping Revolution sent China into civil war and killed 20 million people. Among the demands revolutionaries made was an end to the opium trade. As the Qing state became weaker, more uprisings and internal political divisions made it harder to resist foreign intervention.

As you consider the causes and effects of the Opium Wars, it’s important to remember that the people involved knew that this was immoral. There was widespread criticism of the opium trade in both Britain and the United States. (The US bought opium from the Ottoman Empire, and then sold it to China.) Many critics compared the opium trade to the slave trade in its immorality. In 1840, William Gladstone, a British politician who would later become Britain’s prime minister, remarked: “A war more unjust in its origin, a war more calculated to cover this country with permanent disgrace, I do not know, and I have not read of.”