In this History Blog post, I talked about Robert Fortune, the Scot who almost single-handedly made tea the national drink of Great Britain.
The problem that needed solving was this: the British were absolutely mad for Chinese tea. However, the Chinese weren’t interested in any of the goods the British wanted to trade for tea. Instead, they demanded payment in silver. Shipping silver halfway around the world to buy tea wasn’t just risky, it also caused inflation at home, too… as Isaac Newton found out. So the East India Company set up a trade triangle in which British goods were shipped to India and traded for opium – which the Chinese loved. The opium was shipped to China, where it was exchanged for tea, which was shipped back to the UK. And everyone was happy.
Well, everyone except the Chinese government. Needless to say, the Chinese were angry that the British (and French and Americans) were shipping tons of addictive drugs into their country. After several diplomatic attempts failed to find a solution, the Chinese decided to go to war against the Westerners. Which seemed like an easy win: the Chinese had an army of 200,000 to go against Britain’s 19,000 troops. And the Chinese were clearly superior to the European barbarians. How could they lose?
As it turned out, they lost. Badly. China’s sense of racial superiority ran headlong into Britain’s modern weapons and tactics. The war lasted 3 years, 5 months, 1 week and 4 days, and China lost 20,000 men to just 69 for British forces. And in almost every battle, the British played the role of the 1995 Chicago Bulls to China’s [insert your area’s worst high school basketball team here]. And so, on August 29, 1842, representatives of the Qing Empire boarded the HMS Cornwallis (ironic?) and signed the Treaty of Nanking. The treaty gave the British five “treaty ports”, in which they would have considerable autonomy. The Chinese also agreed to pay the British $21 million in silver dollars for various reparations on a three-year installment plan, with 5% interest charged for late payments. The Chinese also gave the British the island of Hong Kong, which will be important later.
The Chinese weren’t happy with the Treaty of Nanking. They tried to ignore it whenever possible, or halfheartedly enforce it when compelled to. In 1844, French officials signed the Treaty of Huangpu and American officials signed the Treaty of Wangxia. These treaties gave French and American traders rights similar to those enjoyed by the British, but with one crucial difference: there was a clause in both treaties whereby they could be renegotiated every 12 years. And, because of China’s lack of enthusiasm for enforcing those treaties, the French and Americans fought for more concessions in 1856 when they came up for renewal. And the British decided that they too wanted to renegotiate the Treaty of Nanking, something the Chinese flat-out refused to do.
