The Opium War: Drugs, Dreams, and the Making of Modern China

In October 1839, a cabinet meeting in Windsor voted to fight Britain’s first Opium War with China. The conflict turned out to be rich in tragicomedy: in bureaucratic fumblings, military missteps, political opportunism and collaboration. Yet over the past 170 years, this strange tale of misunderstanding, incompetence and compromise has become the founding myth of modern Chinese nationalism: the start of China’s heroic struggle against a Western conspiracy to destroy the country with opium and gunboat diplomacy.
Beginning with the dramas of the war itself, Julia Lovell explores its causes and consequences and, through this larger narrative, interweaves the curious stories of opium’s promoters and attackers. The Opium War is both the story of China’s first conflict with the West and an analysis of the country’s contemporary self-image. It explores how China’s national myths mold its interactions with the outside world, how public memory is spun to serve the present; and how delusion and prejudice have bedeviled its relationship with the modern West.

The Opium War: Drugs, Dreams, and the Making of Modern China

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Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781468308952
Publisher:	The Overlook Press
Publication date:	08/14/2014
Pages:	480
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.80(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Julia Lovell is an author, translator, and academic. She is the author of the widely acclaimed The Great Wall: China Against the World 1000 BC–AD 2000, which was published in eighteen countries. She has translated many key Chinese works into English, including Lust, Caution by Eileen Chang, The Complete Fiction of Lu Xun, and Serve the People by Yan Lianke. She is a lecturer in modern Chinese history and literature at the University of London and writes for the Guardian, The Times, the Economist, and the Times Literary Supplement. She spends a large part of the year in China with her family.

Maps xiii

A Note About Chinese Names and Romanization xxi

Introduction 1

1 Opium and China 17

2 Daoguang's Decision 39

3 Canton Spring 55

4 Opium and Lime 69

5 The First Shots 78

6 'An Explanatory Declaration' 95

7 Sweet-Talk and Sea-Slug 109

8 Qishan's Downfall 125

9 The Siege of Canton 141

10 The UnEnglished Englishman 167

11 Xiamen and Zhoushan 179

12 A Winter in Suzhou 192

13 The Fight for Qing China 209

14 The Treaty of Nanjing 223

15 Peace and War 241

16 The Yellow Peril 267

17 The National Disease 292

18 Communist Conspiracies 309

19 Conclusion 333

Principal Characters 361

Timeline 365

Notes 374

Selected Bibliography 423

Acknowledgements 442

Index 445

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From the Publisher

“A crisp readable account [Lovell] keeps a sharp plot running, which is a testament to her writing skills . . . Ms. Lovell, a keen observer of contemporary Chinese culture, also traces the "afterlife" of the war, exploring the ways it has been remembered from the 19th century to the present.” —The Wall Street Journal

“Excellent . . . Intriguing . . . For those seeking a blow-by-blow account of the conflict, this book will more than satisfy . . . Lovell is no apologist for the English, or their eagerness for war.” —The Daily Beast

“An astute, bracing history lesson on a conflict that set off the British notion of “yellow peril” and Chinese victimhood . . . Lovell offers extensive analysis of why and how this conflict helped create an entire founding theory of Chinese nationalism” —Kirkus Reviews

“The Opium War is dramatic, eye-opening history . . . Historian Lovell recounts the war and its aftermath in full detail.” —Booklist

“Painstakingly follows the intricate webs of trades, treaties, accusations, and recriminations between the two empires . . . Lovell masterfully condenses into one volume a dense, difficult conflict, the results of which are still can be felt 170 years later.” —Publishers Weekly

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Editorial Reviews

06/23/2014
Lovell (The Great Wall), lecturer in modern Chinese history and literature at the University of London, expounds in great detail upon the myriad causes and results of the 19th-century Opium Wars. The book is primarily a blow-by-blow account of the war’s “chaotically interesting” events, supplemented by close studies of the important personalities involved. Toward the end of the 18th century, the British Empire was running up a serious trade deficit in the Orient. The “perfect solution” to their situation, they came to believe, was to import more Indian opium into China. By the 1830s, however, Qing government administrators began to grow anxious over booming opium consumption and forced the lucrative trade into the black market, cutting British profits, which helped fund the Royal Navy. Conflict escalated as Britain repeatedly attempted to reinstate the opium trade’s legality, but opium had become a convenient scapegoat for the Qing rulers. Lovell painstakingly follows the intricate webs of trades, treaties, accusations, and recriminations between the two empires that has culminated in a the contemporary state of affairs in which Chinese citizens simultaneously lambaste the West while competing for visas and study-abroad opportunities. Lovell masterfully condenses into one volume a dense, difficult conflict, the results of which are still can still be felt 170 years later. Maps. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

A crisp readable account [Lovell] keeps a sharp plot running, which is a testament to her writing skills . . . Ms. Lovell, a keen observer of contemporary Chinese culture, also traces the "afterlife" of the war, exploring the ways it has been remembered from the 19th century to the present.” —The Wall Street Journal
“Excellent . . . Intriguing . . . For those seeking a blow-by-blow account of the conflict, this book will more than satisfy . . . Lovell is no apologist for the English, or their eagerness for war.” —The Daily Beast
“An astute, bracing history lesson on a conflict that set off the British notion of “yellow peril” and Chinese victimhood . . . Lovell offers extensive analysis of why and how this conflict helped create an entire founding theory of Chinese nationalism” —Kirkus Reviews
“The Opium War is dramatic, eye-opening history . . . Historian Lovell recounts the war and its aftermath in full detail.” —Booklist
“Painstakingly follows the intricate webs of trades, treaties, accusations, and recriminations between the two empires . . . Lovell masterfully condenses into one volume a dense, difficult conflict, the results of which are still can be felt 170 years later.” —Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher

08/01/2014
In the early 19th century, the opium trade prospered throughout China's port cities. The economic and social ills caused by this drug motivated then-emperor Daoguang to send Commissioner Lin Zexu to Canton, a flourishing port city, to reduce the trade. Lin's efforts to prevent the sale of opium sparked the first Opium War (1839–42) between China and Britain. Lovell (history, Univ. of London; The Great Wall: China Against the World, 1000 BC-AD 2000) offers a detailed and nuanced interpretation of this war. Readers will find ample background information regarding the history of opium use in China as well as Sino-British relations during this time, explaining why the British were smuggling opium and why they were willing to do battle over it. One chapter provides a brief treatment of the second Opium War (1856–60), fought by Britain and France against China. VERDICT The author's fascinating exploration of how the first Opium War influenced Western views of China and the evolution of Chinese interpretations of the conflict makes this scholarly yet accessible book a solid choice for all readers of modern Chinese history.—Joshua Wallace, South Texas Coll. Lib., McAllen

Library Journal

2014-05-29
The story of “the extraordinary war that has been haunting Sino-Western relations for almost two centuries.”A fatal misunderstanding between the paternalistic British and the proud Chinese lay at the root of the First Opium War (1839-1842); the British were determined to open Chinese markets, and the Chinese resisted being bullied into submission. Lovell (Chinese History and Literature/Univ. of London;The Great Wall: China Against the World 1000 BC-AD 2000, 2006, etc.) offers extensive analysis of why and how this conflict helped create an entire founding theory of Chinese nationalism—the first step in China’s attempt to “stand up” to imperialist powers, as Mao Zedong put it, only to end with the Communist triumph of 1949. Opium was good business: The poppy fields of India were carefully overseen by the merchants of the East India Company and, like the lucrative tea trade with China, helped keep “the British empire afloat.” China had developed a craving for opium, and the British had grown a whopping trade deficit. While the British turned a blind eye to private merchants dealing in opium off the Chinese coast, the Qing rulers grew alarmed at the effects of opium addiction on the population. Emperor Daoguang, tottering on an unstable empire of Manchu minority and bureaucratic venality, found in opium a scapegoat, and he directed his agent Lin Zexu to inform Queen Victoria to “eliminate opium productions in her dominions.” His British counterpart, Charles Elliott, was either a “scheming genius” or caught in a bind: He allowed Lin to dump more than 20,000 chests of British opium into the Canton River in 1839, thus inviting the British to avenge what they considered a threat to the principle of extraterritorial powers. The rhetoric on both sides revealed deep suspicions of the other, provoking British “gunboat diplomacy,” against which the Chinese were woefully unprepared.An astute, bracing history lesson on a conflict that set off the British notion of “yellow peril” and Chinese victimhood.

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The Opium War: Drugs, Dreams, and the Making of Modern China

The Opium War: Drugs, Dreams, and the Making of Modern China

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