The Opium Trade was an international network to behold. The diversity of actors involved in the trade make its history truly transnational. Over the course of the late modern period, Opium came to be the most important commodity in Western trade with China. The Dutch and Portuguese first began smuggling Opium into East Asia via their trading posts in South Asia. Once Dutch and Portuguese influence in South Asia began to subside, the British government, along with East India Company, sought to mitigate their trade imbalance with China by capitalising on the Opium Trade and dominating it. By 1840, the trade imbalance was reversed and China was spending more silver on Opium than it was receiving for tea and porcelain. India was the primary staging ground for growing poppy and producing Opium. Merchants would smuggle Opium from Indian ports to Guangzhou, formerly Canton, which was at the time the only international trading hub in all of China. Realising that the Opium Trade was beginning to pose serious social and economic issues, the Chinese government attempted to crackdown on the trade. The British, seeing a threat to their profits, sent an expeditionary force to Guangzhou and began the First Opium War. The British decisively crushed all Chinese resistance and forced the Qing Emperor to agree to the Treaty of Nanjing, which ceded Hong Kong to the British government, forced China to open its ports to international commerce and ensured the continuation of the Opium Trade. British coercion and the persistence of the Opium Trade crippled the Chinese economy and led to a rapid influx of international actors within China.
The macro-historical ramifications of the Opium Trade have been extensively speculated upon by historians and politicians. Much of the historiography regarding the Trade can be placed into what Dilip Basu termed “detriment” and “benefit” theories. Those favouring the benefit theory generally view the trade as a cause for spreading liberal economics and westernised international relations norms to a stubborn and non-conforming China. These views were popular among Western-imperialists throughout the trade itself and maintained a significant presence in historiography until the second-half of the twentieth century. Detriment theory stipulates that the Opium Trade, driven by Western economic interests and imperial expansion, contributed to the complete collapse of the Qing government, debilitated much of the Chinese population and led to exploitation by foreign powers until the success of the Communist Revolution in 1949. Detriment theory originated at the height of the trade, as many Western observers recognised that Britain had deliberately inundated an entire country with narcotics and condemned British involvement in Opium smuggling. Naturally, the most fervent devotees of detriment theory have been Chinese. The rise of the Chinese Communist Party in the early 20th century coincided with the spread of fervent Chinese nationalism. Chinese historians came to regard the first Opium War as the beginning of the “Hundred-years of Shame” in which China was dominated by greedy, imperialist foreign powers. Western historians writing in the second-half of the 20th century leading up to today have subscribed to detriment theory but have also expanded their scope of research to other elements of the Opium Trade, such as evaluating India’s role in the centre of Opium production and determining how international private merchants may have enabled the profitability of the trade. Overall, historiography on the topic is extensive and provides a diversity of approaches to consider.
I would like to hone in on the period of international convergence that resulted from the Opium Trade. It caused a collision of worlds that – like the rest of colonial history – resulted in exploitation. Yet, unlike the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire or American Manifest Destiny, the influence of the Opium Trade and subsequent opening of China spanned across an entire continent and involved nearly all the global powers of the time. With this in mind, I will address a number of key questions in the project. Firstly, how did the economic incentives of Opium smuggling bring together a multiplicity of international actors? How did the opening of China to foreign powers change its social, political and economic make-up? Finally, what ramifications did international convergence have for China and its national sovereignty?
The comprehensive nature of literature regarding the trade makes engaging in specific research more difficult. Ideally, by engaging in the extensive historiographical and primary source material on the topic, I will be able to draw macro-historical conclusions about a transnational network that had long-lasting repercussions for China.
There is a wealth of primary source material but only from the account of British and American citizens – not from a Chinese or Indian perspective. It will be challenging to find Chinese and Indian literature in English that addresses the questions I am attempting to answer. In addition to one-sided primary sources, it must be said that one cannot separate the history of the Opium Trade from national economic and political perspectives. Despite the fact that the Trade’s chief actors were nation-states, transnationalism can still be found in the interactions between nation-states as well as the networks they tie between each other. In the Opium Trade, one finds a detailed, intriguing example of transnational confluence between nation-states.