The Opium Trade was an international\nnetwork to behold. The diversity of actors involved in the trade make its\nhistory truly transnational. Over the course of the late modern period, Opium\ncame to be the most important commodity in Western trade with China. The Dutch\nand Portuguese first began smuggling Opium into East Asia via their trading\nposts in South Asia. Once Dutch and Portuguese influence in South Asia began to\nsubside, the British government, along with East India Company, sought to\nmitigate their trade imbalance with China by capitalising on the Opium Trade\nand dominating it. By 1840, the trade imbalance was reversed and China was\nspending more silver on Opium than it was receiving for tea and porcelain. India\nwas the primary staging ground for growing poppy and producing Opium. Merchants\nwould smuggle Opium from Indian ports to Guangzhou, formerly Canton, which was at\nthe time the only international trading hub in all of China. Realising that the\nOpium Trade was beginning to pose serious social and economic issues, the\nChinese government attempted to crackdown on the trade. The British, seeing a\nthreat to their profits, sent an expeditionary force to Guangzhou and began the\nFirst Opium War. The British decisively crushed all Chinese resistance and\nforced the Qing Emperor to agree to the Treaty of Nanjing, which ceded Hong Kong\nto the British government, forced China to open its ports to international\ncommerce and ensured the continuation of the Opium Trade. British coercion and\nthe persistence of the Opium Trade crippled the Chinese economy and led to a\nrapid influx of international actors within China. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The macro-historical ramifications\nof the Opium Trade have been extensively speculated upon by historians and\npoliticians. Much of the historiography regarding the Trade can be placed into\nwhat Dilip Basu termed \u201cdetriment\u201d and \u201cbenefit\u201d theories. Those favouring the benefit\ntheory generally view the trade as a cause for spreading liberal economics and\nwesternised international relations norms to a stubborn and non-conforming\nChina. These views were popular among Western-imperialists throughout the trade\nitself and maintained a significant presence in historiography until the\nsecond-half of the twentieth century. Detriment theory stipulates that the\nOpium Trade, driven by Western economic interests and imperial expansion, contributed\nto the complete collapse of the Qing government, debilitated much of the\nChinese population and led to exploitation by foreign powers until the success of\nthe Communist Revolution in 1949. Detriment theory originated at the height of\nthe trade, as many Western observers recognised that Britain had deliberately\ninundated an entire country with narcotics and condemned British involvement in\nOpium smuggling. Naturally, the most fervent devotees of detriment theory have\nbeen Chinese. The rise of the Chinese Communist Party in the early 20th<\/sup>\ncentury coincided with the spread of fervent Chinese nationalism. Chinese\nhistorians came to regard the first Opium War as the beginning of the \u201cHundred-years\nof Shame\u201d in which China was dominated by greedy, imperialist foreign powers. Western\nhistorians writing in the second-half of the 20th<\/sup> century leading up\nto today have subscribed to detriment theory but have also expanded their scope\nof research to other elements of the Opium Trade, such as evaluating India\u2019s\nrole in the centre of Opium production and determining how international\nprivate merchants may have enabled the profitability of the trade. Overall,\nhistoriography on the topic is extensive and provides a diversity of approaches\nto consider. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I would like to hone in on the\nperiod of international convergence that resulted from the Opium Trade. It\ncaused a collision of worlds that \u2013 like the rest of colonial history \u2013\nresulted in exploitation. Yet, unlike the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire\nor American Manifest Destiny, the influence of the Opium Trade and subsequent\nopening of China spanned across an entire continent and involved nearly all the\nglobal powers of the time. With this in mind, I will address a number of key\nquestions in the project. Firstly, how did the economic incentives of Opium\nsmuggling bring together a multiplicity of international actors? How did the\nopening of China to foreign powers change its social, political and economic\nmake-up? Finally, what ramifications did international convergence have for\nChina and its national sovereignty? <\/p>\n\n\n\n The comprehensive nature of literature\nregarding the trade makes engaging in specific research more difficult. Ideally, by engaging in the extensive\nhistoriographical and primary source material on the topic, I will be able to\ndraw macro-historical conclusions about a transnational network that had\nlong-lasting repercussions for China. <\/p>\n\n\n\n There is a wealth of primary source material but only from the account\nof British and American citizens \u2013 not from a Chinese or Indian perspective. It\nwill be challenging to find Chinese and Indian literature in English that addresses\nthe questions I am attempting to answer. In addition to one-sided primary\nsources, it must be said that one cannot separate the history of the Opium Trade\nfrom national economic and political perspectives. Despite the fact that the\nTrade\u2019s chief actors were nation-states, transnationalism can still be found in\nthe interactions between nation-states as well as the networks they tie between\neach other. In the Opium Trade, one finds a detailed, intriguing example of transnational\nconfluence between nation-states.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5wNtZ-kN","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1289"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1289\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1290,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1289\/revisions\/1290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}