The History of China - #319 - Opium War 4: Peddling the Drug Peddlers' War

Episode Date: February 9, 2026

Britain and China both saw the opium crisis clearly enough to know it would end in disaster. Each believed it understood the situation, and the other, well enough to keep events from spinning out of control. And yet... it happened anyway.Time Period Covered:Late 1839 – April 1840 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] The British Empire: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]William Gladstone, Member of Parliament [1789–1898]Sir James Graham, Member of Parliament [1792–1861] Major Sources Cited:Platt, Stephen R. Imperial Twilight: The Opium War and the End of China’s Last Golden AgeLovell, Julia. The Opium War: Drugs, Dreams and the Making of ChinaFairbank, John K. Trade and Diplomacy on the China CoastHansard’s Parliamentary Debates, 1840 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Episode 319, Peddling the Drug Peddler's War. The government writers are laboring strenuously to give a respectable colors to the war with China. It is washing the black, more white. Do what they can, gloss it over as they may. The Opium War is the name by which history will hand it down. The Opium War in The Spectator, March 28, 1840 We may deceive ourselves for the moment, but we shall not deceive our contemporaries, nor the next generation.

The Opium War shall stand out in history as the blackest stain on the character of Britain, being an outrage on justice, on public principle, and on the independent rights of nations. The Opium Trade and War, in The Eclectic Review, Volume 7, June 1840. It would be overstating things to claim that there was panic on the streets of London, or of Birmingham. But in mid-1840, there was at least panic in the halls of Parliament. And it was enough to make one wonder, could life ever be sane again? The fact of the matter was, as of September 1839, the vast majority of the British public had never thought of or considered the national trade with China, much less the specifics of its nature. Who had the time?

Thus, it was an understandable shock to find out all at once that not only did it exist, not only was it a tremendous portion of the national economy, not only did it seem to rest primarily on the loathsome drug opium, but that there was also a full-scale international crisis underway over it that Parliament was now taking up the question of war over. It was a lot to swallow. As we've said before, the British public as a whole was harshly, even evangelistically, against the production or trade of the opium poppy.

Regarding its purveyors, as one edition of the Mercury put it, quote, As regards morality and humanity, the pitiless agents of as cruel and detestable a system as ever contrived by our common adversary to affect the ruin and misery of men, end quote. Organized opposition to such an immoral trade was strongest among the working classes, such as the Chartist reformers founded the year prior. They formed to promote universal manhood suffrage, but quickly came to take up what they saw as the sister causes, linking together the British capitalist practice of poisoning their own workers with gin,

with doing the same evil to Chinese workers, just with opium. In such abolitionist and anti-war publications, none other than Imperial Commissioner, Lin Zes Shu, was lifted up as a Paragon official, and a, quote, incorruptible, whose sterling reputation and sense of moral right placed him above the reach of British gold. Let's put a pin in the professional reputation of our friend Lynn for the moment, because we will be getting back to that. But at least for now, these same papers were likewise referencing

Superintendent Charles Elliott at this time, charmingly, as Mr. Opium. It would quickly get redundant to continue listing the many articles, speeches, sermons, and publications that papered Great Britain in late 1839, regarding what had already been popularly derided as the Opium War. As per the Times, quote, an attempt by open violence to force upon a foreign country the purchase of a deadly poison prohibited by its laws, end quote. So instead, I'll just sum it up as, the British knew what the Opium War was about. They knew it was not only morally wrong, but outright odious to prosecute it.

and they hated even the thought of dragging Britain's good name through the mud on account of drug dealers abroad. And yet, it happened anyway. In Parliament, opposition to any idea of war with China likewise faced intense opposition, albeit often for far more inside baseball rationales than the moral clarity of the Hoy-Polloy. The House of Commons finally took up the question of the war in April 1840, quote, with a motion to censure the Whig Cabinet ministers for botching their management of Britain's relationship with China, end quote. This singled out Foreign Secretary Palmerston in particular for condemnation, charging him with, quote, negligence for failing to give Charles Elliott the powers,

which might have allowed him to restrain the opium smugglers and prevent the outbreak of war, end quote. As to why such an oblique angle of attack, I mean, why not just talk about the war directly, The motion's narrow focus was deliberate political jiu-jitsu. The Whigs had long positioned themselves as the party of moral causes, so hitting Palmerston personally allowed his critics to peel off enough Whig MPs on grounds of conscience without forcing a straight vote on the war's supposed justice. Meanwhile, many conservatives, eager to defend national honor and reluctant to appear soft on imperial prestige, would hesitate to denounce any conflict

framed as protecting British interests abroad. By zeroing in on Palmerston's botched management, therefore, rather than as the opium trade or the war's morality as a whole, the opposition hoped to unite their own ranks while splitting the majority governments. It was an impassioned set of arguments that would be made over the next three days of debate. War with China, the Tories argued, risked far more than mere national honor. It could see the end to all future. Sino-British trade relations. The tax revenue made by the Crown on T alone, reminded Sir James Graham to his fellow members of Parliament, accounted for almost 8% of the entire home government's annual income, and in a time of deficit, no less. Combined with the British India trade that

likewise depended on Canton, that more than doubled to one-sixth of the whole United Revenue of Great Britain. It utterly dwarfed each year even the massive sum lost to the recent seizure and destruction at Canton. Quote, and it could all be lost if, as McCartney had once worried, the emperor should retaliate against British violence by shutting them out of China's markets for good, end quote. The subject of the censure, Lord Palmerston, for his part, offered up little more than a contemptuous dismissal of the charges as a, quote, feeble in conception and feebly supported, and quote, attempt by the opposition to leverage themselves into power.

And while on that point he wasn't in. exactly wrong, he went on to insist on such whoppers as denying that Elliot had, quote, in any way contributed to the opium problem, end quote, and insisting that the war was, entirely about the security of honorable, legitimate British commerce, end quote. Sure, secretary, now pull the other one. And he did. To top it off, he finished off his speech by dramatically pulling out a letter that had been signed, he claimed, quote, by 30 London merchant houses, begging him not to let Parliament interfere with the government's plans for war, and quote. The signatories, he insisted, were not mere partisan Whig supporters, but in fact,

quote, the majority of them are hostile to the government generally, and quote, concluding that they were not only representative of the entire London business community, but that it therefore proved that this little war of Palmerston's, quote, had the full and disinterested support of everyone with a stake in the China trade, and quote. Platt is quick to note that Palmerston's speech, coming as it did on the night of the last day of debate, gave no one any time to actually verify the names or claims, and as it turned out with good reason. Out of the 30 signatories, 25 of them were, in fact, long-standing Whig supporters.

The other five, quote, possessed sizable claims to the opium indemnity, and thus would effectively be paid with the proceeds of the war, end quote. Still other war hawks claimed that the opium issue had been blown way out of proportion. Despite what the hand-ringing moralists and liberals claimed, the poppy powder was no worse for its consumers, they said, than alcohol, which was not subject to prohibition. Rather unsurprisingly, the voices from this particular quarter of the argument were often laced with subtle, and not so subtle, racial terms. The Chinese were not the innocent, honest victims that they were being made out to be by the weepy,

unpatriotic left, but rather, quote, possessed a great shrewdness and unscrupulousness in all their proceedings, end quote. They had it coming, don't you see? Plus they claimed, quote, the war would be brief and restrained, not cruel or excessive, end quote. It would be cheap, just a couple hundred thousand pounds, and over in months at the most. They'd be greeted as liberators, and hang a big mission-accomplished banner. Maybe they'd even win a peace prize for this war. It was, after all, quote, the only way to restore peace and prosperity to the Canton trade and cement the everlasting friendship of Great Britain and China, and quote, it was a war for peace, a fight for friendship. Rising in opposition to this,

a 31-year-old newlywed named William Gladstone, who would go on to be able to be able to, a four-time prime minister and one of the titans of 19th century British politics, took a moral, blunt, and controversial tact, that if it were to come to war, both the concept of justice and almighty God himself would necessarily be on the side of China, not Britain. As he wrote in his personal diary, quote, I am in dread of the judgments of God upon England

for our national iniquity toward China. End quote. Lord Palmerston had had every opportunity over many years to reign in the British traders and put down the immoral opium trade once and for all. Yet he had not just neglected to do so, but had overseen a surge of exports of the drug from India into Canton. Meanwhile, the Chinese government wasn't acting suddenly or violently in its opposition to the trade, but from a long-precedented condemnation of the drug coinciding with a year's long legal suppression campaign that had been steadily ramping up well before Linza Shue's climactic drug bust. More to the point, yeah, so what if low-level officials in China had been complicit in the smuggling trade?

That did not amount to the government itself sanctioning it. What governmental body could truly boast of being corruption-free after all? But the law had been broken did not mean that it no longer applied, and was no excuse for British subjects to take advantage of the ease of doing so. Gladstone concluded with a statement so full of righteous fire and brimstone moral clarity that it could not help but make its way into the history books. A vowing, quote, a war more unjust in its origin, more calculated in its progress to cover this country with permanent disgrace, I do not know and have not heard of, end quote.

If the Union Jack were to be flown as it was about to over China, he thundered, quote, we should recoil from its sight in horror, end quote. There was one man in all this whose opinion mattered more than anyone else is in the chamber, Sir George Staunton. Neither minister nor merchant, instead he was Britain's most respected authority on China, a lifelong China hand who'd once addressed no less than the Chanlong Emperor in Chinese. and a man whose dire, seemingly chicken-littlesque warnings in 1833, were now being reprinted across the British press as little less than prophecy itself.

If anyone was expected to denounce the war, to defend Linza Shoe, condemn the opium, and tell Parliament that it had well and truly lost its moral bearings, it would surely be Stanton. And then George Staunton stood up before the peers of Parliament, and in a halting, nervous voice, declared the war just. His reasoning hinged on one claim, that Linzscheu had changed the rules without warning. Now all of a sudden threatening British subjects with death, where centuries of prior precedent had stipulated deportation at worst,

a quote-unquote atrocious injustice that demanded a response. Coming from anyone else, the argument would have sounded purely self-sortation, serving. But from Staunton, it sounded like conscience? With that, Britain's most trusted voice on China gave the wavering MP's permission to vote for war, and to do so with a clean conscience. The motion came to a vote after three grueling days of debate. At four o'clock in the morning of April 10th, 533 votes were cast in the dark of that night, and once tallied, it turned out that Palmerston and the Wigs had won out, but by the skin of their teeth. 271 to 262. Just nine votes.

Freed of censure. The government was thus given sanction to proceed as planned. Platt notes that, quote, the outcome was so close that if the very cabinet ministers whose conduct was on trial had not been permitted to vote in their own favor, the motion to condemn them would have passed, end quote. Leading up to the vote, Palmerston and his fellow defendants had even claimed that, were it to pass by fewer than ten votes, they would resign their posts. But words are wind, and in the wake of its passage, such assurances were simply swept aside.

Critics in the press, and the broader public, continued to press that such a narrow vote, quote, would have been fatal to the existence of any preceding administration, end quote. Yet, as it so often does, putting the country, country explicitly onto a war footing tended to squelch any such debate as being unpatriotic. Any lingering hopes to avoid war were dashed the following month with the failure of the House of Lords to pass a measure much more explicitly blaming the crisis on the British opium traitors. The effort to defeat it was headed up by none other than the Duke of Wellington. Yeah, that Duke Wellington, of Napoleon and Waterloo. Britain's greatest living war hero.

Though himself a conservative, he broke with his own party to side with the Whig Palmerston, declaring that he had looked very strongly into the causes and was certain that it, quote, could not be the opium, end quote. Instead, the 71-year-old proclaimed, it was wholly and completely about, quote, the protection of British lives in the far corners of the world, an unquestionably fair use of military power, end quote. The Iron Duke's assurances, in the face of all evidence to the contrary, proved more than enough to send the motion to a quick and ignominious death in the upper chamber. And with that, the debate was effectively closed. Platt summarizes the all-too-familiar rollout of selling the war, such as it was, quote,

Once the war had the blessings of both houses of Parliament, lukewarm as that blessing may have been, it took on a logic of its own, building a momentum that roll. over its silenced opponents, eventually overwhelming even Charles Elliott, the man who had started it all." As yet, blissfully unaware on the far side of the world in Canton, Commissioner Linza Shoe was jubilant with his apparently easy success. He had, with little actual effort or cost, once again rendered the sea barbarians tremblingly obedient to the laws of the realm, through the sheer overawing force of imperial.

Majesty and Justice. Quote, every manifestation of this subservience was reported to the emperor. As Lynn sat in his shaded pavilion and supervised the daily destruction of huge quantities of drug in seawater ponds filled with lime, he watched every foreign curiosity seeker. A doft hat, a rueful shake of a foreigner's head, was taken as absolute evidence of willingness to submit, end quote. Yet even mid-bliss, Lin understood that these ephemeral signs of deference needed to quickly be rendered into definite lasting guarantees. To this end, Lin placed his faith in the signing of government-mandated bonds of conduct. Foreigners who wanted to trade through Canton would be required to sign a document,

promising that they would not smuggle opium into China, and that, if they were caught doing so, they acknowledged that they would face the same capital punishment as any Chinese would. The concept was designed, as Frederick Wakeman puts it, quote, to bring the barbarians under-acknowledged Chinese jurisdiction, and quote. This grand plan, however, flew squarely in the face of the English foreign policy of that era that asserted not just diplomatic equality between parties, but legal extraterritoriality for its agents and countrymen. Now this is probably already a familiar concept to many of you,

but as a quick refresher, extraterritoriality is the idea that a country's citizen remains under their own nation's legal system and protections even while abroad. If they're charged with a crime, it must be their own courts that try them under their own laws. This somewhat survives into the modern day with the idea of diplomatic community for ambassadorial staff. But Lin Zishu was now a story. that it had just been revote, challenging Elliot directly via communique, quote, how can you bring the laws of your nation with you to the Celestial Empire?

End quote. For the country traders residing in Kent on themselves, of course, this was far less about theoretical legal principles, and far more about quite literally keeping their own heads attached to their shoulders, a fear that had only just recently been shown all too real by the imperial commissioners effectively imprisoning them all within their factory district for the duration of the Qing blockade. And so, they decided to self-deport. They wrote to Elliot, asking that they all be relocated to Macau in a kind of perverse form of political asylum for drug smugglers. After overcoming the Portuguese governor's reasonable but ultimately tepid hesitation to get involved in this

developing imbrilio in progress, by appealing to the literal, and death nature of the situation, you gotta believe me, bro. But July 4, 1840, the whole of Canton's English community had pulled up stakes and transplanted itself to the far side of the bay and under the protective blue and white of La Bandera Real da Casa de Braganza. To this, Linza Shoe effectively shrugged and chalked it up as nothing to be overly concerned with. They might have been spooked off for now, but soon enough they'd come crawling back. Of that, he was certain as it had always been thus.

The alluring song of trade with the Realm Celestial and the limitless riches it promised would see it so. And when they came back, the promissory bonds of conduct would be right there, still waiting for their signature. The scorebed app here with trusted stats in 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. That's not really what I do.

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On July 12th, in his private journal, Lynn wrote, quote, sudden changes from fine to rain, wrote a poem using the same rhymes as the governor general in a poem of his, heard that at Kowloon Point, sailors from a foreign ship beat up some Chinese peasants and killed one of them, sent a deputy to make inquiries, end quote. For Lin, the matter was straightforward. A Chinese subject, a man named Lin Wei Shi, bearing no relationship to the high official, but after whom the case was named, was dead, and someone had to answer for. it. To accept anything less would be to admit that foreigners lived under a different moral law

than Chinese. Then even wrote directly to Elliot in clear frustration at the latter's apparent obdurate incompetence. Quote, if the principle that a life is not paid for where the life is once admitted, what is that going to lead to? If an Englishman kills an Englishman, or if some other national, say, a Chinese does so, am I to believe that Elliot would not demand a life to pay for a life? If Elliot really maintains that after going to the scene of the murder and spending day after day investigating the crime, he still does not know who committed it, then all I can say is, a wooden dummy would have done better, and it is absurd for him to go on calling himself unofficial. And quote. Elliot, no surprise, saw it very differently. He did not deny that a killing had taken place, but insisted that precedent demanded that, president demanded that,

British sailors be tried by British authorities. To surrender them to a Chinese court would almost certainly mean execution. The facts of the case were almost beside the point. What mattered was jurisdiction. And on that, neither Lynn nor Elliott believed compromise was even an option. In an attempt to bypass the standoff, Elliot decided to try to play judge and jury himself. In August of 1839, he convened a makeshift. drum head court on the deck of the merchant ship, Fort William. He couldn't, or wouldn't, identify any single killer, so he convicted five sailors of rioting instead, sentencing them to fines and short prison terms to be served back in England. It was a legal shell game. When the

sailors finally arrived home, the British government promptly overturned their convictions and ruled that Elliott had had no legal authority to hold the trial in the first place. The sailors walked free, and even the money that they had been fined was returned. Commissioner Lin understood this immediately to be the farce that it was. He didn't want a lecture on the difficulties of identifying a culprit and a brawl. He wanted a life for a life. From the outside, Qing justice looked arbitrary and terrifying to Western observers. But in reality, it was, by the standards of the early 19th century, remarkably humane.

Premeditated murder was punished with decapitation, yes, homicide without intent by strangulation, manslaughter by financial compensation, and killing in self-defense, not at all. By contrast, British law still operated largely under the so-called bloody code, in which the theft of even a single shilling could, until quite recently, be punished with death. By the 1830s, some of these penalties were being rolled back, but largely by leaving a a judge to decide whether mercy should be applied. What unsettled Europeans about Qing law was not the severity of its sentences, but the logic of it. Chinese justice was far more concerned with restoring the moral balance of the universe than with isolating individual intent. When

responsibility could not be clearly assigned, the act itself still demanded redress. A life had been taken. A life, therefore, was owed. From the Chinese perspective, this wasn't cruelty. It was order. The ethical repair of a world thrown out of balance by the infliction of injustice. Quote, redressing the wrong was more important than punishing the perpetrator. To restore the ethical balance of a just reign by exchanging the victim's injured spirit for the culprit's life. End quote. From the British perspective, this looked like legalized randomness, as though the Chinese were willing to grab any convenient sailor for a crime he may not have personally committed and punish him for it. It was little wonder that British officials recoiled from the idea of surrendering one of their

own to such a system. Thus, as the summer of 1839 once again bore down on Guangdong, the Lin-Way Shi case continued to fester between the English and Chinese. as they stared down each other from Macau and Canton, respectively. Since the English remained steadfast in their determination to not give up any of their men who had not been first proved guilty in a court of their own, and one was not forthcoming, Commissioner Lynn came to the conclusion that this really was a make-or-break test case of imperial law. If the English were allowed to defy him here, they would go on defying him everywhere,

over the bonds, over trade, over the authority of Qing law itself. The precedent, the law itself, must stand firm. Or it was worth nothing at all. As such, on August 15th, Commissioner Lin decided to up the ante on his blockade of Canton's Foreign Factory District, by applying it to the city of Macau as well, cutting it off from receiving fresh produce and supplies. And just to put an even finer point on things, he went ahead and moved 2,000 Qing troops to Macau's mainland neighbor city of Xiang. Portugal, you'll recall, hadn't exactly been gung-ho about this whole British gambit in the first place.

And now that it was clear that there would be consequences leveled directly at their own city for English stubbornness, the sleepover was officially cancelled. Within 10 days of the Qing announcement of its policies against Macau, the city government ordered the English out. And on the 24th, Elliot and Company were once again cast adrift, making anchor across the bay near Hong Kong. Back at sea, Lin felt, he had the British right where he wanted them, namely not on Chinese land. He wrote to the Emperor, confidently stating that he could use the coastal exclusion policies

of the early dynastic rains to great effect against the barbarians who must now depend entirely on Chinese barter to resupply. He wrote to Daoang, quote, No doubt they have on their ships a certain stock of dried provisions. But the mere fact that they will be prevented from going ashore and getting fresh water is enough by itself to give the power of life and death over them. End quote. And never you mind that the sea ban laws of nearly 200 years prior

had been designed to combat small-scale pirates and smugglers, not an industrial naval armada. In any case, the region's coasts were quickly staffed by additional water patrols and imperial troops, who proved, at least for the time, effective at preventing any British landfall. Elliot and his staff, of course, began to grow desperate as their store of provisions did indeed begin to worryingly dwindle. Within two weeks, on September 4th, he felt that they could wait no longer, and must act. Personally leading a small naval attachment to the Kowloon Peninsula,

Elliot encountered a roving Qing junk commander and informed him that if they were not given the provisions they required within a half hour, they would sink the Chinese fleet. 30 minutes later, the deadline passed and Elliot, true to his word, opened fire, routing the entire

Qing patrol fleet. The first shots of the as yet still undeclared opium war had been officially fired. But Lin was unruffled. Instead, he remained confident that, quote, a few English merchants would be willing to submit to signing the bonds for the sake of renewed commerce, end quote. Indeed, immediately upon Elliot's departure, the American merchants in Canton

happily moved right on British business interests. In reply to Elliot's begging that they hold the line and show solidarity with their British counterparts, the American lead trader answered, quote, I had not come to China for health or pleasure, and that I should remain at my post as long as I could sell a yard of goods or buy a pound of tea. We Yankees had no queen to guarantee our losses, end quote. It was indeed a huge boom time for the Americans, and bitterly hearing of this from their seaboard shelterage offshore, the English merchants, especially those whose hands were clean of the opium trade began to waver, and then they began to defect.

Finally, just after the Kowloon incident, the consignee of the Thomas Kautz bolted from English ranks to sign an opium bond. In short order, the Royal Saxon, loaded with rice from Java, decided to follow suit. This was all incontrovertible proof in Lynn's eyes that Charles Elliot, for all his do-eyed attestations of innocence and legal principle, was nothing more than a crooked protector of the interests of drug smugglers. And it was upon this certainty that Linza Shue would write directly to Queen Victoria, quote, morally adjuring her to stop the opium trade in the belief that the home government had been beguiled and misled by Captain Elliot, end quote. Lin's letter to Victoria is truly one for the ages, and certainly deserves to be

presented in it entirely. And so I have. You can find it in this feed as the standalone feature at Lin Zeshoe to Victoria 1839. Now, just as he'd predicted, the money-grubbing English were beginning to peel off one by one to sign his oath and submit to Qing Law. Everything was proceeding exactly as he had foreseen. Now was the moment to seal the overriding imperative of imperial authority. And so, Lin ordered Admiral Guan Ti, to send a flotilla of 29 war junks to assemble near the opening of Tiger's mouth Bay, that is the Bogue or Human, to raid the English ships at anchor, and quote,

seize a foreigner at random as a hostage for the real criminal harbored by Elliot, end quote. Elliot observed with rising alarm the Qing force amassing over at Tuanbi, and, assuming that they were preparing to attack the whole of his 50-odd merchant navy under his protection, decided that the best defense was to go on the offense and nip this whole thing in the bud. Thus, he set out Upriver on November 3, 1839, to scare this junk navy off with their tails firmly tucked between their legs.

And it was right here that the ironic sensibilities of fate decided to intervene once again. From Wakeman, quote, Just as the two lines of warships swung into confrontation, the Royal Saxon unwittingly and coincidentally sailed past on its way to Canton." The captain of the HMS Vlage, seeking to prevent such an embarrassing defection at this critical moment, fired a shot across the Royal Saxon's bow. At which point, Admiral Guan moved his ships to intervene, seemingly in protection of the English merchant vessels suddenly under fire from its own side.

Yet that was all it took. Elliot, taking Guan's actions as aggression in itself, had his fleet's guns turned on the Chinese vessels and opened fire. Wrote the captain of the village, quote, I did not conceive that it would be becoming the dignity of our flag, the safety of the merchant shipping below, and my own character to retire before such an imposing force, sent out at that moment evidently for the purpose of intimidation, end quote.

As the Chinese later explained and conceptualized it to themselves, The British must have mistaken their own red flags for declarations of hostile intent. Regardless, in the hail of shot that followed, four Qing vessels would be sunk, and the rest scattered, including Admiral Gwan's own flagship, which was damaged, but allowed to limp away. The battle may have been over in moments, but really it was a battle that never should have happened in the first place. Fifteen Chinese sailors killed and one British wounded.

not out of deliberate anger between the Chinese and British, but because of signals so mixed that it literally began by one side firing upon itself, in a futile attempt to maintain its embargo to uphold its free trade principles so that opium traders would not face Chinese justice. It shouldn't have happened. And yet, it happened anyway. In Canton, Commissioner Lin Zishu took news of the battle's outcome pretty well, all things considered. He wrote back to Beijing, informing the emperor of the engagement at sea,

but see if you can spot the oh-so-settled reframing that he made in the telling here. Lin informed the emperor that he'd actually done awesome at Chenby, and those cowardly English sea dogs had been completely scared off. Did you catch it? Pretty clever, eh? In fact, Lin went on, the time for half measures and concessions was over. It was high time to just drive these troublesome British out and expel them from China permanently. This, he explained, would be no sweat, since all the barbarian warships were definitely too large to actually sail within the riverways of China's interior, and that the British, wholly unable to fight on land, were just going to remain stuck on their boats in the harbor. Quote, furthermore, besides guns, the barbarians

do not know how to use fists or swords. Also, their legs are firmly bound. with cloth, and consequently it is extremely inconvenient for them to stretch. Should they come on land, it is apparent that they can do still less. Therefore, what is called their power can be controlled without difficulty." You heard that right. Pants, Lin explained with absolute confidence, were going to be the British Achilles heel. Within the hallowed confines of the forbidden city, the Daugong Emperor received Lin's message with

Glee. Applying his Vermillion seal of office approval to proceed, he further commented in the memorial's liner notes, Shen Wei, Zhenxin fang-quang, or very comforting, our heart is at ease. Now was indeed the time to close the door on these boorish barbarians at the gates. He ordered the issuance of an edict, affecting a perpetual ban on the opium trade, and all foreigners, but in particular the British, who would seek to defy that prohibition. That, both Daugong and Lin figured, would be the final boot in the rear of prideful British obstinence, and in short order, everything could get back to normal. Superintendent Elliott, meanwhile, took the exact opposite tact, writing back to London in the

winter of 1839, 40, and arguing that the time had come for, quote, immediate and vigorous measures to legalize opium and force Lin's click out of power." Elliot was certain that Commissioner Lin was the sole architect of this disaster, and that a simple, sharp display of military force would cause the Chinese people to rise up, discredit Lin, and force the emperor to replace him with someone more reasonable. But Elliot was still playing checkers. And back in London, the man he had once expelled from Canton was playing a must much more globalized game of chess.

Dr. William Jardine, the wealthiest and most formidable of the Canton traders, hadn't just slinked back to England to enjoy his tea profits. He'd arrived in London in early 1839 with a $20,000 war chest and a singular burning purpose, to lobby for a war that would make his name and his firm immortal. In private talks with Lord Palmerston himself, Jardine wasn't suggesting a mere display of force, he was outlining a total strategic decapitation, regime change in effect. He proposed a blockade of China's major ports, the seizure of strategically vital islands like Chu San and Hong Kong, and most crucially, a plan to cut the Qing Empire in two by

sailing up the Yangza River itself. Palmerston, for his part, didn't need much convincing. By October, he had already told Elliot that an expeditionary force was on its way. By February 1840, he had officially appointed the two plenipotentiaries to lead it, Captain Elliot himself and his cousin, Admiral George Elliot. They were given a laundry list of demands, payment for the destroyed opium, the total abolition of the Kohung system, and the session of an island to serve as a permanent British base. And this brings us back to that 4 o'clock in the morning vote in Parliament.

While the Whigs and Tories shouted over the morality of the infamous contraband, the logistical machinery was already in motion. McCulley had successfully framed the conflict as a defense of the Civilus Romanus, the idea that no matter where a Britain stood on the globe, the full weight of the Royal Navy stood behind them. And so, as we reached the midpoint of 1840s, 40, the loop finally closes. In the Forbidden City, the Emperor is gratified, believing he has successfully shut the door on a nuisance. In Canton, Lin Zeshu watches the harbor, waiting for

the British to realize that they cannot fight in shallow water. But on the horizon, the water is rapidly getting deeper. On June 1840, a fleet of 16 warships and 4,000 troops appeared off the coast of China. Leading the way were four heavily armed, top-of-the-line steamers, boasting names straight out of hell itself. The Fleggathon, the proserpenny, the Pluto, and most infamous of all, the HMS nemesis. Iron-holed, steam-powered, and designed specifically to sail straight up those shallow rivers Lynn had thought were his greatest offense, and then wreak havoc. The ease of mind in Beijing was about to crash headlong into the vigorous measures of London. And next time, this drug peddler's war begins in earnest.

Thanks for listening. Life's full of big money decisions. Dividend versus growth stocks. Tapping home equity, even navigating tariffs. And for every smart tip out there, there's another one that sounds smart but isn't. That's where NerdWallet's Smart Money podcast comes in. I'm Sean Piles, a certified financial planner professional. And I'm Elizabeth Ayola.

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