Reading on Opium War

Shijie Guan, 'Chartism and the First Opium War', History Workshop, 24, (1987), pp. 17 - 31. 

Immediate cause of the Opium war 1838 – 1842 was the British governement’s decision to protect its merchants lucrative but evil trade smuggling Indian opium into China. P.17

Chinese imperial government were forced to import opium and give up Chinese protective tariffs.

Chartist papers described the landing of British troops at various points along the Chinese coast, reported the British occupation, and related how the British advance was marked, at each step, by robbery and slaughter of Chinese civilians.’ – Given Gaskell’s evidence of Chartist research, reading the Northern Star she would have been aware of the British occupation in China, the absence of the wars in the novel is interesting and reveals Gaskell’s selective middle-class observations on the life and conditions of the working-class of Manchester, which is interesting as the secondary title to the novel is A Tale of Manchester Life.

Chartists opposition to the aggressive overseas policy of the British governments in China.

1836-1838 – chartist movement was gaining strength, British opium smugglers, contravening the Chinese law, were actively pushing their trade. 1834-1835 – number of opium chests that came into china amounted to 21,885, this increased to 40,200 by 1839. The opium trade harmed the Chinese economy by draining off Chinese silver, and had disastrous effects on the general state of health and morale of the Chinese people.

In 1838 new orders were issued preventing the smuggling of opium, this turned unsuccessful and the Qing Dynasty ordered a blockade on the section of the city where Britain, America and other foreign merchants held their establishments.

This forced them to surrender the opium they had on hand, around 2,376,254 lbs, by 1839 the whole lot had been destroyed publicly. P.18

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merchants of Manchester, London, Liverpool, Leeds and Bristol who were directly profiting from this illegal opium trade, with the London East India and China Association, immediately singed a memorandum addressed to Her Majesty’s Government demanding to send an expedition to China to take vengeance upon the Chinese ‘for the robbery of our merchants, and the insult offered to the representative of our Sovereign.’ Chartists responded ‘What an idea the fellows, who write thus, must have of moral or of international justice, thus to describe the suppression of an illicit trade, which was spreading depravity and misery throughout the Chinese empire.’

‘The Northern Star had carried short news items on the tense situation in China since June 1839, but it was this incident at Kowloon and the reactions to it by a war-clamouring press in Britain which made the Chartists pay closer attention to British foreign policy in China.’

‘The Chartists were very aware that a war with China would be to the great advantage of the British middle class but could certainly not improve the livelihood of the British working class.’

Title of the Northern Star editorial of January 18^th 1840 ‘The Shopkeepers, their ‘profit’ and our ‘loss’. The editorial continues that ‘Mr. Opium Elliot, his master, the Reform Government, and their masters, the ‘shopkeepers’ of India, have chosen to exhibit this whole people to the Chinese empire. They are representatives of this contemptible category of businessmen and politicians, who threatened the Chinese government to withdraw their patronage from its commerce and to return home, who behave like thieves and bullies gloating over the prospects of the bloodshed, the famine, the insurrections among the people and the multiform distress and misery which must follow a blockading of their ports.’

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march 14^th 1840 Britain declared war on China in the name of the British Government. Lord Russell summarised in the House of Commons ‘the expedition proceeds, first, to obtain reparation for the insults offered to Her Majesty’s Superintendent, and Her Majesty’s subjects by the Chinese Government.’ The Chartist editorial asserted that the Chinese had neither insulted Her Majesty’s officials to China nor any of her subjects, as the Chinese laws were known and made public with their enforcement within the sovereign jurisdiction of the Chinese empire was legitimate. The British opium smugglers had been warned to abstain from the illegal trade.

Victorian Era, 'First Opium War', Painting, Victorianera.org, [accessed 5 August 2022].