On February 12, Karel Vereycken, as an independant scholar cooperating with the Schiller Institute, presented the gist of this text to the French Association Carrefour France-Sichuan (ACFS).

Video footage of the one hour conference will also appear on Youtube.

Summary

1. Introduction
2. Deconstructing the “narrative”
3. Opium, the product and its history
a) Plant and consumption
b) Medical use
c) Tobacco
4. Trade with China
a) Tributary System
b) Canton System
5. Economic and financial Stakes
a) Tea
b) Trade deficit
c) Financial Deficit
d) Cotton
6. Open China!
a) The Macartney Embassy
b) The « Opium Solution »
7. Opium routes
a) Portuguese
b) Dutch
c) British East India Company
d) Gentlemen traffickers
8. The « Religious » Factor
9. Consequences of opium addiction
a) Medical consequences
b) Economic, Financial and Political consequences
10. The Unavoidable?
a) The Chinese response
b) First war
c) Second war
11. Hong Kong and the Birth of HSBC
12. Conclusions
13. Brief biography

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?

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,

« if the prevalence of opiate use had remained the same as at the beginning of the 20th century, there would be some 90 million opiate users in the world, not the current 17 million. »

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 »

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.

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:

« Now that the whole country is unified, peace and tranquility reign everywhere, Manchu-Han relations are fully integrated, I therefore order you to go abroad and trade to show the populous and prosperous nature of our rule. By imperial decree, I open the seas to trade. »

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;

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 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.

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:

« Throughout the 19th century, these taxes were put to very good use: they funded a substantial part of the costs of the Royal Navy, which, it goes without saying, ensured the British Empire’s rule on the seas. »

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

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.

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)

New World and Spanish Dollar

No one is unaware of the mad quest of the Spanish, but just as much the Germans, especially the Welsers, for the gold and silver of the New World. Now, in the Americas, Spain gets its hands on enormous reserves of silver, notably in Mexico (Taxla), Bolivia (Potosi) and Peru (Porco).

In 1535, Antonio de Mendoza , working under the Spanish crown, founded the Mexican Mint, which quickly became one of the world’s largest producers of coins and the source of three-quarters of the world’s silver. The most notable innovation of this period was the silver « Spanish dollar, » commonly called the « piece of eight » because it could be divided into eight equal pieces. From 1537 to 1892, Mexico officially minted 3,292,217,390 8-real coins weighing 27.07 g.

It was therefore quite natural for the Chinese to turn to the Spanish for trade. In exchange for silver extracted from Spanish mines, the Chinese offered silks, porcelain, spices. Trade went well, with one condition: Europeans could not enter Chinese territory, so trade took place in Manila in the Philippines, then a Spanish colony.

Several times a year, galleons sailed from Acapulco (New Spain) to Manila (Philippines). The design of the Spanish dollar would serve as a model for many other coins in the Americas, both the peso and the American dollar.

The Mexican dollar remained legal tender in the United States until the « Coinage Act of 1857 ». Some countries, such as China, countermarked this « piece of eight » in order to make their circulation official as local currency.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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)

Letter to King George III of England

In 1794, the Chinese Emperor Qianlong sent the following letter. Officially it was lost en route without reaching its recipient, but strangely the British press published the text:

“In traveling the world, I have only one aim, that of maintaining perfect governance and fulfilling the duties of state: strange and costly objects do not interest me. If I have ordered that the offerings sent by you, O king, be accepted, it is solely in consideration of the spirit that has moved you to send them from afar. The majestic virtue of our dynasty has penetrated into every country under heaven, and the kings of all nations have offered their costly tribute by land and sea. As your ambassador can see for himself, we possess everything. I value no strange or ingenious objects, and I have no use for the manufactured products of your country.”

Source:
http://academics.wellesley.edu/Polisci/wj/China/208/READINGS/qianlong.html

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:

• 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

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

a) Portuguese

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

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.

« From 1769 to 1770, » Karl Marx wrote in Das Kapital, « the English caused an artificial famine by buying up all the rice and only agreeing to resell it at fabulous prices! »

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.

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.

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.

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.

« From the opium trade the honourable company has for years derived immense profits, » states an 1839 text on the subject, « from which the British government and nation have also reaped innumerable political and financial advantages. The reversal of the balance of payments of the trade between China and Great Britain in favour of the latter has … contributed directly to the maintenance of the vast fabric of British domination in Asia … and provided the nation with a revenue of six million pounds a year without impoverishing India. »

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:

« The chest of opium which costs the British Government about 250 rupees is sold at auction in Calcutta at a price varying between 1210 and 1600 rupees. »

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 and rural development?

Some economists argue that opium poppy cultivation boosted rural development in India. Professor Rolf Bauer of the University of Vienna, who has studied in detail the 1895 Royal Commission report on Opium, a 2,500-page document containing hundreds of testimonies, argues that this was not the case.

In « The Peasant Production of Opium in Nineteenth-Century India, » Bauer concludes that the opium trade led to massive exploitation and ultimately impoverished Indian peasants.

« The poppy was grown at a loss to the peasants. These peasants would have been much better off if they had not grown the poppy … The government opium industry was one of the largest enterprises on the subcontinent, producing a few thousand tonnes of the drug each year – a production similar to that of the notorious opium industry in Afghanistan today, which feeds the global heroin market,” Bauer explained in 2019.

Certainly, interest-free financial advances were offered to poppy farmers who did not have access to easy credit, an interesting thing. What was bad for them, Bauer says, was that « the cost of rents, manure, irrigation, and hired labor was higher than the income from the sale of raw opium. » In other words, the price the farmers received for their opium did not even cover the cost of growing it. So they quickly found themselves trapped in a « web of contractual obligations from which it was difficult to escape. »

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

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.

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.

What drives Jardine and Mathison is an unabashed Sinophobia.

The Chinese, Matheson said, were,

« a people characterized by their marvelous degree of imbecility, avarice, self-importance and obstinacy. (…) The policy of these extraordinary people has been to shroud themselves and everything that belongs to them in an impenetrable mystery (…), to display a spirit of exclusion on a grand scale. »

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:

« These merchants were for the most part a bunch of greedy scroungers, full of mockery for the empire that kept them outside its walls (or at least for the unrepresentative southern fragment of it they could glimpse at Canton). They disapproved of its administration, which they regarded as self-important and often venal; its determination to keep them and their trade cautiously at a respectful distance; its old age, its odours, its complete ignorance of Christianity and the cleanliness of the lavatory; the insulting Chinese habit of staring at strangers, the arrogant Chinese refusal to look strangers in the eye, and so on. »

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:

« China to this day proclaims her proud and unattainable supremacy, and disdainfully rejects all pretensions of any other nation to be regarded as her equal. Christianity alone can effectually destroy this contemptible conceit. Where other means have failed, the Gospel will triumph. »

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:

« The empire of China is mine. What a glory it would be to organize the blockade of the coasts of the celestial empire by a squadron (…), with what ease a gunboat would provoke a revolution which would make them open their ports to world trade! It would please me to be the architect of such a change. » Because « every act of violence on our part has resulted in an immediate redress of the situation and other profitable results. » Great Britain « must not threaten to resort to force, but resort to it from the outset. »

9. Consequences of opium addiction

a) Medical and Social consequences

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.

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:

« Bored eunuchs at court and members of the imperial family took it; soldiers took it to tame their fears and probably also as a means of evading active service, as became clear in 1832, when 6,000 men proved unable to quell a local uprising because of widespread independence. Scholars used it to relieve their stresses and frustrations; students to stimulate their intellectual capacities at examination time; merchants to sharpen their business sense; and women to relieve the tensions and difficulties of family life. In some leisured circles, opium became socially acceptable, and the Chinese served it to their friends after dinner as Europeans did. » could offer a digestive.”

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)

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)

Letter from Lin Zexu to Queen Victoria

The letter is inspired by Confucian concepts, morality and spirituality:

« We find that your country is sixty or seventy thousand li from China. The purpose of your ships in coming to China is to make a large profit. Since this profit is made in China and is actually taken away from the Chinese people, how can foreigners make a detriment for the benefit they have received by sending this poison to harm their benefactors?

“They may not intend to harm others on purpose, but the fact remains that they are so obsessed with material gain that they are completely unconcerned about the harm they may cause others. Do they have no conscience? I heard that you strictly prohibit opium in your own country, making it clear that you know how harmful opium is. You do not wish opium to harm your own country, yet you choose to bring this harm to other countries like China. Why?”

“The products originating in China are all useful objects. They are good for food and other purposes and are easy to sell. Has China produced any article harmful to foreign countries? For example, tea and rhubarb are so important to the livelihood of foreigners that they must consume them every day. If China were to care only for its own benefit without worrying about the welfare of others, how could foreigners continue to live?”

« I have heard that the areas under your direct jurisdiction such as London, Scotland and Ireland do not produce opium; it is rather produced in your Indian possessions such as Bengal, Madras, Bombay, Patna and Malwa. In these possessions the English not only plant opium poppies which stretch from mountain to mountain, but also open factories for the manufacture of this terrible drug.

“As the months accumulate and the years pass, the poison they have produced increases in its wicked intensity, and its repulsive odor rises to the sky. The sky is furious with anger, and all the gods groan in pain! It is hereby suggested that you destroy and plow under all these opium plants and cultivate food crops in their place, while issuing an order severely punishing anyone who dares to plant opium poppies again.

« The murderer of one person is punishable by death; imagine how many people opium has killed! This is the reason for the new law which stipulates that any foreigner who brings opium into China will be sentenced to death by hanging or beheading. Our aim is to eliminate this poison once and for all and for the benefit of all mankind. »

The letter remained unanswered (some sources suggest it was « lost » in transit), but was subsequently published in the London Times as a direct appeal to the British public.

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 ».

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, 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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Sack of the Summer Palace

In issue 467 of the journal Histoire from January 2020, Pierre Singaravélou, professor of history at King’s College London and at the University of Paris-I-Panthéon-Sorbonne, gives the following account:

« In just a few months, a flood of ‘chinoiseries’ flooded Europe. More than 1 million objects from the Yuan ming yuan, the Summer Palace, were scattered around the world. Entering the palace deserted by the Emperor Xianfeng and his court on October 6, 1860, the French and British soldiers plundered everything they could get their hands on: porcelain, furs, antique bronzes, and especially watches, music boxes and clocks, which played music and rang constantly in the European camp. The scenes of looting took on a carnivalesque feel, with soldiers wearing richly embroidered Qing imperial robes and beautiful Chinese hats. Hundreds of rolls of silk were stolen, some of which were sewn to make tents. Charles Gordon stole the imperial throne to offer it to his regiment’s headquarters in Chatham, England. Ironically, many of the stolen objects were in fact gifts once offered to the emperor by European sovereigns. Objects too cumbersome to be brought back to Europe were destroyed or sold to Chinese merchants in Beijing. At first, French and British military leaders denied the existence of this systematic pillaging, before justifying a posteriori this « barbaric » behavior contrary to the « humanitarian » objective displayed by the Western powers: their soldiers had become « savages » through contact with the native population.

« From the beginning of the sack, sales of objects were improvised, then the military authorities organized a huge auction in Beijing. Prices soared. One of the emperor’s dogs, the Pekingese named Looty (« plunderer »), was offered to Queen Victoria. The pillaging of regalia (imperial wardrobe, armor, jade scepters, seals, the emperor’s headgear, etc.), transformed into vulgar merchandise, contributed to undermining the foundations of Qing imperial sovereignty. Very quickly, objects were found in several dozen auctions in London and Paris.

“European museums are recovering thousands of works of art, such as the Château de Fontainebleau, where Empress Eugénie created a Chinese museum to house more than 400 objects from the Summer Palace. Today, only a handful of works have been returned to the Chinese government. Thus, in 2009, when two bronze animal heads from a Yuan Ming Yuan fountain appeared in the sale of Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé’s belongings organized by Christie’s, François-Henri Pinault, the owner of this house, had to face a lively controversy. In 2013, these two objects were returned free of charge to Beijing by the French billionaire, who had bought the bronzes. The same year, Christie’s became the first foreign auction house to be granted the right to officiate autonomously in China…”

Letter from Victor Hugo to Captain Butler

Standing out from this colonial ugliness is Victor Hugo’s letter to Captain Butler, in which he expresses his indignation at the sack of the Summer Palace and takes the side of the civilized, the Chinese, against the barbarians.

Hauteville House, November 25, 1861

You ask my opinion, sir, on the China expedition. You find this expedition honourable and beautiful, and you are kind enough to attach some value to my feeling; according to you, the China expedition, made under the double flag of Queen Victoria and the Emperor Napoleon, is a glory to be shared between France and England, and you wish to know what is the quantity of approbation that I believe I can give to this English and French victory.

Since you want to know my opinion, here it is:

There was, in a corner of the world, a wonder of the world; this wonder was called the Summer Palace. Art has two principles, the Idea which produces European art, and the Chimera which produces Oriental art. The Summer Palace was to chimerical art what the Parthenon is to ideal art. Everything that the imagination of an almost extra-human people can produce was there. It was not, like the Parthenon, a rare and unique work; it was a sort of enormous model of the chimera, if the chimera can have a model.

Imagine some inexpressible construction, something like a lunar edifice, and you will have the Summer Palace. Build a dream with marble, jade, bronze, porcelain, frame it with cedar wood, cover it with precious stones, drape it with silk, make it a sanctuary here, a harem there, a citadel there, put gods in it, put monsters in it, varnish it, enamel it, gild it, paint it, have architects who are poets build the thousand and one dreams of the thousand and one nights, add gardens, pools, gushes of water and foam, swans, ibises, peacocks, imagine in a word a sort of dazzling cavern of human fantasy having the shape of a temple and a palace, that was this monument. It had taken the slow work of two generations to create it. This building, which had the enormity of a city, had been built by the centuries, for whom? For the people. For what time does belongs to man. Artists, poets, philosophers, knew the Summer Palace; Voltaire speaks of it. They said: the Parthenon in Greece, the Pyramids in Egypt, the Coliseum in Rome, Notre-Dame in Paris, the Summer Palace in the Orient. If one did not see it, one dreamed of it. It was a sort of frightening unknown masterpiece glimpsed in the distance in some unknown twilight, like a silhouette of Asian civilization on the horizon of European civilization.

This wonder has disappeared. One day, two bandits entered the Summer Palace. One plundered, the other set fire to it. Victory can be a thief, it seems. A great devastation of the Summer Palace was made in half-account between the two victors. We see mixed in with all this the name of Elgin, which has the fatal property of recalling the Parthenon [Looted by his father, n.o.e.]. What had been done to the Parthenon, was done to the Summer Palace, more completely and better, so as to leave nothing. All the treasures of all our cathedrals put together would not equal this splendid and formidable museum of the Orient. There were not only masterpieces of art there, there was a heap of goldwork. Great exploit, good windfall. One of the two victors filled his pockets, which the other seeing, filled his coffers; and we returned to Europe, arm in arm, laughing. Such is the story of the two bandits.

We Europeans are the civilized ones, and for us the Chinese are the barbarians. This is what civilization has done to barbarism. Before history, one of the two bandits will be called France, the other will be called England. But I protest, and I thank you for giving me the opportunity; the crimes of those who lead are not the fault of those who are led; governments are sometimes bandits, peoples never. The French empire pocketed half of this victory and today it displays with a kind of naivety of a landlord, the splendid bric-a-brac of the Summer Palace. I hope that a day will come when France, delivered and cleansed, will return this booty to despoiled China.

In the meantime, there is one theft and two thieves, I note. Such, sir, is the amount of approval that I give to the China expedition.

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.

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.

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

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.

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:

« Driven out of Canton at the start of the war, the business community, for its part, had only one desire: to return there as soon as possible. Small – less than 80 square kilometres -, swept by typhoons and frequented for ages by pirates, Hong Kong did not present any advantage in their eyes. However, one trading house decided to bet on the new colony: Jardine, Matheson & Co. Its directors, William Jardine and James Matheson, played a key role in London’s decision to go to war against the Chinese. Based in Canton for years, they immediately became aware of the interest of the site: better placed than Canton on the trade route linking India to China – the opium route -, Hong Kong also benefited from a natural deep-water port and, above all, the protection of the Royal Navy which had set up a base there.

« As early as June 1841, while the First Opium War was not even over, Jardine, Matheson & Co transferred its operations there and began to build a first warehouse there.

« The movement was launched: in the years that followed, most of the trading houses that had been established in Canton in turn took the road to Hong Kong. The English, of course, who had been present in China since the 18th century, but also the Americans, who were increasingly active in the region. Traders in Boston, the Forbes family established themselves there in 1842. The profits from Far Eastern trade would allow them to invest massively in American railways, the starting point of the family fortune. It must be said that in that same year, 1842, the new colony was established as a free port. A decision taken initially to facilitate the importation of products to an island that was totally lacking in resources and which had the effect of attracting a growing number of trading houses and stimulating trade between China, India, Europe and the United States.

« In 1848, more than 500 ships – including 457 English, 118 American, 42 Chinese and 23 Spanish – were already visiting Hong Kong. Tea, porcelain, silks, textiles, cigarettes, manufactured goods but also, again and again, opium. In 1860, this represented 85% of Hong Kong’s trade and generated considerable profits!

« From 1847 onwards, trading houses also made a lot of money transporting Chinese coolies to California, which had been swept away by the gold rush. Between 1847 and 1870, more than 400,000 Chinese workers passed through Hong Kong. At an average of $180 per trip per coolie, this trade alone brought in more than $70 million in twenty years! It stimulated the growth of shipping companies, such as the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company – today’s P&O – which opened its first lines from Hong Kong to Europe in 1845.

« Opium and coolies were the two driving forces behind Hong Kong’s tremendous development in the 1840s and 1870s. »

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.

« A true hub for trade with the Far East, Hong Kong also established itself as a financial center of prime importance. The two activities, in truth, were closely linked, with the first financial institutions created on the island having the vocation of supporting import-export operations.

Around 1860, Hong Kong was already home to 30 banks, including 10 English, 8 Chinese and 5 Indian. Small in size, they financed in particular the opium traffic between India and China, the starting point of a long tradition of ‘underworld’ financial operations that would characterize the place for decades to come.

But in this area, the decisive step occurred in 1865. That year, in fact, local business circles decided to create a bank dedicated to trade between Europe and China. Thus was born the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, today’s HSBC. The project was led from start to finish by Thomas Sutherland (1834-1922), a Scottish businessman who arrived in Hong Kong to take over the local branch of the P&O company.

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:

« to provide Hong Kong traders – whether Western or Chinese – with a bank with significant resources and rigorous management to enable them to finance their operations. Also established in Shanghai – other branches would later open in Bangkok and Manila – the establishment quickly established itself as the leading bank in the region. It also helped to change the city’s vocation.

With the International Opium Convention of 1912, Hong Kong’s role in the drug trade declined while an increasing share of trade with China was now conducted in Shanghai. With a powerful financial sector and benefiting from the protection of Great Britain, the island naturally established itself as one of the world’s major financial centres. A position it still occupies today, behind New York and London. »

12. Conclusion

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, 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;