DISTILLED FROM THE JUICE OF POPPY SEEDS grown in South and Southeast Asia, the narcotic opium has had an enormous impact, which continues even today, on the economic and societal conditions of the countries that make up the Pacific Rim. Opium became an object of international trade very early on, but in the 18th and 19th centuries, with perhaps the exclusion of Japan, the rampant use of the highly addictive drug threatened to destroy the psyche and social fabric of entire nations and civilizations. DISTILLED FROM THE JUICE OF POPPY SEEDS grown in South and Southeast Asia, the narcotic opium has had an enormous impact, which continues even today, on the economic and societal conditions of the countries that make up the Pacific Rim. Opium became an object of international trade very early on, but in the 18th and 19th centuries, with perhaps the exclusion of Japan, the rampant use of the highly addictive drug threatened to destroy the psyche and social fabric of entire nations and civilizations.

DISTILLED FROM THE JUICE OF POPPY SEEDS grown in South and Southeast Asia, the narcotic opium has had an enormous impact, which even continues today, on the economic and societal conditions of the countries that make up the Pacific Rim. Opium became an object of international trade very early on, but in the 18th and 19th century, with perhaps the exclusion of Japan, the rampant usage of the highly addictive drug threatened to destroy the psyche and social fabric of entire nations and civilizations.

China was forced to import opium grown in British-controlled India in a third-party arrangement designed to offset the trade deficit incurred by Western nations that desired Chinese tea, silk, and porcelain. By the middle of the 19th century, China found itself in a precarious economic position, with an inappropriately high percentage of its silver currency tied up in payments for the more than 30,000 chests of the drug arriving yearly in the harbors of Canton and other coastal cities. An internal report by the British House of Commons -- the British were the main importers of opium to China at the time -- stated, "The payment for opium...absorbs the silver to the great inconvenience of the general traffic of the Chinese...."

Without any traffic or regular commerce with the outside world and with the country's monetary assets handcuffed by the high volume of opium imported, China did not develop into an equal partner on the world stage at a time when international trade, foreign diplomacy, new modes of mass transit, and communication came into being. In fact, the foundation of modern nations rests exactly on these premises, and the free flow of goods, both internally and externally, is a basic part of this evolution.

The Bund on the riverfront in Shanghai during the 1840's. Opium shipments were received and stored along the Bund. (Image: Property of the Wason Collection on East Asia, Cornell University Library)

Karl Marx, in an article published September 20, 1858, entitled "Trade or Opium," commented on the increasing dysfunction of the Chinese market: "One of the leading American merchants in China, in an article inserted in Hunt's Merchants' Magazine for January 1850, reduced the whole question of the trade with China to this point: Which branch of commerce is to be suppressed, the opium trade or the export trade of American or English produce?"

The Chinese themselves took exactly the same view of the case. Montgomery Martin narrates: "I inquired of the Taoutai at Shanghai [in modern terms, this would be the mayor of Shanghai] which would be the best means of increasing our commerce with China, and his first answer to me, in the presence of Capt. Balfour, Her Majesty's Consul, was: 'Cease to send us so much opium, and we will be able to take your manufactures.' "

But let's step back in time for a second and examine the events that led to such a position. The famous Macartney Mission of 1792-94 was to be the kickoff for British trade with China. The British Crown sent Earl George Macartney in full ambassadorial regalia to the court of the Chinese empire to approach emperor Qianlong (reigned 1736-1796) about setting up trade relations between what was then perhaps the most powerful nation of the Western world and the most powerful nation of the eastern hemisphere. Arriving onboard the HMS Lion at the port of Tianjin in the first week of August 1793, Macartney proceeded overland to Beijing and Rehe (Jehol, today called Chengde), the summer residence of the Manchu emperor's court.

What happened then has been recorded many times and has been the subject of innumerable articles and books. Suffice it to say that Macartney's mission was largely perceived as a failure, and the British ambassador was treated with much suspicion and subjected by the Chinese officials to court rituals befitting a tributary expedition bringing presents from, say, a fiefdom in inner Asia. The Chinese empire, calling itself the "Middle Kingdom," had little use for British interests in their markets and continued to pursue its so-called closed door policy, in essence not allowing any foreign power to have independent dealings on its territory.

The Wason Collection provides access to the entire Macartney mission papers in their original form, including Macartney's diary, the logbook of the HMS Lion, cartographic materials drafted at the time, and various other titles related to this important event. Charles Wason purchased the Macartney mission manuscripts around 1913, and they have been part of the Wason Collection ever since.

Illustration of the South China Coast from the log of the HMS Lion, 1793-1794. (Image: Property of the Wason Collection on East Asia, Cornell University Library)

The story does not end there. The East India Trading Company, a British merchant's organization established in 1600 to cope with the Dutch-Portuguese monopoly on international trade in lucrative spices and other "exotic" commodities, had started in as early as 1773 to export opium illegally from India to China. In 1839, with more and more opium being smuggled into the country, the Chinese court sent a special commissioner by the name of Lin Zexu to the port city of Canton (now Guangzhou) with strict orders to suppress the traffic. Upon arrival, Lin issued public statements, some of them printed in the journal Canton Register, demanding that all opium be surrendered by the British. He then ordered all the chests containing the drug -- 20,291 of them, valued at 2 million pounds sterling in 1880, which was an enormous amount of revenue at that time -- to be placed in specially excavated trenches filled with lime and then seawater, destroying the drug completely.

This Chinese equivalent of the Boston Tea Party, as one might call it, resulted in a war between Britain and China, commonly known as the Opium War (1840 to 1842). A second war, sometimes referred to as the Second Opium War, took place between Allied forces -- again led by the British -- and China between 1857 and 1860.

Surrounding the two Opium Wars, a large body of literature was generated which discussed the status of China among the nations. The "Pretensions of Universal Supremacy" addressed in the pamphlet shown here (published in London circa 1861) alludes to the notion of China styling itself the "Middle Kingdom". (Image: Property of the Wason Collection on East Asia, Cornell University Library)

In what is still today called the Unequal Treaties, China had to surrender territory in the south and was forced to open up five port cities as entry points for foreign merchants. (See also The Abolitionist.) An officer of the 98th Regiment on board the ship HMS Belleisle gave a rather intimate account of the signing of the treaty that ended the first Opium War on August 29, 1842. According to this treaty, the territory in the south of course was Hong Kong, only handed back to China in 1997, fully 155 years after the first treaty was signed, while the five ports would allow the free influx of imported goods, mainly opium. It is estimated that by 1867, almost 70,000 chests of the drug were imported (this time "legally") and that in 1879-80 the value of the imported opium was worth close to 13 million pounds sterling (W. J. Moore, The Other Side of the Opium Question, London 1882).

A rare, non-Marxist example of a western writer arguing in favor of the Chinese in regard to the question of the British-controlled opium imports from South Asia. (Image: Property of the Wason Collection on East Asia, Cornell University Library)

Through the execution of the Unequal Treaties, the previously closed door to China's markets was forced wide open. One of the consequences of the Western powers' establishing a strong presence in the East was that many major Chinese cities became hybrid in their architecture, such as the famous Bund in Shanghai. In addition, by being granted extraterritorial status, residents of foreign nationality enjoyed immunity from the Chinese legal system.

Before the advent of modern newspapers and journalism, those who were intimately involved in events such as the Opium Wars captured the circumstances in writing and image. These included the captains, quartermasters, and midshipmen aboard the ships that constituted the punitive expeditions to China.

The entries produced in these original logs give details about the progress of the naval forces in Chinese waters. The Wason Collection, besides owning the original logbook of the HMS Lion (part of the aforementioned Macartney Papers), includes a number of other highly unique logs, such as the log of the HMS Belleisle, the same boat that brought back the famous Chinese cannons of the destroyed Taku Forts in 1861, and the log of the HMS Retribution, a ship second in command to Lord Elgin's HMS Furious, which went up the Yangzi River, attacked the city of Nanjing, and then proceeded further north, ending with the destruction of the imperial Summer Palace in 1860.

Excerpt from the log of HMS Belleisle 29th August 1842. Treaty of Peace between the Emperor of China and Victoria Queen of England was this day signed on board HMS Cornwallis, by the Plenipotentiary Sir H. Pottinger and Keying, Elipoo, and the other Imperial Commissioners. A salute of 21 guns announced the conclusion of the War.

John Crealock's hand-drawn sketches of the assault on Canton on December 29, 1859, are equally dramatic as the eyewitness accounts of soldiers and officers in the allied forces. In the rare Atlas of Pallu published in 1861, military cartographers precisely mapped the waters off the Chinese coast for the first time and even took an interest in the thickness of ramparts surrounding Chinese cities that were about to be attacked.

French military design of the ramparts and fortifications of a major Chinese defense situated on the coast. (Image: Property of the Wason Collection on East Asia, Cornell University Library.)

A great number of published materials housed in Cornell's Rare Book collection bear witness to the fact that the Wason Collection contains tremendous amounts of resources especially on 19th- and early 20th-century Chinese history. Western materials include pamphlets from the original Wason Pamphlet Collection, amassed until 1918 and comprising some 1600 pieces of early "gray literature" related mostly to things Chinese, or books published immediately after or even during the events of the two Opium Wars.