Because of this trade imbalance, Britain increasingly had to use silver to pay for its expanding purchases of Chinese goods. But Chinese consumers had no similar preference for any goods produced in Britain. One major reason was that British consumers had developed a strong liking for Chinese tea, as well as other goods like porcelain and silk. In the 18th and early 19th centuries, the balance of trade was heavily in China’s favour.

This effectively restricted foreign trade and subjected it to regulations imposed by the Chinese government.įor many years, Great Britain worked within this system to run a three country trade operation: It shipped Indian cotton and British silver to China, and Chinese tea and other Chinese goods to Britain (see Map 2).

(The Manchus were the ethnic group that ruled China during the Qing period.) In the year 1757, the Qing emperor ordered that Guangzhou/Canton would be the only Chinese port that would be opened to trade with foreigners, and that trade could take place only through licensed Chinese merchants. An earlier version of this system had been put in place by China under the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644), and further developed by its replacement, the Qing Dynasty, also known as the Manchu Dynasty. In the decades leading up to the first Opium War, trade between China and the West took place within the confines of the Canton System, based in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou (also referred to as Canton). Opium and the West’s Embrace of Free Trade While the first Opium War of 1839–42 did not cause the eventual collapse of China’s 5,000-year imperial dynastic system seven decades later, it did help shift the balance of power in Asia in favour of the West. This ineffectiveness resulted in, or at least added to, longer-term problems for China, such as unequal treaties (which will be described later), repeated foreign military invasions, massive internal rebellions, internal political fights, and social upheaval. All of these things made China, in some ways, dramatically different from the European powers of the day, and it struggled to deal effectively with their encroachment. 2,000-year-old bureaucracy and dominated by centuries old and conservative Confucian ideas of political, social, and economic management. Nineteenth-century China was a large, mostly land-based empire (see Map 1), administered by a c. In addition, Confucianism, the system of beliefs that shaped and organized China’s culture, politics, and society for centuries, was secular (that is, not based on a religion or belief in a god) and therefore was not necessarily an obstacle to science and modernity in the ways that Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism sometimes were in other parts of the world.īut in another sense, China was not effective in responding to the “modern” West with its growing industrialism, mercantilism, and military strength. In one sense, China was relatively effective in responding to this foreign encroachment unlike its neighbours, including present-day India, Burma (now Myanmar), Malaya (now Malaysia), Indonesia, and Vietnam, China did not become a full-fledged, formal colony of the West. These countries embraced the idea of free trade, and their militaries had become so powerful that they could impose such ideas on others. In the mid-19th century, western imperial powers such as Great Britain, France, and the United States were aggressively expanding their influence around the world through their economic and military strength and by spreading religion, mostly through the activities of Christian missionaries. As one British historian says, “If you talk to many Chinese about the Opium War, a phrase you will quickly hear is ‘luo hou jiu yao ai da,’ which literally means that if you are backward, you will take a beating.” 1 The lesson that Chinese students learn today about the Opium Wars is that China should never again let itself become weak, ‘backward,’ and vulnerable to other countries. The British did this in the name of free trade and without regard to the consequences for the Chinese government and Chinese people. In addition, the Chinese government had to stand by as the British increased their opium sales to people in China. The terms of its defeat were a bitter pill to swallow: China had to cede the territory of Hong Kong to British control, open treaty ports to trade with foreigners, and grant special rights to foreigners operating within the treaty ports. In the second Opium War, from 1856 to 1860, a weakened China fought both Great Britain and France. The first Opium War was fought between China and Great Britain from 1839 to 1842. The Opium Wars in the mid-19th century were a critical juncture in modern Chinese history.

Original monopoly board pic