The Opium Wars

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 352 pages
• Published by: Sourcebooks, Inc. February 1, 2004
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 1402201494
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-1402201493
• Book Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Weighs: 1.2 pounds

From Publishers Weekly
Hanes (Imperial Diplomacy in the Era of Decolonization) and film author and former Los Angeles Daily News critic Sanello have teamed up to produce this fine popular account. Beginning in the 18th century, British merchants quickly discovered that by introducing high-quality opium into China, they could earn high profits and use the hard currency to buy more tea. As a result, Chinese society became inundated with opium, and more and more people, including much of the army, became addicted. Twice, from 1839 to 1842 and again from 1856 until 1860, the Chinese government sought to oust the British trade. Hanes and Sanello describe in detail the military operations of both wars, the few Chinese successes and inexorable British wave of victories, culminating in the 1860 sacking and looting of the Imperial Summer Palace and its sumptuous works of art. The opium saturation of China continued until the post-WWII communist takeover, when the Maoist government banned opium, executed dealers and weaned the country (perhaps 10% of the population was addicted) off the drug with progressive rehab programs. The book covers a familiar time and place in history, but the authors make some nice analogies between the brutal economics and empire of the 19th century, and 21st- century forms of money, politics and war.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist
Today it seems incredible, but not that long ago a liberal and presumably "progressive" nation forced a weaker one to accept the importation of opium at the point of a sword. Tea grown on Chinese plantations was already a staple of the British diet in the 1830s. Frequently, British merchants paid for the tea with the profits gleaned from massive smuggling of opium into Chinese ports. Opium, first imported into China by Arab traders during the Middle Ages, had cut a devastatingly wide swath through Chinese society, with a large percentage of the army and the bureaucracy addicted. When the Chinese government attempted to prohibit both the use and the smuggling of the drug, Britain launched two wars between 1839 and 1860 to force open Chinese ports. Hanes is a historian and educator who specializes in British imperial history; Sanello is a film critic and author of numerous books on films and history. Their account of the causes, military campaigns, and tragic effects of these wars is absorbing, frequently macabre, and deeply unsettling. Jay Freeman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Reader Reviews
This review is from: The Opium Wars: The Addiction of One Empire and the Corruption of Another (Hardcover) This well written narrative describes the roots and actions of the two Opium Wars (1839-42, 1856-1860) fought primarily between Great Britain and China. Its not a pretty story, and its not a story familiar to many Americans. The gist of the problem for the British was that Britain had an insatiable demand for tea and silk, but there was virtually nothing the Chinese wanted to import from Britain. Therefore British traders in Canton imported opium from British-owned plantations in India, creating millions of Chinese opium addicts (including the emperor himself). Not only did drug dealing more than offset their negative balance of payments, it eventually generated nearly 10% of British tax collections. The first Opium War erupted in 1839 when the Chinese officials got serious about suppressing the opium trade and resulted, among other things, in the British navy and numerically small but well-armed ground troops opening various Chinese ports by force and obtaining possession of Hong Kong. The second Opium War, in which French navy and army forces joined, resulted in the conquest of Peking and the destruction of immense artistic and cultural wealth when the Summer Palace complex was looted and burned. In fact the words loot apparently came into the English language in the first Opium War from a Hindi word lut. Queen Victoria even named a Pekinese dog sent to her from the sack of Peking Lootie. Nobody comes off well. The British are uniformly horrible, and the French only slightly better. Americans are not active belligerents (excepting one occasion when a US Navy captain intervenes, despite contrary orders, to help the British), but American traders and consuls are involved in drug dealing. And, yes, the Chinese are victimized, but many Chinese grew wealthy as opium importers (the authors describe one Chinese as the worlds wealthiest man), most officials were corrupt, incompetent and uncaring regarding their citizens welfare, and Chinese soldiers serving in the British army commit as many atrocities as the Brits and Sikhs. While the British ignore this sorry episode and Americans are largely ignorant of it, the Chinese remember Western aggression and their victimization all too well. Opium plagued China for another century, although most was home-grown by 1900. On the eve of World War II 10% of the population was addicted, with 30% of Hong Kongs population addicted (Not the image of efficient British colonial administration, is it?). Massive opium addiction did not end in China until the Communists brutally cracked down on it after their 1949 victory. The authors conclude, The Great Helmsman just said no. I recommend this book as an excellent overview of 19th Century Western interaction with China and an important piece of knowledge for those who would understand Chinese wariness towards the West since 1949. The few reproductions of paintings and photographs are interesting, but the large scale map of China is inadequate to follow the complex series of military actions. There is a bibliography for those who want to study the subject further, although many of those books will be hard to come by outside a major university library.