The spectre still looms

Name of the book: The Opium War
Publisher: Picador
Author: Julia Lovell
Edition: Paperback
ISBN: 9780330537858
Pages: 499
Price: Rs 458

Western criticism of China mostly make for a humorous read because, more often than not, they are so skewed in their logic that it reflects more on these critics paddling from Ivy League universities and their equally snobbish partners across the Atlantic, and less on China itself. The potent mixture of fear, disgust, superiority complex and outright loathing drives them so blind that they don’t miss any opportunity to make fools of themselves. Take for example the Nobel Committee. Not that they had any credibility left after they handed it over to the likes of Henry Kissinger, Shimon Peres and President Obama. But last year, when they gave it to Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, in the haste to give short shrift to China, they even forgot to do a simple Google check. So the proud recipient of the last year’s Nobel turned out to be a man who supported the war in Afghanistan and Iraq, praised Israel’s occupation of Palestine, advocated a couple of centuries of colonisation of China by the West and thought George W Bush was a Zen maestro. That speaks more about the credibility of Western analysts and intelligentsia than the state of repression in China.    

Under the circumstances Julia Lovell’s ‘The Opium War’ becomes an essential read for intellectuals and casual readers alike. About a period and an incident that is often termed as a watershed in Chinese history—the Opium War—the book deals with the circumstances and factors that led to it.

More often than not, you’ll find colonial apologists of all hues defending this imperial aggression under the guise that it opened a practically closed and xenophobic nation to outer civilisations. The book attacks that notion. It shows how the besieged Qing dynasty was as open and integrated with the international system as it was possible in those days and had struck deals with Korea, Japan and a good part of Indochina. It was pretty much present in Central Asia and Turkestan region as well but mostly through conquests. And not only that, it also made its presence felt in Europe in the form of the porcelain trade.

While China was expanding its realm, it played host to a number of outsiders too. Qing dynasty’s flesh and blood, Manchus, for starters, were not inhabitants of China. These Tungusic people had marched in hordes from north-east and had already influenced the culture, outlook and, more importantly, the bureaucracy of China for couple of centuries.    

What sets Lovell’s book apart is that she has got a kind of access to both British and Chinese sources on the issue that has not been seen previously.

Lovell admits that it is a “tragicomedy” and indeed it is. Lovell’s grasp on the flow is superb and she has successfully used both comedy and tragedy in the forms of different wacky and eccentric characters, central and peripheral.  Opium was primarily brought from what is now east UP and Bihar to China by the Britishers in the early 19th century. However, in the 1830s, rattled by its adverse effect on the well being of their subjects and economy, the Qing dynasty banned it. Not only that, much to the chagrin of British, they ordered Lin Zexu, a bureaucrat cum strategist, to blockade British opium ships in Canton. The retribution was swift. A Naval fleet under Admiral Charles Elliot was sent out to tame the Chinese. The Chinese, marred by internal rebellions, stagnation and pure hubris, failed to match British combat technology and lost the first battle in a little less than 10 minutes. The war ended with the Nanjing treaty of 1842 which handed over Hong Kong island and opened the hinterland for commerce and Christian missionaries.

Lovell also manages to underscore the despicable role of Christian missionaries. Their collusion with traders, princes and officials and their sheer lust for war signifies much of what happened in those days. In fact, one of the aftereffects of the humiliating Nanjing treaty was Taiping war of 1856-64, when a crazy fanatic inspired and egged by missionary bailiwick actually ignited one of the bloodiest civil wars in Chinese history, which killed 20 million.

It also did not help them that when the war started, the emperor’s bureaucrats and officials continued telling him fictitious accounts of glorious Chinese victories.

It is not for nothing that the Opium War and its aftermaths hang like an albatross today. It has so deeply affected the psyche of the ruling class that it becomes singularly difficult for them to conduct their policy towards the west without referring to it. And you cannot blame them for that. Therefore, every time you award the Nobel to a Xiaobo, a white supremacist and a self loathing Chinese, the era of the Opium War is evoked.