Britain Went to War Against China to Force it to Buy British Narcotics
In the 20th century, the United States invaded Panama because it was displeased with the Panamanian government’s actions that furthered and facilitated the drug trade. In the 19th century, Britain invaded China because it was displeased with the Chinese government’s actions against the drug trade. At the time, Victorian Britain was the world’s biggest drug trafficker – bigger than any Latin American drug cartel or any combination of such cartels. And unlike today’s narco traffickers, Britain didn’t conduct its narcotics business in the shadows of the global criminal underground but openly and in the full light of day. So openly, that Britain fought wars in order to force a foreign government to allow British merchants to sell narcotics by the thousands of tons in its territory.
It began in the mid 18th century, when the British East India Company started growing opium, from which heroin is refined, and shipping it to China for a hefty profit. Opium was illegal in China, but the British got around that via trading loopholes and outright smuggling. As Chinese opium consumption and British opium profits boomed, China faced a growing addiction epidemic that caused widespread social and economic disruptions.
Chinese authorities finally began taking serious measures to stop the British from flooding China with opium. In 1839, a drug czar was appointed, and he initiated a crackdown. 1700 drug dealers were arrested, and over 1400 tons of opium sitting in warehouses were seized and destroyed. However, most of that opium belonged to British merchants, and they appealed to their government.
Britain demanded compensation from the Chinese government, and sent a military expedition to China to back those demands. It arrived in June of 1840, and sailed up the Pearl River estuary to Canton. After months of unavailing negotiations, the British attacked and seized Canton in May of 1841. The Chinese, still using medieval weapons and tactics, were outmatched by the modern British forces, armed with the latest firearms and artillery, and drilled in the latest tactics. The invaders easily beat back a Chinese attempt to retake Canton, then seized Nanking in August of 1842.
The Chinese sued for peace, and negotiations concluded in the Treaty of Nanking. The Chinese were made to pay a huge indemnity, and cede Hong Kong to the British. The number of “Treaty Ports” where the British could trade and reside was also increased from one to five. British citizens were also granted extraterritoriality, or the right to be tried by British courts, instead of Chinese ones, for offenses committed in China
The British fought another war against China, known as the Second Opium War (1856 – 1860), that was also caused by Chinese resistance to British opium flooding their country. This time around, Britain sought to force China to completely legalize the opium trade, exempt foreign imports from internal Chinese tariffs, and open all of China to British merchants.
France, which also sought greater trade concessions from the Chinese, joined Britain. The 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, whose leader claimed to be Jesus Christ’s younger brother. The combined British and French army had little trouble in seizing Canton in 1857, and as military setbacks mounted, the Chinese sued for peace.
When negotiations broke down, the invaders sailed to northern China, seized the Taku Forts near Tianjin, and advanced upon Beijing. That brought the Chinese back to the negotiating table. At some point during the fresh round of negotiations, a British envoy insulted his Chinese counterpart, and was arrested along with his party. Half of his entourage were tortured to death. The British-French army retaliated by attacking and routing 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. There, the British-French soldiers plundered 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.