The History of China - #320 - Opium War 5: Bayonets In the Dragon's Teeth

Episode Date: February 22, 2026

Britain carries the Opium War to Beijing's unready doorstep with steam and iron, moving the crisis from the border frontiers to the heart of the imperial court itself. As imperial defenses strain and diplomacy replaces defiance, the two empires probe each other’s resolve – and discover that both of their understandings of the other have been built on little more than smoke. Time Period Covered:July 1840 – March 1841 Major Historical Figures:The Qing Empire:The Daoguang Emperor (Aisin-Gioro Minning) [r. 1820–1850]Lin Zexu, Imperial Commissioner [1785–1850]Qishan, Imperial Commissioner and Governor-General of Zhili [d. 1854]Yiliang, Governor-General of Liangguang [fl. 1840s]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]Sir Henry Pottinger, Plenipotentiary to China [1789–1856]Sir James Bremer, Royal Navy commander [1786–1850] Major Sources Cited:Platt, Stephen R. Imperial Twilight: The Opium War and the End of China’s Last Golden Age.Lovell, Julia. The Opium War: Drugs, Dreams and the Making of China.Wakeman, Frederic Jr. Strangers at the Gate: Social Disorder in South China, 1839–1861.Fairbank, John K. Trade and Diplomacy on the China Coast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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My history can beat up your politics wherever you get podcasts. Hello and welcome to the history of China. Episode 320, Bayonets and the Dragon's Teeth. Sometimes the connections we perceive across cultures and distances, our hopes for an underlying unity of human virtue, our belief that underneath it all we are somehow the same, can turn out to be nothing more than the fictions of our own. imagination. And when we congratulate ourselves on seeing through the darkened window that separates us

from another civilization, heartened to discover the familiar forms that lie hidden among the shadows of the other side. Sometimes we do so without ever realizing that we are only gazing at our own reflection. Stephen R. Platt, autumn in the heavenly kingdom. The barbarians demands no, no bounds. If they are not checked by force, there will be no end of trouble. Commissioner Lin Zeshu, memorial to the Daugong Emperor, 1840. If you know your enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the outcome of a hundred battles. If you know yourself, but not your enemy, for every victory you shall suffer a defeat. If you know neither yourself nor your enemy, you will be in peril in every battle.

Sunza, the Art of War, Chapter 3 China was a tough nut to crack. This was a fact, well and long known to those in the halls of London. The Qing regime's high-handed treatment of its sovereign brother states in both protocol and trade had long stymied British efforts to better and more profitably exchange with the so-called Celestial Empire. This was an insult to the very majesty of influence. England that had been allowed to stand for far too long and could no longer be suffered. Such would be a reasonable summation of the official British line regarding its decision to

prosecute the Opium War as of 1840. Fortunately, their justification would go on, we've long studied this nut and have devised a very effective nutcracker. In that at least, they would prove absolutely right. The British strategy wasn't. anything particularly flashy or brilliant. For them, it was little more than modern military maneuvers. Rather than wasting time, attempting to seize the heavily fortified port of Canton, why not bypass it entirely? In fact, save for a small force to maintain its ongoing blockade, the entire Pearl River itself could be swept off the strategic map. Who cared, after all, about a port city that had been specifically designed as a lone border gate of the sea,

much less the southern river system that fed it. Certainly not the center of that very imperial power, the place that Canton was built to keep the foreigners as far away from as possible, Beijing. Thus, only a fool would strike at the tail of the serpent, rather than its head, and Great Qing, after all, had plenty of other coastlines and river mouths to choose from. Thus, planning to quit the south altogether, the British plan to sail around the coast, east and then north, up to the mouth of the Hangzhou Bay and the hilly boat-shaped island of Zhou Shan. After establishing a forward command post there, the bulk of their navy would continue north to the mouth of the Behe,

today known as the High River near Tianjin City, and from there, a direct water pathway to Beijing itself. This initial plan hinged on neither siege nor occupation nor decapitation. Even in their wildest flights of fancy, the British surely knew that they had ludicrously little manpower or time before the crushing weight of China itself came crashing down upon their tiny incursion. Rather, this was all to deliver a message. In form, it was a note from Foreign Secretary Palmerston to the Daugong Emperor, himself. Well, maybe calling it a note is a little bit too polite. It was a very curt list of the demands levied by Parliament. Diplomatic equality, opening of new ports, legal protections,

full indemnity for the destroyed opium, and above all, the permanent session of Hong Kong Island. But in function, it was a simpler message still. We can touch you. By June 21st, 1840, a full 16 British warships had broken off from the Canton blockade and made north for the Jijang coast, along with eight transports carrying some 4,000 soldiers that have been assembled and wading off of Macau. Let's pause here for a moment to discuss ships. We talked last time about the Qing's estimation of British fighting prowess on both sea and land, which held that their ships could not sail in shallow waters, nor could their ships. soldiers, constrained as they were by their oh-so-restrictive pants, effectively fight with fists or swords once ashore. Commissioner Linza Shue had finished out his assessment with the historically haughty dismissal that, quote, what is called British power can be controlled

without difficulty, end quote. And that was the part where we, in the present, all threw our heads back and laughed. The facts of the matter were so much to the contrary, that I risk slipping into forests even outlining just how utterly the Qing's assessment of the British military eclips their own. Though the brains of the operation were indeed in distant and inaccessible London, their bases across the Indian coasts were more than capable of providing all the logistical and material support to the Far Eastern Theater that could ever be required. The tip of this spear would be the latest and greatest in British naval platforms. as embodied by the flagship herself, the HMS nemesis.

It had been almost purpose-built to defeat the Qing's supposed maritime Maginot line, which was, once again, the supposition that any ocean-going warship would be unable to navigate the shallows of China's internal waterways. Completed and rolled off the line just the year prior in 1839, the nemesis was a 660-ton displacement iron-hulled steamer. the likes of which China had neither yet seen nor even dreamed of. Far from the deep holes of its predecessors, the draught of the nemesis and its ilk was just six feet, rendering it able to ply virtually any riverway with ease.

It was lightly crude at just 90 to 100 personnel and heavily armed with twin 32-pound main guns, four eight-pound guns, and Congreve rocket artillery stations, which, as a side point here, were the same sort of shells used by the British, in the War of 1812, inspiring the line and the rocket's red glare the bombs bursting in air. So stick that in your back pocket.

Though terribly inaccurate by modern standards, at the time such heavy guns were both terrifyingly accurate and psychologically devastating to face down. Moreover, its half inch thick iron hulling wasn't just about shrugging off direct enemy fire, fire, which it was able to do with almost laughable ease. Even more demoralizing, though, was that ching cannon fire against such vessels would be met with a resounding clang on hit, followed by watching the cannonball itself drop harmlessly into the waters below. The ships were also designed with watertight bulkhead systems to ensure that, even in the event of a hull breach, the ship remained nigh unsinkable. To the peasant, largely conscripted troops of the Qing coastal defense force,

it seemed less like an enemy warship just shrugging off fire that should have sunk anything on the water, and more and more like something straight out of hell. But its ultimate secret weapon were not its cannons, nor was it its armor. Rather, it was its propulsion. As a top of the line, steam-powered paddlewheeler, it sat a league apart from any Qing design as being able to defy the very patterns of nature itself. to sail against the wind and storm, and in any season, rendering it able to appear anywhere at virtually any time it chose. Nor were, it ought to be said, the red-coated and pantalooned

British infantrymen anything to sneer at either. Technologically, they'd come to far outstrip the archaic Chinese cannon and matchlock designs, and were by 1840 beginning to field new percussion lock muskets, vastly improving their rates of fire. from one to one and a half rounds per minute for a, say, well-disciplined Qing soldier, firing one of their Niao Chang-style muskets, versus the now three to four rounds per minute for a red coat shooting a pattern 1839 percussion lock. They also decreased misfires and improved accuracy,

all while continuously functioning in almost any weather or condition, such as in the rain or aboard ship. But the difference was not merely technological, though that might well have been sufficient in itself. The British tactics were, no sugar-coating it here, just outright better than the Qing's, and not by a little bit. From Wakeman, quote, The Chinese, once geniuses of siege warfare, consistently held fixed coastal fortress positions

with artillery riveted in place to face massed frontal attacks. Time and time again, all that the English had to do was to land under supporting naval fire and attack from the flank with the disciplined precision of close-order drill in order to seize the emplacement or break the enemy line. End quote. In contrast, the Qing Green Standard Army was little more than a hollow shell, a massive force on paper, but in reality badly undermanned, under-trained, and underfunded to do much more than stop individual pirate fast crabs.

And all under the command of Fat Cat Banner Generals from the North, who often knew even less about naval warfare than they remembered about the step-conquests of their forefathers. Quote, registers were patted with false names, marketplace coolies hastily recruited to pass muster, and periodic military exercises held for great pomp and little circumstance, emphasizing sword drill formalized into operatic dance, end quote. Field commanders were not from the ranks, but appointed by the central government from its own glen,

luts of civilian bureaucrats, who'd often never so much as led a formal military operation ever before. They were in practice little better than the poorly trained, poorly led local militia, as likely as not to desert and ravage the countryside as they were to stand fast and obey commands in the face of enemy fire. There would be, over the course of the war-torn years to follow, several attempts to correct these dire problems within the Qing military. The quickest and easiest patch job was to simply hire on extra local militia. It was none other than Lin Zishu himself, who championed such a measure across Guangdong in the early stages of the war. Quote, characteristically believing that the popular zeal of these local braves could almost by itself defeat any enemy,

end quote. His confidence, however, proved misplaced. This won't come as a great surprise to anyone familiar with militias in general, But however poorly one's standing army functions normally, militias were predictably still worse. Not only do they not receive the same level of training or equipment as the regulars, but they also tend to bring out, well, the weirdos, and in droves. When the emperor extended the militia recruitment season in the summer of 1840, he was trying to bolster imperial forces while cutting costs.

What he found instead, again according to Wakeman, was that, quote, many of the irregulars were former bandits, salt smugglers, or rural hoodlums, who used their militia rank to prey on local villages, and quote. But even beyond hiring foxes to guard the hen house, Daugong's government would also find itself turning to the more mystical and esoteric arts. Purported Wu Shu and Kung Fu practitioners, claimed that mastery had enabled many of them to, to harness the power of Taoist magic and channel their chi energies in order to perform miraculous

feats, all of which could be made available in defense of the emperor and his realm, for the right price, of course. What sorts of magical arts, one might ask? Perhaps the most famous were the Yongshui, or the water braves, masters of focus, who claimed to be able to hold their breath for more than ten hours at a time, enabling them to hide beneath the waves and wait for passing British ships. When one sailed overhead, they could swim to it and use hand drills to bore holes into the bottom of the hulls, thus sinking the vessels. Others claimed even more outlandish possibilities,

ritual hexes to count British yang energy with yin pots, or even employing roving troops of animals to function as living bombs. It is important to note here that with the exception of the Qing government actually hiring on professional pearl divers to attempt night sabotage against British ships. These other flights of fancy were very localized, improvisational, and much more a marker of the rising desperation of coastal defenders, as the more rational line of defense were systematically shattered by this implacable foe. They should not be taken as the entire state apparatus banking on magical solutions to real-world problems. No, no. That would wait for wars yet to come.

As of late June 1840, though, from the gun emplacements surrounding Canton, watching the greater bulk of the British fleet sail off beyond the horizon was cause for celebration. Most denizens believed that the Englishmen had been scared off upon seeing the new shore batteries so recently installed by Commissioner Lin himself. Why, a mere display of Great Ching's divine Imperial Majesty had, yet again, been more than enough to cow the barbarians back into their proper place. But that fantasy burned off with the morning fog as of July 5th, when the British fleet reappeared some 800 miles north in sight of Zosan off of Hangzhou Bay.

And to once again contextualize the speed of this move relative to the flow of information overall, the sub-prefect on the island at first thought that the foreigners had come to trade with them, beating to great rejoicing at the commercial profits about to be made. It was only when naval commander, James Bremer, sent word demanding the port's surrender, that it became apparent that celebration had been premature. The garrison commander, of course, refused the demand, which led to a nine-minute-long bombardment from the flotilla at the front door. In the course of what must have seemed to the city's populace a terrifying eternity,

Hundreds of heavy rounds were fired into the island's capital, Ding Hai, battering it to effective ruins. Later, as tales so often grow in the telling, particularly in Qing post-war accounts, that number would swell into the thousands. When the gun barrage ceased, the shattered remains of the town were sifted through by shore parties, who quickly moved to occupy it without any further resistance. The capture of Dinghai had been intended to borrow a Rumsfeldian term from 160-odd years later, to be an operation shock and awe. Back in Whitehall, Foreign Secretary Lord Palmerson had greenlit the occupation of the island as a means to quickly and easily,

quote, shock the Chinese into immediate surrender, end quote. Several world wars and strategic aerial bombing campaigns later, we understand this idea to be ludicrous, but it seemed quite plausible to the sensibilities of the age. The specificities of Joe Shan's. capture, as it turned out, did the British no favors in breaking Chinese morale. Since Josian's garrison had been routed by naval artillery, the loss of the island did not destroy the myth that Englishmen could not fight ashore. It was widely believed, moreover, that the British objectives were, indeed must be, local and narrow in scope. At most, the barbarians might hope to venture to the coastline proper, likely the nearby trade hub, Ningbo, to open it

specifically to their further trade. Ching's sensibilities still understood the British to fit far more into the familiar mold of especially well-armed pirates rather than as potential conquerors to be taken seriously. Any remaining delusion of security was dashed, however, when word began to arrive in the capital, that having secured the island rid out for themselves, the British task force was making not for the nearby coastline, but headed even further north. full steam ahead. Quote,

by 9 August, the Grand Council was thrown into a furor as it received reports of the ship's progress, end quote. Fearful rumors began to circulate through the halls of power

and even the throne room itself. Could the English mean to make for Beijing itself? Could they really be so brazen as to intend its capture? That question was definitively answered once the British arrived at their next port of call,

turning up the mouth of the Behe and to just outside the fortified guns along the embankments at Daegu. Daegu, which is often rendered as Taku, had for nearly 300 years since the time of Ming's Jia Jing Emperor served as the teeth in the dragon's mouth that led directly to the capital. Less than 60 kilometers or 35 miles from the vital trade city, Tianjin, it stood as the last and final readout against a naval incursion through Tianjin. and directly into the northernmost reaches of the famed Grand Canal Network. From there, via the Tongue segment of the canal, it was just a straight, unimpeded shot of 90 more miles

directly to the beating heart of the empire. Daegu had been chosen because its emplacement along that flat, muddy delta of the Beyh make sure their firepower potential against incoming threats, but also because it was an especially difficult and arduous section of the river for ocean-going ships to navigate. Large and especially shallow sandbars and mudflats ran unpredictably throughout the river's lower reaches, easily able to beach an uncareful vessel with a normally deep draught. It was supposed to be, in many respects, a wet version of the infamous Maginoline a century later.

And as one with the other, its impenetrable nature would quite unexpectedly prove to be no barrier at all to new mechanical wonders, such as iron steamers, like the nemesis. And yet, for all the technological eclipsing, and the bayonet now pointed squarely down their pinioned foes' throat, there never came the killing thrust. Want to learn how you can make smarter decisions with your money? Well, I've got the podcast for you. I'm Sean Piles, and I host NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast.

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Instead, they were met by the envoy, Chishan. Beijing native and Borgi'd Mongol Marquis by birth, Chishan was as illustrious unofficial as there came. In the Imperial Service since the age of 20, he served as a personal bodyguard of the Jia Qing Emperor for six years, and his position prior to 1840 had been no less than the imperial governor of the Jili capital metropolitan region, standing as one of the richest and most powerful men in all of China. But there had been some recent reshuffling that had forced him to accept this new assignment, for it was now Qi Shan who held the title of Imperial Commissioner. Not even two years prior, the Wundarkind Lin Zishu had practically walked on water in the eyes of the emperor, promising to

keep the whole opium situation in Canton in hand and under control. But oh, how far he had now fallen. Wakeman writes, quote, the decision to negotiate was not so much a break with Lynn's policy of awing the barbarians into submission, as it was a disavowal of Lynn himself. On the one hand, as the stern letter of demands from Lord Palmerston would make fully clear, the British were furious at the erstwhile Imperial Commissioner, as they saw him, not without cause, as the guy who'd destroyed $9 million worth of their product

and dumped it into the sea. The court, understandably, came to the conclusion that, if they got rid of Lin, that would satisfy the English completely. Not that it was a difficult decision for the Dao Guang Emperor, either. He was, quote, furious at what he took to be Lin's blundering, end quote. mind you, his intentions had been correct, firmness with the foreigners was still the correct approach, but for all of Lind's issue's pie-in-the-sky predictions and reports about containing the problem and bringing the British back to heel, he had, as was now quite evident by the, you know,

war ships sitting at the mouth of the Behe, epically screwed it all up. And look, war with a foreign tribe or nation was one thing. Not great, not terrible. It happened. That wasn't the problem per se. But such things were supposed to happen over there, in the provinces, along the peripheries. That was what the border trade system had been designed to ensure. It absolutely wasn't supposed to be happening within shooting distance of the Imperial Center.

And that it had been allowed to slip that far out of hand was, frankly, unforgivable. Where now, the Emperor wished to know, were all of Lin's promises of a quick and easy solution to the opium question. Da Guang wrote directly of his appointment to Lin, quote, You speak of having stopped foreign trade, yet a moment after, admit that it is still going on. You say you have dealt with offenders against the laws, yet admit they are still at large. All this is merely an attempt to put me off with meaningless words. So far from doing any good, you have merely produced a number of fresh complications. The very thought of it infuriates me, end quote.

Yeah, nice job breaking it, hero. Lin's response was predictable enough. He blamed it all on Superintendent Elliot. Elliot knew that he was doing wrong, as evidenced by the fact that he had voluntarily turned over the opium, only to turn and then lie to his own government that it had been ill. legally seized. And Wakeman notes here that later on, the emperor would have Chi Shan investigate this particular claim, with a new commissioner reporting back that it was just incorrect factually. But anyways, yeah, it was his bad that it had come to war, and he totally accept responsibility

for that. But by the throne, all he needed was a few good men and a commission to retake Joshaun and drive the British out completely once and for all, at all costs. As Lynn explained his understanding of the foreigners, quotes, Their appetites are insatiable. The more they get, the more they demand. The barbarians demand no no bounds. If they are not checked by force, there will be no end of trouble. It was a good sounding line,

and one with which the emperor may have even privately agreed. But one thing was clear from the dragon throne. Whatever it was that must be done about this British invasion, Linza Shue was no longer the miracle worker for the job. He'd lost the confidence of his own imperial patron, and the British themselves were likewise shouting for his removal. The writing was on the wall. Then so, on September 4, 1840, that writing was read via imperial decree.

Quote, In the preceding year, the Imperial Commissioner did not fully understand the holy mind of the great emperor, and consequently failed to manage affairs with propriety. He is now put under trial and surely will be severely punished. Therefore, there is no obstacle in the way of the redress of grievances, and quote. And with that, Lin Zeshu was offered up as the sacrificial lamb on the altar of making the British go away again. Such was, effectively, the end of any meaningful semblance of the once untouchable Lin Zha-Shu's career. Though he'd remain stationed in Canton until early May the following year, he duly made

his way northward to face adjudication from the capital, and it would be no mere wrist-slapp. By Imperial Rit, he departed Beijing just two months later in early July for his next assignment. To once again foreground the often overlooked but hugely explanatory factor of travel times, You may recall that his initial triumphant dispatch from the capital to the 1,200-mile distant Canton had been made in famously good time, taking just 60 days. So, if he left Canton in early May and reached Beijing on a similar schedule, that takes us right to early July, meaning that he was turned straight back around and sent out again without so much as a chance to rest his feet.

And this time the road did not lead to some lush, southern port city, but into the dust and wind, to the central Asian marches, and further still, off to I. Lee, some 2,500 miles and all, into the frontier wastelands beyond Gansu. There, he would spend the next four years overseeing vast drainage and irrigation works fed by mountain runoff. Thank you for your service, indeed. It's important to say, plainly, that for all his personal bravado, Lin Zishu was very much the imperial fall guy for this whole debacle. He might have been a little too much his own hype man in securing the appointment to Canton, but he had not been a malign or even incompetent commissioner.

He was the man left holding the bag, in the wrong place, at the wrong time, when the crisis broke. As Wakeman puts it, quote, any official in Lin's position would have failed, and suffered equally. Each appointment to the post of Imperial Commissioner during these years was an embodiment of the Emperor's resolve to have peace and order without compromise of his own terms. So long as the Imperial hardline remained My Way or the Highway, every commissioner would face the same impossible and ruinous dilemma. And yet, Lin's years as acting assistant to the military governor of Yi Li,

reveal something essential about his character. He took his punishment squarely on the chin and then set himself with characteristic energy to making the most of it. Very quickly, the military governor learned simply to let Lin do his thing. He was the most efficient man in the room, heck, probably within a thousand miles of Ili. During his exile, he oversaw the construction of the Dunggau Canal,

still locally known as the Lin Zeshu Canal, and compiled detailed observations, often for the first time in Qing official reporting on the cultural and religious life of the region's Muslim communities. Rehabilitated at last, he was permitted to return to Beijing in 1845, where he lived out the remaining five years of his life in comparative quiet, before dying of natural causes on the road to suppress the early stages of the High Ping rebellion, as the world he'd sought to preserve continued to burn around him. But back to 1840, to the iron ships floating just outside the dragon's teeth at Daegu. The new Imperial Commissioner on the block, Chi Shan, was more than just an incredibly rich and powerful nobleman. He was also a consummate diplomat, a scholar of great cultivation, and a famously

shrewd negotiator. It was through his hands that Lord Palmerston's demands were now being handled at the Capitol, and through him that all further talks and deals would be struck. Quote, at the time, the Emperor had to admit that the English did have understandable grievances, but these were due to the kind of treatment they had received, not the nature of their relations as such, and quote. From the Qing perspective, the British demands as presented in Palmerston's missive were not merely unacceptable, they were cosmically absurd. New ports?

Payment from the Imperial Treasury for private foreign losses? Indemnity for the opium trade and its illegal smugglers? The session of sovereign imperial territory? An entire island? To a maritime barbarian power simply because it wished it? These were not serious people. But their cannons were serious. enough that much was certain. And so Da Guang himself was left flummoxed. From Wakeman,

quote, Without precedence, the emperor could not negotiate with these unprecedented enemies, end quote. His immediate goal, his need, was far simpler, if just as impossible. I don't care how, just get them out now. Thus it fell to the silver tongue of Commissioner Chishan to try to spirit the English back south. It's often said that the best way to a man's heart is through his stomach, and that's exactly where Chishan began. Even before terms were argued or demands rehearsed, baskets of fruit, meats, and tea were sent out from the shore to the British ships lying under the guns of Daugu. Officers who came ashore to parley found themselves received not with threats, but with tables laid. It was the oldest grammar of

Qing frontier diplomacy, soothe first, negotiate later. Before he could move the Englishman, Chishan would have to soften them, to establish, in the only language the tributary system truly trusted, that they were now guests of the empire. Much to his credit, Chishan was approaching this Gordian knot with one of the wide-eyed naivete as his predecessor, well-understanding the danger that now faced down the empire in a way that the emperor seemingly still did not. Chishan had, on several occasions, tried to make Dao Guang understand that these were no longer his grandfather's barbarians. Even so, even Chishan understood that difference only in quantitative terms. That is, yet another iteration of the Eon's old cycle of waxing and waning

peripheral tribes and confederations that would sometimes challenge the territorial integrity of the realm. It was a story only too familiar to any student of Chinese history, a tale as old as time. And thus, in spite of the very impressive and scary weapons that these particular barbarians had brought to bear this time around, it was still a known issue that could be dealt with via known means. Even if, quantitatively, it might take a whole lot more of those means to deal with these same old Shang Nu but now with new steamboats. What this meant in terms of implementation was that the classic means of barbarian placation could be used. Delay. Bribes. Flatter. Apease. Do all that correctly, and they

could be squeezed back into that same system of old tributary control. At least in the mid to long run. In the short term, obviously, with the foreigners' bayonets pointed right down their throats, it was a different story. Even with his newly empowered status as commissioner, Chishan couldn't simply offer up major concessions to the British all willy-nilly, especially those that the emperor himself had expressly forbidden. Yet he needed a way to get the British to agree to pull back from Tianjin and retire back to the south for future management.

which meant that he was going to need to jazz vamp a bit. In his proposal to the Grand Council as such, Chishon couched this improv routine in appropriately familiar terms. He proposed a policy of Fu Yi, meaning soothing the barbarians. This, in turn, stemmed from a broader and far older policy scaffolding that had underpenned Chinese administration since at least the Tang Dynasty, called Ji Mi, or Loose Rain. It proposed pretty much what it says on the tin,

that China's barbarian border states were wild horses who resisted being broken to the saddle and needed to be eased into it. Again from Wakeman, quote, Since it stressed the use of Adroit compliments to forge close personal ties with barbarian negotiators and thereupon arouse a feeling of personal obligation, it was also an expression of Chinese customs

which relied upon a special sense of personal camaraderie, or Gan Qing, to mitigate hostile conflicts of principle between political or economic groups, and quote. Or, as put in another common way of the era, the idea of culturally uncooked versus cooked barbarians. Like frogs in a pot. The careful chef knew that he must turn the heat up but slowly, that he had to buy enough time to let the British cook. In the moment, it would work, but without a comprehensive solution forthcoming, buying time would

inevitably just become postponement of any actual reckoning of the central issues in the conflict. And this would be made all the worse, as the British would come to realize, as dribs and drabs of gossip and internal reports leaked to them over 1841 and 42, that what they'd thought of as developing a, to them at least, real, equal working relationship with their Chinese counterparts, was actually them getting effectively catfished. The charming Qing diplomats who smiled and claimed to be their friends to their faces were at the same time in their missives back to Beijing explaining how abhorrent these noxious foreigners who reeked of pickled meat in Greece were, and how overwhelmingly difficult it was to overcome their crude, barbaric,

and physically noxious behaviors in customs, and were only able to do so out of an inexhaustible commitment to faithfully serve the realm's interests. It's hard not to take stuff like that, personally, as the British most certainly did in their subsequent enforcement of the Treaty of Nanjing. But, for the moments, it worked. By September 17, 1840, Chishan could report that the English warships would be returning south to Canton to, quote, complete the negotiations, end quote. The emperor, delighted by the news, sent Chishan himself to oversee this process. His artifice, the careful mix of fruit baskets, polite smiles, and strategic flattery, seemed in itself almost enough to keep the English at bay.

The two Eliot's, reading Chishan's charm as evidence of a new, reasonable peace party, didn't quite appreciate that the emperor's alarm in Beijing would cool as soon as the immediate threat in the north was eased, and that much more bellicose voices in court would begin to grow louder once again. By the time negotiations began that December, with Captain Elliott now acting as sole plenipotentiary, Chishon faced a nightmare balancing act. In Beijing, hot-headed young censors and old conservatives alike clamored for the outright a night. annihilation of the English. Some even whispered that Chishan himself was an appeaser, hoodwinked perhaps, or worse, corrupted by the foreigners. In Canton, the British,

confident of their military superiority, pressed for more concrete concessions. The most perilous of these, of course, was the question of Hong Kong. Chichon first tried to convince the emperor that the city's defenses were hopelessly inadequate. Then he miscalculated. Believing that he could protect Chinese territory while still giving the English enough to go back to their ships, he aimed to negotiate the return of Joshan and some form of indemnity,

perhaps opening a port like Amoy to trade, all while preserving the illusion of sovereignty. But the British were not about to take the bait. Even before Chishan heard back from Beijing, a communication delay of a full month, Elliot made clear that the acquisition of Hong Kong was not negotiable. To underscore Chishan's military impotence, the British captured the Bogue batteries on January 7, 1841. Finally, awakening to the stakes, Chishan, however reluctantly, agreed to the Convention of Chenby on January 20th,

which agreed to the session of Hong Kong, a $6 million indemnity, official intercourse on equal footing and the opening of Canton trade on British terms. Elliot, triumphant, believed the Sino-English problem solved, and without, at least by his figure, a drop of blood spilled, never mind the citizens of Joshan or the Chinese sailors on the junks. But any such sense of triumph was premature. When the imperial dispatches arrived in Beijing, they brought fury. not relief. By early January, the Daogwang Emperor had decided that the English were outrageous and unreasonable. Gentlemen, they might pretend to be, but they held piratical conquests and

attacked coastal forts regardless. Counter-orders went out. Four thousand reinforcements to Canton by January 6, and by the 30th, his cousin Ishan was named to lead an army of extermination. The Imperial Edicts arrived just two days after Chishon had signed over Hong Kong. He scrambled, attempting to persuade Cantonese officials to portray the city as having barely survived the English threat in order to justify the session and buy additional time. And then, at this worst possible moment, the gossip hit. Word spread that Chishon had taken bribes for the relinquishment of Hong Kong. Governor Iliang reported to Beijing that Chishon had killed.

kept the session a secret. On February 26th, the emperor exploded. Quote, In governing the country as the emperor, I look upon every inch of our territory and every subject as belonging to the empire. Chishon usurped the power to cede Hong Kong. The convention of Chenby was rejected.

Chishan's properties confiscated, and he was taken in chains from Canton on March 13th, 184. Across the globe in London, the British Foreign Secretary, Lord Palmerson, was just as outraged. Elliot had disregarded explicit instructions. He had been in a position to dictate terms after capturing Zhou Shan, yet had exchanged it for a dry, rocky island all the way back south again. Queen Victoria, just 22, wrote to her cousin Leopold of Belgium, quote, the Chinese business vexes us much, and Palmerston is deeply mortified at it. All we wanted might have been got if it had not been for the unaccountably strange conduct of Charles Elliott,

who completely disobeyed his instructions and tried to get the lowest terms he could, end quote. In a near mirror image of Chishan's abrupt and ignominious dismissal, Elliot was summarily replaced by Sir Henry Pottinger, a 52-year-old Irish veteran of Sindh, with instructions as clear as they were merciless. Secure Hong Kong, claim indemnities for opium and debts, open four new ports, ensure consular representation, abolish the Kohang system, and, if possible, legalize opium, all while negotiating with full powers on the Chinese side.

And so, with Pottinger on the ground, and imperial defenses stretched thin, the next moves would decide whether the Qing could withstand the industrial might of Britain or whether the dragon's teeth at Daegu were only the beginning. All that and more next time. But until then, happy year of the firehorse, Gongxi Fahai, and thanks for listening.