Poppies have been used in Chinese medicine since the
seventh century CE, they are mentioned in a pharmacopoeia by Liu Han, Ma Chih
and others, where the seeds of the poppy – ying-tzŭ-su – are described
as being useful for those who have been taking mercury in the belief that it
imparts immortality, if the seeds are mixed with bamboo juice boiled into
gruel. Wang Hsi, who died in 1488, wrote,
“Opium is produced in Arabia from a Poppy with a red flower … the capsule, while still fresh, is pricked for the juice.”
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| Opium Poppies |
In the latter years of the Ming dynasty, in the seventeenth
century, Spanish and Dutch merchants introduced tobacco from the Americas into
China through the Philippines, and the practice of smoking a mixture of opium
and tobacco began. Edicts against tobacco smoking were issued, but the habit
spread too rapidly to be effectively restricted by law. The Chinese habit was
to smoke their tobacco in pipes, and it spread throughout the entire country,
across all classes and was enjoyed by men and women alike.
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| Chinese Opium Smokers |
It was not until
1729 that the first edict restricting the use of opium was issued, but this was
also ineffectual, due to the widespread use of the drug, not least amongst
those in positions of power. The punishments were not inflicted on the smokers,
but on anyone involved in the sale and distribution, and were very harsh
indeed. The sellers were imprisoned for several months and then strangled,
their assistants were beaten with one hundred blows and subjected to a
banishment of one thousand miles.
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| Chinese Merchants |
Runners, magistrates, police, boat-keepers,
indeed anyone bar the smoker (who, it was felt, had suffered enough with their
addiction), were all severely dealt with, as it was attempted to remove the
scourge from China. In a report to the British parliament of 1783, it was
reported that any vessel caught importing opium to be used for smoking would be
confiscated, the opium would be destroyed and any Chinese members of the crew
would be executed.
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| A Wife tries to destroy an opium smoker's pipe |
Nevertheless, contraband opium continued to be smuggled into
the country and as more opium entered the market, more addicts were created,
and more addicts meant further opium was needed to feed their habit, resulting
in a terrible self-replicating circle. The main reason for the failure of the
official policy was the great number of corrupt of Viceroys, Governors, Customs
Officers and so forth, who were far to easy to bribe, either with silver or
even with opium itself, compounding the problem still further. It is estimated
that Dutch and Portuguese traders were importing no more than two hundred
chests of opium per year at the time, and the edict was intended to stop the
smoking of opium, rather than restricting its import for medical use.
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| Canton |
In 1773,
the Dutch trade ended and English merchants, trading from Calcutta, took over
the importing of opium into China, until the East India Company in turn took
over the trade in 1781, and by 1790 the imports had risen to four thousand
chests per year. As the smoking of opium spread throughout southern China, the
Jiaqing Emperor issued an edict banning its importation and smoking, together
with the cultivation of poppies, and opium became a contraband cargo.
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| The Great Wall over the Hills |
The
British, trading through the East India Company, bought vast amounts of goods
from China, including tea and porcelain, for which they paid in silver but the
Chinese imported very few goods from the west, resulting on a drain in hard
currency from Europe.
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| Smoking Opium |
The opium trade reversed this situation, as silver began
to ooze out of China, to the consternation of the Emperor, who needed funds to
suppress internal revolts in his realm. British vessels shipped the opium to
Lintin Island, where it was unload and the ships proceeded into Canton with
their legitimate cargoes, whilst smaller native vessels smuggled the prohibited
drug ashore later. It was a cash trade on an open market, and demand continued
to grow, from an average of about five thousand chests in the 1810s, which had
doubled by the following decade.
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| Imperial Commissioner Lin Zexu |
From 1820 on, the new Dauguang Emperor issued
many more edicts banning opium and sent his Commissioner Lin Zexu south, to
enforce the edicts. Lin arrived in Canton (now Guangdong) in March 1839 and had
an immediate effect. He was an tremendously efficient bureaucrat and
administrator, and was noted for his honesty and morality, and he confiscated
over 20,000 chests of opium (over one million kilograms) which he had
destroyed, arrested over 1,700 opium dealers, and seized over 70,000 opium
pipes.
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| Crates of Opium awaiting destruction |
But Lin Zexu did something else in his attempt to stamp out the opium
trade. I will tell you what that was tomorrow.
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