The Opium War

June 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.

August 1, 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

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 15, 2014
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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July 1, 2014
The Opium War of 183942 is one of the least-celebrated chapters of British history. Spun at the time as Great Britain defending its honor and opening China to beneficial foreign trade and civilized ideas, the war is now viewed as colonialism at its worst. Diplomats at the command of the queen and for the benefit of British merchants demanded China buy opium from India. Why? The British wanted Chinese tea and porcelain badly, but the Chinese had little interest in British manufactured goods. Selling opium would balance trade. Though some British critics decried opium as evil, many leaders justified the trade as economic necessity. When China resisted, the British invaded coastal cities, killing thousands of poorly armed Chinese soldiers. Historian Lovell recounts the war and its aftermath in full detail, showing how the Chinese Communist Party continues to this day to use historical accounts of the war as justification for its policies and a screen for its own atrocities. The Opium War is dramatic, eye-opening history.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)