The evil that men do lives after them.
The good is oft interred with their bones.
The project which this book results from, commenced with a statement of the then Chinese Premier Jiang Jemin in 1990s shortly before the return of Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty. He spoke of the ‘century of shame’. I confess I had not heard the expression before. I was not sure if it referred to western shame for what we had done or Chinese shame for permitting it. In the Western version of history, the China-trade was intelligible only in terms of British India from whence it was somewhat regulated. British India in turn was somewhat regulated by London. What had appeared to be an interesting niche, severable from the rest of history, turned out to require an examination of global affairs. My initial little project turned into a ten year course of study. I have to say there are endless omissions, possibly myriad errors and misunderstandings too, and some newspapers have been lost but I think the overall result is still useful in making a difficult period of history and the rationales of the people involved in it accessible to the general reader.
The reasons given by governments for their actions abroad are many and varied. This is particularly true of the history of Britain. I attribute it to the country’s disproportionate interest in the affairs of other countries. What I have found in preparing these newspaper extracts for publication, is that whilst all these interesting reasons are individually plausible, if the events they justify are isolated from their context, even occasionally persuasive; if one takes a longer term look at the history of a relationship it transpires that the complaints of treaty breach or impugned national honour are not consistently made. One then suspects that another cause is operating which, in the 50 years covered by this book, was also always present and seems to offer a much better indicator of government’s basic thinking and likely response in any given situation although rarely actually professed – this cause is the self-interest of British businessmen. There may be a general rule of history, when identifying causes, at least during the last 200-odd years during which first the British then the Americans dominated the world, that one should always go with the money. This may seem trite to more worldly people but I was schooled at a time when the causes of this or that historical event were seldom, to my recollection, attributed to national gain.
The newspapers consulted are the Bombay Courier and the Canton Register, the latter supplemented by the Friend of China. The great thing about newspaper reports is that they record events as they occur before interpretation starts. There are also some commentaries here, mostly in the form of Letters to the Editor or articles from the Edinburgh Review which are inevitably interpretative but I believe they help to elucidate the values and opinions of the time. Lord Clarke in Civilisation quotes Ruskin’s opinion that the record of man’s words and deeds is unreliable and only the art is true. I believe one might add the newspaper reports to art.
This book deals with the half-century from 1793 when British traders were leading the invasion of Asia and South America in the search for bullion and for those profitable goods that could readily be turned into gold and silver - Moluccan nutmegs and cloves, Sri Lankan cinnamon, Malibari cardamoms and pepper, Chinese tea, silk and purges – that had formerly come to the West from Indian or Arab agency via Byzantine, Venetian and later Dutch intermediaries. The existence of so many parties between producer and consumer raised prices and provided the sort of opportunity that merchants love – to discover the source of each product, obtain supply at producer-price and carry it to the consuming market to profit from customers’ willingness to pay the former high price.
The process got underway in England with Elizabeth I and her permission to her sea captains to explore east and west; to take land that was unoccupied or had been abandoned by the natives. It was not precisely an organised process but typically expedition by expedition, some profitable, others loss-making. It was also occasionally dangerous as the two or three massacres of British traders attests. There is an English expression still occasionally heard “when my ship comes in” that alludes to anticipated receipt of future wealth. Initially these adventures was entirely speculative and fortunes were equally made and lost but the occasional profitable voyage, in a time of relatively short life expectancies and minimal medical knowledge, was sufficient to maintain a gambling spirit.
An ideological basis was provided by Charles II at the time of the plague and the subsequent Great Fire of London. I am obliged to Alexander Del Mar in ‘Money and Civilisation’ for a succinct explanation of it. The 17th century was a time of rising prices in Europe due to the influx of gold and silver from America and Japan. This accumulated to the benefit of the Iberian countries who, with this great supply of bullion, became the most prosperous Europeans. At a time when paper money was impracticable, it was wise policy to obtain as much of this supply as possible and it has continued to be every country’s policy. Charles II enacted a law in 1666 requiring all bullion holders to bring their metal to His mint, guaranteeing to return weight for weight, fineness for fineness in new English coins without seignorage. The accumulation of bullion thus became national policy and, as Del Mar notes, in the process created the study of economics.
It is sometimes said, in explanation of Britain’s quest for foreign trade, that England became a nett importer in 1770s. I believe this was actually due to the Corn Laws which maintained a high price for wheat and thus for agricultural land and rents - an indirect tax on bread to transfer English wealth to the landowners – rather than to any genuine deficiency in domestic productions. The Scots chose to eat oats and the Irish learned to eat potatoes, so the tax fell mainly on the English. The downside of the Corn Laws was that people spent disproportionately to feed themselves, reducing their disposable income for other goods. That became the complaint of the merchants in the 18th century and it was their efforts during the period under review that led the economy out of its intended fossilisation and facilitated political change. It was achieved by lobbying and by the financial control that merchants assumed over the ministry through their funding of the Great War with France.
At first western Kings responded to traders’ pleas for help on a case-by-case basis. Western Kings always pleaded poverty - they were always ready to accommodate a new money-making scheme. The history of alliance between power and wealth is a history of our species. What was original in the British form of foreign trade was the financial basis to it. This can most clearly be seen at an intermediate stage, the period of this book, after the process had commenced under monarchical Chartered Companies but before it had made complete progress against the competition of indigenous traders and the maritime powers of the West - the Portuguese, the Dutch and increasingly the new country, the Americans.
The European approach was to set-up isolated coastal trading bases which soon became fortified. Arms and ammunition were brought in for protection, a local headman was acknowledged as authority to concede land title and a little became a lot under the joint influence of the soldier and the merchant. The valued production of the hinterland was attracted to the trading base for export. The process is dynamic - either the foreign base grows or it shrinks and disappears - and this depended on whether the local products successfully created markets back in the consuming centres. Success introduced the concept of national interests – financiers, colonists, ship-owners, insurers, marketing agents, wholesalers and retailers - all those more or less dependent on the continuance of the supply of the foreign product(s), as what had been a novelty seamlessly transmuted into a necessary. National interests are the collection of deals for which the joy of first receipt has been replaced by expectation and a doctrine of prescriptive right for their maintenance.
Those Westerners who went abroad to seek for their fortune had to also provide the means of their protection. Chartered Companies were empowered to recruit armies and defend themselves, their enclaves and their ships. The political leadership at home also tried to extend its protection, but the limit of Western political endeavour was normally the national boundary. Beyond that was the Admiral’s problem. Even in 1821, several years after the conclusion of the war with Napoleonic France, the cost of the British overseas service was £300,000 per annum. At that time the Foreign Office from top to bottom employed 28 people at home and the same number in overseas missions, of which latter total three quarters were honorary appointments who, as they got their jobs through ‘connections’, were invariably businessmen focused on the main chance. There was neither diplomatic training nor uniformity of representation. This combination of roles in the merchant/Consul became the international face of the West. Those people who stay at home may be perplexed by foreign attitudes towards Western countries even now. It seems the political deal with the merchants was ‘you keep your nose clean at home and you can have a free hand overseas’.
English foreign trade had grown since American independence, both with America and the West Indian colonies and Asia. American trade was mainly in tobacco and cotton and fed the burgeoning cotton-processing factories of Lancashire. The estates in West Indies produced all this country’s requirement for sugar. This trade employed a considerable shipping fleet to return its production to England where several City merchants arranged its sale to wholesalers and paid the immense tax to Customs. The sugar producers shared only little in the profits - the owners of estates took a certain rental, the shipping and insurance companies raised their own fees, but the bulk of profit remained with the farmer’s creditors, those London banks that monopolised the trade in return for loans. In this way our colonies throughout the Americas were brought into contribution to the British economy. At least that appears to have been the political expectation although one notes a Commons debate in 1801 after the income tax had been introduced when the revenue collected from merchants throughout the country was quantified on optimistic terms at 0.2% of national business turnover.1
Asia was different. It fell entirely within the Chartered domain of the East India Company which both administered territory, traded with the natives and defended its interests militarily.
In India, London banks could not easily obtain access. The India Company was financed by Company employees who invested in the great Agencies in the three main ports. Those agencies in turn invested in the production of export staples – indigo, cotton, sugar and some light cotton and silk cloth. They paid a guaranteed return to investors. They also invested in the Company’s Promissory Notes which paid 6 – 12% depending on need. The Company always preferred to raise its funds in India rather than in London. Although it might superficially make great savings on interest payments on loans from the London banks, it chose the apparently more expensive money in India in part to avoid the terms of the City capitalists had it become increasingly reliant upon them - it was not going to emulate the West Indian farmers. In fact, it routinely ran a line of credit with the nation, finding its continuance in business was better assured as a public debtor. The source of the Company’s Indian surpluses were from its trade. Collections from territory were disbursed mainly within India itself to the army. It did not seek to produce anything which it could not monopolise profitably as the century of delay in commencing tea production in India evidences.
The trade in staples was ultimately under the control of the ministry in London which regulated it through the Customs tariff for access to the home market. That meant West Indian sugar was preferred to support the aristocratic owners of estates in those islands whilst American cotton was preferred to provide a return cargo for our manufactures. Spanish indigo likewise provided a return for Yorkshire wool. Only occasionally, when acts of war or prohibitive tariffs disrupted the preferred supply, did the Company get brief access to the home market for cotton, indigo and occasionally rice. The Company’s regular exports to London were coffee from Mocha, spices from South East Asia, the Chinese supply of tea, silk and purges and, increasingly throughout this period, the bullion proceeds of favourable trade balances. It repeatedly declined to develop a domestic production of any of its trading commodities until it lost control of monopoly supply to the home market.
In this book I have reproduced some historical occurrences, many of which illustrate the different worldview of East and West and provide some indicators of how Asia reflects on events, identifies its interests and derives its policies. Not being Asian myself, this is a bold endeavour and there will no doubt be errors all of which are mine. Asia has become globally important and its burgeoning wealth may oblige the West to force the continent into a position of power. If this book can spread understanding of historical Asian decision-making processes, the world will be culturally richer, maturer, safer and better informed. Who knows, we westerners might find something of use for our own fragmented societies.
The period of study embraces a variety of events commencing with the French Revolutionary War and ending with the First Opium War.
In the course of the wars with France, Britain seized the Danish fleet twice, required the Dutch and the Russians to surrender their fleets at different times, occupied and governed both Spain and Portugal and, consequent on these acts, assumed the administration of and responsibility for all the world’s colonies. The great increase in military costs that was partly accounted in ‘extraordinaries’ represented the costs of garrisoning and administering these colonies. I make this claim on the basis that there is no other item in the annual budgets that could conceivably contain them. This gave the London banks, insurers and shipowners a near monopoly of international trade with all the profits that that entailed whilst leaving the costs with the British people.
The result of this extended colonisation and the consequent trade and money flowing back to London was little Britain defeating big France and more or less the whole of the rest of Europe at one time or another. The expression in London was ‘thank God and not my strength for it’. It was the beginnings of a heady idea – that Britain enjoyed Divine support. The Jews already claimed this in respect of their cultural archive so preference for Britain must relate to the material level.
It was the bankruptcy of the Bank of England in the Revolutionary War that caused William Pitt to turn to debt-based finance of his ministerial policies. It was justified in the Commons as 'like the atmosphere that presses upon the Earth although people are unaware of the burden.' Throughout his tenure the debt increased as he was using taxation only to pay-off the interest on it. I ignore the flim-flammery of the Sinking Fund which I assess to have been solely to maintain the values of government bonds. Eventually, the tax income reached approximately five times the per capita levels in France - that appeared to be the extent of debt-servicing payments required of the British people but in fact value had been removed from the domestic economy and replaced with paper, the issue of which was under the minister's control, and the actual cost in declared and concealed tax was more.
Briefly, the British position starts with an observation of an old British diplomat named Perceval – ‘all war is a contention of purse’ – which I understand to mean that the country with the deepest pockets wins the war and gets its way. Charles II’s recognition of this is mentioned above. The requirements of this dogma were presented to young William Pitt early in the Revolutionary War with France when George III’s implacable insistence on fighting to restore Bourbon monarchy required Pitt to answer a conundrum ‘what is to be gained from war?’ as he put it to the Commons. More or less the entire British population was seduced by the beauty of French democratic ideals. Only the power centres – the King, the landowning often borough-mongering Lords, the great Chartered Companies, particularly the Bank of England and the India Company, the developing industrial producers and the nascent capitalists in the City – had much to lose in a world turning to the popular tune being played in Paris.
“What is to be gained by war” became domestically the oppression of the people by legislatively withdrawing their Constitutional rights, settling garrisons near all major towns, imprisoning the leaders of critical groups and taxing everyone to the hilt. Externally, it was the adoption of a defence posture of ‘eternal war’ – a war to the annihilation of one or other of the conflicting systems, incessant borrowing of huge annual sums to finance the effort and the creation of immense volumes of fiat money which inflationary effects could be partially contained only in wartime conditions. Indeed British financing of the war against Napoleon could only be ultimately successful if France was totally destroyed. To make peace with France still independent even if Britain was apparently victorious militarily would have been defeat once the effects of the financial policy on the British economy were exposed to normal peacetime conditions – that was fulgently apparent even before the brief armistice between the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. What might have appeared to Pitt initially as his indulgence of a difficult King soon became involvement in a war for national survival as a result of his own voluntarily chosen and assiduously argued policies. No wonder he drank himself into an early grave – his solution funnelled him inexorably into deeper and deeper water.
Today, with hindsight, one notes Pitt's financial policy elevated the City's bankers - the merchant banks and stockbrokers - to an importance they had not had before, and made their mercantile concerns the concerns of the legislature; It laid debt upon the unborn who were necessarily unconsulted in its creation and expenditure; It encouraged parliament to maintain the master/servant laws as a prime support of the merchant's strength and, at that time, to criminalise combination of workers for better terms of employment; It rehabilitated debt as a responsible act in contradiction of Polonius' advice to his son in Shakespeare's Hamlet 'neither a borrower nor a lender be' that is our traditional philosophy, and it required those rising to the managerial class to do things that disgusted them in fulfilling their master's will. Above all it has enabled war on the never-never to become an instrument of policy.
In the course of the wars, Britain seized or sank the war fleets of every maritime country except America. This achievement was the result of oppressive discipline in the Royal Navy. The seaman was inculcated to a belief that disobedience was certain death whilst obedience might permit continuing life. This austere choice was mitigated and made tolerable by the financial rewards of prize-taking. I should say that life aboard a British warship was not unpleasant. On average throughout the twenty years of war, there was an engagement with a foreign warship somewhere in the World about once a month. The focus of naval work was actually commerce-raiding and blockade which were popular and lucrative activities. These activities were facilitated by Cromwell’s Navigation Laws and honed to precise requirements by Orders-in-Council. Thus Britain obtained control of the high seas. In war, this control permitted an enemy’s colonies to be occupied and governed and their colonial production brought to London to be taxed before re-export to Europe and America in a re-creation of ancient Rome.
There was then no European substitute for cane sugar, coffee, tea, cotton or the variety of Asian spices. This commercial hegemony became Pitt’s destination in ‘what is to be gained from war’. It explains why Britain refused again and again to make peace, why she continually raised loans to finance the series of coalitions against France, none of which succeeded until Napoleon himself was induced by his own sense of purpose into that step that led to his downfall. George III’s concern for his continuing existence was accommodated with the aristocrats’ concern for the status quo and the City’s interest in control of the means to wealth and all was dedicated to global hegemony as prize.
To achieve this end, Pitt, the Grenvillites and a regrettably long list of other ministers required funding. It will be seen in some records of parliamentary debates in the Economy chapter that the Chancellor assessed his spending need first before considering how to fund it - the common way of the debtor. The chosen means of obtaining money was a determinedly complex one involving firstly the creation of Exchequer Bills which were swapped with the Bank of England for credit notes (paper money) for domestic circulation in replacement of the gold & silver that was required by the ministry; and secondly the securitisation of government loans from the City on the Royal Exchange, which values were maintained by constant government purchasing using the so-called Sinking Fund. On the one hand the minister was victorious over the British people and apparently over France (it has to be said that all Napoleonic innovations were soon voluntarily adopted Europe-wide, albeit in a minimalist way); on the other he was utterly defeated by capital. Occasionally, as with Pitt’s sale of the Land Tax or introduction of the Income Tax, British ministers found the bankers required improved security on their loans. These financiers were not precisely investing in their own preservation – they were acting professionally for profit. They did on one occasion, when it appeared the country was on the verge of defeat shortly before Moscow, organise and handsomely participate in ‘voluntary contributions’ to supplement the national revenue – they were not unpatriotic, just devoutly capitalistic.
These twin features of the British approach to the Great War with France – popular oppression and deficit financing with its consequent concessions to business - have shaped our society up to the present day. Once France had been defeated and encumbered with horrendous financial obligations to the Kings, there remained only the United States still asserting a democratic and Republican form of government. That was addressed in the War of 1812 and America was weaned from the ideals of her Founding Fathers into the British way of running a country. The absolute freedom of capital to act always for its preservation and increase is consequential. This has become so ingrained in western thought, so mindlessly communicated to children, that it has become a form of conditioning - “it’s the economy, Stupid” as President Clinton put it recently. The willingness of one generation to commend its experiences and tolerances to the next whilst it is in that receptive stage of immature development has permitted its continuance.
The concessions to business mentioned above were two-fold. Initially it was the protection from bankruptcy that the Bank of England received that fascinated the merchants. Cornwallis, as Governor-General of India, was repeatedly importuned by his officials and some private merchants for a similar concession to the Bank of Bengal. Eventually, limited liability had to be offered to all, turning corporate bankruptcy into a painless inconvenience to replace the hounding by duns and bailiffs that had formerly been a feature of borderline commerce. The second concession was provided in the Companies Act of 1862 which raised the corporation from a thing into a person and gave it the same human rights. This Act so astonished the Judiciary it was not until the end of the century when it came up on Appeal to the House of Lords that its terms were confirmed. Thereafter companies became alive - they existed independently of the shareholders who financed them and the Directors who managed them and possessed their records. They became personalities in their own right. Perhaps the next elevation of them by homo economicus will be deification.
The world has now had two centuries to evaluate this system and it is pristinely apparent that it is institutionally divisive, not just amongst the people within the country adopting it but internationally in the pursuit of national competitiveness. It creates the causes of endless war. It seems to have been overlooked that society creates wealth; a man alone cannot do it. No matter how he uses his time, he needs another to give it value. It follows that, in wealth creation, society is more fundamental than the individuals comprising it. That truth has been categorised as politically inconvenient in the great democracies today. One must wonder whether they are really democratic – a united populace should direct government rather than vice versa.
I believe we are a social species. A majority chose to live together for the advantages of bartering production excesses at harvest time, for sharing the work, for security and for the pleasure of company. There have always been a few people who repudiate those advantages. Historically they were the disadvantaged tribes who occupied hard countries, descending on the sown to steal the harvests and girls. In the West they were ‘mountain men’ who lived in forests and caves and survived on berries and small animals. These are hardly representative of our species yet in the British system adopted by Pitt they are placed above society and legislate their ways on the people to divide and rule them.
India was brought to submission at the turn of the century by the Wellesleys; the United States and Europe ex Russia followed by 1815, South America was brought into contribution by the 1820s through the opportunity created by its independence struggles, in which the India Company’s primary role is not well covered in Victorian histories, and thus by the late 1820s the preponderance of the nations of the world had been brought under British influence, at least in so far as they could be ‘got at’ by a frigate. London received the surplus capital of the whole World. As we have seen, this programme was pursued on the basis of Perceval’s dictum which is effectively ‘money is power’ - it provides the ability to say ‘you are either with us or against us’ – and allows the political leadership to avoid doing anything that is not of its own choosing. It was extolled and justified in martial poetry and songs asserting Britons never would be slaves, it being held in these islands that compromise was tantamount to slavery.
The British way found expression in the assertion of individual rights, most fundamentally the right of property ownership that the Dutch taught us. It was the best reason the country had for its repudiation of Tom Paine and French Revolutionary values but no system of government is fundamentally incapable of performance. Even the topsy-turvy Anglo American system can be massaged into workability if a constant political will to maintain the balance of individual and social interests is at work. In that way no alienated proletariat is created and everyone gets some benefit from citizenship.
What initially interested me was how we had gone to war with China over opium and thus commenced Jiang Jemin’s ‘century of shame’. I discovered that the Chinese system approaches the same dynamic from the opposite direction – it is necessarily inferred from the text and not an express statement but I hope it will be found uncontentious. China asserted the rights of society in its culture, in the four books, understanding of which constituted the sole route to a government job. These days there is a Constitution and the rights of individuals are licensed to the extent felt appropriate by the administration of the day. Two centuries ago under the Emperors that was not very far and merchants were particularly denied government assistance, it being thought that they get by well enough without extra help. Well, times change and it is markedly different today. It may well be the case that the Indian position is similar but I regret I am ignorant in that field. There seems to be overtly little to choose between the two approaches, the concern of both parties being to strike the balance somewhere around the middle where a majority of people are reasonably satisfied. It would seem to be hardly a contentious matter in either system but we have repeatedly used the difference as pretext for war so, unless we have become hung-up on inconsequentialities, I am no doubt missing something. If so, I suspect it is the wish to maintain a disproportionate part of the World’s resources under Western control.
It is particularly galling to me because capitalism is a pristine way of creating illusory wealth to the satisfaction of all concerned and leading our entire species out of poverty and uncertainty into an astonishingly fruitful and exciting future on this planet and beyond. To have this instrument infected with the concessions that legislators bestowed upon in pursuit of evanescent interests is tragic. These indulgences separated wealth from responsibility. They destroyed the willingness of capital to take risks and maintain its vigour. Nowadays, eternally-preservable wealth oppresses the competition of the many aspirants to commercial success. It is Lenin’s ‘commanding heights of the economy’ under the aegis of supposedly democratic governments in London, Washington and elsewhere. Today the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker are all cartelised or monopolistic – they speak of market-adapted pricing by which is meant the most popular of their group with the largest sales sets the prices and the rest discount minimally from that. This present perversion of capitalism by denying competition and divorcing cost prices from sale prices does not increase choice. It creates artificial markets through advertising and peer pressure. It is a tragedy as little recognised by us as the epidemic of purposeless accumulation it has spawned is recognised as unhealthy by our medical experts. Remove the legislative concessions and it is my belief we will enjoy a golden age of new inventiveness that will renovate our society.
So that was the reason we went to war over opium. The British ministry permitted the India Company to commence military preparations. Britain itself was short of money whilst the India Company was keen to pursue its own agenda – obtain an offshore base for the smugglers at Canton and prevent China obtaining a revenue from European trade to the point Peking would itself propose amendments to its trade regulations. Captain Elliot managed the Company’s war but that was ultimately unsatisfactory on the available reparations and Pottinger was called in to have another go.
Parliament remained uninformed until quite shortly before the war. No position papers were presented to either House. MPs relied on the newspapers and private letters. When Sir Robert Peel put the question to Palmerston ‘if hostilities are decided upon, will the Commons be informed’ he received a nonsensical response conflating communications (with India) with hostilities (against China) and no clarification could be had. Then, on 19th March 1840, Lord John Russell announced to the Commons the objects of an expedition to China - to obtain apology and compensation from China, and security for future trade. The proximate cause of the ministry’s initiative was the surrender of opium to Commissioner Lin and the subsequent lobbying of the dispossessed owners for compensation. Amusingly, this involved pulling the strings of more or less the entire commercial establishment of Britain. Scottish and midland manufacturers were told that war would open the China market to them which only Chinese government policy was preventing. That got their co-operation.
The subsequent history of opium makes it difficult for the reader today to take an unbiased position. It will be recalled that opium use was generally legal then. The only restraint I am aware of internationally was the registration of users in the Swiss Cantons. Lincolnshire farmers went sprout-picking on cold November mornings fortified with an opium pill. William Wilberforce preferred a glass of laudanum to wine as the latter was too heating and a good many others, rich and poor, took the same view. Sir Samuel Whitbread, the well-known brewer, was disturbed by his competitors exploiting a niche market in opiate-flavoured beers. Every doctor prescribed opium to patients. It was part of the everyday scene.
Lord John Russell’s announcement of war induced Sir James Graham a couple of weeks later to move a resolution attributing the dispute with China to the neglect of government to appropriately empower Napier and subsequent representatives to regulate the opium trade. This public allegation stung Lord Melbourne, the Prime Minister, and Palmerston instantly published the first China Blue Book. On the information contained in this publication, the merits of the war were finally made available to the representatives in the House.
The way the final vote for war was rigged by a couple of city merchants is interesting but, once war had commenced, both parties supported it, and the Tory administration that soon replaced Melbourne’s made the war its own. The commercial attractions of dictating a treaty to a country as wealthy and populous as China were very real. After considering and discarding all the rationales that were adduced in support of war, one has stood the test of time - the right of a strong country to insist, by all available means, that another trade its products on the terms of the strong country. It is true that every country likes to trade but, in the present system, its no longer a matter of choice. This first opium war and the next one 10+ years later together allowed an increasing level of western interference in Chinese domestic administration. It is consequently called ‘the opening of China’ in the West and ‘the century of shame’ in China.
Britain’s real complaint was unknown in London when the decision to war was legislatively approved. The order for the perpetual expulsion of Britain from China-trade occurred well after the surrender of the unsellable opium when the tiny British community at Canton had left Canton and Macau and had adjourned to the ships in Hong Kong harbour from whence it was trans-shipping its goods into American bottoms for the river passage to Whampoa. For British China-traders the loss of market to British manufacturers which this exclusion represented was not ultimately that important for their own interests except in so far as it was the British manufacturers who lobbied parliament successfully for war. The China traders profited little from sales of British goods and that continued long after war ended. Their profits arose elsewhere whilst the costs of guards and garrisons and consular representation continued for the British people. Even as late as 1870s when China was already in the course of partition, the Treasury official Malet wrote to the British Ambassador there that, if a balance sheet of British China-trade was ever drawn-up, it was nice point what colour the bottom line would be. British exporters had to a man been successfully manipulated through their Chambers of Commerce by a handful of people in the East India and China Trade Association in London and by occasional visits of free-traders from Canton. It was the shape of things to come and, one suspects, was the ultimate cause of the failure of Empire. The equitable balance of contributions paid on the one hand by businessmen and on the other by the people was never found.
There was a China market for some foreign goods but, so far as the items that the British brought, it was for Indian goods – cotton and opium – and these commodities did not require formal Chinese approval for sale as British trade after the Company’s monopoly was determined in 1834 had become entirely and designedly a smuggling trade in order to deny China a revenue from it to facilitate a willingness to negotiate on British terms. This was the India Company’s preferred policy. The concern of the free traders for British support arose because Britain held a modicum of control over the India Company that could be manipulated by stimulating British Chambers of Commerce to suppose a huge market was available to them, once obstructive Chinese officials had been removed from their supervision of Chinese merchants. That preferred policy had to be abandoned once the trade of all British merchants had been excluded. British commercial opinion domestically was parochial and readily stimulated whereas the Indian government had an expert understanding of China trade and was already satisfied. For the Company the assessment was simple - if China did not buy Bengal opium when Britain had already ceased to buy Indian sugar and indigo, there was insufficient foreign trade left to underwrite the Home Charges and supplement the revenue of the Company’s government. The alternative, if the same level of surpluses were to flow back to the shareholders, was to tax the Indian for the approximate amount that was paid by China. The Indian farmer was already taxed to the hilt and a continuous undercurrent of rebellion had taken place from Hyder Ali’s time until the Company’s removal from government. Taxing India more fully risked jeopardising everything. The Chinese contribution had to be continued whatever it involved. That was the Company’s informed position. So far as the uninformed British industrialist was concerned, his commercial interest was the neophyte’s interest – one inch on the shirt-tails of China - and only relevant in respect of the political influence he could bring to bear on the ministry.
When searching for explanations to British hegemonistic actions, the message from two centuries ago is clearly ‘go with the money’. Today it is the same and I assume it has always been so during the intervening period although I cannot say for sure. This is why I study history - to understand the present from the past and obtain some dim and shadowy hint of the future.
The thrust of this book is really at the very tentative and superficial control that Western governments exercise over their merchants abroad and the appearance of business directing government rather than vice versa. Not long ago the British Treasury told departments not to propose any initiatives that did not create or increase markets. Political submission to the market place has its downside but politicians appear unconcerned for self-image. This willingness to discount reputation, except in the stylised rituals of diplomacy, is a feature of Western executive government and might derive from the temporary nature of the employment. Ministers in democracies seldom stay ‘on seat’ long enough to face the effects of their acts and are, in any event, commonly indemnified by their successors. In fact Republican/ Democrat or Tory/ Labour distinctions are complementary concepts - they rely on each other for existence. Remove either one and the rationale for the existence of the other collapses. It is the game we play to divert the populace - a relic of ‘might over right’ nationalism that cannot inure to the benefit of a globalised world. More likely its continuance will lead to Western exclusion from the hearts and minds of the rest of the planet - indeed that is precisely what we see in Asia, Africa and South America today when these peoples reflect on their relations with us, a kind of Janus-faced administration is forced upon them in which the country is liable to continually revise its policies to accord with predictably out-spoken but ever-changing views from the West whilst domestically officials shrug their shoulders and mutter ‘its only money’. This is a challenge for genuinely global institutions.
The prospect of a World turning to an international tune, so far as Westerners can conceive of it, is not one that is found either attractive or compelling. Whilst Western technical excellence leads the planet it is not even likely, but the effects of our profit-driven activities have created many risks to our continuing health – risks that can be effectively addressed only by co-operation. Working together assumes dialogue which in turn requires consideration of opinions that vary according to the different cultures they arise out of. Understanding increases respect - perhaps there is a college course in it? There is a popular American joke – there are only two sure things, death and taxes. Carl Sagan’s posthumous book ‘The Varieties of Scientific Experience’ notes a third – extinction. We are not the first species to dominate this planet.
If one encounters an idea, which on examination turns out to be progressive, one should accept it and incorporate it in one’s lifestyle. Who knows, in future years, perhaps the peoples of the great Western democracies will be tending their parents’ graves each year to recall and honour the nurturing and education they received as children. It is regrettable that the West has repudiated foreign ideas apparently for fear of giving rise to a debt of gratitude. In fact there are endless borrowings by the West but few are attributed. One sees the process operating in the religions - Christians count beads and burn incense - Asian traits, while today’s Buddhists often display a talisman of their preceptor - a Christian predilection expressly reprobated by the Buddha. At a cultural level, this produces homogeneity; it facilitates understanding and good will - witness the impressive level of co-operation between Muslims and Hindus in the villages of 19th century India. Perhaps they were united in the face of a common enemy but they knew each others hopes and fears and co-operated together. There is a basis to inter-cultural co-operation and this book identifies some of the threads that comprise it in the responsive acts of mainly India and China to western infiltration. Nevertheless, it is a bold book and, if it is read at all, it will be found defective in many ways. Perhaps other better qualified people might be persuaded to correct and improve it.
By fortuity, I have some slight qualification to edit these old newspapers. By a series of unforeseeable events, as a teenager I became the most junior officer on a passenger ship when that form of transport was still common. I learned something of nautical matters which has been useful in consideration of the sailing ships that made the voyages east. Then in 1960s, through a related accident, my employment lurched to the Hong Kong Police where I learned about the concerns of a Chinese community and institutionalised corruption as an inexpensive form of administration. Finally I was a private investigator for thirty years and discovered the ways of business. Throughout the last two jobs, I believe I achieved a slight insight of the Chinese view of the World and this was increased by marriage with a delightful Hongkong girl and by a fascination with the simple profundity of the Buddha. The only thing lacking, and its an unfortunately large thing, is a qualification in history - in that respect I am an amateur. History was really only a hobby for spare evenings and I did not become focused on the subject of this book until, with the approach of the handover of Hong Kong in 1997, I was forcefully made aware of the continuing strong indignation of the Chinese people, one and half centuries after the event, at British activities leading the cession of Hong Kong in 1842.
I should mention here that the history revealed by the newspapers in this book differs from the history I was taught as a schoolboy and upon which I was examined and received certificates. It is irritating to suspect that there were people revising history and others propagating those revisions. Some people today worry that the facts of recorded history are only as reliable as the compilers wished to make them, as Ruskin’s opinion at the outset of this Introduction makes clear. George Orwell coined a phrase ‘he who controls the present controls the past’. Those who have read the old histories of western involvement in Asia and elsewhere will be familiar with those two invariable causes of Asian action as recorded by the Victorians – imbecility and corruption. The 2nd Editor of the Canton Register, John Slade, was an early and consistent exponent of this view and it has been a task to remove the variety of adjectives and adverbs that detract from the factual reporting he makes in his newspaper. There also appears to be a difficulty in English translations of Chinese texts, particularly official Edicts, but my knowledge of Chinese is not adequate to expand on the suspicion. I just note that the translations in the smuggler’s newspaper, as the Canton Register was known, are distinctly officious and querulous whereas say, the translations of Edicts in Fu Lo Shu’s invaluable ‘Documentary Chronicle of Sino-Western Relations, 1644 – 1820’ are lucidly presented, profoundly sensible and pleasant to read.
On the basis of nationalistic history, the doubt that surrounds the significance of the historical record is right. But it is also true that humanity acts in predictable ways and, with a knowledge of the culture, some understanding of the underlying ‘flow’ will manifest. History is a dynamic thing and what comes later seamlessly links to what has gone before – something that is beautifully illustrated by Napoleon’s constant policy of reciprocity that features in the Europe chapters of this work. There really are primary and contributing causes and some effects infer the existence of others. I retain a faith in the utility of history to show us the future by recalling the triumphs and the errors of the past; of sounding a warning bell when we are entering something already known to be dangerous. Its study helps us to select what sort of society we wish to live in. Nevertheless, my views may not be widely shared if at all and the reader should particularly beware the possibly interpretative effect of my selection of the entries in this book. It is not a complete record of articles in the newspapers I have reviewed.
I am hopeful this book might be found useful in positive ways. I have tried to be fair in the selection and editing of information. I have minimised the use of adjectives and adverbs to reduce emotive content. Wherever a trace of humour exists - even black, cynical or worldly-wise - it is here. I have avoided drawing conclusions and I hope my personal opinions (other than in this Introduction) are not too prominently on display; the events should speak for themselves. I should also apologise to the Irish. There is an immense amount of reporting on Irish attempts to escape the British yoke and I have left nearly all of it out – it is simply too depressing and the relevant point is made in the suppression of democracy in Britain during and after the Great War and in the acts of the India Company’s army throughout Asia.
Nevertheless, the final result may be emotional for some. The reader will be reminded of the Buddhist instructional technique of repetition, in so far as many of the events in the relationship at Canton were recitals of the same basic misunderstanding - the West saying ‘if it makes money, do it’ and the Chinese responding ‘action must accord with propriety’. It is the story of a culturally pacific peoples’ efforts to deal non-violently with an overpowering interloper who, for reasons unknown in Asia, imperatively had to obtain a share of the wealth of the country.
I hope that the occasional description of Chinese thinking, so far as I have been able to penetrate it, will be found interesting and that the careful reader will reach the last page with a better idea of what China was like and of the onerous responsibility of being born Chinese.
Mainly what Britain has shown to Asia, unasked, has been our ideas of political and social organisation and these we assiduously pressed on unwilling peoples throughout the continent. We did not sell them competitively - they were considered to be inherently better apparently because the inconvenience and comparative disability of learning something new became intolerable to us at about the end of the 18th century. One can fairly precisely date this change of national mindset in India, from whence the China-trade was administered, to the administration of Lord Wellesley at the beginning of the 19th century. It entailed the withdrawal of fraternisation and has been well captured in William Dalrymple’s splendid little book ‘White Mughals’. It was the beginning of British exclusiveness - our system and no other.
There were some borrowings from east to west. The requirement of fitness for government service is an important one. The West instituted civil service examinations in emulation of China in preference to the former aristocratic commendation. But generally there was little that was Chinese that was thought to be beneficial in London. In France it was different. The access that Jesuits obtained at Peking and the reports they sent back to Paris were fundamentally important contributions to the philosophical development that underlay the French Revolution, but all that somehow passed England by because protection of individual property rights was thought to be threatened by democracy.
It seems to be much the same with our knowledge of all the rest of Asia - we became impeccably well informed on all the objective aspects of these strange cultures (language, flora, fauna, religion, history, archaeology, etc.) but the subjective Asian view that defined social mores escaped us. Asia had adopted a just and ethical basis to society that is worthy of study. As the East India Company’s Select Committee at Canton noted two centuries ago in respect of its relationship with the Canton Provincial Government ‘an argument based on moral grounds is always effective’. That could not have been said in the West then or now - we pride ourselves on our pragmatism, we knew what we were doing, we were not born yesterday.
In selecting and editing articles from these old newspapers, I found I was illustrating these two different mindsets which appear to be the invariable positions of East and West in all its relationships. This dynamic applies to all sorts of human relationships, one is stronger and the other is weaker - husband and wife, parent and child, big company/small company or big country/small country. The strong party has the ability to say “you are either with us or against us” (‘do it or I’ll hit you’) whilst the weak one responds with ‘I cannot stop you but is it right for you to act thus?’
We seem to have lost what we learned with such difficulty centuries ago and are today tempted to implacably insist on our own way in the expectation of bringing every alien culture to accord with the Western world-view. Readers will be interested to see that the rationales given two centuries ago for this or that policy duplicate those of today – the arms trade continues on the basis ‘if we don’t do it, someone else will;’ precisely the argument that kept the slave trade going so long. Globalisation is capable of eliciting a change if our fledgling international institutions can assert it above the cacophony of contending nationalism that mainly influences them. Not long ago a British foreign secretary published an intention to introduce an ethical dimension to his government’s foreign policy - there is always hope. All that is required to get the ball rolling is for one country to put its fists down.
With that thought in mind, I offer this digest of newspaper reports for the period. The Europe chapters deal with events in that continent and set the stage for what happened in Asia. My personal interest concerns the relationship of foreigners with Chinese during the period prior to the Opium War, mainly in the first decades of the 19th century. I have relied heavily on Morse’s edition of the East India Company’s records in ‘Chronicles’ for background details of the India Company’s view of events in the period and on his ‘International Relations’ for the period subsequent to 1834 but that information appears only in footnotes. This work is overwhelmingly comprised of extracts from the Bombay Courier (1793 – 1823) and Canton Register newspaper (1827 - 1843), the latter supplemented by the Friend of China (1840 – 1843). The only other source of information in the main text is the 2nd Earl Grey’s diary of his 1832 China visit and the few paragraphs from Erskine's defence of John Stockport against a charge of libel for defending Warren Hastings (which appears at the beginning of the Asia chapters). Some information in the footnotes comes from books listed in a bibliography at the end.
I have not been as diligent as I should have in footnoting, not recognising its importance at the outset. Not all items, which should be attributed, have been. The professional historian will hate this. Actually, this work started out as a personal enquiry and lacked academic rigour. Now it is online, I cannot assume that what I write will be accepted at face value. The Wars with France were characterised by endless public deception and some doubtful émigré articles on French personalities and Royalist support may have survived to enter this text. In justification, but not exoneration, I can only say that I believe the book contains little misinformation and, overall, no misdirection of the interested reader - absolutely no ‘closed fist’. I have withheld nothing that appeared relevant, as no doubt the intimidating length of the work will support. I hope the book might assist those interested in China today for business or study. I think there are many useful things in it, particularly in comparing the Chinese system with what is customary in the West, observing the results when business requirements lead western government policies, but overall the views that can be deduced from this book do not reflect mainstream western historical opinion. Indeed it would appear that the reasons given for this or that action at the time of its happening seldom survive more than a few decades before reinterpretation.
I should say that some of the newspaper reports which form the contents of this book are consolidations of articles appearing over several editions. They are all edited for brevity and, hopefully, greater clarity.
I learned a useful lesson from the research required for this work which I should mention for good order. It appears to me that the intelligible unit of historical study, at least since the Seven Years War, is the entire globe. This is because of the global nature of European and American interests which had effects in South America, Asia and Africa and vice versa. If this opinion has merit, it might promote the study of brief periods of global history to fully reveal the international aspects in causation of local effects.
I hope you enjoy browsing through this book. I believe I have reproduced all the news that has a bearing on the original intention – to elucidate how Britain could decide to go to war to force terms of trade on China. If I had left out articles I might reasonably have been criticised so the work is a source book of the history of the half-century as recorded by a few Editors, generally lawyers, of the newspapers mentioned.
I have had the usual difficulty with Romanisations of Chinese names. I speak a little Cantonese but no Mandarin at all, whereas the information, particularly in the Canton Register, and many of the Select Committee’s letters, promiscuously mingles the Mandarin of official pronouncements and the Cantonese of the market. As a matter of preference for those of my friends who might read this book, who are almost entirely Cantonese-speakers, I have used Cantonese Romanisations except where words and names have become well-known in their Mandarin form. To avoid confusion over personal names, I recommend Hummel’s ‘Eminent Chinese of the Ching Dynasty’.
Foreign words, including those in occasional English usage, are in italics. Those verbs and nouns which have two words, like make-up, have both words hyphened together with, hopefully, no subordinate clauses in between to confuse the reader.
Roger Houghton
roger (at) houghton (dot) idv (dot) hk
1 See the chapter on Political Economy, an article datelined 31st October 1801