Étiquette : Ireland

 

Britain’s Opium Wars Against China, Key to Understand the Present

Michel Panet (standing left), President of the Association Carrefour France-Sichuan, with Karel Vereycken (sitting on the right).

Dear guests and friends, Good Evening,

First of all, I would like to thank Carrefour France-Sichuan Association (ACFS) and its president Michel Panet for this kind invitation.

1. Introduction

I will start my presentation by talking about the present. We will then travel back in time to better understand what is happening to us today.

At the end of the Cold War and after the breakup of the USSR, it was hoped that peaceful cooperation would bring about lasting peace in the world. Unfortunately, today many conflicts have been rekindled.

From the China Sea to the Panama Canal, via Ukraine, Palestine, Greenland and Canada, the words « tariffs », « sanctions », « high-intensity wars », « annexation », « ethnic cleansing » and « genocide » have made a comeback, and unfortunately, they are not just words.

With regard to China. While we can rejoice that the prospect of a settlement through diplomatic channels is emerging to end the conflict in Ukraine, many analysts fear that the United States is mereley seeking to extinguish this conflict in order to have a free hand for a confrontation with China, designated in 2022 by the « kind » Democrat Antony Blinken as the country « which is, in the long term, the most serious threat to the international order. »

It is true that Donald Trump, after having exchanged on December 16 with Chinese President Xi Jinping on trade, the social network TikTok and fentanyl (a drug produced and distributed by the Mexican Cartels which has caused 100,000 deaths in the United States and whose precursors come partly from China), repeated almost word for word what he had said in 2017: « by working together, China and the United States can solve almost all of the world’s problems ». A few days later, as we know, he announced an increase in customs duties on foreign products, notably Mexican, Canadian, European and Chinese while showing himself willing to negotiate the time frame of their implementation.

This rivalry between the United States and China is reminiscent in many ways of the situation preceding the « opium wars » that I will talk to you about this evening.

Since the banking crisis of 2008, the current financial system has been in a state of virtual bankruptcy. Gigantic financial schemes, called derivatives and securitizations, mechanically generate financial bubbles. And like soap bubbles, financial bubbles inevitably end up exploding. When they burst, panic sets in and the system grinds down.

In 2008, the highest authorities of the UN in charge of the fight against narcotics admitted : the banking system, especially the interbank market which had come to a complete standstill, had been « lubricated » by billions of dirty money from crime, fraud, corruption, terrorism and drugs.

Worse still, after the crisis, nothing was done to prevent such a solution from repeating itself. No meeting of the European Council, the IMF or the G20 was devoted to the subject. Let us recall that it was only after the attacks of September 11 that the beginnings of the fight against the laundering of dirty money were outlined. Since then, the surveillance bodies set up were immediately diverted from their initial purpose. To this day, it is the strongest who use them to spy on and subjugate their enemies and vassals.

All this is reminiscent of the pitiful state of the British Empire at the end of the 18th century. A systemically bankrupt monster, the British Empire then chose drugs and war to perpetuate the privileges of its oligarchy in the name of « customs duties » and unregulated « free trade » as free as the fox in the henhouse.

The history of the Opium Wars shows that drug trafficking and war are not things that « happen to us, » but choices that corrupt elites impose on entire societies. Drugs are not something that « happens to us » through foreign aggression, but rather a choice that our leaders make through their acts and acts of omission.

As we documented in this book (shows book), the heirs of what was set up by the British following the Opium Wars, notably the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC) and the other « pearls of the Crown », that is to say the tax havens, allow a globalized narco-finance to prosper in full daylight and with complete impunity. By its size, this narco-finance has gone from « too big-to-fail » to « too big-to-jail ». Unless this taboo is lifted now, nothing serious can be done to eradicate the deadly narcotic business.

I will focus here on the (not so hidden) economic and financial stakes behind the opiim wars, which few historians dwell on. As long as we do not understand the driving force behind events, they will tend to repeat themselves. And as Marx once said, when history repeats itself, the first time it repeats as a tragedy, the second time as a farce.

Both Tragedy and farce, today, with the « white tsunami » of cocaine and ecstasy, and the corruption that accompanies it and which is eating away at France above all, history is repeating itself.

2. Deconstructing the « narrative »

The official « narrative », if it appears in school textbooks, presents the Opium Wars as a clash « between two empires » that they want to put on an equal footing, each with « its addiction » and each with its hypocritical and greedy elites:

  • Among the English, we are told, the addiction is tea; among the Chinese, opium. Let us recall all the same that we have never seen Chinese warships bombard English ports to force the British to consume Chinese tea…;
  • The British, we are told, advocated an « open door » policy, they sought to « open China » to « free trade, » Christianity and democracy;
  • The dangers of opium are « exaggerated, » the English have always told us. Laudanum (a few opium poppy seeds dissolved in ethanol) was freely available in their country, so why not elsewhere?
  • The British, we are told, only wanted to « satisfy » a demand and not to create it. If they had not sold their Bengali productions, others would have sold theirs, notably the Iranians and the Turks.

Fundamentally, this « narrative » is entirely false and at the very least without nuance, but it is the « narrative » of many conferences on the subject that most often end up, and this is logical, by advocating the choice rejected by the Chinese emperor and his advisors, that of the legalization of all drugs. Which goes to show that narratives are never neutral.

In any case, it is not a question of « two empires seeking to dominate the world »:

  • China, through its territorial and demographic expansion, but in a system favoring creativity and progress, must certainly face a strong and sometimes terrible « growth crisis » with populations demanding their share of development;
  • In contrast, for the British, war is written into the DNA of their system: a monetarism thriving on the rent drawn from land, possessions, raw materials and slaves to exploit them, all acquired at low prices and sold to the highest price, whether it be tea, opium and from Hong Kong, Chinese coolies sold to the United States.

3. Opium and its history

a) Plant and consumption

Before we continue, a few words about the product. What is opium?

Latex running out of opium poppies.

What we call opium is the latex (dried juice) produced by incision of the capsule before maturity of a plant, the « opium poppy » ( Papaver Somniferum ). Now what is special about opium is that it contains dozens of alkaloids that are used in pharmacy, more precisely morphine and codeine, two powerful analgesics.

Opium is consumed mainly in two ways:

  • In solid form (balls)
  • In liquid form (mixed with alcohol)
  • Smoked (with or without tobacco)

Like most drugs, opium can make you sleepy as well as overexcited. Like cocaine or captagon, it can make you insensitive to pain, a property much appreciated by warriors. In all cases, it gives you an illusory feeling of pleasure that you will find very difficult to do without. Opium dens, said one writer, are par excellence « the place where artificial paradises meet a real hell. »

b) Medical use

Recent archaeological studies have shown that it was in Switzerland that Neolithic farmers enabled the domestication of the opium poppy between 5 and 6 millennia ago.

Opium quickly entered the pharmacopoeia of Mesopotamia, Egypt and ancient Greece. Homer describes its use. The Arabs, the Venetians, the Portuguese, the Dutch and then the British were the first traders in opium.

In the United Kingdom, as we have already reported, laudanum, composed of a few poppy seeds in alcohol (wine or ethanol), was used for medicinal purposes.

Invented by the Swiss Paracelsus, this drink was sold over the counter at a low price in British pharmacies. Highly addictive and often fatal, because it contained morphine and codeine, laudanum was supposed to relieve the pain of coughs and migraines while offering a trance and ecstasy to poets lacking imagination. England consumed between 10 and 20 tons of opium per year for « medical use ».

Via the Silk Roads, opium was introduced to Central Asia and China during the Tang Dynasty (618-907). Its consumption, for medical use or as a kind of Viagra, remained marginal due to its foreign origin and its high price.

c) Tobacco

This situation would change radically in the 16th century with the arrival in the New World of Nicotiana tabacum, tobacco , consumed above all in America in the form of chews to quench hunger and thirst.

The « taking » and « chewing » of tobacco took over the whole of Europe and beyond, Asia, in a few decades. Smoking arrived in Italy in 1561, by Cardinal Prospero di Santa-Croce; in England in 1565; in Germany around 1570 by the Huguenots moving away from France; in Vienna in the same years. In 1580, it reached Turkey, which opened the door to Asia, where tobacco consumption became widespread in a few decades.

At the turn of the 16th century, the introduction of the pipe in Southeast Asia by the Portuguese and the Spanish marked a decisive turning point. First the Portuguese and then the Dutch, having clearly identified the extent of smoking in China, to boost their sales by making tobacco more addictive, dipped it in opium to obtain the famous madak.

The craze was immediate. Quickly, consumers, installed in nicely furnished living rooms when they were the upper classes, or in unsanitary slums for the poor populations in Jakarta, preferred to smoke madak and later chandoo (an opium refined to be smoked) with long pipes. It should be noted that smoked, opium « gains advantages » for the consumer: the risk of overdose is much lower than orally and the pleasure effect is no longer delayed but almost immediate.

Before the arrival of tobacco, China had already opened its doors to new crops from the New World, including corn, sweet potatoes and peanuts. While the consumption of these last three improves life expectancy, that of tobacco reduces it substantially. Smoking remains a major scourge in China. In 2020, with 300 million tobacco smokers, China still holds the world record for the number of smokers…

In the end, even before the British imposed legal opium production and consumption on China through war, the country already had an estimated 4 million to 13.5 million opium addicts. With at least 40 million opium users in China in 1949, Chinese opium addiction, on a state-wide scale, remains the largest wave of drug addiction in history.

The UN, in a report of 2008, stated that,

4. Trade with China

Before the Opium Wars, China had become a major economic and political power. Thanks to improved nutrition, the population of China increased from 100 million at the end of the 17th century to 430 million by 1850. Although there were fifteen major peasant revolts, some of which lasted for many years, the country was relatively self-sufficient.

Compare this with the number of inhabitants of the British Isles, estimated at less than 17 million in 1810, around 10 million in England and Wales, 5 million in Ireland and less than 2 million in Scotland, without taking into account the « great famine » which decimated at least 1 million people in Ireland in 1845, due to lack of potatoes (while Britain was growing tons of opium in Bengal !).

Direct foreign trade between China and European countries began in the 16th century, with the Portuguese as their first economic partners (1517), to whom the Chinese leased Macao (30 km²) in 1557. Then came the Spanish, who, by the Treaty of Saragossa (1529), legalized their grabbing of the Philippines which initially, by the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494), were under the rule of the the Genovese bankers dominated Portugese. The Spanish founded Manila there in 1571. And finally the Dutch, who settled in Indonesia, first on the island of Penghu (1603) north of Taiwan, then in 1619 in Batavia (Jakarta, Java, Indonesia), then in Taiwan (1624). The Russians came as neighbors by land.

It is important to understand how China traded with « foreigners » before the Opium Wars. To simplify roughly, we can speak of two systems:

  • the “Tributary System”;
  • the “Canton System”.

a) The « Tributary System »

Kowtow in front of a Ming Emperor.

The term « tribute system » is a Western invention. There was no equivalent term in the Chinese lexicon to describe what would today be considered the « tribute system, » and it was not intended as an institution or system.

The so-called Chinese tributary system or Cefeng system dates back to the Han Dynasty (202-220 BC). It reflected the Chinese worldview according to which China, of virtually uncontested grandeur and autonomy, was the world-civilization, that is, « all that was under heaven » ( tianxia ). The Chinese word for China (Zhongguo) actually means this: « Middle Country ». In this framework, although one can debate the possible interpretations, the Chinese emperor was considered the sovereign and therefore responsible for all humanity.

To organize economic exchanges with other peoples, called « barbarians » and « uncivilized, » the imperial court established a protocol. Non-Chinese could be accepted into the Emperor’s sphere if they were willing to go to court and perform the forbidden ritual of « kowtow » as a form of homage and recognition of his precedence. This prostration consisted of three kneelings and nine prostrations expressing a gesture of deep respect that consists of the person performing it kneeling and bowing so that his head touches the ground.

Kowtow of a Chinese citizen in front of a district judge.

It should be noted that the kowtow was not exclusively required of foreigners, but was also required when a person was, for example, brought into the presence of an official (representative of the imperial authority) for example to plead his case before a local court.

In everyday life in modern China, this gesture is no longer performed in front of a human being. Some Buddhists perform the kowtow in front of statues or a tomb to express the respect shown to the deceased. It is reported that some Buddhist pilgrims perform a kowtow every three steps during their long pilgrimages. It is also a ritual gesture in Chinese martial arts initiation ceremonies.

When visiting the Chinese court, sovereigns or emissaries would offer tribute (gifts) on this occasion. In fact, in exchange for this recognition, the tributaries received sumptuous gifts that often exceeded the value of what they received, thus demonstrating the benevolence and generosity of the Emperor. More important than the tribute, they obtained the implicit promise of protection (possibly military) and commercial rights.

Western observers like to exaggerate the importance of this ritual and see in it, somewhat wrongly, both a clear desire for Chinese domination and a form of active corruption on the part of the tributaries. In reality, the tributary system, which organized China’s diplomatic framework, mainly provided it with a means of regulating the flow of foreign goods across imperial borders. For the tributary states, the status ceremonially granted by the Chinese Court gave them privileged commercial access to Chinese ports. This status was above all protocol and did not necessarily imply strong political control.

Scholars differ on the nature of China’s relations with its neighbors in the traditional period, but generally agree that political actors within the tributary system were largely autonomous and in almost all cases virtually independent. Some historians even argue that China gave rise to a European-style community of sovereign states and established diplomatic relations with other countries around the world in accordance with international law.

The list of countries that paid tribute to China is very long. It includes neighboring countries but also the Portuguese and the Dutch who considered that the commercial advantages obtained in exchange were so advantageous that they willingly complied with it, seeing it only as a formality and a ritual of respect and politeness.

b) The « Canton system »

The second way of trading with China, the so-called Canton (now Guangdong) system, emerged in 1757 under the Qing dynasty (1644–1912). From the beginning of his reign, the Kangxi Emperor (r. 1661–1722) faced a number of challenges, not the least of which was integrating his relatively new minority dynasty from Manchuria into the Chinese Han majority. Support for the previous Ming dynasty rulers remained strong, particularly in the south of the country, including Canton.

Kangxi twice banned all maritime trade for internal security reasons , to prevent any attempted seaborne coups. During the Qing dynasty, no fewer than 15 rebellions took place, including one led by Koxinga, a Ming loyalist, and separately the Three Feudatories Rebellion, which led to the capture of Taiwan in 1683.

After the rebellions were suppressed, Kangxi issued an edict in 1684:

For 160 years, Canton would be the only Chinese port open to trade with the West. Canton, a fortified city 100 km inland on the Pearl River, already by its geography, offered a certain security.

A large city in the south, with good rainfall in the center of the tea-producing region and with a densely populated hinterland rich in productive capacities, Canton is one of the economic lungs of China.

China sets the rules:

  • foreign merchants are not allowed to enter Canton;
  • warships are prohibited there;
  • All orders for export and import must be placed through one of the 13 members (Hong) of the Chinese merchant guild (the co-Hong);
  • The Hongs rented them a small piece of land outside the city walls on the banks of the Pearl River, known as the « 13 Factories »,
  • Western merchants may only be present in the trading posts during the trading season, which extends from June to December. Women and weapons are prohibited there;
  • Westerners can store some goods there, but they are primarily trading posts and offices;
  • The bulk of their goods must remain 13 km to the south, on the island of Whampoa;
Map of the City of Canton, with citywalls and location of « 13 Factories ».
The « 13 Factories » in Canton.
Island of Whampoa.

Since the Portuguese operated from Macau and the Spanish from the New World through Chinese residents in the Philippines, the system would primarily serve a handful of other Western and Christian powers: French, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Spanish, Americans and British.

5. Economic and Financial Stakes

Let us now examine the economic and financial issues, essential to understanding how the logics which, as long as we remain slaves to them, end in war:

a) Tea

The first economic and financial issue at stake was not the Chinese addiction to opium but that of the British to tea. According to legend, tea was discovered in China one day in the year 2737 BC, by Shen Nong. This emperor with the body of a man and the head of an ox wanted to improve the lot of humans and it was to guarantee their health that he ordered his subjects to boil water before drinking it. One day, while he was resting in the shade of a tea plant, he boiled a little water to quench his thirst. Three leaves fell into his cup. He tasted this infusion and found it exquisite. Tea was born.

Tea imports in Britain.

Tea first appeared in China as a medicinal drink and was later consumed daily for pleasure. By the 17th century, tea began to travel to Europe, following the Silk Road. In 1606, the first crates of tea arrived in Amsterdam aboard a ship of the Dutch East India Company (VOC), making it the first shipment of tea in history to be delivered to a Western port. Accounts vary. What is said is that England adopted tea and its rituals after King Charles II received two pounds of black, fragrant leaves from China in 1664.

Old East India House in London.

By the end of the 17th century, tea was the national drink of the Kingdom.

Between 1720 and 1750, tea imports to Great Britain through the British East India Company (EIC) more than quadrupled. Real « tea fleets » developed. In 1766, exports from Canton reached 6,000,000 pounds (2,700 tons). At their peak, in the 1830s, England imported 360,000 tons of tea from China per year.

A minor but not insignificant effect was that the British Treasury also became addicted, not to tea, but to tea revenues, since it levied a 100% customs duty on its import .

As Waley-Cohen writes:

b) Trade Deficit

Even as the EIC’s profits were no longer sufficient to offset the cost of governing India, tea-loving British helped push trade figures with Asia into the red.

While British merchants and the British treasury were enriched by buying tea cheaply, taxing it, and selling it at a higher price, by the 1780s Britain’s trade deficit with China was exploding.

c) Financial Deficit

Silver imports of China. EIC = East India Company; Country traders are undboubtless the Chinese traders importing silver from New Spain (Mexico).

Symptomatic of this imbalance is the fact that the Chinese, who buy almost no goods in return (a little tin and iron), demand silver (metal) as the only accepted means of payment.

It all began in 1571. Until that date, China collected taxes from its inhabitants in the form of corvées or goods. At that time, it decided to levy taxes in silver. On a daily basis, for small daily payments, the Chinese used copper coins with which, when the time came, they could obtain silver ingots (sycees) to pay taxes or make large transactions.

Sycee (lingot of silver metal)

The sycees had no denomination and were not struck by a central Mint. Their value was determined by their weight in « tael » (unit of weight. One canton tael = 37.5 grams, one tael = one thousand copper coins).

Another accepted means of payment was the « piece of eight » or « Spanish dollar », the main international currency at the time. (See box)

« Spanish dollar » also called « Piece of Eight ». The two columns will be intetrated in the american dollar sign ($).
The Manilla-Acapulco trade (China aquiring silver from New Spain (Mexico, Bolivia and Peru) in exchange for porcelaine, silk and tea sold by Chinese traders based in Manilla, the Philippines.
1888 Republica Méxicana silver 8 Reales trade coin, with chinese marks on it to be allowed in China.

Thus, to pay for British imports from China (tea, porcelain, silks), between 1710 and 1759, 26 million pounds in silver went to China, which bought only 9 million worth of goods in return from England.

This situation would become even more critical for the British Empire later. Firstly because of its own colonial policy, because of the speculations leading to the dismantling of the EIC and because of the emancipation movements contesting its policy of plunder and slavery.

In 1773, the American « insurgents » during the Boston Tea Party demanded the right to trade freely with countries outside the British Empire. The French and Spanish Bourbons, seeking revenge for the humiliation suffered in the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763), supported, first covertly and then openly, the American « insurgents ».

Other countries challenged British hegemony. In Europe, in 1780, the member countries of the « League of Armed Neutrality » (Sweden, Denmark, Russia, the Netherlands, Prussia, Portugal, etc.) demanded their right to trade with America and refused British dictates and sanctions.

Then followed, at the beginning of the 19th century, after civil wars for their sovereignty, a series of « independences » depriving both the English and the Chinese of the precious silver metal that they needed so much, notably Colombia (1810), Venezuela (1811), Chile (1811), Mexico (1811), Paraguay (1811), Peru (1821), Uruguay (1825) and Bolivia (1825).

Added to this, after strong speculative surges, were repeated panics and bank failures: that of 1819 in the United States and those of 1825 (77 banks were declared bankrupt) and 1847 in London.

These shocks contribute to the feeling of panic in the face of a system that is shaking and will contribute to fueling a dynamic of war appearing as the last option to « save » the system.

d) Cotton

Finally, another additional factor upsetting the balance, the mechanization of production lines. The invention of the steam engine, the previous century, led to a mechanized production of cotton by factories in the north of England.

Steam powered ginning of Coton in Britain.

Quickly, the world market was flooded with cheap cotton textiles produced in very large quantities. Textile producers feasted in England and the surplus was absorbed by the Indian market. However, anyone looking to buy goods in India had to obtain « Council Bills », a paper currency issued by the British crown that could only be purchased in London by paying in gold or silver… When the Indians converted these Council Bills into currency, they were given the equivalent in rupees, rupees collected by the British tax authorities on site. As a result, in order to be able to buy the immense quantities now at their disposal, the English merchants established in India also needed an ever-increasing quantity of metal silver.

Boom of the British Coton exports to India.

On the side of their British masters, although the Indian economist Utna Patnaik arrives at the sum of 45,000 billion dollars to quantify all the wealth extorted by the British from India, at the time, the EIC’s account books indicated that the costs of maintaining the Empire exceeded the EIC’s income: for example, from 1780 to 1790, the combined profits from the EIC’s trade with India and China reduced by barely 2 million the debt of 28 million pounds, left over from their conquest of India.

6. Open China!

a) Lord McCartney’s embassy

Lord George Macartney.

Although the First Opium War did not begin until 1839, the first « virtual shot » fired in that conflict occurred fifty years earlier, when the British envoy completely failed in his attempt to « open China. »

This envoy, Lord George Macartney (1737-1806) was a seasoned diplomat known for his efficiency and dynamism. His mission was simple. It was to obtain a privilege that no other country in the world had: diplomatic representation in Beijing and the right for British ships to dock at ports other than Canton.

Tea, porcelain and fabrics in themselves, trade with China was booming to the point that Canton was congested and unable to handle the volumes sought. In bad shape, the British were quick to demand an « open door » policy.

After a year-long journey, at the expense of the British East India Company, the British envoy, accompanied by a delegation of one hundred people, arrived on September 14, 1793. The emperor did not receive them in Beijing, which would have meant a meeting between equals, but in a yurt (tent) erected in front of his mountain residence in Rehe (present-day Chengde), 227 km to the north, where the sovereign retired when it was too hot in the capital and where he would receive the Englishman among emissaries from several other countries.

Emperor Qianlong.

The emperor, a scholar, a calligrapher, a patron of the arts and sciences with a library of 36,000 books, is at the height of his glory. His reign had begun in 1736, 57 years earlier. Under his rule, China became the most populous country in the world and its territory doubled.

Then the inevitable question of ritual prostration before the Chinese emperor arose. Given the commercial stakes, Macartney, in his finest ceremonial costume, said he was willing to engage in kowtow. Only, in exchange, as the representative of the largest Empire on the planet that has just launched the industrial revolution, and convinced that establishing a relationship on an equal footing was already a debasement, he demanded that the members of the Chinese imperial court do the same… before the giant portrait of King George III of England (1738-1820) that he has brought for the occasion!

The mandarins decline, especially since it is unthinkable to do this in front of other foreign delegations! The Chinese then demonstrate their patience and diplomatic genius. Finally, the emperor agrees to receive Macartney if he pays the same homage before the Chinese imperial throne as he is accustomed to pay before that of his own sovereign.

British cartoon mocking Lord Macartney kneeling in front of the Chinese Emperor.

Macartney kneels before the emperor without kissing his hand, which is normal in London but strange in China. This protocol difficulty finally overcome, the interview takes place. He offers the letter from King George III to the emperor. In return, the latter showers the ambassador with precious gifts, but rejects his requests, has him escorted back to his ships and sends him home. He orders his officials in Canton to keep a close eye on foreign merchants in general and the British in particular.

The Emperor examines the 600 gifts Macartney left at the Yuan Ming Yuan (Summer Palace). These gifts – including telescopes and other astronomical instruments, model British warships, textiles and weapons – are of excellent workmanship and demonstrate the scientific knowledge and technical skill of the British. But in reality, while the Chinese would have liked to have access to the steam engine, locomotives and steel rails, the gifts are only intended to display British supremacy in weaponry…

Most accounts of the embassy see Macartney’s refusal to bow to the Emperor as the immediate cause of its failure, but the misunderstanding goes deeper. The Chinese defend a philosophy, the British their Empire with its privileges and possessions.

As is often the case before destructive wars, there is a total lack of empathy, an inability to understand the intention and the frame of reference of the other. People spend their time commenting on the colour of their own glasses. They think they know without taking the time to know. Macartney thought that diplomatic relations could be established with China in the same way as they were established in Europe and on the same basis, while Qianlong expected Macartney to honour him by complying with the Qing ceremonial for the reception of foreign dignitaries. Both were wrong.

The exchange of gifts was another source of confusion. Macartney, for example, was unaware that the golden sceptre Qianlong presented him with was a symbol of peace and prosperity, and rejected it as inappropriate and of little value.

Qianlong, for his part, who was passionate about new technologies, considered in his letter to King George III that the sumptuous gifts from the British were only trinkets and could contribute nothing to the development of Chinese manufacturing. (See box)

Portrait of King George III.

Compounding his performance, Macartney’s constant reversals, which demonstrated his willingness to adapt and compromise, convinced the Chinese that the British were hiding their true intentions, which only served to irritate them. Under these circumstances, the Qing felt no pressure to make any concessions.

In any case, the British demands seemed exuberant to the Chinese. What was the point of an embassy in Beijing, more than two thousand kilometers from Canton, when trade was being negotiated there? After all, the Hongs already supplied all the products the English demanded!

The Emperor Qianlong , who received Macartney, left power in 1796 to Emperor Jiaqing (1760-1820), who was succeeded by his son, the Daoguang (1782-1850).

His suspicions proved fully justified. In the years following the Macartney embassy, the British would ignore Chinese laws and warnings not to deploy military forces in Chinese waters.

  • In 1802, claiming that they wanted to protect Macau from a French invasion, they attempted to seize the enclave leased by China to the Portuguese;
  • Then, during the War of 1812 between the British and Americans, the former attacked American ships deep in the inner harbor of Canton (the Americans had already plundered British ships in Chinese waters);
  • And in 1814, after that country had become a tributary state of China, Nepal was invaded and forcibly incorporated into the British Empire. All this led the Chinese authorities to become very suspicious of the true British intentions.

b) The Opium « Solution »

Producing opium in Bengal and selling it illegally or legally in China then appears to be the obvious solution, because it allows us to « resolve » almost all of the problems we have just mentioned:

In 1825, the EIC’s mere income from opium was sufficient to pay for its imports of tea from China.
  • From 1828, thanks to the opium trade, the trade balance was reversed: more money left China than came in;
  • The flow of silver metal reversed towards the British Empire: between 1808 and 1856, 384 million silver dollars left China for the British Empire thanks to the boom in opium imports, while between 1752 and 1800, 105 million silver dollars went from the British Empire to China thanks to the sale of tea, porcelain and silks. From 1800 to 1818, the annual average of the traffic stabilized around 4,000 chests (each chest containing about 65 kg of opium); from 1831, this figure approached 20,000;
  • The British got enough to buy Chinese tea. In 1839, the revenues from opium alone paid for all the tea purchases;
  • The British Treasury collected customs duties on tea imports, allowing it to modernize the Empire’s Navy, the same Navy that was used to defeat China;
  • British merchants established in India got the necessary silver income to pay the « Council bills » in London, allowing them in return to buy surplus cotton in England.

Aren’t you happy?

7. Opium routes

Britain, India and China: the opium road.

Long before the British, it was the Portuguese and the Dutch who introduced opium into China.

a) Portuguese

Mansion of an opium trader in Macao.

After being banned, as in various other European countries, tobacco was reintroduced into China around 1644 under the Qing dynasty, which, without fully understanding the consequences, made itself vulnerable to the opium scourge by trivializing smoking. In West Bengal, the Portuguese settled in Satgaon from 1536 and then in 1578 in Hooghly, on the Ganges. From 1589, the Portuguese began to bring increasing quantities of opium into China via Macao, a Chinese territory leased to the Portuguese in 1557.

The opium trade played an important role in the economy of Macao for a long time, also representing a significant part of the peninsula’s income. It should be noted that Macao, whose gaming industry is now 10 times larger than that of Las Vegas, just like the Emirates, was removed a few years ago from the blacklist of tax havens to join the « grey list » of « cooperative » tax havens.

b) Dutch

The Dutch come next. At war at home against Spain and in search of financial profits, they dominate the « spice route » and regularly wage war against their Portuguese, Spanish or British competitors.

They settled in Penghu (1603), a small island next to Taiwan, then in 1619 in Batavia (now Jakarta in Indonesia) and finally in Taiwan (1624). The Dutch also opened a base for their Dutch East India Company (VOC) in 1659 in Bengal. The Batavians did not do things by halves. In 1740, after the sudden collapse of the price of sugar, the Chinese laborers working in Batavia (Java) whose wages were being crushed, revolted against their employer, the OIC. To avenge the deaths of a good dozen Dutch who perished during the revolts, no fewer than 10,000 Chinese were massacred…

Chinese merchants based in Indonesia and Dutch, from Jakarta (Indonesia), and Portuguese from Bengal (India), will export opium to Guangdong and Fujian (China).

c) Britain and the British East India Company

London: Main office of the British East India Company (EIC).


In India, the English drove out their European competitors (France and Portugal). In 1632, the troops of Emperor Shah Jahan laid siege to Hooghly in Bengal (West India) and expelled the Portuguese. 19 years later, in 1651, the English settled there and in 1690, they made Calcutta, 40 km south of Hooghly, their commercial base in Bengal where they took over opium production.

In 1683, the British East India Company (EIC), whose importance for tea we saw, gave instructions for the first time that opium should be part of its investments.

Meanwhile, in China, the first decrees appeared: as early as 1709, the court declared that opium consumption, prostitution and the corruption that accompanied it, were harmful to people’s physical and mental health. In 1729, opium dens were banned in China. These imperial decrees, which sounded more like warnings and were poorly enforced, gave rise to the establishment of vast smuggling networks thanks to the collaboration of corrupt officials who turned a blind eye to the contents of European ships arriving at the port.

In 1757, following the Battle of Plassey , the British imposed themselves and seized in 1764 what would become the opium poppy producing regions: Bengal (Calcutta) and the bordering states which are, to the north of Calcutta, Bihar and to the east, Odisha.

The modus operandi of this trade will undergo a profound change. Initially, everything is done under the « legal » monopoly of the EIC, then passes into the underworld of the gentleman traffickers.

Modeled after the powerful maritime empires of Antiquity (Athens, Phocaea, Carthage, etc.), Italy (Amalfi, Pisa, Genoa, Venice, etc.) and Portugal, the EIC was the largest and richest private (joint-stock) company in history, founded in 1600 by a royal charter of Queen Elizabeth I. In 1602 the EIC arrived in Java in Indonesia, due to its climate, the ideal place for the production of many spices (pepper, nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves, lemongrass, fennel, anise, ginger, etc.), in 1608 it set foot in Surat, India and in 1613 in Japan. In 1699 it traded with Canton in China.

A state within a state, the EIC levied its own taxes and administered justice through its own courts. And to protect its trade, it had the right to wage war. To this end, it paid for its own armies and leased long-term regiments from the British regular army. It was an entity with sovereign powers. It was accountable to no one except the shareholders it enriched through its worldwide trade in spices, tea, textiles and opium.

Between 1730 and 1770, the EIC imported slaves on a large scale from Mozambique and especially Madagascar into India and Indonesia. In Indonesia, the Dutch militarily drove the British off the « spice route ». In 1773, the British supplanted the Portuguese in India and the EIC imposed its monopoly on the opium trade with China, in particular to finance its own conquest of the Indian subcontinent. In short, the EIC fed « on the beast ».

On the ground, the populations hardly benefited from it. The colonial government of Bengal weakened food crops by directing local production to benefit the trade balance of the British Empire. The export of jute, indigo, cotton, opium and… grains, ensured by European trading houses, made the commercial wealth of the colonial administration.

In 1880, 14% of the revenues of India under British mandate came from opium while its population declined. The beginnings of the territorial establishment of the EIC coincided with the great Bengal famine of 1770 which caused, according to sources, between 10 and 60 million deaths.

Consistent with its vision of financial income and human livestock, the EIC employed in 1805 at Haileybury College, to train its executives, the Reverend Thomas Malthus for whom demographic growth always exceeds the means to support it.

At the producer-consumer level, the EIC knew full well that opium was banned in China. In order not to compromise its tea imports, the EIC therefore invented a stratagem that did the trick.

V0019154 A busy stacking room in the opium factory at Patna, India. L Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images images@wellcome.ac.uk http://wellcomeimages.org A busy stacking room in the opium factory at Patna, India. Lithograph after W. S. Sherwill, c. 1850. 1850 By: W. S. SherwillPublished: – Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons Attribution only licence CC BY 4.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

In Bengal, the company organized the large-scale cultivation of the poppy and all the industrial phases of its processing, from the exhausting harvesting of latex by incising the poppy capsules, to the passing of this latex over drying trays, to the pressing into balls which were covered with a layer of crushed and dried poppy stems and leaves, and finally to its packaging in mango wood boxes. Some 2,500 employees working in 100 offices of a powerful colonial institution called the Opium Agency supervised the poppy growers, enforcing contracts and quality with an iron fist. The Indian workers received commissions on each unit produced.

The EIC’s « opium fleet » shipping raw opium from Northern India to Calcutta for auction.

Initially, the crates were sent to Calcutta where they were auctioned. From there, the company could wash its hands of what happened to them, leaving private merchants to venture off the Chinese coast. It is worth noting that the EIC granted licenses to private ships trading with China, licenses which contained a provision that penalized them if they carried opium… other than that supplied by the EIC.

Opium use for non-medical purposes was forbidden in China – the first laws banning opium had been enacted in 1729 – and the EIC did not want to be seen as illegally importing opium, which would have prompted a reaction from the emperor.

Instead, it would use Indian merchants licensed by the Company to trade with China. These companies sold opium for money, particularly around Lintin Island at the mouth of the Pearl River, where Chinese smugglers collected the goods and distributed them throughout China.

Exchange between British and Chinese opium smugglers.

Opium was also shipped to other parts of the Chinese coast, but outside its territorial waters, where it was smuggled into the country on local boats. The smugglers’ payments were made at the Company’s establishments in Canton, and by 1825 the bulk of tea purchases were covered by drug trafficking. By 1830, there were over 100 Chinese smugglers’ boats trading in opium.

In 1858, Karl Marx mocked the false Christian values that the British government evoked in its fight against the Chinese « semi-barbarians » and pointed out the enormous profits:

By the end of the 19th century, the poppy was harvested by some 1.3 million peasant households in what are now Uttar Pradesh and Bihar states. The crop occupied between a quarter and a half of a peasant’s farm. A few thousand workers – in two opium factories on the Ganges – dried and mixed the milky liquid from the seed, made it into cakes, and packed the opium balls in wooden chests.

Opium weighing in India under British rule.

However, judged too corporate, constantly bailed out by the British State, corrupt, managed from London and judged inefficient, it encountered much opposition. In 1832, when its serious responsibility in the haemorrhage of the Treasury’s silver stocks was noted, its monopoly on trade with China was abolished

As Adam Smith wished, who opposed all forms of monopoly, whether private or public, the tea and opium trade was then handed over to more dynamic gentleman traffickers. The Crown, while setting itself up as the guarantor of the « international rules-based order », cultivated the art of black, grey and shady areas (like today’s tax havens) allowing it to triumph.

d) Gentlemen traffickers

Dr William Jardine, the scottish opium billionnaire that got the war started against China.

The leading figure of this species was the Scottish surgeon, Dr. William Jardine , a staunch supporter of the legalization of the opium trade, from which he made his fortune. He was employed by the EIC from 1802 to 1817 before settling in Bombay.

His early success in Canton as a commercial agent for opium merchants in India earned him admission in 1825 as a partner in Magniac & Co., and by 1826 he was in control of the company’s operations in Canton, where he had been operating since 1820.

James Matheson , another Scot, joined him shortly afterwards, and Magniac & Co. was reconstituted as Jardine, Matheson & Co. , the great firm that made its fortune from the sale of opium in China and which still exists today under the name « Jardines » with assets of around $100 billion.

Based in Hong Kong and domiciled in Bermuda (a tax haven suspected of dope money laundering), it officially ceased this trade in 1870 to devote itself to other commercial activities, including shipping, railways, textiles and real estate development.

William Keswick.

To be complete, we must add the Keswick dynasty, whose founder, the Scotsman William Keswick (1834-1912) who would be a major grey emissary at the heart of this nebula.

His grandmother, Jean Jardine Johnstone , was the elder sister of Dr William Jardine, founder of Jardine Matheson & Company.

His father, Thomas Keswick , had married Margaret Johnstone, niece of Jardine and daughter of Jean, and had entered the Jardine business.

Logo of the current Jardine Matheson Group, not any longer in opium.

What drives Jardine and Mathison is an unabashed Sinophobia.

The Chinese, Matheson said, were,

James Matheson.

After China destroyed opium chests seized from British traders in 1839 and ordered Jardine’s arrest for violating all existing laws, he fled to London in 1839. Finally, from 1841 until his death in 1843, he sat in Parliament for Ashburton, representing the Whig party.

It was he who, through lobbying and media offensives in the press, convinced both Parliament and the then Foreign Minister, Lord Palmerston, to whom he sent a letter detailing the strategy that would be adopted to launch the first opium war. The English merchants whose merchandise had been confiscated in Canton would not be compensated immediately. This would be discussed in more detail after the victory. As for the costs of the war, even for a small war England could not afford it. The solution was quickly found: the bill would be presented to the losers, the Chinese.

Speaking of Jardine & Matheson, Waley-Cohen points out:

8. The « religious » factor

What may be surprising today is that Protestant and Catholic missionaries were the natural allies of the traffickers: once they reached the Chinese coast, they landed among the opium merchants on Lintin Island, acted as their interpreters in exchange for places on ships sailing north, distributed their piety tracts as the drugs were unloaded; and, in the Chinese Repository , the main English-language Protestant publication in Canton, they shared a forum for spreading their views on the urgent need to open China by any means necessary.

The Protestant London Missionary Society sent its first representative to southern China, Robert Morrison, in 1807. Mission observers expressed their frustration during the 1830s in the tones of pure imperialist paternalism:

By the 1830s, merchants and missionaries were both advocates of violence.

« When an adversary supports his arguments by the use of physical force, [the Chinese] can be humble, kind, and even good, » noted Karl Gützlaff, a rugged Pomeranian missionary who, during the Opium War, would lead the British military occupation of eastern Chinese territories, managing entire armies of Chinese spies and collaborators.

For its part, London would sanction any English official opposed to the conflict and install military personnel who had triumphed against Napoleon, such as the evil William Napier, Chief Superintendent of British Trade in China who enthusiastically noted in his journal:

9. Consequences of opium addiction

a) Medical and Social consequences

Chinese opium smokers.

Opium quickly caused dramatic health havoc, first among the elite and then among the Chinese people as a whole. Initially, the consumers were scholars, officials and intellectuals. They became totally dependent and ruined themselves to obtain it. For the Jiaqing emperor, his people » waste their time and money, they exchange their silver currency and their goods for this vulgar filth from abroad ».

Opium consumption reduced the life expectancy of Chinese opium addicts, mainly men between the ages of twenty and fifty-five. Habitual smokers (8 pipes per day) died within 5 to 6 years, modest smokers (1 pipe per day) after 20 years. Most opium addicts succumbed before the age of 50.

Opium smokers in Indonesia.

In 1836, even before the British imposed the legalization of opium by war, China already had between 4 and 13.5 million consumers, according to estimates.

Joanna Waley-Cohen, in her book The Peking Sextants, notes that in those days (much like today), everyone could easily find a good reason to indulge in the now ubiquitous drug:

b) Economic, Monetary, FInancial and Political consequences

  • Economically, productivity is falling because of the havoc this drug is wreaking on the Chinese population;
  • On the monetary and financial level, the purchase of opium by Chinese consumers then substantially reduced the quantity of silver, as we have seen, essential to the monetary system. Between 1793 and 1836, the silver reserves of the imperial treasury went from 70 million taels to only 10 million taels. As silver became scarcer, its price soared. As a result, for the Chinese citizen at the bottom of the scale, who, in order to pay his taxes, had to obtain silver with his copper currency, the drop in his purchasing power was brutal. A petition addressed to the Emperor in 1838 expressed alarm at the fact that the « copper price » of silver had suddenly gone from 1000 to 1600 coins! As a result, there was growing discontent against the emperor and the multiplication of peasant revolts,
  • On the political level, members of the Qing government were concerned about the corrupting effect that the establishment and flourishing of a drug culture would have. If the court resolutely rejects any idea of compromise and resists a section of the Chinese elites in favour of the legalisation of opium, it is because it sees all of these factors clearly. But above all, she became aware of the danger that all the oppositions, internal and external, could one day, when the planets aligned, join forces: corrupt elites, nostalgic for the previous dynasty, peasants suffering the collapse of their purchasing power, foreign powers seeking to « open » China to their colonial pillage and Protestant and Catholic evangelists in tune with the opium traffickers, all wanting to conquer the wealth, bodies, minds and souls of the Chinese, including by overthrowing the dynasty.

10. The unavoidable?

a) First Opium War (1839-1842)

Lin Zexu.

If for the English, the situation was restored from 1828, for the Chinese, with more than 10 million people addicted to opium, the situation was untenable. The Emperor Daoguang (1782-1850) then sent the imperial commissioner Lin Zexu (Tse-Hou) (1785-1850) to Canton. A former soldier, a scholar, he was an exceptional man.

In 1839, he arrived in Canton to supervise the banning of the opium trade and to suppress its use. He attacked the opium trade on several levels. First, he tried to reason with the British. To do this, he published in Canton an open letter sent to Queen Victoria (1819-1901), Queen of England since 1837, asking her to stop the opium trade. (see box)

Queen Victoria in 1843.

Without a response from the Queen, China, faced with an existential choice, then decides to apply the law, essential to preserve its integrity and sovereignty.

Overmore, among the scholars advising the emperor, opinions were divided:

  • On one side, those who were keen to target opium consumers rather than opium producers. For them, the production and sale of opium should be legalized, then taxed by the government, an argument that still makes some people dream today. Taxing the drug would make it so expensive that people would have to smoke less of it or not smoke it at all (as if the black market would magically disappear). The money collected from taxes on the opium trade could help the Chinese government reduce the loss of revenue and the flight of money (what a bargain!). The purchase of opium was to be done exclusively with Chinese goods, thus preventing money from fleeing the country (a bit of protectionism to defend the industry!);
  • On the other side, stood those who argued that if the opium trade and the vices that came with it (idleness, prostitution, corruption, addiction, debt, etc.) could not be eradicated, the Chinese empire would have no more peasants to work the land, no more townspeople to pay taxes, no more students to study, and no more soldiers to fight. Rather than targeting opium users, the traffickers had to be arrested and punished.

The second camp is led by Lin Zexu but his strategy was twofold:

  • the rehabilitation of opium addicts. In 1839, there were between 4 and 13.5 million of them. They had 18 months to wean themselves off, they risked the death penalty if they did not give up;
  • the end of impunity for banking and commercial interests, whether Chinese or foreign, involved in the opium trade.

When the British merchants in Canton refused to hand over their drug shipments, Lin Zexu laid siege to the « 13 factories ». He deprived them of their staff, forcing the gentlemen-traders to prepare their own meals and take care of the latrines. On February 26, 1839, to make them understand what awaited them, Lin ordered the hanging of a Chinese trafficker in front of the Cantonese representations of the British merchants who claimed not to be liable to local law.

Despite the hostility of a corrupt part of the Chinese elite, he arrested 1,600 Chinese drug traffickers and confiscated 42,000 pipes and 14,000 cases of opium. But at least 20,000 remained on board the ships off the Chinese coast…

He then issued an order requiring foreign merchants in writing not to transport opium and to allow their ships to be inspected. Captain Charles Elliot, the British Chief Superintendent of Trade in China, called for disobedience and ordered British ships not to sign the agreement because if opium was found, the cargo would be confiscated and the perpetrators executed. The English claimed extraterritoriality and even when a Chinese peasant was killed by the British, they refused to hand the culprit over to the Chinese authorities.

After multiple injunctions, threats and summons, Elliot finally released 20,290 chests of opium to the Chinese authorities. To the British merchants, he assured them that the British Crown would compensate them for the value of the merchandise, estimated at two million pounds. This was the trap he set for Lin Zexu. Elliot and Lord Palmerston, who had made the decision a long time ago to go to war against China, thus creating the pretext to launch the war: British interests had been « plundered » and their flag « mocked ».

The destruction of British opium ordered by Lin Zexu.

Lin, proud of his victory, on June 7, 1839, had the crates opened, reduced the opium to a paste, ground it with quicklime in specially constructed vats, and threw it into the sea. They asked forgiveness from the gods of the sea for polluting it in this way. The foreigners were ordered to abandon the factories and retreat to Macao.

Hong Kong, on the other side of the estuary, was initially only a fishing village. The English who rushed there continued to be harassed by the Chinese who cut off their supplies.

Then, the first British aid arrived. At the naval battle of Chuenbi in November 1839, near Canton Bay, two British ships engage 14 imperial junks and sink four before withdrawing without loss, demonstrating their nation’s technological superiority.

In London, under pressure from the « Big Opium », the merchant lobby led by William Jardine, the British Parliament decided in October to send a military expedition to China. There was not a penny in the coffers, but that was not a problem, the losers would pay the costs.

Lord Palmerston.

Lord Palmerston, British Foreign Secretary, immediately sent instructions to Elliot demanding an end to hostilities. Among the conditions:

  • a preferential trade treaty for the British in China;
  • the opening of four ports (Canton, Xiamen, Shanghai and Ningbo, where illegal opium was already entering China);
  • the ability for British citizens to be tried in accordance with the laws of their country.

Over the next few months, the British withdrew their military and diplomats from Canton, giving the impression to the Qing Empire that they did not want open conflict. It was the calm before the storm.

Palmerston sent a letter to the government of India to prepare the squadron of an expeditionary force: 16 ships of the line, 4 gunboats, 28 transport ships, 540 guns and 4000 men. His first objective was not Canton, but the strategic island of Zhoushan, near the mouth of the Yangtze, about 1500 km from Canton and 1400 km from Beijing.

The final goal sought was very clear: to obtain compensation for the confiscated opium, for the settlement of certain debts of the Co-Hong merchants and for the cost of the expedition, to open the ports of the coast, Canton, Amoy, Fuzhou, Ningbo, Shanghai to British trade freed from the system of the Co-Hong merchants. Finally, to set up the blockade of Canton, to control the mouths of the Yangtze and the Yellow River in order to paralyze Chinese foreign trade and to seize Pei-Ho (forts of Taku), at the gates of the capital.

The British iron frigate HMS Nemesis, on the right, destroying Chinese jonks.

The fortress fell in a matter of days to the power of the artillery of British ships, notably the HMS Nemesis, considered the English « secret weapon » in the Opium Wars and the first steam frigate in history with an iron hull and watertight bulkheads.

This first flat-bottomed ship equipped with paddle wheels, could easily penetrate the mouths of Chinese rivers. Supposedly built in only three months at the request of the EIC’s « secret committee », Chinese wooden junks could not compete with such a technical feat.

The Europeans, with their steamships, rifles and easy-to-maneuver cannons, won thanks to their technological superiority. The Chinese, on their side, had only a few rudimentary cannons, bows, arrows and spears. But as some battles during the Second Opium War demonstrate, they studied their opponent’s military technology and tried to assimilate it as quickly as possible, but were unable to catch up in time…

After this show of force, the British moved to the Pearl River Delta to subdue Canton. But their conditions for ending hostilities, which included the surrender of Hong Kong Island in exchange for Zhoushan Island, were unacceptable. They captured Canton after three months of fighting, and China agreed to a ceasefire in May 1841.

The British fleet returned to the mouth of the Yangtze and captured the strategic port of Ningbo in October. After repelling Chinese attempts to recapture the place in the spring of 1842, the British sought to strike a blow to prevent a prolonged conflict on land.

They set their sights on Zhenjiang, a city near Nanking where the southern end of the Grand Canal, the most important communication route between the north and south of China, was located. In July, the fall of Zhenjiang led to the closure of the Grand Canal. Faced with the threat to Nanking and the impossibility of navigating the Grand Canal to supply the Chinese troops from the north, the imperial authorities had to capitulate.

Peace negotiations between the British and the Chinese resulted in the signing of the Treaty of Nanking on 29 August 1842 aboard a British warship, HMS Cornwallis , supplemented by two other treaties.

Signing of the Treaty of Nanking.

The clauses of these three treaties recognize the following rights for the British:

  • The transfer of Hong Kong, which will become a military and economic center;
  • Five ports were opened , namely Xiamen, Canton, Fuzhou, Ningbo and Shanghai. The British were granted the right to settle in these ports and live there with their families (for merchants). The Treaty of Humen authorized the construction of buildings in these ports;
  • War compensation (expenses + opium) of 21 million yuan, or 1/3 of the imperial government’s revenue, to be paid over a four-year period;
  • Customs : British traders are subject to the payment of customs duties fixed by mutual agreement between the Chinese and the British;
  • Consular jurisdiction law : in the event of a dispute between a Chinese and a British person, a British court will decide on the basis of British laws;
  • Most-favored-nation clause : If China signs a treaty with another power, the privilege granted to the nation in question will also be granted to the United Kingdom.

The United States and France, in 1842, demanded the same privileges as those granted to the United Kingdom. By the Treaty of Wangxia (village near Macao) the Americans obtained them. By the Treaty of Whapoa, in 1844, the French as much. Added to this was the right to build churches, to establish cemeteries and finally, to evangelize. The Chinese would strongly resist in the applying the Treaty of Nanking.

b) Second Opium War (1856-1860)

In 1854, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States contacted the Chinese authorities and requested revisions of the treaties to enter Canton without resistance, expand trade to northern China and along the Yangtze River, legalize the opium trade, and deal with the court directly in Beijing. The imperial court rejected all requests for revisions.

On October 8, 1856, Chinese officers boarded the Arrow, a British ship registered in Hong Kong under the British flag, suspected of piracy and opium trafficking. They captured the twelve crewmen (Chinese) and imprisoned them. The British officially requested the release of these sailors, citing the emperor’s promise to protect British ships, without success. The British then referred to « the insult made to the British flag » by the soldiers of the Qing Empire.

They decided to attack Canton and the surrounding forts. Ye Mingchen, then governor of Guangdong and Guangxi provinces, ordered the Chinese soldiers stationed in the forts not to resist.

Corpses of Chinise soldiers at Fort Taku.

American warships bombarded Canton. But the people of Canton and soldiers resisted the attack and forced the attackers to retreat towards Humen. The British parliament demanded reparations from China for the Arrow incident and asked France, the United States and Russia to participate in a multinational intervention. Russia sent its diplomats, without participating militarily.

  • The Second Opium War began in earnest at the end of 1857.
  • On December 28, 1857, the combined fleets of England and France stormed Canton;
  • On March 16, 1858, French Admiral Rigault de Genouilly left Canton with the squadron for northern China;
  • On May 20, 1858, acting in concert with the English, he seized the forts of Takou at the mouth of the Peïho before going up to Tianjan (Tien-Tsin) in the direction of Beijing;
  • On June 24, 1859, Franco-English forces attempted to enter Tianjin;
  • On September 2, 1860, Tianjin was taken.
Treaty of Tien-Tsin.

On June 12, 1858, the British, French, Americans and Russians negotiated the Treaty of Tien-Tsin. (today Tianjin) containing the following clauses:

  1. The British, French and Americans will have the right to establish permanent delegations in Beijing (a city forbidden to many foreigners until then);
  2. Eleven more Chinese ports (see Article XI of the treaty) will be opened to foreign trade (including Yingkou, Danshui, Hankou and Nanking);
  3. Foreign ships (even military ones) will be able to navigate the Yangzi Jiang without control;
  4. Foreigners may travel to the interior regions of China for the purpose of trading, sending missionaries, or any other purpose;
  5. China shall pay an indemnity to England and France of 2 million silver taels each, and compensation to English merchants of another 2 million;
  6. Official letters and documents between China and the United Kingdom shall exclude the character « 夷 » or « yi » meaning « barbarians » when referring to subjects of the British Crown and its officials;
  7. Legalization of opium by China, the illegality of which had not been called into question by the Treaty of Nanking.

The clause providing for the establishment of foreign legations in Beijing met with fierce opposition in the capital, and once Western troops had withdrawn from the forts near Tianjin, the Qing showed no intention of complying with it. They strengthened their fortifications and repelled Western troops who nevertheless managed to reach Beijing. The emperor fled to Rehe, the imperial winter residence, 225 km north of Beijing.

Sacking of the Summer Palace by French and British troops.

A skirmish along the way, coupled with unusually brutal treatment of Western prisoners, prompted them to plunder the Yuan Ming Yuan, the summer palace northwest of the capital that the Jesuits had built for Qianlong just over a century earlier.

It was not just one building, but a vast complex with 200 buildings and beautiful gardens. What could not be taken was smashed into pieces. After a long week of looting and destruction, when Beijing fell, the complex was burned down on October 17.

Map of Summer Palace.
Ruins of the Beijing Summer Palace.
Cartoon of the French engraver Honoré Daumier: « So! Comrade … is this (french wine) not better than O…O…Opium? I will civilize you, Guy! »
Poster celebrating British heroism.

On October 24, 1860, China surrendered. It then signed the Convention of Peking, which ratified the Treaty of Tientsin and ended the Second Opium War.

Convention of Peking.

The Beijing Convention includes the following clauses:

  • China’s recognition of the validity of the Treaty of Tianjin;
  • The opening of Tianjin as a commercial port;
  • The perpetual cession of the south of the Kowloon Peninsula (south of today’s Boundary Street) to the United Kingdom, as well as Ngong shuen chau (called in English, Stonecutters Island), which significantly enlarged the colony of Hong Kong; La Grande-Elle obtained in 1898 a 99-year lease on the New Territories (952 km² constituting 80% of Hong Kong territory) and on 235 islands off the coast of Hong Kong.
  • Freedom of worship in China for Christians;
  • Allowing British ships to take Chinese labour to the Americas;
  • The payment to the British and the French of an indemnity amounting to eight million taels of silver (about 320 tons) for each country;
  • The transfer to the Russian Empire of Outer Manchuria and Ussuri Krai, largely creating the present-day Primorsky Krai, corresponding to the territory of the former Manchu province in Eastern Tartary;
  • The opening of the port of Shamian Island, in Canton, to foreign trade and the completion by the Canton authorities of the construction of the British factory

The Qing government was also forced to sign treaties with Russia, ceding over 1.5 million square kilometers of territory in the northeast and northwest, particularly in Outer Manchuria.

French cartoon (published after the start of Japanese agression of 1894), showing foreign powers carving up china as a pie.

Other conflicts followed, followed by other unequal treaties:

  • the first Sino-Japanese war of 1894;
  • the invasion of the Eight-Country Alliance to suppress the Boxer Rebellion in 1901;
  • Treaty of Versailles in 1921;
  • Second Sino-Japanese War of 1937

11. Hong Kong and the Birth of HSBC

Thomas Sutherland.

Following the Opium War, the British opium dynasties thought of only one thing: getting rich from the now legal sale of opium. Jardine, before his death in 1843, launched a subscription among his clients to create such a bank. However, following persistant acts of Chinese resistance, the Indian producers had seen the value of their assets collapse…

It was not until 1865 that Thomas Sutherland established HSBC.

As tai-pan (top managers) of Jardine Matheson & Company, the Keswick family was closely associated with the development of Hong Kong and the management of HSBC, the Indo-China Steam Navigation Company Ltd, the Canton Insurance Office Ltd (now HSBC Insurance Co), the Hongkong and Kowloon Wharf and Godown Company Limited, the Star Ferry, the Hong Kong Tramway, the Hong Kong Land Investment and Agency Co Ltd and the Hongkong and Whampoa Dock Co Ltd.

Hong Kong office of HSBC in 1901.

In the French economic daily Les Echos of July 18, 2013, business historian Tristan Gaston-Breton , outlines the take-off of Hong Kong thanks to the opium trade:

The island also hosted a large merchant community from India, which founded powerful trading houses there. It controlled the opium traffic from Bengal, which was resold to European trading houses in exchange for manufactured goods. Linked together by all sorts of business relationships, Europeans, Indians and Chinese participated in the same commercial networks and the same traffic.

As early as 1847, the P&O took over part of the opium trade now under British control. In 11 years, it transported 642,000 chests of opium from Bengal and Malaya to Europe despite competition from Jardine & Matheson’s Apcar Line.

The Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company (P&O) was a shipping company founded in London in 1837 by two British businessmen. Since 2006 it became part of the Emirati company Dubai Ports World (DP World).

Sutherland’s idea, Les Echos explains:

12. Conclusion

Jardine’s main office in Hong Kong.

Any sensible person who examines the contents of the « unequal treaties » that were imposed on China will quickly understand to what extent this period is for her a « century of humiliation. »

The label « Opium War » turns out to be a very reductive title since it was, through brutal « gunboat diplomacy », a clear attempt at colonization with a view to perpetuating a monetarist system which carries war within it like clouds carry storms.

Certainly, the Chinese and the British should and could have invented an alternative to the pitfalls of the financial and commercial mechanisms of their time.

Just as we must do today by creating, with the BRICS, an alternative to the current system before it plunges us back into an international conflict.

The English could have invited the Chinese to India to explain how to grow tea there! It was not until the end of the EIC monopoly in 1834 that it became seriously interested in tea growing in India.

To succeed, the EIC had to send Robert Fortune, a botanist, as a spy to bring back from China the tea that would make Darjeeling in India in 1856. The EIC would then grow tea in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) from 1857.

The current system has already made the choice of drugs. The highest officials of the UN acknowledged that in 2008, at the beginning of the great financial crisis that continues to weigh us down, the interbank market was able to remain liquid thanks to the acceptance of billions of dollars coming from crime, corruption and drugs.

The Jardines and Keswicks, who have given up opium, continue to make their fortunes in British tax havens. The Jardines firm, which is worth a hundred billion dollars, is now a Hong Kong company domiciled in Bermuda, and Matheson & Co., Ltd., is a London merchant bank.

Like HSBC, these families remain active supporters of the Royal Institute of International Affairs (RIIA or Chatham House), the pinnacle of the international financial oligarchy headquartered in London.

In 2012, HSBC Bank, set up by the gentlemen traffickers and their descendants and caught red-handed laundering billions of dollars for Al-Qaeda and the Mexican drug cartels that control a substantial portion of the cocaine and fentanyl trafficking in the United States, was saved thanks to the direct intervention of the British Finance Minister who argued that the banking license of a bank as large as HSBC could not be suspended without causing a crash of the entire global economy. As said before, from « too big-to-fail », they became « too big-to-jail ».

HSBC former office in Shanghai, China.

HSBC, after paying a fine, continues its shady activities, as denounced by the International Consortium of Journalists. It is an « untouchable » bank because it is kind enough to buy the Treasury bonds that allow France to « roll over » its never ending debt.

13. Biography

  • Cantón Álvarez, José Antonio, The sulphurous opium war , Le Monde Histoire & Civilisations, 2020;
  • Lovell, Julia, The Opium War, 1832-1842, Buchet-Chastel, 2017;
  • Waley-Cohen, Joanna, The Sextants of Beijing, Presses universitaires de Montréal, 2002;
  • Travis-Hanes III, W., Sanello, Frank, The Opium Wars, The Addiction of One Empire and the Corruption of another, Sourcebooks, Inc., 2002;
  • Executive Intelligence Review, Dope, Inc., 1976, 1986;
  • Cartwright, Mark, Fall of the British East India Company , World Encyclopedia, 2022;
  • China365, How the Opium Wars Made China What It Is Today, China365 website;
  • Les Crises, file The Opium Wars in China, November 2012;
  • Paulès, Xavier, The Opium Wars in China , University of Geneva, Chuan Tong International website.
  • Tual, Jacques, Indian Opium and British Imperialism at the Beginning of the 20th Century: The Case of Ceylan, Centre for Research on Travel Literature (CRLV), 2008;
  • Desmaretz, Gérard, The Opium Wars in China , Agoravox, 2024;
  • Chouvy, Pierre-Arnaud, Opium in globalization: the case of the Golden Triangle, Erudit, 2016;
Merci de partager !

The republican struggle of David d’Angers and the statue of Gutenberg in Strasbourg

In the heart of downtown Strasbourg, a stone’s throw from the cathedral and with its back to the 1585 Chamber of Commerce, stands the beautiful bronze statue of the German printer Johannes Gutenberg, holding a barely-printed page from his Bible, which reads: « And there was light » (NOTE 1).

Evoking the emancipation of peoples thanks to the spread of knowledge through the development of printing, the statue, erected in 1840, came at a time when supporters of the Republic were up in arms against the press censorship imposed by Louis-Philippe under the July Monarchy.

Strasbourg, Mainz and China

Plaster model for the statue of Gutenberg, by David d’Angers.

Born around 1400 in Mainz, Johannes Gutenberg, with money lent to him by the merchant and banker Johann Fust, carried out his first experiments with movable metal type in Strasbourg between 1434 and 1445, before perfecting his process in Mainz, notably by printing his famous 42-line Bible from 1452.

On his death (in Mainz) in 1468, Gutenberg bequeathed his process to humanity, enabling printing to take off in Europe. Chroniclers also mention the work of Laurens Janszoon Coster in Harlem, and the Italian printer Panfilo Castaldi, who is said to have brought Chinese know-how to Europe. It should be noted that the « civilized » world of the time refused to acknowledge that printing had originated in Asia with the famous « movable type » (made of porcelain and metal) developed several centuries earlier in China and Korea (NOTE 2).

In Europe, Mainz and Strasbourg vie for pride of place. On August 14, 1837, to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the « invention » of printing, Mainz inaugurated its statue of Gutenberg, erected by sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsenalors, while in Strasbourg, a local committee had already commissioned sculptor David d’Angers to create a similar monument in 1835.

This little-known sculptor was both a great sculptor and close friend of Victor Hugo, and a fervent republican in personal contact with the finest humanist elite of his time in France, Germany and the United States. He was also a tireless campaigner for the abolition of the slave trade and slavery.


The sculptor’s life


French sculptor Pierre-Jean David, known as « David d’Angers » (1788-1856) was the son of master sculptor Pierre Louis David. Pierre-Jean was influenced by the republican spirit of his father, who trained him in sculpture from an early age. At the age of twelve, his father enrolled him in the drawing class at the École Centrale de Nantes. In Paris, he was commissioned to create the ornamentation for the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel and the south facade of the Louvre Palace. Finally, he entered the Beaux-arts.

Portait of David d’Angers, by François-Joseph Heim, Louvre.

David d’Angers possessed a keen sense of interpretation of the human figure and an ability to penetrate the secrets of his models. He excelled in portraiture, whether in bust or medallion form. He is the author of at least sixty-eight statues and statuettes, some fifty bas-reliefs, a hundred busts and over five hundred medallions. Victor Hugo told his friend David: « This is the bronze coin by which you pay your toll to posterity. »

He traveled all over Europe, painting busts in Berlin, London, Dresden and Munich.

Around 1825, when he was commissioned to paint the funeral monument that the Nation was raising by public subscription in honor of General Foy, a tribune of the parliamentary opposition, he underwent an ideological and artistic transformation. He frequented the progressive intellectual circles of the « 1820 generation » and joined the international republican movement. He then turned his attention to the political and social problems of France and Europe. In later years, he remained faithful to his convictions, refusing, for example, the prestigious commission to design Napoleon’s tomb.

Artistic production

Project for a statue of the physician Françis-Xavier Bichat (1771-1802), David d’Angers.

David’s art was thus influenced by a naturalism whose iconography and expression are in stark contrast to that of his academic colleagues and the dissident sculptors known as « romantics » at the time. For David, no mythological sensualism, obscure allegories or historical picturesqueness. On the contrary, sculpture, according to David, must generalize and transpose what the artist observes, so as to ensure the survival of ideas and destinies in a timeless posterity.

David adhered to this particular, limited conception of sculpture, adopting the Enlightenment view that the art of sculpture is « the lasting repository of the virtues of men », perpetuating the memory of the exploits of exceptional beings.

Medallion featuring Alexander von Humboldt, David d’Angers.

The somewhat austere image of « great men » prevailed, best known thanks to some 600 medallions depicting famous men and women from several countries, most of them contemporaries. Added to this are some one hundred busts, mostly of his friends, poets, writers, musicians, songwriters, scientists and politicians with whom he shared the republican ideal.

Among the most enlightened of his time were: Victor Hugo, Marquis de Lafayette, Wolfgang Goethe, Alfred de Vigny, Alphonse Lamartine, Pierre-Jean de Béranger, Alfred de Musset, François Arago, Alexander von Humboldt, Honoré de Balzac, Lady Morgan, James Fenimore Cooper, Armand Carrel, François Chateaubriand, Ennius Quirinus Visconti and Niccolo Paganini.

To magnify his models and visually render the qualities of each one’s genius, David d’Angers invented a mode of idealization no longer based on antique-style classicism, but on a grammar of forms derived from a new science, the phrenology of Doctor Gall, who believed that the cranial « humps » of an individual reflected his intellectual aptitudes and passions. For the sculptor, it was a matter of transcending the model’s physiognomy, so that the greatness of the soul radiated from his forehead.

In 1826, he was elected member of the Institut de France and, the same year, professor at the Beaux-Arts. In 1828, David d’Angers was the victim of his first unsolved assassination attempt. Wounded in the head, he was confined to bed for three months. However, in 1830, still loyal to republican ideas, he took part in the revolutionary days and fought on the barricades.

Pediment of the Panthéon, David d’Angers.


In 1830, David d’Angers found himself ideally placed to carry out the most significant political sculpture commission of the July monarchy and perhaps of 19th century France: the new decoration of the pediment of the church of Sainte-Geneviève, which had been converted into the Pantheon in July.

As a historiographer, he wanted to depict the civilians and men of war who built Republican France. In 1837, the execution of the figures he had chosen and arranged in a sketch that was first approved, then suspended, was bound to lead to conflict with the high clergy and the government. On the left, we see Bichat, Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, David, Cuvier, Lafayette, Manuel, Carnot, Berthollet, Laplace, Malesherbes, Mirabeau, Monge and Fénelon. While the government tried to have Lafayette’s effigy removed, which David d’Angers stubbornly refused, with the support of the liberal press, the pediment was unveiled without official ceremony in September 1837, without the presence of the artist, who had not been invited.


Entering politics

During the 1848 Revolution, he was appointed mayor of the 11th arrondissement of Paris, entered the National Constituent Assembly and then the National Legislative Assembly, where he voted with the Montagne (revolutionary left). He defended the existence of the Ecole des Beaux-arts and the Académie de France in Rome. He opposed the destruction of the Chapelle Expiatoire and the removal of two statues from the Arc de Triomphe (Resistance and Peace by sculptor Antoine Etex).

He also voted against the prosecution of Louis Blanc (1811-1882) (another republican statesman and intellectual condemned to exile), against the credits for Napoleon III’s Roman expedition, for the abolition of the death penalty, for the right to work, and for a general amnesty.


Exile

Greek maiden, statue by David d’Angers for the tomb of Greek freedom fighter Markos Botzaris.

He was not re-elected deputy in 1849 and withdrew from political life. In 1851, with the advent of Napoleon III, David d’Angers was arrested and also sentenced to exile. He chose Belgium, then traveled to Greece (his old project). He wanted to revisit his Greek Maiden on the tomb of the Greek republican patriot Markos Botzaris (1788-1823), which he found mutilated and abandoned (he had it repatriated to France and restored).

Disappointed by Greece, he returned to France in 1852. With the help of his friend de Béranger, he was allowed to stay in Paris, where he resumed his work. In September 1855, he suffered a stroke which forced him to cease his activities. He died in January 1856.


Friendships with Lafayette, Abbé Grégoire and Pierre-Jean de Béranger

The Marquis de Lafayette. painted by Adolphe Phalipon after a picture by Ary Scheffer (1795-1858).

David d’Angers was a real link between 18th and 19th century republicans, and a living bridge between those of Europe and America.

Born in 1788, he had the good fortune to associate at an early age with some of the great revolutionary figures of the time, before becoming personally involved in the revolutions of 1830 and 1848.

Towards the end of the 1820s, David attended the Tuesday salon meetings of Madame de Lafayette, wife of Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de La Fayette (1757-1834).

While General Lafayette stood upright like « a venerable oak », this salon, notes the sculptor,

« has a clear-cut physiognomy, » he writes. The men talk about serious matters, especially politics, and even the young men look serious: there’s something decided, energetic and courageous in their eyes and in their posture (…) All the ladies and also the demoiselles look calm and thoughtful; they look as if they’ve come to see or attend important deliberations, rather than to be seen. »

Irish republican general Arthur O’Connor.

David met Lafayette’s comrade-in-arms, General Arthur O’Connor (1763-1852), a former Irish republican MP of the United Irishmen who had joined Lafayette’s volunteer General Staff in 1792.

Accused of stirring up trouble against the British Empire and in contact with General Lazare Hoche (1768-1797), O’Connor fled to France in 1796 and took part in the Irish Expedition. In 1807, O’Connor married the daughter of philosopher and mathematician Nicolas de Condorcet (1743-1794) and became a naturalized French citizen in 1818.

Republican chansonnier Pierre-Jean de Béranger, bust by David d’Angers.

Lafayette and David d’Angers often got together with a small group of friends, a few « brothers » who were members of Masonic lodges: such as the chansonnier Pierre-Jean de Béranger, François Chateaubriand, Benjamin Constant, Alexandre Dumas (who corresponded with Edgar Allan Poe), Alphonse Lamartine, Henri Beyle dit Stendhal and the painters François Gérard and Horace Vernet.

In these same circles, David also became acquainted with Henri (Abbé) Grégoire (1750-1831), and the issue of the abolition of slavery, which Grégoire had pushed through on February 4, 1794, was often raised. In their exchanges, Lafayette liked to recall the words of his youthful friend Nicolas de Condorcet:

« Slavery is a horrible barbarism, if we can only eat sugar at this price, we must know how to renounce a commodity stained with the blood of our brothers. »


For Abbé Gregoire, the problem went much deeper:

« As long as men are thirsty for blood, or rather, as long as most governments have no morals, as long as politics is the art of deceit, as long as people, unaware of their true interests, attach silly importance to the job of spadassin, and will allow themselves to be led blindly to the slaughter with sheep-like resignation, almost always to serve as a pedestal for vanity, almost never to avenge the rights of humanity, and to take a step towards happiness and virtue, the most flourishing nation will be the one that has the greatest facility for slitting the throats of others. »

(Essay on the physical, moral and political regeneration of the Jews)

Napoleon and slavery

The first abolition of slavery was, alas, short-lived. In 1802, Napoleon Bonaparte, short of the money needed to finance his wars, reintroduced slavery, and nine days later excluded colored officers from the French army.

Finally, he outlawed marriages between « fiancés whose skin color is different ». David d’Angers remained very sensitive to this issue, having as a comrade a very young writer, Alexandre Dumas, whose father had been born a slave in Haiti.

As early as 1781, under the pseudonym Schwarz (black in German), Condorcethad published a manifesto advocating the gradual disappearance of slavery over a period of 60 to 70 years, a view quickly shared by Lafayette. A fervent supporter of the abolitionist cause, Condorcet condemned slavery as a crime, but also denounced its economic uselessness: slave labor, with its low productivity, was an obstacle to the establishment of a market economy.

And even before the signing of the peace treaty between France and the United States, Lafayette wrote to his friend George Washington on February 3, 1783, proposing to join him in setting in motion a process of gradual emancipation of the slaves. He suggested a plan that would « frankly become beneficial to the black portion of mankind ».

The idea was to buy a small state in which to experiment with freeing slaves and putting them to work as farmers. Such an example, he explained, « could become a school and thus a general practice ». (NOTE 3)

Washington replied that he personally would have liked to support such a step, but that the American Congress (already) was totally hostile.

From the Society of Black Friends to the French Society for the Abolition of Slavery

Abbé Henri Grégoire, bust by David d’Angers.

In Paris, on February 19, 1788, Abbé Grégoire and Jacques Pierre Brissot (1754-1793) founded « La Société des amis des Noirs », whose rules were drawn up by Condorcet, and of which the Lafayette couple were also members.

The society’s aim was the equality of free whites and blacks in the colonies, the immediate prohibition of the black slave trade and the gradual abolition of slavery; on the one hand, to maintain the economy of the French colonies, and on the other, in the belief that before blacks could achieve freedom, they had to be prepared for it, and therefore educated.

After the virtual disappearance of the « Amis des Noirs », the offensive was renewed, with the founding in 1821 of the « Société de la Morale chrétienne », which in 1822 set up a « Comité pour l’abolition de la traite des Noirs », some of whose members went on to found the « Société française pour l’abolition de l’esclavage (SFAE) » in 1834.

Initially in favor of gradual abolition, the SFAE later favored immediate abolition. Prohibited from holding meetings, the SFAE decided to create abolitionist committees throughout the country to relay the desire to put an end to slavery, both locally and nationally.

Goethe and Schiller

Victor Pavie.

In the summer of 1829, David d’Angers made his first trip to Germany and met Goethe (1749-1832), the poet and philosopher who had retired to Weimar. Several posing sessions enabled the sculptor to complete his portrait.

Writer and poet Victor Pavie (1808-1886), a friend of Victor Hugo and one of the founders of the « Cercles catholiques ouvriers » (Catholic Workers Circle), accompagnied him on the trip and recounts some of the pictoresques anecdotes of their travel in his « Goethe and David, memories of a voyage to Weimar » (1874).

In 1827, the French newspaper Globe published two letters recounting two visits to Goethe, in 1817 and 1825, by an anonymous « friend » (Victor Cousin), as well as a letter from Ampère on his return from the « Athens of Germany ». In these letters, the young scientist expressed his admiration, and gave numerous details that whetted the interest of his compatriots. During his stay in Weimar, Ampère added to his host’s knowledge of Romantic authors, particularly Mérimée, Vigny, Deschamps and Delphine Gay. Goethe already had a (positive) opinion of Victor Hugo, Lamartine and Casimir Delavigne, and of all they owed to Chateaubriand.

A subscriber to the Globe since its foundation in 1824, Goethe had at his disposal a marvellous instrument of French information. In any case, he had little left to learn about France when David and Pavie visited him in August 1829. On the strength of his unhappy experience with Walter Scott in London, David d’Angers had taken precautions this time, and had a number of letters of recommendation for the people of Weimar, as well as two letters of introduction to Goethe, signed by Abbé Grégoire and Victor Cousin. To show the illustrious writer what he could do, he had placed some of his finest medallions in a crate.

Once in Weimar, David d’Angers and Victor Pavie encountered great difficulties in their quest, especially as the recipients of the letters of recommendation were all absent. Stricken with despair and fearing failure, David blamed his young friend Victor Pavie:

Friedrich Schiller, David d’Angers medallion.

« Yes, you jumped in with the optimism of a young man, without giving me time to think and get out of the way. It wasn’t as a coward or under the patronage of an adventurer, it was head-on and resolutely that we had to tackle the character. (…) You’re only as good as what you are, it’s a yes or no question. You know me, on my knees before genius, and imployable before power. Ah! court poets, great or small, everywhere the same!

(…) And with a leap from the chair where he had insensitively let himself fall: Where’s Schiller? I’d like to kiss him! His grave, where I will strike, will not remain sealed for me; I will take him there, and bring him back glorious. What does it matter? Have I seen Corneille, have I seen Racine? The bust I’m planning for him will look all the better for it; the flash of his genius will gleam on his forehead. I’ll make him as I love and admire him, not with the pinched nose that Dannecker (image below) gave him, but with nostrils swollen with patriotism and freedom.

Victor Pavie’s account reveals the republican fervor animating the sculptor who, faithful to the ideals of Abbé Grégoire, was already thinking about the great anti-slavery sculpture he planned to create:

« At that moment, the half-open window of our bedroom, yielding to the evening breeze, opened wide. The sky was superb; the Milky Way unfurled with such brilliance that one could have counted the stars. He (David) remained silent for some time, dazzled; then, with that suddenness of impression that incessantly renewed the realm of feelings and ideas around him:
‘What a work, what a masterpiece! How poor we are compared to this!Would all your geniuses in one, writers, artists, poets, ever reach this incomparable poem whose tasks are splendors? Yet God knows your insatiable pretensions; we flay you in praise… And light! Remember this (and his presentiments in this regard were nothing less than a chimera), that such a one as received a marble bust from me as a token of my admiration, will one day literally lose the memory of it. – No, there is nothing more noble and great in humanity than that which suffers. I still have in my head, or rather in my heart, this protest of the human conscience against the most execrable iniquity of our times, the slave trade: after ten years of silence and suffering, it must burst forth with the voice of brass. You can see the group from here: the garroted slave, his eye on the sky, protector and avenger of the weak; next to him, lying broken, his wife, in whose bosom a frail creature is sucking blood instead of milk; at their feet, detached from the negro’s broken collar, the crucifix, the Man-God who died for his brothers, black or white. Yes, the monument will be made of bronze, and when the wind blows, you will hear the chain beating, and the rings ringing' ».

Finally, Goethe met the two Frenchmen, and David d’Angers succeeded in making his bust of the German poet. Victor Pavie:

« Goethe bowed politely to us, spoke the French language with ease from the start, and made us sit down with that calm, resigned air that astonished me, as if it were a simple thing to find oneself standing at eighty, face to face with a third generation, to which he had passed on through the second, like a living tradition.

(…) David carried with him, as the saying goes, a sample of his skills.He presented the old man with a few of his lively profiles, so morally expressive, so nervously and intimately executed, part of a great whole that is becoming more complete with our age, and which reserves for the centuries to come the monumental physiognomy of the 19th century. Goethe took them in his hand, considered them mute, with scrupulous attention, as if to extract some hidden harmony, and let out a muffled, equivocal exclamation that I later recognized as a mark of genuine satisfaction.Then, by a more intelligible and flattering transition, of which he was perhaps unaware, walking to his library, he charmingly showed us a rich collection of medals from the Middle Ages, rare and precious relics of an art that could be said to have been lost, and of which our great sculptor David has nowadays been able to recover and re-immerse the secret.

(…) The bust project did not have to languish for long: the very next day, one of the apartments in the poet’s immense house was transformed into a workshop, and a shapeless mound lay on the parquet floor, awaiting the first breath of existence. As soon as it slowly shifted into a human form, Goethe’s hitherto calm and impassive figure moved with it. Gradually, as if a secret, sympathetic alliance had developed between portrait and model, as the one moved towards life, the other blossomed into confidence and abandonment: we soon came to those artist’s confidences, that confluence of poetry, where the ideas of the poet and the sculptor come together in a common mold. He would come and go, prowling around this growing mass, (to use a trivial comparison) with the anxious solicitude of a landowner building a house. He asked us many questions about France, whose progress he was following with a youthful and active curiosity; and frolicking at leisure about modern literature, he reviewed Chateaubriand, Lamartine, Nodier, Alfred de Vigny, Victor Hugo, whose manner he had seriously pondered in Cromwell.

(…) David’s bust, writes Pavie, was as beautiful as Chateaubriand’s, Lamartine’s, Cooper’s, as any application of genius to genius, as the work of a chisel fit and powerful to reproduce one of those types created expressly by nature for the habitation of a great thought. Of all the likenesses attempted, with greater or lesser success, in all the ages of this long glory, from his youth of twenty to Rauch’s bust, the last and best understood of all, it is no prevention to say that David’s is the best, or, to put it even more bluntly, the only realization of that ideal likeness which is not the thing, but is more than the thing, nature taken within and turned inside out, the outward manifestation of a divine intelligence passed into human bark. And there are few occasions like this one, when colossal execution seems no more than a powerless indication of real effect. An immense forehead, on which rises, like clouds, a thick tuft of silver hair; a downward gaze, hollow and motionless, a look of Olympian Jupiter; a nose of broad proportion and antique style, in the line of the forehead ; then that singular mouth we were talking about earlier, with the lower lip a little forward, that mouth, all examination, questioning and finesse, completing the top with the bottom, genius with reason; with no other pedestal than its muscular neck, this head leans as if veiled, towards the earth:it’s the hour when the setting genius lowers his gaze to this world, which he still lights with a farewell ray. Such is David’s crude description of Goethe’s statue.- What a pity that in his bust of Schiller, so famous and so praised, the sculptor Dannecker prepared such a miserable counterpart!

When Goethe received his bust, he warmly thanked David for the exchange of letters, books and medallions… but made no mention of the bust ! For one simple reason: he didn’t recognize himself at all in the work, which he didn’t even keep at home… The German poet was depicted with an oversized forehead, to reflect his great intelligence. And his tousled hair symbolized the torments of his soul…

David d’Angers and Hippolyte Carnot

Hippolyte Carnot, son of Lazare Carnot, painted by Jules Laure, 1837.

Among the founders of the SFAE (see earlier chapter on Abbé Grégoire) was Hippolyte Carnot (1801-1888), younger brother of Nicolas Sadi Carnot (1796-1832), pioneer of thermodynamics and son of « the organizer of victory », the military and scientific genius Lazare Carnot (1753-1823), whose work and struggle he recounted in his 1869 biography Mémoires sur Lazare Carnot 1753-1823 by his son Hippolyte.

In 1888, with the title Henri Grégoire, évêque (bishop) républicain, Hippolyte published the Mémoires of Grégoire the defender of all the oppressed of the time (negroes and Jews alike), a great friend of his father’s who had retained this friendship.

For the former bishop of Blois, « we must enlighten the ignorance that does not know and the poverty that does not have the means to know. »

Grégoire had been one of the Convention’s great « educators », and it was on his report that the Conservatoire des Arts-et-Métiers was founded on September 29, 1794, notably for the instruction of craftsmen. Grégoire also contributed to the creation of the Bureau des Longitudes on June 25, 1795 and the Institut de France on October 25, 1795.

Bust of Rouget de Lisle, David d’Angers.

Hippolyte Carnot and David d’Angers, who were friends, co-authored the Memoirs of Bertrand Barère de Vieuzac (1755-1841), who acted as a sort of Minister of Information on the Comité de Salut Public, responsible for announcing the victories of the Republican armies to the Convention as soon as they arrived.

It was also Abbé Grégoire who, in 1826, commissioned David d’Angers, with the help of his friend Béranger, to bring some material and financial comfort to Rouget de Lisle (1860-1836), the legendary author of La Marseillaise, composed in Strasbourg when, in his old age, the composer was languishing in prison for debt.

Overcoming the sectarianism of their time, here are three fervent republicans full of compassion and gratitude for a musical genius who never wanted to renounce his royalist convictions, but whose patriotic creation would become the national anthem of the young French Republic.


Provisional Government
of the Second Republic

Hippolyte Carnot.

All these battles, initiatives and mobilizations culminated in 1848, when, for two months and 15 days (from February 24 to May 9), a handful of genuine republicans became part of the « provisional government » of the Second Republic.

In such a short space of time, so many good measures were taken or launched! Hippolyte Carnot was the Minister of Public Instruction, determined to create a high level of education for all, including women, following the models set by his father for Polytechnique and Grégoire for Arts et Métiers.

Article 13 of the 1848 Constitution « guarantees citizens (…) free primary education ».

On June 30, 1848, the Minister of Public Instruction, Lazare Hippolyte Carnot, submitted a bill to the Assembly that fully anticipated the Ferry laws, by providing for compulsory elementary education for both sexes, free and secular, while guaranteeing freedom of teaching. It also provided for three years’ free training at a teacher training college, in return for an obligation to teach for at least ten years, a system that was to remain in force for a long time. He proposed a clear improvement in their salaries. He also urged teachers « to teach a republican catechism ».

A member of the provisional government, the great astronomer and scientist François Arago (1886-1853) was Minister for the Colonies, having been appointed by Gaspard Monge to succeed him at the Ecole Polytechnique, where he taught projective geometry. His closest friend was none other than Alexander von Humboldt, friend of Johann Wolfgang Goethe and Friedrich Schiller.

Bust by David d’Angers signed « To his honorable friend François Arago ».


He was another abolitionist activist who spent much of his adult life in Paris. Humboldt was a member of the Société d’Arcueil, formed around the chemist Claude-Louis Berthollet, where he also met, besides François Arago, Jean-Baptiste Biot and Louis-Joseph Gay-Lussac, with whom Humboldt became friends. They published several scientific articles together.

Humboldt and Gay-Lussac conducted joint experiments on the composition of the atmosphere, terrestrial magnetism and light diffraction, research that would later bear fruit for the great Louis Pasteur.

Napoleon, who initially wanted to expel Humboldt, eventually tolerated his presence. The Paris Geographical Society, founded in 1821, chose him as its president.


Humboldt, Arago, Schoelcher, David d’Angers and Hugo

Victor Schoelcher and the 1848 decree abolishing slavery in the French colonies.


Humboldt made no secret of his republican ideals. His Political Essay on the Island of Cuba (1825) was a bombshell. Too hostile to slavery practices, the work was banned from publication in Spain. London went so far as to refuse him access to its Empire.

Even more deplorably, John S. Trasher, who published an English-language version in 1856, removed the chapter devoted to slaves and the slave trade altogether! Humboldt protested vigorously against this politically motivated mutilation. Trasher was a slaveholder, and his redacted translation was intended to counter the arguments of North American abolitionists, who subsequently published the retracted chapter in the New York Herald and the US Courrier. Victor Schoelcher and the decree abolishing slavery in the French colonies.

In France, under Arago, the Under-Secretary of State for the Navy and the Colonies was Victor Schoelcher. He didn’t need much convincing to convince the astronomer that all the planets were aligned for him to act.

A Freemason, Schoelcher was a brother of David d’Angers’s lodge, « Les amis de la Vérité » (The Friends of Truth), also known as the Cercle social, in reality « a mixture of revolutionary political club, Masonic lodge and literary salon ».

On March 4, a commission was set up to resolve the problem of slavery in the French colonies. It was chaired by Victor de Broglie, president of the SFAE, to which five of the commission’s twelve members belonged. Thanks to the efforts of François Arago, Henri Wallon and above all Victor Schoelcher, its work led to the abolition of slavery on April 27.


Victor Hugo the abolitionist

Victor Hugo, bust by David d’Angers.



Victor Hugo was one of the advocates of the abolition of slavery in France, but also of equality between what were still referred to as « the races » in the 19th century. « The white republic and the black republic are sisters, just as the black man and the white man are brothers », Hugo asserted as early as 1859. For him, as all men were creations of God, brotherhood was the order of the day.

When Maria Chapman, an anti-slavery campaigner, wrote to Hugo on April 27, 1851, asking him to support the abolitionist cause, Hugo replied: « Slavery in the United States! » he exclaimed on May 12, « is there any more monstrous misinterpretation? » How could a republic with such a fine constitution preserve such a barbaric practice?

Eight years later, on December 2, 1859, he wrote an open letter to the United States of America, published by the free newspapers of Europe, in defense of the abolitionist John Brown, condemned to death.

Starting from the fact that « there are slaves in the Southern states, which indignifies, like the most monstrous counter-sense, the logical and pure conscience of the Northern states », he recounts Brown’s struggle, his trial and his announced execution, and concludes: « there is something more frightening than Cain killing Abel, it is Washington killing Spartacus ».

A journalist from Port-au-Prince, Exilien Heurtelou, thanked him on February 4, 1860. Hugo replied on March 31:

« Hauteville-House, March 31, 1860.

You are, sir, a noble sample of this black humanity so long oppressed and misunderstood.

From one end of the earth to the other, the same flame is in man; and blacks like you prove it. Was there more than one Adam? Naturalists can debate the question, but what is certain is that there is only one God.

Since there is only one Father, we are brothers.
It is for this truth that John Brown died; it is for this truth that I fight. You thank me for this, and I can’t tell you how much your beautiful words touch me.

There are neither whites nor blacks on earth, there are spirits; you are one of them. Before God, all souls are white.

I love your country, your race, your freedom, your revolution, your republic. Your magnificent, gentle island pleases free souls at this hour; it has just set a great example; it has broken despotism. It will help us break slavery. »



Also in 1860, the American Abolitionist Society, mobilized behind Lincoln, published a collection of speeches. The booklet opens with three texts by Hugo, followed by those by Carnot, Humboldt and Lafayette.

On May 18, 1879, Hugo agreed to preside over a commemoration of the abolition of slavery in the presence of Victor Schoelcher, principal author of the 1848 emancipation decree, who hailed Hugo as « the powerful defender of all the underprivileged, all the weak, all the oppressed of this world » and declared:

« The cause of the Negroes whom we support, and towards whom the Christian nations have so much to reproach, must have had your sympathy; we are grateful to you for attesting to it by your presence in our midst. »


A start for the better

Another measure taken by the provisional government of this short-lived Second Republic was the abolition of the death penalty in the political sphere, and the abolition of corporal punishment on March 12, as well as imprisonment for debt on March 19.

In the political sphere, freedom of the press and freedom of assembly were proclaimed on March 4. On March 5, the government instituted universal male suffrage, replacing the censal suffrage in force since 1815. At a stroke, the electorate grew from 250,000 to 9 million. This democratic measure placed the rural world, home to three quarters of the population, at the heart of political life for many decades to come. This mass of new voters, lacking any real civic training, saw in him a protector, and voted en masse for Napoleon III in 1851, 1860 and 1870.


Victor Hugo

Second bust of Victor Hugo, by David d’Angers.

To return to David d’Angers, a lasting friendship united him with Victor Hugo (1802-1885). Recently married, Hugo and David would meet to draw. The poet and the sculptor enjoyed drawing together, making caricatures, painting landscapes or « architectures » that inspired them.

A shared ideal united them, and with the arrival of Napoleon III, both men went into political exile.

Out of friendship, David d’Angers made several busts of his friend. Hugo is shown wearing an elegant contemporary suit.

His broad forehead and slightly frowning eyebrows express the poet’s greatness, yet to come. Refraining from detailing the pupils, David lends this gaze an inward, pensive dimension that prompted Hugo to write: « my friend, you are sending me immortality. »

In 1842, David d’Angers produced another bust of Victor Hugo, crowned with laurel, where this time it was not Hugo the close friend who was evoked, but rather the genius and great man.

Finally, for Hugo’s funeral in 1885, the Republic of Haiti wished to show its gratitude to the poet by sending a delegation to represent it. Emmanuel-Edouard, a Haitian writer, presided over the delegation, and made the following statement at the Pantheon:

The Republic of Haiti has the right to speak on behalf of the black race; the black race, through me, thanks Victor Hugo for having loved and honored it so much, for having strengthened and comforted it.


The four bas-reliefs
of the Gutenberg statue

Tour of the Gutenberg statue in Strasbourg by the author, July 8, 2023.


Once the reader has identified this « great arch » that runs through history, and the ideas and convictions that inspired David d’Angers, he will grasp the beautiful unity underlying the four bas-reliefs on the base of the statue commemorating Gutenberg in Strasbourg.


What stands out is the very optimistic idea that the human race, in all its great and magnificent diversity, is one and fraternal. Once freed from all forms of oppression (ignorance, slavery, etc.), they can live together in peace and harmony.

These bronze bas-reliefs were added in 1844. After bitter debate and contestation, they replaced the original 1840 painted plaster models affixed at the inauguration. They represent the benefits of printing in America, Africa, Asia and Europe. At the center of each relief is a printing press surrounded by characters identified by inscriptions, as well as schoolteachers, teachers and children.

To conclude, here’s an extract from the inauguration report describing the bas-reliefs. Without falling into wokism (for whom any idea of a « great man » is necessarily to be fought), let’s point out that it is written in the terms of the time and therefore open to discussion:

Dissemination of ideas in Europe thanks to the printing press.
Plaster model for the base of the statue of Gutenberg, David d’Angers.

« Europe
is represented by a bas-relief featuring René Descartes in a meditative attitude, beneath Francis Bacon and Herman Boerhaave. On the left are William Shakespeare, Pierre Corneille, Molière and Racine. One row below, Voltaire, Buffon, Albrecht Dürer, John Milton and Cimarosa, Poussin, Calderone, Camoëns and Puget. On the right, Martin Luther, Wilhelm Gottfried Leibniz, Immanuel Kant, Copernicus, Wolfgang Goethe, Friedrich Schiller, Hegel, Richter, Klopstock. Rejected on the side are Linné and Ambroise Parée. Near the press, above the figure of Martin Luther, Erasmus of Rotterdam, Rousseau and Lessing. Below the tier, Volta, Galileo, Isaac Newton, James Watt, Denis Papin and Raphaël. A small group of children study, including one African and one Asian.« 

Ideas spread to Asia thanks to the printing press.
Plaster model for the base of the statue of Gutenberg, David d’Angers.

« Asia.
A printing press is shown again, with William Jones and Abraham Hyacinthe Anquetil-Duperron offering books to Brahmins, who give them manuscripts in return. Near Jones, Sultan Mahmoud II is reading the Monitor in modern clothes, his old turban lies at his feet, and nearby a Turk is reading a book. One step below, a Chinese emperor surrounded by a Persian and a Chinese man is reading the Book of Confucius. A European instructs children, while a group of Indian women stand by an idol and the Indian philosopher Rammonhun-Roy.« 

Ideas spread to Africa thanks to the printing press. Plaster model for the base of the statue of Gutenberg, David d’Angers.

« Africa.
Leaning on a press, William Wilberforce hugs an African holding a book, while Europeans distribute books to other Africans and are busy teaching children. On the right, Thomas Clarkson can be seen breaking the shackles of a slave. Behind him, Abbé Grégoire helps a black man to his feet and holds his hand over his heart. A group of women raise their recovered children to the sky, which will now see only free men, while on the ground lie broken whips and irons. This is the end of slavery.« 

Ideas spread in America thanks to the printing press. Plaster model for the base of the statue of Gutenberg, David d’Angers.

« America.
The Act of Independence of the United States, fresh from the press, is in the hands of Benjamin Franklin. Next to him stand Washington and Lafayette, who holds the sword given to him by his adopted homeland to his chest. Jefferson and all the signatories of the Act of Independence are assembled. On the right, Bolivar shakes hands with an Indian. »


America

1884, Statue of Liberty construction site, rue de Chazelles, Paris 17th arrondissement.

We can better understand the words spoken by Victor Hugo on November 29, 1884, shortly before his death, during his visit to the workshop of sculptor Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi, where the poet was invited to admire the giant statue bearing the symbolic name « Liberty Enlightening the World », built with the help of Gustave Eiffel and ready to leave for the United States by ship. A gift from France to America, it will commemorate the active part played by Lafayette’s country in the Revolutionary War.

Initially, Hugo was most interested in American heroes and statesmen: William Penn, Benjamin Franklin, John Brown and Abraham Lincoln. Role models, according to Hugo, who enabled the people to progress. For the French politician who became a Republican in 1847, America was the example to follow. Even if he was very disappointed by the American position on the death penalty and slavery.

After 1830, the writer abandoned this somewhat idyllic vision of the New World and attacked the white « civilizers » who hunted down Indians:

« You think you civilize a world, when you inflame it with some foul fever [4], when you disturb its lakes, mirrors of a secret god, when you rape its virgin, the forest. When you drive out of the wood, out of the den, out of the shore, your naive and dark brother, the savage… And when throwing out this useless Adam, you populate the desert with a man more reptilian… Idolater of the dollar god, madman who palpitates, no longer for a sun, but for a nugget, who calls himself free and shows the appalled world the astonished slavery serving freedom!« 

(NOTE 5)


Overcoming his fatigue, in front of the Statue of Liberty, Hugo improvised what he knew would be his last speech:

« This beautiful work tends towards what I have always loved, called: peace between America and France – France which is Europe – This pledge of peace will remain permanent. It was good that it was done!« 

NOTES:


1. If the phrase appears in the Book of Genesis, it could also refer to Notre-Dame de Paris (1831) a novel by Victor Hugo, a great friend of the statue’s sculptor, David d’Angers. We know from a letter Hugo wrote in August 1832 that the poet brought David d’Angers the eighth edition of the book. The scene most directly embodied in the statue is the one in which the character of Frollo converses with two scholars (one being Louis XI in disguise) while pointing with one finger to a book and with the other to the cathedral, remarking: « Ceci tuera cela » (This will kill that), i.e. that one power (the printed press), democracy, will supplant the other (the Church), theocracy, a historical evolution Hugo thought ineluctable.
2. It was the encounter with Asia that brought countless technical know-how and scientific discoveries from the East to Europe, the best-known being the compass and gunpowder. Just as essential to printing as movable type was paper, the manufacture of which was perfected in China at the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty (around the year 185). As for printing, the oldest printed book we have to date is the Diamond Sutra, a Chinese Buddhist scripture dating from 868. Finally, it was in the mid-11th century, under the Song dynasty, that Bi Sheng (990-1051) invented movable type. Engraved in porcelain, a viscous clay ceramic, hardened in fire and assembled in resin, they revolutionized printing. As documented by the Gutenberg Museum in Mainz, it was the Korean Choe Yun-ui (1102-1162) who improved this technique in the 12th century by using metal (less fragile), a process later adopted by Gutenberg and his associates. The Anthology of Zen Teachings of Buddhist High Priests (1377), also known as the Jikji, was printed in Korea 78 years before the Gutenberg Bible, and is recognized as the world’s oldest book with movable metal type.
3. Etienne Taillemite, Lafayette and the abolition of slavery.
4. Victor Hugo undoubtedly wanted to rebound on the news that reached him from America. The Pacific Northwest smallpox epidemic of 1862, which was brought from San Francisco to Victoria, devastated the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest coast, with a mortality rate of over 50% along the entire coast from Puget Sound to southeast Alaska. Some historians have described the epidemic as a deliberate genocide, as the colony of Vancouver Island and the colony of British Columbia could have prevented it, but chose not to, and in a way facilitated it.
5. Victor Hugo, La civilisation from Toute la lyre (1888 and 1893).

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