The First Opium War - IV: Conflagration and Surrender - Extra History

Christina, if you don't teach for a living, you should really consider it... you laid that out better than most of my Japanese history professors.

Avery

Thank you, Connor, that makes it clearer.

Moses Lambert

Hey EH - I'm curious about the Christian missionaries. You mention them briefly in the video as something which was 'too touchy' for the Europeans to even bring up. What was the Christian missionary influence in China at the time of the treaties, why was it a touchy subject at the Nanking Treaty negotiations and how did it influence European-Chinese relations? I'm particularly interested since less than a decade after the end of the First Opium War, a massive Christian uprising - the Taiping Rebellion - resulted in a war that nearly broke the Qing Empire and became one of the deadliest conflicts of the 19th century. Which I hope gets an Extra History series in the future... pleeeeeeaaase?

Connor Raikes

The United Kingdom didn't receive the official 99-year lease until half a century later. It is true that in the initial Treaty of Nanking, the UK received Hong Kong Island as a Crown Colony "in perpetuity", but the terms of territory were revised several times. After the Second Opium War, the UK expanded British Hong Kong to include Kowloon Province, and the British used the 99-year lease to further expand British Hong Kong to include the New Territories. I'm a little confused about this, but here is my understanding: the 99-year lease was only for the New Territories, but Hong Kong had urbanized so rapidly that there was no feasible way to cede the New Territories back to the Mainland without a border being struck through the middle of the city. And even if the British wanted to fight for their ownership of parts of Hong Kong, the Chinese could have just imposed their will militarily on the basis that the whole Hong Kong cession was unjust. (c.f. unequal treaty, century of humiliation, etc.) So the British agreed to cede all of Hong Kong back to China as if the whole island were being leased.

Connor Raikes

Correction: The Brits only got a 99-year lease on HK, not permanent ownership.

Moses Lambert

That makes sense. I'm probably just getting caught up in minutia when it's a topic I know a lot about. I have a bad habit of that.

Christina Maria Jessen

^^^ That was James posting something yesterday, although it appears Patreon ate his message which... sucks. I know he said he wanted to come by and say hi and thanks to you, Christina; I'll try to flag him down and see if we can post a new message. Anyway, regarding cities and which were included and which were left out: one of the things that makes Extra History work as well as it does at getting people interested in new points of history is the flow of the story. We do occasionally take a moment to explain decisions that we've made about representation in the series, but if we had stopped to explain passing references like why we mentioned Shanghai and didn't mention Hangzhou, each episode would very swiftly become bogged down since every episode is full of such decisions. I think if we took that approach, we'd lose out on the people who are just finding a new interest in history. And to clarify, I'm not saying Hangzhou wasn't important, but that the series made sense and accurately represented the overall flow of events without it. -Soraya

Extra History

Extra History

Certainly, if it shows up. Unless another one I like more is in there, but then I'll want to do rank choice voting. At some point, I might increase my pledge level and add topic suggestions

Jessica Cheeri

Japan and China were massively different. Japan didn't have the demographic challenges of China, nor the soil erosion and deforestation problems. It also didn't have the endemic corruption created by entrenched elites being too far for accountability. There was also a distinct difference between the two in that the dominant class in China were Confucian literati trained in classics of poetry and philosophy rather than anything more practical, whereas the Japanese was dominated by merchants and warriors turned bureaucrats. The enforced migration of the daimyo, their families and their entourages also helped create one of the most heavily monetized countries in the world, subsistence farming pretty much didn't exist in Japan anymore by the early 19th century, supported by a small, easily navigable country and major state-sponsored highways. The monetization was further driven by the enforced urbanization inherent in demanding all samurai lived in their lord's castle and the enforced cash economy in demanding they were paid in rice, but giving the Osaka rice merchant's guild a monopoly on the trade in rice. Together these things had caused Japan to have the highest literacy rate in the world and the highest degree of regional specialization, with the inherent commercial nature that brought with it. You can easily see this in the extend of marketing found in Japan. Most of the classic Japanese ukiyo-e paintings you see were either used as wrapping for goods bought, bearing the brand name and hints to remind people of the shop or were compiled and sold as souvenirs for various scenic spots and entertainment districts. IN fact it would take until the interwar period for the west to catch up with the Japanese in subtlety of marketing. The nature of Japanese limitations on imports from the Netherlands also meant that they mostly bought high value goods. In practice this mostly meant art and books, leading to a situation where the Japanese had one of the highest spreads of European scientific knowledge and a fad of painting the Grim Reaper spread in the early 19th century, particularly centered on the figure of Kawanabe Kyousai. The Japanese imported other goods as well, probably the most prominent one being blue, industrial German dyes that provided the distinctive dark blue colors associated with late Edo Period Japan. I could mention several other aspects of Japanese society that were highly different from Chinese, such as the government centering on a secular ruler rather than a quasi-divine emperor or the struggles to try to preserve the primacy of the traditional warrior elite as the merchant class overtook it in power and influence. Many of these traits are more similar to what absolutist European monarchies faced than they are to the situation in China. Also, I'm not sure it's fair to say China refused to adapt to the changing world around the country. The changes mostly didn't get to China until the country was in a position of weakness already and lacked the central authority and legitimacy to actually adapt, then it tried and either got ruined by a lack of money or the action of conservatives at court. A succession of weak child emperors didn't help much either. Figures like Prince Gong were quite eager to adapt to changing times and he was as high placed as you could get in China, he failed due to crippling financial holes, rebellions and Empress Dowager Cixi seeing him as a threat to her power. History is never as simple as saying that a culture couldn't get with the times, there is always a story there when somebody failed. Often, but not always, that story involves foreign powers trying to kneecap the attempt so preserve their own interests in the country.

Christina Maria Jessen

It's fair to say that the West greatly exploited China in this era, but China's idea that they were the Middle Kingdom, literally the center of the universe, and refused to adapt to the changing world around them is exactly how Europe, America, and Japan, a culture which had many of the same problems as China, but learned quicker, to overtake the once all-powerful kingdom of Qin.

Michael Jebbett

It was hardly just Mao and the CCP who was focused on making China strong. He was just the most successful in a century of reformers, revolutionaries and wishful thinkers with that goal. Prince Gong had tried it before being purged by Cixi, the Guangxu Emperor tried it before Cixi reduced him to a figurehead, several scholars and literati tried it before getting purged by Cixi, Cixi herself tried it after the Boxer Rebellion, Yuan Shikai tried it, Yan Xishan tried it, Sun Yatsen tried it, Chiang Kaishek tried it, the warlord of Yunnan whose name I forgot tried it... Really, anybody with any power in China tried it, it's just that they kept failing until the CCP ended internal turmoil and went on to develop nukes following the Sino-Soviet split. To this day, being strong and impossible for foreigners to push around is the guiding principle of Chinese politics. More than any ideology, ethnic preference or anything of the sort, strength to enforce independence is what the CCP is all about.

Christina Maria Jessen

Use of cannons in naval engagement was the greatest point of European technological superiority for centuries. European desire for Asian and American goods drove the need for naval technology to cross oceans in a safe and timely fashion. Piracy, conflict with other European powers in distant waters such as the Caribbean and a desire of European monarchs to secure bases and holdings abroad forced these superior ships to also carry superior cannons. China on the other hand was used to the world coming to them for trade, while facing no foreign attack since the fall of the Ming when the Manchus conquered the country and Russia and Portugal tried to grab some territory at the edges. The latter two suffered crushing defeats at the hand of the beleaguered remnants of the Ming, even as the Ming got conquered by the Manchu invaders. After that, the only real foreign wars China had fought were the conquests of the Tarim, Dzungaria and Tibet, three sparsely populated regions and in Tibet's case also a place that had been known for being backwards. China hadn't needed advanced military technology before, whereas the constant violence of Europe had led to great institutional knowledge of this in every European great power. Chinese civilian technology was notably more advanced, though still pre-industrial, but was actually deteriorating from demographic pressures and great poverty. Farmers couldn't afford a better plow or improved harnesses for draft animals, usually they couldn't even afford draft animals and had to pull it themselves, while there was no incentive for merchants and landlords in investing in improved technology when there were hundreds of millions of poor peasants willing to do the job through their own labor. The greatly expanding population had also led to massive deforestation for fuel and to clear farmland, causing shortages of fuel that would make a lot of early industrial development impossible. Add political instability, rampant opium addiction and ethnic tensions, particularly in the south where the war was fought, and China getting its own ass kicked on its own turf is pretty understandable. In a lot of ways China's wealth, power and sheer international might ended up doing it a disfavor in the end. It grew complacent internationally and cheap labor and lack of fuel hindered internal development. I mean, corruption and long transit times for communication with distant governors certainly didn't help internally. Japan is a pretty interesting comparison since its demographics and the economic and political challenges it faced in this period makes it one of the countries most comparable to the forces that are generally believed to lead to industrial revolution in England. Pretty much the only thing Japan needed for mechanization was sources of coal and decent iron. This despite having technology that was pretty much comparable with China at any given point.

Christina Maria Jessen

The specter of opium would linger for a long time after The Good Earth too. It wasn't until the CCP victory in the Civil War that opium addiction ceased to be an endemic problem throughout China. It's hard to overestimate the influence opium had on China. Probably the best comparison would be alcohol in Russia following the end of the Cold War.

Christina Maria Jessen

The thing about Nanjing is that mostly Pinyin was used. The name Zhenjiang had at the time was either Kingkow or Kinkiang and Beijing would have been Peking, so Nanjing stands out a bit as the only place other than Guangzhou to have its postal map name. As for Shanghai, my concern is mostly that mentioning it as one of a handful of cities gives the impression that it was important at the time, which it wasn't in particular. WHile I understand the point of using it to anchor understanding of where things were and what was going on, by leaving Hangzhou and Suzhou out, the impression can easily be that Shanghai was important at the time, while those cities weren't. Maybe just adding a modifier to say that it wasn't that important at the time could have done the same, while also making people curious about how Shanghai became the city from Temple of Doom 90 years later. Also, Hangzhou is pretty central to this story since it's where most of the tea the British were buying came from. While tea was growing in other parts of China, the overwhelming majority came from the area around Hangzhou with major cultivation further inland, primarily Yunnan, didn't truly expand until later. To this day, the most expensive tea in the world, Lion Well district Longjing, is from Hangzhou.

Christina Maria Jessen

Fire ships were actually used by several nations. You basically needed something as big as a fishing boat, you packed it with oil or gunpowder, depending on what your country had, and then sailed it towards a ship with a skeleton crew. Once they were close, they set the ship on a ramming course, lit their stock, jumped off and then swam away. Meanwhile, if you were lucky the ship hit it's target just as the fire started to rage and it would destroy your target. Conversely, if it was destroyed the fact that the ship exploded would cause a negative psychological effect on the crew.

Sean Sarff

Now that we've gotten to the end of this series I feel comfortable to talk about how China viewed this. It was while I was going to college and majoring in history my Eastern Civ teacher showed us a couple of clips from a movie talking about the Opium War that was made in China. In it, they made Lin Zi Shou (I'm misspelling his name I know, please no hate) the hero and it showed how he rallied the Chinese people to fight and overcome the British. Obviously all propaganda, but it's interesting and explains so much about why when Mao took over in the early 20th Century there was so much focus on making China better than the west so they could avoid such terrible defeat. Especially when you consider one of the largest land empires was beaten by a small island nation. I hope we get to see the Second Opium War. Even though it was a terrible event that happened to China it's important for everyone to know what we did in the past to learn from our failings to be better people today.

Sean Sarff

I've suggested the Taiping Rebellion twice, but random raffles being what they are, it's number hasn't come up. Pretty satisfied with what we've got instead, but I'd still love to have it.

Christina Maria Jessen

The actual engagements of the First Opium War were incredibly lopsided, with the British sometimes causing near as many casualties to the Chinese forces as the total number of fielded British soldiers, with casualty ratios well in excess of 50 or even 100-1 at Ningpo. The primary weapon of the British army was the flintlock musket, with several select units of King's Rifles and percussion muskets, while the Chinese were using outdated firearms from the Ming Dynasty. The flintlocks had about twice the range and about a 50% greater fire rate, meaning the volley fire of the British troops was devastating to Chinese forces. The rifles would be even better. The best way I've ever explained the difference between rifles and muskets on the battlefield is simple. "Muskets are fired at formations. Rifles are fired at targets." The King's Rifles were excellent shots, and able to hit who they needed, when they needed. It wasn't just the small arms though. Investment in the sciences of chemistry and metallurgy led to finer cannon barrels and more precise formulations of gunpowder, maximizing British artillery's destructive power compared to the Qing cannons. Individual pieces of modern weaponry existed in China, but the Qing troops were woefully underequipped for this conflict. In addition, the British military had become one of the most professional forces in history, well-drilled in movement and firing technique. Napoleon had brought many sweeping revolutions to Western warfare, and these ideas were incorporated by his enemies. The need for trained, reliable troops led to regular training, which in turn led to high morale. By contrast, the Qing forces often broke after the British first double volley, while the British were trained to the shock and chaos of gunfire. The Qing army had little success against the British, but a peasant uprising at Sanyuanli, outside of Canton. A large group of Chinese locals armed with hand weapons attacked a group of Indian and British soldiers who were besieged for two hours before withdrawing to the Western Fort. When the villagers approached the fort, the British commander used the threat of burning down Canton to force the governor to order the crowd to disperse. This action is used as a heroic instance of popular revolt against foreign invaders, and much like the Battle of Bunker Hill, was largely blown out of proportion for nationalist reasons (only four British soldiers died). The governor who ordered the crowds dispersed had his career ruined, and the nationalist, anti-foreigner sentiment help support the Taiping Rebellion and the Boxers. Overall, the First Opium War showed that superior training and superior equipment had a phenomenal effect on overall military strength, as would the Second Opium War.

Jim McGeehin

I ALSO want to say: Christina has been posting these amazing, detailed reflections on every episode since this series began, and I've seen them getting a lot of likes! That is fantastic. And since I know a fair number of you are reading these, I'm hoping I can take a moment to remind everyone that what Extra History tries to do is provide a narrative-driven introduction to these topics, but there is a lot more information you can find by doing a deeper dive. I've said this before, but sometimes I feel like people assume that what Extra History leaves out are the "boring" parts - not so! A deeper dive will give you information the likes of what Christina has been kindly sharing, details that can give you such a richer understanding of the events and contain so many interesting stories you wouldn't have found otherwise. So if you ever enjoy an Extra History series, and you're sad when it ends, go get yourself lost in a Wikipedia rabbithole or pick up a book from your local library! I promise you there is so, so much more to find.

Extra History

When you say 'modernize', it makes me wonder, with how isolationist China was making itself out to be and their tactic of sending burning ships at the British instead of their own dedicated gunboats (sails and not steamers, naturally), just how behind on military tactics and weaponry were the Chinese? Especially since the comparatively smaller and modern British forces were kicking their asses on their own turf.

The Cayute

You mean like in a future series, or in Lies? The first one I can't guarantee (that's up to you folks!) but the latter I can suggest to James for consideration in Lies. No promises, though. As always, Lies is gonna be quite packed. :)

Extra History

I mean, if you vote for it...

Extra History

This is the last animated episode in this series! We'll have a Lies episode out next week. After that, there will be two weeks' worth of one-off episodes.

Extra History

We're grateful to you all for voting on such interesting topics and allowing us to talk about some of these offbeat topics, like opium wars and cholera investigations. ;)

Extra History

We originally wrote Nanjing in this episode, but ultimately decided that since we'd been using names like Canton that we should remain consistent with the names used during the period. As for Shanghai, I feel like you answered your own question, though maybe I missed some aspect of it? We wanted to mention it (over Suzhou and Hangzhou) because it's become significant, and we often choose to reference cities that will be recognizable to our audience today to provide them with an anchor so they understand the connection between the history they're learning and the places they've heard about. Finally, Laura: I am definitely sending all of Christina's comments to James as part of my Lies summary for him to review. :D

Extra History

It's been ages since I read that book, but I still remember some parts of it so vividly. I do remember the rich neighbor was addicted to opium, so even though it didn't take place during the Opium Wars, the spectre of them still lingered very clearly.

Extra History

Yep, Lies is next week! After that we have two different one-offs, but I'm going to let the topics of those be a surprise. :D

Extra History

I hope you talk about how these wars have affected the countries in Asia.

Jason Youngberg

Since it was mentioned in this episode, I hope there will be a series about the Taiping and Hong Xiuquan eventually

Jessica Cheeri

I think we need you on the Lies episode.

Laura Galm

Martin Verran

Awesome, I cant thank you guys enough for bringing to light the events that have great importance on the modern society, but are left behind, by shadows of epic, glorious battles of other more famous wars...

Karen Vardanyan

Not a lot to say about the military operations, they aren't really what I learned studying this topic. I do have two comments though. One is that I'm not entirely sure why the capture of Shanghai was mentioned, but not what happened to Suzhou and Hangzhou. Shanghai wasn't a terribly important city at the time, mostly just serving as the oceanic port for the vastly more important Suzhou as well as a station for Chinese naval forces in dealing with pirates in the area. Suzhou and Hangzhou on the other hand were cities of more than a million inhabitants each, Hangzhou was a former imperial capital and they were the two first major stops on the Grand Canal. The Yangtze is only a major shipping lane for southern China, it doesn't flow into the North Chinese Plain or the Loess Plateau, much less Manchuria or the mountains near the border between inner China and the Mongolian steppes. The Grand Canal, still the largest man-made canal in the world, is what connects the fertile south with the more barren north, supplying it with rice and other staple foods to support a population larger than northern agriculture itself could. Which leads me to the second question about military operations, one about the war and not choices in the telling: Why was Nanjing so important? It couldn't be access to the north through the Grand Canal, Zhenjiang and Yangzhou held that. Was it for food supplies getting shipped out from Hunan, Hubei and Sichuan in the west, rather than agricultural products from Fujian, Zhejiang and Jiangxi in the southeast? Anyway, the peace treaty is what really matters here and the thing that made Shanghai important. I can't remember the exact list of ports "opened" in it, only that it was five in the original treaty, but the one that really matters is Shanghai. Situated at the mouth of the Yangtze and halfway along the Chinese coast, Shanghai was the perfect location for managing and collecting trade throughout East Asia. "Opening" Shanghai, in reality ceding a muddy stretch of land along the Huangpu River between the city proper and Suzhou Creek, was what made Shanghai the city that would become the largest urban area in the world, exceeding even Tokyo. As the base of western mercantile interest in China and especially a safe haven protected against the Taiping by the great powers of the west, saw it attract more than a million Chinese peasants fleeing war and poverty before the turn of the century. By WWII, it would be the most important spot in the world economy, the place the fate of China had already been decided and the location Chiang Kaishek decided to make his major stand against the Japanese invasion. So perhaps Shanghai wasn't of major strategic and economic significance at the time of the war, but it was still central to what the First Opium War was about and I think that makes it worth mentioning, even as cities that were more important at the time weren't. The exact content of the unequal treaties wasn't touched on in the video, probably because it's often legally complex, but I believe that it is important to understand the full story and why they were so destructive and humiliating for the Chinese. There are primarily three aspects of them prior to the Second Opium War: Extraterritoriality, concessions and Most Favored Nation clauses. The first of these stated that citizen of nations with a treaty including an extraterritoriality clause would not be subject to Chinese laws, but only to the laws of their homeland, even while on Chinese soil. Concessions are a legally highly confusing principle that still sends my head spinning trying to untangle despite having worked on topics dealing with interwar Shanghai for years now, but in essence it was a territory that remained under Chinese sovereignty, but where foreign law applied. The two most famous concessions are in Shanghai: The French Concession and the International Settlement (in reality the British, American, Italian and German/Japanese concessions). Smaller ones were found in the other treaty ports, which is to say the other ports "opened", but gradually the principle of concessions expanded to include huge territories, particularly along the Yangtze and in Manchuria. Finally Most Favored Nation clauses, which weren't yet a thing in the original peace treaty following the First Opium War but were invented by US diplomats a short while later, stated that should any country get further rights and privileges in China, these would immediately and automatically be extended to the Most Favored Nation. By the time the Second Opium War rolled around every western nation, even minor ones like Norway or Greece, had these clauses. Shortly after the Meiji Restoration Japan achieved one as well. Also, I'm not sure I can quite agree that the Second Opium War played out much like the first. Militarily it did, though it was even more devastating and humiliating for China as it saw Beijing occupied and an imperial palace sacked, and the treaty at the end continued the trajectory of the first, but the start was very different and highlighted the changes in China's position. Where the First Opium War had seen two arrogant empires viewing each other as barbarians clash, Britain practically stumbling into it and Britain's economic fortunes ride on it, the Second Opium War was a purely imperialistic war started on a transparent pretext. The Second Opium War started due to a scuffle aboard the ship The Arrow in a Chinese port. The Arrow was a former pirate vessel and under suspicion of renewed piracy, but it's last legal registration had been in Hong Kong, though this registration was expired, making it technically a British subject. This minor incident lead to almost immediate military reprisal from the British, including bombardment of the very forts outside Guangzhou that featured repeatedly in the First Opium War. The British also sought what allies they could among the great powers, securing France, and marched on Beijing to force new concessions out of China. Over a minor incident involving likely pirates using the British flag as a shield while caring little enough to even keep up with the bureaucratic demands to do so. One last thing. The naming is a bit confusing. Generally speaking pinyin transcription and approximated Putonghua pronunciation has been used, but occasionally such as Nanjing the Wade-Giles transcription and pronunciation was used and in the case of Guangzhou, the ancient postal map transcription was used. Was this a deliberate choice? I kinda understand it with Canton, it's far more known in the west by that name and the names are different enough that it's not immediately obvious that Canton and Guangzhou are two ways of saying the same thing, but why Nanking? It's only one letter of difference, making it pretty easy to figure out that they're the same and Nanjing is used far more frequently than Guangzhou is. It just seems needlessly confusing to suddenly switch from pinyin to Wade-Giles.

Christina Maria Jessen

Update on that, I was wrong. 'The Good Earth' takes place just prior to WWI.

Aaron hutchinson

Very interesting. I have to go back and look at what time period 'The Good Earth' was because it sounds like it's in either the opium wars or the civil war you eluded to. But maybe I'm wrong and thinking of a different part of history.

Aaron hutchinson

Awesome series! So I take it next week is Lies? And what are you planning in the two weeks after that?

Brian Rose