Britain Invaded China For a *Second Time* To Force the Chinese to Legalize British Opium
From 1856 – 1860, the British fought a second war against China, known as the Second Opium War, which was sparked by Chinese resistance to British opium flooding their country. Britain’s war aims this time around was the complete legalization of the opium trade, exempting foreign imports from internal Chinese tariffs, and the opening of all of China to British merchants.
Britain was joined by France, which also sought greater trade concessions from the Chinese. The technological disparity between Chinese and Western forces was even greater this second time around. Moreover, the Chinese were in the midst of dealing with a huge peasant uprising, the Taiping Rebellion, that was led by a failed civil service job applicant, who claimed to be the younger brother of Jesus Christ. Thus, a combined British and French army had little trouble in seizing Canton in 1857. Other military setbacks made it clear that the Chinese had no hopes of resisting the invaders militarily, so the Chinese sued for peace.
When negotiations dragged on, however, the invaders sailed to northern China, seized the Taku Forts near Tianjin, and advanced upon Beijing. At some point during further negotiations, a British diplomatic envoy insulted his Chinese counterpart, and was arrested along with his party. Half of his entourage were tortured to death. In response, the British-French army routed a Chinese army near Beijing, forcing the emperor to flee his capital. The invaders then seized a vast imperial compound known as the Summer Palace.
The British-French soldiers began by plundering anything made of gold or silver, then went on an orgy of destruction for the sheer fun of it. They crushed statues, smashed exquisite objects of porcelain and jade, ripped paintings with their bayonets, and paraded in ornate silk robes from the imperial wardrobe for comic effect. Then they put the entire palace complex to the torch.
The destruction of the Summer Palace was one of the greatest acts of cultural vandalism of the past few centuries. As one British officer described it: “When we first entered the gardens they reminded one of those magic grounds described in fairy tales; we marched from them upon the 19th October, leaving them a dreary waste of ruined nothings“. Utterly defeated, the Chinese capitulated and signed a peace treaty in 1860 that granted all the invaders’ demands, including the complete legalization of the opium trade.
The Opium Wars were extremely controversial, and were decried by some leading British politicians. William Gladstone, a towering figure in Victorian-era British politics, declared as a young MP in 1842 that he knew of no conflict “more calculated in its progress to cover this country with disgrace” than the First Opium War.
It should be noted, however, that whatever pangs of conscience were felt by enlightened British, such as Gladstone, they did not keep the British Empire from hanging on to the fruits of its victories in the Opium Wars. As to China, those wars set it on a path of accelerating decline that led in 1911 to the demise of the imperial system that had lasted for over 2000 years.
That was followed by a period of chaos and anarchy that was exploited by imperial Japan, which seized Manchuria in 1931 and launched a full-scale invasion in 1937. Next came a civil war that culminated in a communist victory, which led to yet more stretches of turmoil under Mao during the “Great Leap Forward”, followed by the Cultural Revolution. It can be argued that China did not begin to recover from what the Opium Wars had set in motion until the late 1970s. Understandably, the Chinese are still resentful about those wars, which is reflected in a wariness towards the West that is seen to this day in Chinese foreign policy.
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Where Did We Find This Stuff? Sources & Further Reading
Atlantic, The, April 8th, 2016 – The Drugs That Built a Super Soldier
Encyclopedia Britannica – Opium Wars
Encyclopedia.Com – Vietnam: Drug Use In
Gizmodo – A Beginner’s Guide to Navy-Strength Rum
Kakanomics, February 2nd, 2017 – The History of Drugs and War
Military History Monthly, June 12th, 2012 – War Culture: Military Drinking
Military History Now – Fighting Spirits: Three Centuries of Rum in the Royal Navy
NPR, January 2nd, 2012 – What Vietnam Taught Us About Breaking Bad Habits
Providentia – Soldier’s Disease
Mental Floss – Armies Hopped Up on Drugs
