opium wars Britain china

Miscommunications between Britain and China abounded in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, culminating eventually in the Opium Wars. In the 1840 document from Lord Palmerston to the Emperor of China, and the 1792 letter sent directly from King George III to the Emperor of China both reveal British desperation to trade with China. Initially motivated by access to China’s tea markets, the British East India Company soon recognized the lucrative potential of diversifying into the global opium trade as well.

Even prior to the newfound hunger for opium, the British sought free trade with China, evidenced in these letters. Yet as the tone and content of these two documents show, China had little to gain from doing business with Britain. China’s concept of international diplomacy also seems qualitatively different from that of the British, although these two British documents naturally offer only a one-sided view of the situation.

The conciliatory tone in these two documents shows that Britain was indeed in a subordinate position with regard to establishing bilateral trade agreements. Trade imbalances, as well as stark cultural differences and divergent political philosophies, led to a persistent foreign relations discontinuity between Britain and China.

Based on a textual analysis of the Lord Palmerston letter and that of King George III, three specific indications of foreign relations discontinuities include a shift from King George’s blatantly conciliatory and seemingly insincere tone to Lord Palmerston’s paternalistic one, an obvious shift in assertion that the mission was educational in nature even while underscoring the desire for trade, and ultimately a tacit acknowledgement that Britain needs China more than China needs Britain.

The differences between King George’s letter and that of Lord Palmerston are striking, particularly with regards to tone, style, and theme. King George’s sycophantic tone belies Britain’s core objective: to overcome the asymmetrical trade relations that exist between Britain and China. Britain wants to endear itself to the Chinese, and thus a personal letter from the King serves just that purpose.

The King’s language is flowery and excessively laudatory, referring to the “bounds of friendship and benevolence” that exist between the two realms (King George, p. 245). On the contrary, Lord Palmerston’s tone is derogatory and self-righteous, revealing the underlying hypocrisy of the Crown’s original intent. Whereas George had claimed to seek diplomatic relations for the purpose of intellectual intercourse, the exchange of ideas, and education, Palmerston has by 1840 done away with any such false pretenses.

Palmerston claims to have the moral high ground on the Chinese, as when telling Beijing: “If it enforces that Law on Foreigners, it is bound to enforce it also upon its own Subjects; and it has no right to permit its own Subjects to violate the Law with impunity, and then to punish Foreigners for doing the very same thing,” (Palmerston 1).

In the five decades between King George’s original appointment of Viscount Macartney as the ambassador and the onset of the Opium Wars, Britain had shown its true colors. Palmerston refers repeatedly to the “demands” Britain is placing on China: a country that has hosted British merchants for decades. In fact, King George had promised the Chinese crown to conduct any business in accordance with Chinese law and custom.

George had stated outright about establishing political and economic diplomacy that “such intercourse requires to be properly conducted,” (p. 245). Similarly, King George tells the Chinese Emperor that the newly appointed ambassador has been instructed to punish anyone who transgresses Chinese law or disturbs the peace. It is likely King George had been sincere when he wrote those words, as conflict would have been anathema to trade: the ultimate goal of the diplomatic mission of Macartney.

Even more ironically, Palmerston claims to respect Chinese law even while standing up for British subjects who had overtly disobeyed such laws—most importantly the clandestine importation of opium through known trade channels. Palmerston claims, “Her Majesty does not wish to protect [those who disobey laws] from the just consequences of any offences which they may commit in foreign parts,” and in the very next sentence claims that persecution of British opium smugglers was a type of “injustice,” (Palmerston, p. 1).

Granted, Palmerston may be correct in his assertions that Chinese law was being inconsistently applied to British versus Chinese subjects, and also that Chinese punitive measures were violent and unnecessarily harsh. Nevertheless, the Chinese had made an agreement with the British and the British broke that agreement. The British, instead of apologizing or assuming the conciliatory tone that King George III might have done, instead react like a petulant child.

Sending a full naval fleet to the Chinese coast is a more global act of aggression than the individual singling out of opium smugglers who were actually breaking the law. Palmerston’s letter seems to suggest that the Crown’s goal all along might have been to find any excuse possible to instigate military activity that might expand Britain’s locus of control in the region.

King George III does briefly refer to a prior incident, leaving out any details, in which “one Man shall not suffer for the crime of another, in which he did not participate, and whose evasion from Justice he did not assist,” (King George, p. 247). Here, it is as if the King is referring to an incident that took place in which innocent people were used as scapegoats to punish a crime that had been committed by another person.

Palmerston is effectively doing the same: punishing China more broadly instead of first seeking a diplomatic solution to the problem. Britain is simply hungry for opium, and cannot tolerate the Chinese government’s policy of restricting its own access to the world’s largest market. Effectively, Britain had sought not just access to Chinese goods like tea and then opium, but to the Chinese consumer market: which it hoped to have access to as a matter of course.

China had no interest in importing anything Britain had to sell, leading to a trade deficit that besieged the two nations in the years to come. King George and Palmerston both seek to solidify and strengthen the political and economic relationship between Britain and China, of that there is no doubt.

Even though King George tries to cloak the Crown’s endeavors with idealism, the monarch ultimately admits, “no doubt the interchange of commodities between Nations distantly situated tends to their mutual convenience, industry, and wealth,” (King George, p. 245).

However, just a few paragraphs earlier, King George claims that Britain’s endeavors in China were “not for the purpose of conquest, or of enlarging Our dominions which are already sufficiently extensive...not for the purpose of acquiring wealth...but for the sake of increasing Our knowledge of the habitable Globe,” (King George, p. 244). Given Britain’s current escapades in South Asia and its having recently lost the United States, China’s emperor would have no doubt found the King’s letter almost humorous.

The inconsistencies in British foreign policy vis-a-vis trade partners in Asia is most evident in the ways China understands it has the upper hand. While China’s own position is not evident from British correspondences, the tone and content of Lord Palmerston’s and King George’s letters do suggest that China still had the upper hand in regional and even world trade. Moreover, China had a healthy mistrust of foreign governments and their disingenuous intentions.

China welcomed the establishment of diplomatic ties through King George, but clearly had given no indication it wanted to renegotiate trade agreements or offer Britain any sort of free trade agreement whatsoever. The fact that Britain was restricted to doing business only in certain areas of Canton clearly demonstrates China’s political and economic strategy to retain the dominant position. Palmerston’s letter and its angry tone shows that Britain did not have any intention of engaging China in mutually beneficial, bilateral agreements.

On the contrary, Britain hated the fact that the Chinese outsmarted them at their own game. When Palmerston states, “These measures of hostility on the part of Great Britain against China are not only justified, but even rendered absolutely necessary, by the outrages which have been committed by the Chinese Authorities against British officers and Subjects,” it becomes.