Opium (23 page)

Opium was also retailed to local Chinese in Hong Kong. Within weeks of the Union Jack being raised on the island, the
Canton Register
predicted ‘Hong Kong will be the resort and rendezvous of all the Chinese smugglers. Opium houses and gambling houses will soon spread; to those haunts will flock all the discontented and bad spirits of the empire.'

The assessment was correct for crime and vice soared. Brothels provided for the needs of sailors, military personnel and the hordes of lonely Chinese men who migrated to Hong Kong from the hinterland of Kwangtung province to seek their fortunes. Large numbers of opium dens or divans sprang up. Aware of the potential revenue, the governor set up a local monopoly by which the right to deal in opium in Hong Kong was sold annually to the highest bidder. The opium franchise was known as an opium ‘farm', the noun deriving from the verb ‘to farm', meaning to pass responsibility, the successful bidder for a farm monopoly agreeing to pay a certain annual amount by way of a licence, with whatever he could make on top of this being his profit. It proved impossible to enforce so the monopoly was dropped and, from 1847, a system of licensing dens was introduced with the stipulation that owners had to display their licences on the premises, could retail opium only for cash and were obliged to keep armed persons out.

Tension between Britain and China remained high, however. Humiliated by losing the conflict and still burdened by opium, the Chinese authorities deeply resented the foreign presence in their kingdom. Opium addiction was rapidly growing, the treaty ports became hives of corruption, crime burgeoned and imperial authority was increasingly undermined. This led to another problem. Piracy and banditry burgeoned.

In 1847, the receiving ships at anchor between Amoy and Foochow were all attacked, their crews massacred: then two opium vessels, the
Omega
and the
Caroline,
were boarded and the crews killed. Even the
Sylph,
Jardine Matheson's clipper, was taken in 1849. When the Chinese commander of the Bogue forts reprimanded local pirates in 1844, they kidnapped him, sliced off his ears, then ransomed him.

Some pirates sailed under British protection for a large number of the Chinese racketeers involved in opium based themselves in Hong Kong and gained British nationality. In addition, a colonial ordinance was instituted whereby a Hong Kong Chinese-owned vessel could be granted a British register, allowing it to fly the British flag and come under the same protection as a British-owned vessel. This meant a fair number of China coastal pirates sailed under the British flag.

Not only Chinese pirates preyed on shipping. In 1845, an English pirate named Henry Sinclair was sentenced in Hong Kong to transportation for life but the most infamous was an American, Eli Boggs. He operated – as did Sinclair – throughout the South China Sea. Boggs commanded a fleet of thirty war-cum-fighting junks crewed by Chinese. He attacked numerous vessels before being caught by the Royal Navy in 1857. His actual murdering of captured crews not being able to be proven, he was sentenced to Victoria prison in Hong Kong.

Of the many Chinese pirates who attacked opium clippers or general cargo vessels, the most notorious were Chui A-pou and Shap Ng-tsai. They raided the whole South China coast with substantial fleets of junks, taking any vessel they could or charging a toll on passing ships. Chui A-pou's fleet of junks, based in Bias (now Daya) Bay north-east of Hong Kong, was destroyed on the night of 1 October 1849 by HMS
Columbine
and HMS
Fury.
Within a fortnight, Shap Ng-tsai's fleet was cornered, 58 of his 64 junks being destroyed with 3150 men killed. Shap Ng-tsai escaped with 400 men and set up a pirate base on Hainan Island: he was subsequently persuaded to give up piracy and was made an Imperial naval civil servant.

The last major skirmish against pirates was the Battle of Hahlam Bay on 4 August 1855, when the USS
Powhattan
and HMS
Rattler
sank 10 junks and killed 800 pirates: this was a rare instance of the Royal Navy and the United States Navy joining forces to protect trade routes – especially those carrying opium. Thereafter, piracy was conducted by small bands who were more easily handled.

With such a volatile situation, it was certain to be only a matter of time before something happened. In October 1856, it did.

The
Arrow
was a Chinese-owned, Hong Kong-registered
lorcha:
a
lorcha
was a type of craft unique to the Far East, being a vessel with a Western-type hull but rigged with junk sails and frequently carrying Chinese-type superstructure – it may still be seen in Hong Kong waters, without the sails and powered by marine diesels. Although flying the British flag, she was attacked by armed Chinese junks, sequestered in Canton and charged with piracy. Crewed by Chinese, the
Arrow
was commanded by an Englishman. Theoretically, she should have been safe but for the fact her annually renewable certificate of registry had expired eleven days before. The captain and crew were returned unharmed to Hong Kong but their ship was impounded.

The British dismissed the expired registration as a minor administrative matter and requested the craft be restored: the Chinese authorities were adamant. After a series of failed negotiations and using the incident as an excuse to take on the Chinese who refused to revert certain parts of the Treaty of Nanking which the British required altered, a British naval force under the command of Admiral Seymour attacked the Bogue forts. In retaliation, the Canton factories were torched and the passengers on a steamboat, the
Thistle,
were massacred.

So began the second Sino-British conflict. Known as the Second Opium War or the
Arrow
War, the hostilities lasted from 1856 to 1860, the campaigns being far bloodier than in the previous opium war.

This time, however, the British were not alone. After the Battle of Fatshan Creek to the west of Canton, in June 1857, the French joined in in response to the murder of a French missionary. The Chinese militia was no match for the highly trained European forces and was beaten. During the war, in June 1858, the Treaty of Tientsin was signed. Opium was not specifically included in the treaty but it was made abundantly clear to the Chinese that, unless it was legalised, relations between the countries would remain fragile. Lord Elgin, who had been sent from London to negotiate a peace, was confidentially informed that opium was the most important matter to which he was to address himself.

Despite the Treaty of Tientsin, the war continued. Eventually, British troops marched into Peking, razing the Summer Palace and 200 other Imperial buildings to the ground. On 24 October 1860, Lord Elgin signed the Convention of Peking. Prince Kung, the equivalent of the Foreign Minister and brother of the Emperor Hsien feng, conceded to the British demands that new treaty ports be established, the Yangtze River be opened to trade and foreigners be given unhindered access to the Chinese interior. With such concessions and those of subsequent treaties, credit and transport systems developed, banks were founded or expanded, insurance and shipping companies burgeoned and blossomed. Hong Kong, as the hub of transport and commerce with China, flourished.

The most important of the Convention terms, however, was the placing of a tariff on the importation of opium which more or less legalised the trade.

The duty, identical to that placed upon ordinary goods under the Treaty of Nanking, was set at 30 taels (39.75 ounces) of silver per picul (approximately 133.5 pounds) of opium. It was much lower than the Chinese had requested: the British kept it down so as not to upset the Indian exporters and rock the Indian revenue boat. As Sir Rutherford Alcock, a British Ambassador to Peking, informed the British Parliament in 1871, ‘we forced the Chinese Government to enter into a Treaty to allow their subjects to take opium.'

Ironically, the Convention allowed for missionaries as well as traders to enter China, the preaching of the gospels being legalised along with opium. Many missionaries did not approve of this and petitioned Queen Victoria to change the situation regarding the drug trade, but to no avail. Understandably, a good number of Chinese identified Western evangelism with the drug trade. Opium and morphine – which was sometimes erroneously employed by well-meaning missionary doctors to cure opium addiction – were frequently referred to as ‘Jesus-Opium'. Such was the link between the Christians and opium that when Alcock left Peking in 1869, Prince Kung told him if he removed opium and missionaries from China, traders would be welcomed.

The Convention provided not only for an excise duty on opium but also led to the foreign administration of the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs which, under predominantly British control, developed into a highly effective organisation usually beyond the taint of corruption. Their efficiency produced a downturn in smuggling activity, although some running continued because even the low duty was considered worth avoiding. Smuggling, however, increased again after 1876 when, under the Chefoo Convention between Britain and China, the inland revenue on opium (known as
li kin
), was gathered along with the import duty. Amounting to a total of 110 taels per picul, it was considered well worth evading.

Not only immediate concessions were granted the foreigners. The Treaty of Tientsin had included a revision clause allowing a reassessment of the terms every decade and intended to give the British a chance to rewrite the rules without recourse to more gun-boat diplomacy. Yet this cut both ways and, in 1869, the Chinese Foreign Office sent an appeal to the British government. It read in part:

From Tsung-li-Yamen to Sir Alcock, July, 1869

… the Chinese merchant supplies your country with his goodly tea and silk, conferring thereby a benefit upon her; but the English merchant empoisons China with pestilent opium. Such conduct is unrighteous. Who can justify it? What wonder if officials and people say that England is wilfully working out China's ruin, and has no real friendly feeling for her? The wealth and generosity of England are spoken by all; she is anxious to prevent and anticipate all injury to her commercial interests. How is it, then, she can hesitate to remove an acknowledged evil? Indeed, it cannot be that England still holds to this evil business, earning the hatred of the officials and people of China, and making herself a reproach among the nations, because she would lose a little revenue were she to forfeit the cultivation of the poppy!

The writers hope that His Excellency will memorialise his Government to give orders in India and elsewhere to substitute the cultivation of cereals or cotton. Were both nations to rigorously prohibit the growth of the poppy, both the trade in and the consumption of opium might alike be put an end to. To do away with so great an evil would be a great virtue on England's part; she would strengthen friendly relations and make herself illustrious. How delightful to have so great an act transmitted to after ages!

This matter is injurious to commercial interest in no ordinary degree. If His Excellency the British Minister cannot, before it is too late, arrange a plan for a joint prohibition, then no matter with what devotedness the writers may plead, they may be unable to cause the people to put aside ill-feeling, and so strengthen friendly relations as to place them for ever beyond fear of disturbance. Day and night, therefore, the writers give to this matter most earnest thought, and overpowering is the distress and anxiety it occasions them. Having thus presumed to unbosom themselves they would be honoured by His Excellency's reply.

This appeal was accompanied by a confidential memorandum from Sir Rutherford Alcock who pressed for it to be taken seriously. For months, the Chinese waited in anticipation of a response. None was ever forthcoming.

Alcock, who was personally dismayed by the evils of the opium trade, warned Parliament in 1871:

There is a very large and increasing cultivation of the poppy in China; the Chinese Government are seriously contemplating – if they cannot come to any terms or arrangement with the British Government … – the cultivation without stint in China, and producing opium at a much cheaper rate. Having done that they think they will afterwards be able to stamp out the opium produce among themselves.

Small quantities of opium from countries other than India were still arriving in China but it was the Chinese home product which started to hit at Indian profit margins. The trade in domestic opium was almost exclusively Chinese operated. Some had long been grown in China, especially in the western and south-western provinces, and by 1800 domestic production was greater than imported opium, despite the 1799 prohibition. In 1830, poppy farming had been recorded in the provinces of Chekiang, Fukien, Kwangtung and Yunnan whilst six years later, when the debate on legalisation was raging in Peking, a large imperial correspondence dealt with the domestic product. By the 1860s there was a considerable increase in poppy cultivation, much of it successfully hidden from the authorities.

There were those in China, as Alcock reported, who advocated an opium industry. This had so alarmed the Indian Board of Revenue an envoy was dispatched to China in 1868 to study the situation. He reported Chinese opium, previously thought to be very inferior to Indian, to be now of much better quality and observed Chinese addicts mixing their native drug with only small quantities of Indian opium. This, he suggested, would lead to a taste in Chinese opium and he recommended his superiors ‘send in future such increased quantities of opium to China, and at such low prices, as to prevent indigenous cultivation and competition.' Eventually, when the price of the Chinese opium dropped well below that of imports, many of the British traders were not only worried but also indignant, arrogantly believing the Chinese did not have the right to compete with them.

The majority of Chinese were concerned by the growth of their national opium industry which increased addiction and disrupted agriculture. Land which had previously been put over to food production was lost to poppies: in some districts, food shortages occurred and even starvation was reported. The problem was that more money could be earned from poppies than from wheat or rice: furthermore, the poppies were hardy and not prone to disease.