Britain Hooked China Then Sent The Bill

Twenty thousand chests of opium were destroyed on a Chinese beach in June 1839. The men who owned them made money out of it, because the seizure cleared the shelves and the price went up. Three years later a treaty valued that same opium at six million dollars and sent China the bill. This is the ledger of the First Opium War, read line by line. Britain cut the import duty on Chinese tea from a hundred and ten per cent to an average of ten in 1784. Demand became national, silver drained east to pay for it, and opium grown in British India was the instrument that closed the gap. Two hundred chests went to China in 1729. Forty thousand went in 1838. It was contraband the whole time. Parliament had already decided it would not give up the money. In 1832 a Select Committee resolved that it was not, in its words, expedient to relinquish the revenue arising from the cultivation of opium in India, and a Member read that minute back into the chamber eight years later. By 1840 the government's own figures put one sixth of the whole united revenue of Great Britain and India on the China trade. The part almost nobody reads is the treaty itself. If this was a war to force opium into China, the document that ended it should say so. It does not. Opium appears once, in Article 4, as a thing China must pay six million dollars for. Article 6 adds twelve million more for the expenses of the expedition that came to collect. Article 7 totals it: twenty one million dollars. The war did not legalise the drug. Legalisation took a second war, in 1856 to 1860. The complication is kept in, not edited out: on one scholarly reading, political London did not experience this as an opium war at all, and the trade was never purely British. Motive is arguable. The ledger is not. Every figure, date and quotation in this film comes from a frozen source ledger: Hansard for the Commons debate of 7 to 9 April 1840 with column numbers, the Treaty of Nanking articles verbatim, and Lin Zexu's letter to Queen Victoria in Giles's translation. Subscribe for the financial history of empire: the levy, the loan, and the collector. Worth arguing about: if the treaty never mentions legalising opium, what was the war for? CHAPTERS 0:00 The invoice that outlived the cargo 0:18 Start with the tea 1:04 One sixth of the whole revenue 1:34 Two hundred chests to forty thousand 2:02 1832: Britain writes it down 2:47 The firms who carried it 3:30 Lin Zexu tries a letter first 4:18 Humen: a thousand tons destroyed 4:45 Neither empire could talk to the other 5:11 The men who lost the cargo were delighted 5:47 The hinge: a bill, not a rescue 6:05 Three nights in the Commons 7:00 Gladstone: a war more unjust in its origin 7:34 The honest complication 8:34 A majority of nine 8:45 The order predates the vote 9:05 What the treaty actually says 9:37 Article four: six million dollars 9:47 Article six: billed for the fleet 10:18 Count the opium in the treaty 10:45 It took a second war to legalise it 10:54 The line that actually paid 11:40 Never only a British operation 12:09 Who got to write it down 12:44 Back to the beach SOURCES Hansard, HC Deb 7-9 April 1840, cc670, 740, 818, 819, 835, 895, 950 (api.parliament.uk historic-hansard) Treaty of Nanking, 29 August 1842, Articles 2, 3, 4, 6 and 7 (Wikisource) Lin Zexu, Letter to Queen Victoria, 1839, trans. H. A. Giles Select Committee of the House of Commons, resolution of 1832, as read into Hansard 1840 Corrections welcome in the comments.