The History of China - #318 - Opium War 3: Up In Smoke

Episode Date: February 1, 2026

Lin Zexu believed moral clarity and the largest drug bust in history could end the opium crisis and avert war. Yet, as his solution drained into Humen Bay, so too did the last hope of peace between China and Britain.Time Period Covered:1836–June 1839 Major Historical Figures: The Qing Empire:The Daoguang Emperor (Aisin-Gioro Minning) [r. 1820–1850]Lin Zexu, Imperial Commissioner and Governor-General of Huguang [1785–1850]Deng Tingzhen, Governor-General of Liangguang [1776–1846]Huang Juezi, Minister and court official (opium policy advocate) The British Empire:King William IV [r. 1830–1837]Queen Victoria [r. 1837–1901]Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston, Foreign Secretary [1784–1865]Charles Elliot, Chief Superintendent of British Trade in China [1801–1875]Lancelot Dent, Opium trader and head of Dent & Co. [1799–1875]James Matheson, Merchant and political advocate for war [1796–1878] Major Sources Cited:Fairbank, John K. Trade and Diplomacy on the China CoastPlatt, Stephen R. Imperial Twilight: The Opium War and the End of China’s Last Golden AgeWakeman, Frederic, Jr. “The Canton Trade and the Opium War,” in The Cambridge History of China, Vol. 10Wakeman, Frederic, Jr. The Fall of Imperial ChinaLovell, Julia. The Opium War: Drugs, Dreams and the Making of China Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Episode 318, Up in Smoke. A war more unjust in its origin, a war more calculated in its progress to cover this country with permanent disgrace I do not know and have not read of. William Gladstone, the House of Commons, 1839. By what reason, then, should these foreigners send in return a poisonous drug, which involves in destruction those very natives of China?

Lin Zashu to Queen Victoria, 1840 If your people are virtuous, they will desist from the evil practice, and if your officers are incorruptible and obey their orders, no opium can enter your country. Sir Henry Pottinger, two Qing negotiators, 1842. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious. I'm ready for anything. Obi-Wan Kenobi to Luke Skywalker, Year Zero, B, B, B.Y.

Last time, we went through the Odyssey of Lord Napier's Three Weeks in China, culminating with him trying his level best to touch off a war all by himself, only to quickly succumb to malaria. Napier's unmitigated failure, as grandiose in ambition as it was doomed from the outset, nevertheless left both empires with lasting lessons. For the Qing government, they understood the incident as a reaffirmation of their system and methods of controlling the barbarians, that the British were, at the end of the day, just like any other foreign traders, subject to the immutable laws of the realm and able to easily be held hostage, should China but... blockade access to the Canton Factory District. The Englishman had, after all the racket they'd stirred up,

eventually towed the line and removed Napier back to Macau where he belonged. They had complied, therefore the system had held. The British, on the other hand, took a markedly different lesson away from William Napier's humiliating failure. They'd been forced to back down all right, but not because his aims had been particularly off, or even wrong. Young Brash Napier, many in Britain and especially among its traders felt, had had his heart in the right place, even if he had technically gone against his standing orders. In essence, it wasn't that Napier had broken the law that was the problem.

In British eyes, it was much more that the Chinese had been impudent enough to actually enforce those laws against him. And the reason that he'd failed, and thus the union's reputation and prestige itself had been so tarnished, wasn't because he'd done anything out of sorts or broken the law. No, it was just that he didn't have enough backup to pull it off. He'd been absolutely right about the Canton system. It sucked, and it kept Britain out of the very Chinese markets they were desperate to sell to. It had to go.

The goods must be allowed in. The opium must flow. And who were the Qing to try to stop it? Rather, the British's great mistake in 1834, according to their own understandings, was that Napier hadn't had access to enough shock and awe to actually get the job done. And they resolved they wouldn't come so ill-equipped the next time they might need to force their way past the port authority. Now, in the immediate aftermath of the Napier affairs fallout, the British did make a show of falling back into line like good little tributary petitioners.

They achieved this through the appointment of John Francis Davis as the poor late Napier's replacement as chief superintendent. Davis, as we left off with last time, had won the job by assuring the foreign secretary, Lord Palmerston, that he, unlike Napier's brash impetuousness, would pursue, quote, absolute silence and quiescence, and quote, toward the Qing government, while ever away. further instructions from home. He was in almost every respect, precisely the man that the British government had said that they'd wanted for the post at Canton, and as a result, he was quickly despised by the greater part of his fellow countrymen.

From Wakeman, quote, this quiescent policy did not please the country traders in Canton, and after enduring three months of their carping criticism of his spinelessness, Davis resigned. His successor served quietly throughout 1835 and 36, waiting for instructions that never came. He had only one thought, keep trade going, even if this meant accepting all its restrictions. End quote. This, of course, didn't sit well with the British free traders at all. The markets were booming now more than ever before, and they demanded a far freer hand than whatever thin pittance the Hoppo, as a reminder. the Canton customs had, allowed them.

Trade had increased significantly in naked dollar value since the abolition of the East India Company monopoly, but that was largely not due to increased volume of sales, but to soaring prices in Canton itself. The total value of American and English imports increased by 64% in just five years between 1832 and 37, to more than $37 million, while exports grew by 79% to nearly 35%.

million per year. But this wasn't all good news. In fact, despite the number lines going up, it was actually quite worrying. Quote, the English traders were having a hard enough time underselling the millings of Lowell, Massachusetts, not to speak of having to pay higher and higher prices for Chinese goods. This inflation was a sign of Western trading weakness for the abolition of the English monopoly really meant the end of effective corporate bargaining power and credit devices which had kept prices down, and quote. They didn't know how good they'd had it in their economic monopoly hothouse until they broke it and accidentally let the ruthlessness of the free market back in.

It turns out you don't get better deals as 1,000 freelancers all vying against one another than as a single unified block. But it's got worse from there. With no more EIC monopoly, there was no longer any single group of, English company representatives to aid in the protection of the individual hongists from the levies of the hoppo. Free trade, therefore, removed an important prop from Chinese mercantilism, and thereby threw the Canton system entirely out of order. Insistence on laissez-faire trade on the one side was met with the unbinding of traditional restraints on the other, an attempt to

restore the functional balance of trade. One that the British had evidently forgotten was naturally tilted sharply against them. How all this was received back in Britain, however, was largely a matter of who was transmitting it. To the foreign traders in Canton, the very boots on the ground, their conviction was that this constituted no less than a shuddering of China's markets to them at the whims of predatory customs officials. And further, that both the personal honor of the late Great Patriot Lord Napier and that of the Union Jack, Great Britain, itself had been gravely insulted. No surprise that it was such nationalist sentiment that would be carried forth, as Wakeman puts it, quote, in public campaigns and petitions to convince their

countrymen of the righteousness of their struggle. The arguments for war were first stridently sounded in the Canton Register, and by 1835, James Matheson had carried these cries back to England." End quote. Even so, this wasn't immediately a slam-dunk case back home. For one thing, intervening parliamentary elections had forced a shake-up of the office of Foreign Secretary, and it would be almost another year before the far more sympathetic ear of Lord Palmerston would once again take up the office.

For another, it just couldn't be as simple as launching a full-scale war on account of some local trade dispute on the other side of the world, and especially not over such a dirty, immoral commodity as opium. This could not, quote, be foisted off on an English public, which was evangelistically sensitized to the evils of the opium trade, unless acacus beli were provided by the Chinese, end quote. Nevertheless, that issue could at least be pushed in the right direction, and Palmerston proved open to the idea of appointing Captain Charles Elliott, the then-assistant superintendent of Macau, to Canton, in order to try to thread that needle. Quote, to pursue a policy somewhere between Napier's obduracy and Davis's passivity,

and quote. The appointment was made on June 15, 1836, and received some six months later in Macau. Charles Eliot's was, by all accounts, an optimistic man. One of those fortunate individuals, Wakeman puts it, who, quote, are usually able to believe that a reasonable solution can be found for even the most difficult problems. Unfortunately, this optimism was not sustained by attention to detail, nor the kind of patience for niceties which is often required for successful diplomacy, end quote. He, like Napier before him, arrived in Canton with instructions to cease the petitionary form of address with the Qing, and instead conduct communications as equal trading partners. Yet he found that the man on the opposite side of these dialogues had inexplicably changed.

The Governor General Lu Kuhn was no more, having died, it turns out, in office within a year of Napier's own death. The head of Yang Guang was now one Deng Teng Zhen, an unknown quantity to the British. As such, Elliot decided to go a little off script and defer to the older custom in communication. Thus, he issued a petitionary address, appropriately deferential, and was thereafter granted passage on to Canton itself. Well now, that wasn't so hard, was it? Elliot was quite happy with himself, at least until word arrived from London and Lord Palmerston, chastising him for screwing it up already. The Foreign Secretary correctly supposed protocol to be the essence of the tribute system,

and so harshly forbade the use of the petition for intergovernmental communication, and quote. Even if it worked, even if it had gotten them what they wanted, it wasn't proper for British officials to be bowing and scraping before their Chinese counterparts, and it could not be allowed to continue. Governor Dung, for his part, was in at least as much of a bind. The petition was the form of address that foreign nations used to conduct business with China. It was more than only proper, more than just the way things were done. Such a question of formal etiquette was bound up in the very cosmic world order that the Qing imperial apparatus saw itself as the center of.

As Deng wrote to the Daugwang Emperor, quote, If I suffer them to recede on an equal standing with the provincial officials, that will mean to allow the barbarian nations to rival the celestial empire, end quote. On this, there could be no compromise. into this deadlock, Elliot resolved to be the Monkey Wrench. He wrote to Macau on his own authority as superintendent, ordering two British warships of the Indian fleets under the command of Rear Admiral Maitland to dispatch to the Cantonese port, seemingly in the hope that this minor show of force

was going to somehow transform Chinese attitudes. They duly arrived that July, though without any precise instructions as to what to do beyond that. Within the city, the Governor General was quite naturally a little bit stressed out at all this. Two foreign warships had just showed up, and everyone remembered how that had gone the last time. When a minor incident occurred in the waters between the British and the Qing water forces, Governor Dung permitted the colonel in command to offer the foreigners a formal apology. Elliot seemed to think that this was enough, and by that October, the warships had once again departed back to Indian waters. Once again, Elliot's blind optimism shined through.

He really thought he'd done something here. But this little stunt hadn't impressed anyone else. The Qing Authority figured they'd called the English's piddling little bluff, and the barbarians had gone away, apparently satisfied. Meanwhile, the British free traders in Canton were likewise unimpressed, because they'd already seen this play acted out with Napier. No tiny fleet of a couple minor gunboats was going to result in what they wanted, what Britain needed, a full-scale war. They'd long understood that His Majesty's government was invested in its commercial interests far beyond its mere symbolic considerations. That's to say, it was useless to try to wage a war on grounds of national dishonor. It was going to have to hinge on the flow of revenue, and the potential to cut that flow off.

Insults to the flag could be window dressing, sure, but the real thrust of any cases beli needed to be economic in nature. The answer by this point was obvious. From Wakeman, quote, Only if opium, the monetary catalyst of the English English English Indian Chinese trade were curtailed, would Palmerston have to make that decision which the free traders awaited so eagerly? The initiative, therefore, rested with the Chinese authorities who had already begun to suppress the drug traffic with some vigor, end quote. The empire well understood

the scourge of the substance, Yapien. Though long used in medical prescriptions, it now came in ever-surging torrents to flood the realm in its poisonous haze. By 1836, some 1,820 tons of Yapien, opium, were finding its way into Great Qing, and its addiction continued to creep across the empire like a fungus. It is unfortunately difficult to determine the actual degree of individual addiction, as no reliable measure of how much was used by an average smoker per day is known. Yet we can still attempt to shed some light on the scale of the problem. In 1836, foreign estimates guessed at about 12.5 million opium users. A half century later, historians would still be wildly disagreeing on the scale, ranging from as little as 2 million to as many as 45 million

or 10% of China's total population. Chinese estimates back in the 1830s were similarly alarming. The city of Su Zhou, it was claimed in 1820, had more than 100,000 addicts out of a million people. While in 1838, Lin Zha Shu would insist that at least 1% of China overall was using the drug. Yet Wakeman importantly notes that while these figures were indeed troubling in themselves, it was not nearly as troubling to the imperial government, as was the image that it was creating. Great Qing was, after all, an empire built of images. and opium claimed first and foremost those with means enough to afford it. The officials, the literati, the wealthy, the urban, those most likely to be seen by outsiders.

Quote, therefore, it was usually found among wealthy members of the gentry, officials of the central government, some said one-fifth were addicts, Yaman clerks, Linzah Shue estimated a four-fifth sediction rate, and soldiers, end quote. all of this, even worse than the actual drug plague gripping the nation, amplified the image abroad of China and opium addiction as going hand in hand, a ubiquitous habit endemic to the entire people. And as if that wasn't enough, the economic burden of shouldering this national addiction had become a five-alarm fire all its own.

In spite of its strong legal prohibitions on exporting the precious metal, Qing was not so much losing, as it was hemorrhaging silver in the course of this trade. As you may recall, China primarily operated on a bimetallic currency system of copper cash coins and silver scy ingots at a nominal exchange rate of 1,000 to 1. But that balance had been rapidly degenerating as of late into a worrisome inflationary pattern. By 1838, the de facto exchange rate had become 1, 650 to 1. And worse yet, because the land tax was paid in cash,

but transmitted to the central government in Sices. Empire-wide, the peasantry faced ruinous tax hikes, while the Central Treasury received no actual additional revenue. Wakeman makes clear that looking at the situation in the cold light of historical analysis, this cash devaluation actually had little, if anything, to do with the coastal opium trade, and was indeed purely from internal domestic causes. The copper mines in Yunnan, for instance, long the source of much of the empire's minting operations, had progressively begun to dry up, forcing the government to progressively debase its own cash coinage

by minting it with less and lower-quality copper. As a result, eight times as many coins were minted each year in the opening three decades of the 19th century, as had been made a century prior. With the bad coinage flooding the market, people no longer wanted to exchange their good silver, hoarding it instead and driving it largely out of circulation. This drove up demand and thus the value of silver. This economic positive feedback loop, Wakeman asserts, quote, completely accounts for the loss, and quote, an exchange value over the period,

even without British coastal machinations. But evidence is one of the first. thing, and narrative sometimes quite another. Rather than complex, largely baffling economic forces, Qing officials were quick to seize on the far more obvious in their faces answer as to why the markets were all crashing. It's the opium, stupid. The foreigners did it. In an almost ironic reversal of British realizations about the economic power of the drug, for the Qing, opium's economic impact was exacerbated and enhanced by the symbol. of the substance foisted upon it.

It was, quote, viewed as an agent of barbarian aggression, a moral poison which debased people's minds. Like heretical religion, it dissolved the proper social relationships, Loon Li, which distinguished man from beasts and Chinese from barbarians, end quote. As the imperial censor, Yuan Yu Ling put it in 1836, quote, fathers would no longer be able to admonish their wives, masters would no longer be able to restrain their servants, and teachers would no longer be able to train their pupils. It would mean the end of the life of the people and the destruction of the soul of the nation, end.

The opium traffic had likewise resulted in a worrying muddling of imperial official and underworld riffraffery, and nowhere more so than Guangdong itself, of course. Try as those at the top May, where the officialdom touched criminality, corruption soon. propagated. The special river patrol fleet established in 1826, specifically to hunt down and catch opium runners, were within a brief span themselves on the take, allowing smugglers' fast crab boats to slip by them for an easy 36,000 Cicces per month. The problem was obvious, but over the subsequent decade of repeated attempts at reform, it seems to have proved unavoidable. Dissolve the patrol fleets, and the smugglers just passed through completely unimpeded, reestablished the

fleets, and they were quickly co-opted by lucrative bribes to let almost all the smugglers through completely unimpeded. But even beyond the waters themselves, the great merchant houses of Canton were also implicated in this corruption. Quote, they did try to keep from becoming too closely involved in drug for fear it would jeopardize their legal business, but in the end it mattered little. So many traders were engaged in the traffic, Fujini's wholesalers, Cantonese cloth peddlers, Shanxi bankers, that all were indiscriminately grouped together in official eyes, end quote. Canton mattered not just because it was corrupt, but because it was indispensable. Its custom surplus alone accounted for more than a third of the empire's total revenue,

which made officials in Beijing deeply suspicious that something vast and morally dangerous was taking root on the southern coast. Whether or not opium profits ever reached the palace, and it was rumored that that may have been taking place at scale, officials sent South increasingly believed that they were confronting a whole ecosystem, merchants, smugglers, and compromised officials alike, that were, through their collective greed, rotting China from the outside inn.

Within the sacred confines of the forbidden city, the Daugong Emperor was appalled. that the empire's prohibition on import of the material was being so flagrantly and widely flouted. Red poppies flowering across the hills of Anhui, smuggling in the waters near Shanghai, smokehouses operating in Shanxi, and even open sale of the drug in the capital itself. Quote, by 1830, the emperor had also become aware of the rising cost of silver south of the Yangtze. In the following year, he ordered that opium imports via Canton be stopped by arresting the smugglers, and that native cultivation be suppressed.

Neither succeeded in blunting the draw of undreamed of profits, and it soon became clear that any idea of strictly enforcing the law was wholly unable to stem the flow of the drug. Such a stark realization prompted one official to boldly suggest that, actually, the real problem wasn't opium. Instead, it was the ongoing outflow of silver from the imperial coffers. The moral question of drug dependency could, at least for now, be set aside in order to address the chronic silver bleed. Quote, and that could be prevented by legalizing the opium trade for barter, end quote. Intrigued, but as yet unconvinced, the Daugwang emperor convened his court and posed to his officials the question for discussion.

It would turn into a great debate that would go on. in one form or another for a subsequent two years. On this question of legalization, there were two main camps, the legalizers and the moralists. The legalizers argued that strict enforcement of the law hadn't worked, didn't work, wouldn't work, unless the emperor was willing to enforce it through a sustained campaign of death and terror. Rivers of blood in the streets was impractical, and moreover, bad for business. keeping things as is, meanwhile, just encouraged further official corruption. Thus, the only reasonable solution, they argued, was to, quote,

come to grips with reality, obtain a drug by barter, and place it under the monopoly of the hoppo, end quote. That would neatly solve the economic problem by staunching the silver bleed and increasing state revenue, and at only the cost of accepting a deadly addiction throughout the populace as a permanent cost doing business. The economic upside did intrigue the emperor, but not enough to offset his own personal feelings. He had modeled himself and his reign, after all, on the sage kings of antiquity, and considered his role as moral guidepost of the nation to be among the foremost of his responsibilities as sovereign. As such, Daugong was far more open to the counter-argument presented by the moralists, who stated that, quote, infraction of the law was no reason

for its annulment. The times might be bad, but that was all the more reason for a bold effort at moral regeneration. If opium were legalized, on the other hand, everyone would start smoking it, end quote. Thouguong agreed with this position, and as of late 1836, ordered the Canton government to, quote, enforce the laws more energetically, end quote. And it worked pretty well, at least for a while. By January, the flow of opium had been brought to an almost complete standstill, and throughout 1837, more than 2,000 dealers were arrested by officials who went through the city shutting down the smoke parlors. The trade shutdown, of course, left the free traders in Canton holding the bag, and that bag contained the entire glut of opium they suddenly could no longer move crashing the market price. Yet even after one of their own was arrested and deported for smuggling, the foreign traders seemed to have kept faith that somehow, some way, the Chinese weren't really that serious

about this whole opium embargo, and that all they had to do was have a nice cold pint and wait for all this to blow over. It helped immensely, too, that they felt themselves personally immune from arrest for just about any of their activities while in Canton, professional. or otherwise. Back in Beijing, the emperor received the glowing reports from Canton of the near total halt of the opium trade, but was understandably a bit suspicious. It seemed almost too good to be true. Was he being played? Thou Guang was unsatisfied with temporary half-measures. He wanted a solution, a final solution. And so it was that in June of 1838, the minister

Huang Jue Zhe set the stage for the second phase of the great opium debate, methods of eradication. And he did this by asking the throne to enact the death penalty against addicts, in addition to producers and traffickers. Huang argued, quote, as long as there was demand, unscrupulous people would strive to meet it. Therefore, that demand must be extinguished, even if it means the death of thousands or millions. End quote. Many, rightly, balked at such a genocidal solution. The Manchu General of Mukden, Bao Singh, replied in question, quote, How do you actually find who the smokers are?

The only ones who benefit from laws like this would be Yaman policemen and clerks, who could use it to extort money from hapless innocence or as a way of settling old scores. End quote. It was absurd on its face, especially. when a far more obvious chokepoint existed, the dealers and smugglers. And we've already got laws to arrest and punish them. Therefore, what we need are not sweeping new draconian laws to murder the civilian populace at large, but just to more strictly enforce the laws already on the books.

The issue with this eminently reasonable advice, though, as the emperor himself knew, was that there was a chasm between talking of strict enforcement and actually having it carried out. And in that chasm, corruption would always seep in. Yet the same danger, and perhaps worse, lurked in the moralists' harsher measures. As Weikwin puts it, quote, it meant state intervention at the lowest level of society. That not only smacked of legalism, it also meant putting a powerful weapon in the hands of sub-officials who could not be counted on to use it wisely, end quote. Indeed, Qing's society at large didn't need to think back too long to find the prime example of such an untrustworthy official. The old finance minister,

Hushan, the most corrupt politician in dynastic history, was less than 40 years in his grave at this point. It was a classic conundrum. One solution too hot, the other too cold. So what to do? And, as if on Q, in-stepped our Goldilocks of the story today. trusted stats and real-time sports news. Yeah, hey, who should I take in the Boston game? Well, statistically speaking. Nah, no more statistically speaking. I want hot takes. I want knee-jerk reactions.

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or the gambling of someone close to you, please go to conixonterio.ca. Lin Zeshu was what may be fairly described as something of a Wunderkind. Descended from a distinguished Fujonese family that had fallen on hard times, he had nonetheless proved himself to be not just a political competent, but a prodigy. In 1804, at just 19, he earned his first imperial degree, ushering him into the rarefied halls of public officialdom. The next five years had seen him clerk as a governor's secretary, and then three more in the capital as literary compiler for the prestigious Han Lin Academy. His career promotion path followed a standard but notably accelerated upward trajectory from there, with each of his overseers noting his squeaky clean record and vigorous efficiency. until at last, at the remarkably young age of 47, he'd be made governor, and then within five years

promoted to the Governor General of Hubei and Hunan. You really could not dream of a resume more immaculate than Lin Zah Shoes. And yet, for all that, but entirely understandably, Governor Lynn had in 1838 zero prior experience with the West. From Wakeman, quote, he glowed with the confidence of a man who had never made a serious mistake in his life. Within his own context, he was a deeply ethical man with a strong sense of worldly mission. This was partly inspired by his immersion in the most serious intellectual circles of the empire, end quote.

And it was largely from those circles that he had developed his worldview, based on the very confusingly named modernist school of Confucian thought. The modernist school dated back to the mid-second century Han dynasty, and was not to be confused with neo-Confucianism of the 11th century song. Without getting too much further into the weeds on this, because they are infinitely deep on such a topic, this modernist school, at its core, rejected passive moralism in favor of positive action. For thinkers like Lin, true virtue meant engagement with the world as it was, not

retreat into commentary or ritual. The past existed not as a script to be followed, but as a resource to be learned from and adapted. This made it possible, indeed necessary, for a morally upright official to use new methods, even potentially foreign ones, if they served the higher goal of restoring order to the realm. Lynn believed, with an unshakable confidence born of an unbroken career, that when a cultivated man acted decisively for moral ends, heaven itself would align with him. By 1838, the Daugwang Emperor had grown deeply frustrated with the endless inconclusiveness of the court's debate over opium. What he wanted, as Wakeman puts it, was a clear weighing of the arguments followed by decisive action. Instead, month after

month, he received little more than moral hand-wringing. That stalemate finally broke on July 10th, with the arrival of a memorial from Governor General Lin Zha Shu, one that cut directly through the center of the argument. Lin agreed that execution was an extraordinarily brutal punishment for opium users. Smokers, he argued, were not criminals in the ordinary sense, but morally ill individuals in need of rescue rather than elimination. But, and this was the crux of his argument, the state still had both the right and the obligation to use whatever means were necessary to compel that reform. Terror, if required, was not incompatible with compassion.

As Lin himself put it, quote, To get rid of the habit of smoking is not a difficult task. What is difficult is to do. to reform the mind. If we wish to reform that mind which constantly neglects the law, how can we refrain from promulgating laws which threaten it? End quote. This is, rather remarkably, one of the first documented moments in Chinese history when senior state officials explicitly grappled with the psychology of addiction and the problem of rehabilitation. Lin understood that even the threat of death would not produce instant or even desirited.

results. Habitual smokers, he warned, would simply postpone the agony of quitting until it was too late. His solution, therefore, was a phased system. Escalating penalties, combined with state-run sanitariums being opened, designed to force reform while still offering a path back. At the same time, Lin insisted that enforcement focused relentlessly on the true source of the problem. The key point remained Canton. Traffickers, foreign and Chinese alike, must face the same laws and the same penalties. The era of tender handling, Lin argued, had only enabled further disaster. Foreign smugglers, no less the native ones, had to be brought firmly under Chinese jurisdiction and justice. The scope and coherence of this proposal impressed the emperor. Lin was summoned to the capital,

where he received an unusually high number of personal audiences with Da Guang, no fewer than 19. On New Year's Eve, 1838, the emperor resolved the matter decisively. Lin Zeshu was appointed Imperial Commissioner, granted unified command over Guangdong's naval forces, and ordered South to cut off the opium pipeline, whatever it took. As Daugwang declared in his decree, quote, yesterday we issued a decree particularly in trusting the governor-general of the Hu Guang, Lin Zha Shu, with the mission of hurrying to Guangdong province to investigate and manage maritime affairs. He has furthermore been appointed Imperial Commissioner for Frontier Defense,

and all the water forces of that province are thereby united under his command. After Lin Zashu reaches Guangdong, he must reverently obey our order to exert all his strength to resolve this matter by clearing up the source of this fraud. This does not only refer to the province's opium brokers or fast crabs, or its opium houses, warehouses, divans, and other glaring aspects of corruption. It also means that he must, according to the place and circumstances, radically sever the trunk from the roots.

End quote. Looking at this set of instructions, it's impossible to ignore the sweeping latitude they provide. They're virtually a by any means necessary. framework, and could justifiably be interpreted to mean involving China in warlike actions should the need arise. It's a virtual certainty that just such a contingency came up in the course of Dao Guang and Lin's many meetings, though Wakeman is careful to note that the Qing were institutionally, quote, unaccustomed to the notion of going to war in the modern sense of a formal declaration of hostilities, end quote. This ties directly back into the imperial worldview

in its particular framing of events. To them, English merchants making trouble in Canton were functionally the same as Mongol step-riders causing a ruckus along the borderlands, or the meow causing a fuss in the mountainous interior. Quote, recalcitrant rebels, whom Lin was going south to manage and pacify. If circumstances demanded it, he would resort to force,

but this was not to be desired, end quote. As Lin wrote to the emperor that septuptych, by way of explanation, quote, opium must be completely suppressed, while risks should be avoided which might give rise to hostilities on this frontier, end quote. The commissioner planned to achieve this by using the classic combination of carrots and sticks, and that careful application thereof would frighten the foreigners into acquiescence by a proper display of the moral supremacy of the Qing Empire. As for the throne itself, Da Guang was approving the man himself far more than any specific policy.

He liked Lin, and thus he gave him extraordinary latitude, although he would still be judged, as imperial commissioners always must be, solely by his results. Just as addicts could be frightened into reform, so too could foreign merchants be awed into obedience by a proper display of impede. imperial resolve. War, as far as Lin was concerned, was not a part of this conversation. It wasn't even in his vocabulary. No, it was going to be moral rectitude decisively applied that would entirely resolve this issue. Even before he had actually arrived in Guangdong, Commissioner Lin drafted arrest orders for 17 notable Cantonese offenders, a herald both of his arrival and the deadly seriousness with which he took his mission. He was, like just about every high imperial official, completely convinced that the southern port city was, quote,

a cesspit of corruption and crime. The Hongists were simply slightly wealthier smugglers than most. In all, his trip from Beijing to Canton took Lin 60 days, as typical for him, remarkably fast. Once arrived, he took up residence at the Yueha Academy and turned directly to local scholar officials for help in what he expected to be a strenuous campaign against all the racketeering interests of the city. This network of local literati would, from beginning to end, form the central spine of Linza's Schu's efforts to eradicate the cities, the provinces, and the empire's unconscionable opium addiction. There were dangers in this, Wakeman notes, quote, because permitting a village notable to establish an opium suppression committee with powers of

arrest meant putting a great deal of power in hands which were not easily controlled." It was always difficult to directly monitor power structures much below the level of the province itself, from the perspective of the central government, and delegating such sweeping power risked, and would quickly prove all too true, petty revenge, vendettas, slander, and property disputes, suddenly having many more official weapons in their local respective arsenals. Such concerns, however, were a known quantity, a negative, to be sure, but an acceptable one compared to the necessary task at hand. Commissioner Lynn had spelled it all out in his earlier July memorial that had won him his position, in which, quote, he explained that these were necessary evils which had to be endured for the sake of curing a much more dangerous social malady, and quote.

That there might be lasting ripple effects from such a social disturbance on down the line, particularly into the ruinous 1850s, either didn't occur to the zealous official or was deemed likewise a manageable risk. Still, for all his ardor, Lynn would quickly find his grand plans stymied by the sheer stickiness of the poppy's sap. Quote, indeed, the attack on native smokers soon lost all immediate relevance as the other phase of his program, the assault on foreign dealers, ran into difficulties, end quote. And it is with this cosmos-shattering confrontation that we will conclude today. Linza Shu's initial push to curb opium imports was meted out via two decisions.

The first of these was the use of the hungists as quote-unquote security merchants, meaning native state hostages, to control the foreigners and their activities. And as we will quickly see, it is just as bad as it sounds. On March 18, 1839, Lin informed the Hong merchants that they had three days' notice to persuade the foreigners to surrender their stockpiles of opium to the Chinese government, and to sign binding government bonds promising that they, on pain of death, would never again seek to import the banned substance to China. If the foreigners refused, then the Hong merchants themselves would be used as leverage. One or two would be executed as a lesson, and the rest would forfeit all of their property. This was a familiar tactic to the English, who immediately chalked the threat up to a trick by the Chinese that they would never actually carry out.

Surrender your entire business operation or will kill our own guys? Yeah, right, okay. But on the off chance that the Chinese were just crazy enough to do it, the European merchants did eventually agree to offer up a token amount of 1,056 chests of opium for seizure. But the second phase of Lin Zaschu's anti-opium strategy was his decision to single out and arrest who had been deemed the quote-unquote key figure behind traffic on the English side. That man would wind up being one Lancelot Dent, the head of the second largest country firm and head of the British Chamber of Commerce,

in Canton. An arrest warrant was issued for Dent on March 22nd, concurrent with the actual arrest of two Hong merchants as, quote, hostages to be decapitated in the Englishman's stead unless he turned himself over to the local authorities, end quote. Such incandescent news in Canton quickly reached Macau and Captain Charles Elliott, who immediately assumed the worst. This might not yet be outright war, he thought, but it was, at the very least, its immediate and inevitable preliminary. He ordered all available warships to set sail for Hong Kong and prepare for hostilities, himself departing Macau on March 23rd, quote, with a small escort and dramatically arrived the next day at the Canton factories just in time to endure Napier's punishment, a Chinese embargo,

labor boycott, and blockade of the factories, which was to hold 350 foreigners in thrall for the next 47 days." End quote. Elliot, for his part, seems to have immediately understood what dire straits he now found himself. His ultimate charge and concern must be the survival of those under his flag of protection, himself, his crew, and those foreign traders now encircled and besieged by the Qing garrison. Quote, it was not difficult to imagine that the thousands of Chinese troops cordoned around the

factories were preparing to massacre them all while he stood. helplessly, his ships and his few troops far out of reach." And quote. Fortunately, on the 26th, Governor Lynn clarified his position, stating that he would indeed release the English once he had the required opium. This was, of course, a great relief to Elliot, and the next day he ordered the country traders to surrender the entirety of their stores to Lynn's agents. The merchants, themselves feeling even more acutely than Elliot than noose about their

necks were likewise delighted to be given the chance to comply. After all, even beyond their own necks, business had been terrible. Over the prior five months, they hadn't been able to move an ounce of opium. There was just no one left even to peddle it. It had just sat in their warehouses, moldering while their costs soared. As such, instead of the previously agreed to token amount, on Elliot's insistence and their own collective sense of survival, the country merchants duly handed over the whole of their opium stocks to the Qing Authority, on the assurance from Elliot himself that His Majesty's government would compensate them for their losses. This promise would, once it had been relayed back to London,

eventually send Foreign Secretary Palmerston nearly into apoplectic fits. Because it seems that the good Captain Elliot didn't quite realize at the time, just what he'd really done. By guaranteeing the trader's losses, he'd made what had been a private business issue into a national budgetary problem. This was no trifling sum of money that Elliot had promised away after all.

In all, the Canton merchants surrendered some 20,283 chests of opium valued at $9 million at the time, which is more than $300 million in modern currency. by far the largest drug bust in human history. By May 5th, Commissioner Lynn was satisfied enough with the English cooperation that he lifted the blockade and allowed the foreigners to flee to Macau as a gesture of good faith. This still left him with the question, the conundrum, of what exactly to do with several million pounds of highly concentrated, highly addictive, highly illegal compound now in his sole possession.

There is a certain lingering image of the massive destruction of the British opium in the Canton Bay as a huge bonfire. Heck, even I've been playing on that image myself in this episode's very title. But it's been a trick this whole time. Linza Shue wasn't stupid enough to burn the opium. Such a flashy pyrotechnic display would have gotten the entire bay high as kite, and then the inevitable residue for miles around would have been findable, scrapeable, and reusable. That was the opposite of an effective solution. And Lin was a modernist in both the classical and contemporary sense of the word. He was all about efficiency, not showmanship. He desired deletion, not display. The scene would unfold in a small village just a short distance

from Human, the Tiger's Gate, known by the British as the Bogues, itself a corruption of the Portuguese boca tigris of the same meaning. And the governor had himself ferried there as well to personally oversee the process. The land there is flat and marshy, crisscrossed with winding creeks and bordered by endless rice patties. Lin then oversaw the construction of three massive stone-lined trenches, each about 150 feet in length to serve as effective caldrons for the masterpiece of 19th century chemical alchemy that he and his agents were about to carry out. Nearby, the crates began to arrive and be stacked in a steady procession. Linz's shoe was determined to prevent any theft.

The perimeter was watched day and night, and every worker searched both before entering and leaving the site. First, thousands of laborers worked to break the balls of dried opium into four chunks, which were then dumped into the pits flooded with seawater. After about a half day to steep, into this slurry was added massive amounts of salt and quicklime, triggering a catalytic reaction, tearing the organic compounds of the opium apart and rendering it a boiling, caustic gray sludge. As the cauldrons boiled and bubbled, the laborers stood over them, protectively masked,

stirring and churning the steaming bog until the chemical reaction had run its course. Then, at low tide, channels were opened and the toxic sluice dumped into the bay, and the pit bottoms thoroughly washed out with clean salt water, leaving no trace behind. Day after day, the piled-up opium was rendered into this sludge, crate after crate stacked until the total reached 20,000. The entire process would take more than 23 days to complete in all. The officials ordered to patrol and inspect the destruction of the opium, all cover their noses, and frowned at the foul odor,

with some even falling ill to the fumes. Chen Rang, a county official, notably exclaimed, It smells terrible, during his inspection, and then lost consciousness, with some reports claiming that he may have died, a few days later. As the final step, Commissioner Lin, himself still a Confucian and thus moralist in spite of his modernist leanings, performed a ritual prayer over the sight, composing and reciting a poem to the God of the South Sea. It reads, in full, O spirit whose virtue is ancient and enduring, whose power moves with the tides themselves, you cleanse the foul and lift the pure.

There was a time when the empire shone like a polished mirror. We watched foreign sails crowd the horizon like a forest of masts, and thought them harmless, travelers only, like geese alighting for the season. We did not see the poison they carried. We did not foresee the bitter smoke that would turn our cities into markets of vice. With a flick of the hand they drained our silver. With fire in the heart, men came to crave the very thing that ruined them. Then the Emperor's command thundered forth.

His commissioners hastened south like falling stars. Even the ocean seemed to tremble at the decree. The evil was to be swept away. At first the foreigners scattered like wolves, but soon they bent in submission like moths before a lamp. The poison was gathered in full, not by the crate, but by the tens of thousands. It might have been given to the flames,

but fire leaves embers. and embers invite those who would sift the ashes for one last taste. Better that it be cast into the deep, water overcoming water, the false smoke dissolving like a mirage in open air. Yet though the abyss is vast and receives all things, we fear for the creatures of the sea. Our aim is to strike down the vicious steed,

not wound the innocent fish. Therefore, we give warning to the scaled and the shelled, Withdraw for a time, lest this poison trouble your waters. We call upon the Spirit to banish this corruption forever, to soften its fierce tempers, and turn men from venom toward honest trade and rightful labor. Let rivers carry away what is foul, how much more the boundless blue of the great ocean. Let distant lands keep their customs if they must, but let this poison never again stain the yellow realm. Spirit, behold this sincerity.

Receive this offering. On June 3rd, the destruction of the opium officially commenced. A ceremonial platform was erected at Human, with a long yellow silk banner hanging in front, inscribed with Imperial Commissioner by Imperial Decree in charge of Maritime Affairs in Guangdong, commander of all land and sea forces, Governor General Lin. All high-ranking officials from Guangdong were. present. Since the destruction of the opium was open to public viewing, and it was around the time of the Dragon Boat Festival, many people flocked to the Human Beach. In addition, foreign merchants,

consuls, journalists, missionaries, and others, all traveled specifically from Macau or other places to visit, often in protest against the Qing government's oppression of British property. For Lin Zeshu, this was supposed to be the solution. The drug was now gone. The dealers humbled, and the emperor's orders fulfilled. In his mind, the crisis had been resolved by firmness and moral clarity, not by armies or declarations of war. But the same event looked very different from the other side of the waters. What Lynn saw as enforcement, British merchants understood as seizure. What he treated as contraband worth destroying, they counted as private property.

worth compensation. The destruction at Human didn't just erase a stockpile of opium. It shattered the last shared understanding of just what the score really was. The opium was destroyed, the silver that bought it long since drained away. And next time, the fragile piece

would follow them both out into the surf. Thanks for listening. Welcome to True Spies. The podcast that takes you deep inside the greatest secret missions of all time. Suddenly out of the dark that's appeared in Laubman. You'll meet the people who live life undercover. What do they know? What are their skills?

And what would you do in their position? Vengeance felt good. Seeing these people pay for what they'd done felt righteous. True spies from Spyscape Studios, wherever you get your podcasts.