Podcasts about First Opium War

Who won the First Opium War? Why did British troops feel guilty about their role? What treaty led to Britain taking control of Hong Kong? Anita and William discuss the tragic imbalance of The First Opium War, and the traumatic ways in which Chinese citizens responded to the humiliation it entailed… Empire Club: Become a member of the Empire Club to receive early access to miniseries, ad-free listening, early access to live show tickets, bonus episodes, book discounts, our exclusive newsletter, and access to our members' chatroom on Discord! Head to empirepoduk.com to sign up. You can get started with a 3-month trial for only £5 at https://historytoday.com/empire For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to www.goalhanger.com.  Email: empire@goalhanger.com Instagram: @empirepoduk  Blue Sky: @empirepoduk  X: @empirepoduk Assistant Producer: Becki Hills Producer: Anouska Lewis Senior Producer: Callum Hill Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

      Join The Alex on Green Coast Radio's Air Tight for Episode 135, come with him to the freshest underground music and counter-culture news.  This episode brings an eclectic mix of sounds, from DARGZ, Massive Attack, School Fair, Yaya Bay, and many more underground hits that you won't hear on mainstream radio.      Beyond the beats, we're tackling today's biggest counter-culture headlines—France's newly announced crackdown on drug dealers and users.  What does this mean for the underground scene?  We'll also take a historical quick look into the First Opium War, connecting the past to the present in the ongoing war on drugs.      Looking for exclusive Green Coast Radio merch?  Find art-driven station gear at GreenCoastRadio.com under the Station Gear tab. And don't forget to check out our YouTube channel, where we're bringing you Unknown Airwaves, a music video show that curates the best in underground and independent music.      Tune in now for underground beats, dance tracks, and counter-culture deep dives. Your next favorite song is waiting.   Playlist Jackie DeShannon - Needles and Pins Courtney Barnett - History Eraser DARGZ - Twilight Beans & Fatback - What makes a man Jacuzzi Boys - I fought a crocodile Muddy Waters - Tom Cat Natalie Bergman - You've got a woman Massive Attack - Safe from Harm Masego - Navajo Krafty Kuts - Hands High Shy Johnson - Suicide Blues The Cleaners of Venus - No Go School Fair - Leavin' this rancid city slain The Cramps - Primitive The Coup - The Coup Volta Jazz - Dougou Toro The Shangri-Las - Give him a great big kiss Yaya Bay - Pour Up The Wailers - Close My Eyes The Heavy - Girl Witch - Avalanche of Love  

The Qing, China's last imperial dynasty, ruled over one of the largest empires in Eurasia at the dawn of the 19th century. Throughout the preceding century, it expanded its reach into the northwest, southwest, Tibet, and gained hegemony over Mongolia. For a long time, traditional historiography has viewed the Qing as a land-based, agrarian power with minimal engagement with the seas. Even its successful conquest of Taiwan in 1683 was seen as a one-time affair. This, the traditional narrative goes, was the reason why the Qing lost to the British in the First Opium War. Scholars today have increasingly pushed back against this view, pointing out the Qing's liberalization of ocean-going trade and its development of a naval infrastructure. Joining me today is Ronald Po, author of Blue Frontier: Maritime Vision and Power in the Qing Empire, who will talk about Qing maritime history and policy in the 18th and 19th centuries. Contributors: Ronald Po Ronald Po is an Associate Professor in the Department of International History at LSE. He is a historian of late imperial China, with a focus on maritime history and global studies. His book, Blue Frontier: Maritime Vision and Power in the Qing Empire, seeks to revise the view of China in this period as an exclusively continental power with little interest in the sea. Instead, the book argues that the Qing deliberately engaged with the ocean politically, militarily, and conceptually, and responded flexibly to challenges and extensive interaction on all frontiers - both land and sea - in the eighteenth century. Professor Po joins us today to talk about his research on Qing maritime history. Yiming Ha The Chinese History Podcast is an educational show that aims to make academic content and newer research related to Chinese history more accessible to the general public without sacrificing the effort and quality that we as scholars put into and expect from our own research. It is designed for students, teachers, and anyone interested in Chinese history. We envision this podcast as collaborative space where scholars can share their research and stories through both interviews and lectures. Our aim is to provide content covering every aspect of Chinese history from ancient times to the modern period, including but not limited to political history, military history, economic history, social history, and cultural history. We especially strive to tie China into broader regional and international networks of exchange and interactions and to view China from a more Eurasian perspective. For the time being the majority of our content will focus primarily on premodern China, although it is our goal to expand into modern China in the near future.    Yiming Ha | Founder, Host, and Editor Yiming Ha is the Rand Postdoctoral Fellow in Asian Studies at Pomona College. His current research is on military mobilization and state-building in China between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries, focusing on how military institutions changed over time, how the state responded to these changes, the disconnect between the center and localities, and the broader implications that the military had on the state. His project highlights in particular the role of the Mongol Yuan in introducing an alternative form of military mobilization that radically transformed the Chinese state. He is also interested in military history, nomadic history, comparative Eurasian state-building, and the history of maritime interactions in early modern East Asia. He received his BA from UCLA, his MPhil from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and his PhD from UCLA. He is also the book review editor for Ming Studies. Credits: Episode no. 19 Release date: September 21, 2024 Recording location: Amsterdam/Los Angeles, CA References courtesy of Ronald Po Images: The Port of Canton (Guangzhou) in c. 1830, showing the factories of the foreign powers (Image Source) View of Canton (Guangzhou) in c. 1665 with ships of the Dutch East India Company in the foreground (Image Source) Chinese junk in Guangzhou, c. 1823 (Image Source) The East India Company steamship Nemesis (right background) destroying war junks during the Second Battle of Chuenpi, 7 January 1841 (Image Source) Select References: Gang Zhao, The Qing Opening to the Ocean: Chinese Maritime Policies, 1684-1757 (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2013). Hans van de Ven, Breaking with the Past The Maritime Customs Service and the Global Origins of Modernity in China (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014). John D. Wong, Global Trade in the Nineteenth Century: The House of Houqua and the Canton System (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016). John E. Wills, Jr., China and the Maritime Europe, 1500-1800: Trade, Settlement, Diplomacy, and Missions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). Leonard Blussé, Visible Cities Canton, Nagasaki, and Batavia and the Coming of the Americans (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2008). Melissa Macauley, Distant Shores Colonial Encounters on China's Maritime Frontier (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2021).  Paul A. van Dyke, Whampoa and the Canton Trade Life and Death in a Chinese Port, 1700-1842 (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2020). Schottenhammer, Angela, China and the Silk Roads (ca. 100 BCE to 1800 CE): Role and Content of Its Historical Access to the Outside World (Leiden: Brill, 2023). Tonio Andrade, The Gunpowder Age: China, Military Innovation, and the Rise of the West in World History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017). Wensheng Wang, White Lotus Rebels and South China Pirates (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2014). Xing Hang, Conflict and Commerce in Maritime East Asia The Zheng Family and the Shaping of the Modern World, c.1620-1720 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015). Zheng Yangwen, China on the Sea: How the Maritime World Shaped Modern China (Leiden: Brill, 2011).

In a land far to the East and at a time not all that long ago Britain decided it needed a whole bunch of stuff that only China could provide, silks, fine porcelain, and oh yeah TEA. You know how they are about Tea. Well trouble was Britain really didn't have China wanted. What they did want was silver. The Brits didn't have silver, but they did have a ton of opium they grew in the newly colonized India. Funny thing about Opium, it was illegal in Britain. So what do you do, well you smuggle it into China where it's also very much illegal and use the silver earned to buy all the stuff you want from China. Effectively Britain pumped China full of drugs, then paid them for other stuff with the illegal funds earned from said drug sales. Well eventually China had enough and this is where we come to the Opium Wars. I'm not going to give you anymore information, you're gonna have to just listen to the episode. It's good I swear. 

The First Opium War between China and Britain from 1839-1842 was driven by the trade of opium, leading to British military dominance and the signing of the Treaty of Nanking, which imposed unequal terms on China and marked the beginning of its decline in sovereignty. This war was a critical chapter in history, shaping global dynamics of trade, addiction, imperialism, and cultural conflict.

Episode 55: The First Opium War

Exactly what were the Opium Wars and how did they end up with the British in charge of Hong Kong until 1997?Get my free, weekly history newsletterThe Opium Wars were two 19th century wars fought between China and Britain (and also France in the second one).  Two mighty and proud empires fighting each other and all, ostensibly about the trade in opium.The British were trying to export the narcotic into China and the Chinese authorities, unsurprisingly,  wanted to stop them.That's the horrifying headline…and it is hardly something for us British to be proud of.But, despite the name, there was a lot more to these wars than just opium.In this episode, I will be  exploring the reasons behind the 1st Opium War 1839-1842, what happened and how it resulted in the British ruling Hong Kong for over 150 years.Support the show

“The entire story of the Taiping Rebellion might be told, from one perspective, as the rage of a failed exam candidate writ large.” — Stephen Platt“They may not intend to harm others on purpose, but the fact remains that they are so obsessed with material gain that they have no concern whatever for the harm they can cause to others.” — Lin Zexu about British opium traders “Heaven is furious with anger, and all the gods are moaning with pain!... A murderer of one person is subject to the death sentence; just imagine how many people opium has killed! This is the rationale behind the new law which says that any foreigner who brings opium to China will be sentenced to death by hanging or beheading.” — Lin Zexu“… soothing, quieting and delightful beyond measure.” — Queen Victoria about opium If I were to ask you which is the deadliest conflict in history, you'd probably answer WW II. But if I were to ask you which is the second deadliest conflict ever—at least according to most historians—I'd bet the number of raised hands would shrink quickly. And I'd also bet that a good percentage of those taking their chances with an answer would probably be wrong. So, welcome to the wildest, weirdest, biggest conflict in history that few people have heard about (that is…unless you are quite knowledgeable about Chinese history). Millions of troops took part in this war. Something in the neighborhood of 600 cities changed hands over decade and half of fighting. Conservative estimates place the dead around 20-30 millions (some estimates go as high as 100 millions.) For frame of references, this is deadlier than the Iraq War, the War in Afghanistan, the Vietnam War, the Korean War, the Spanish American War, the American Civil War and the American Revolution put together. We can also throw in the 7 Years War, all three Punic wars and all of the Crusades for good measure. In light of this, it may begin to make sense why several historians believe this is the bloodiest civil war of all time. It all began with a Chinese man who, in the mid-1800s, dreamed of becoming a scholar and receive a government job. Seems like an innocent start, right? Well, our wannabe intellectual, a certain Hong Xiuquan, experienced a major crisis when he realized that no matter how much he studied, he would not succeed at passing the imperial exams, that were the prerequisite to getting the career he dreamed of. The fact that he failed was more than a personal tragedy for Hong. Rather, this failure would trigger a sequence of events leading to the death of millions. This was easily the most costly F in the history of education. Broken to the core, he had a mental breakdown, and began to experience visions. These visions revealed to him that he was God's son, and Jesus' younger brother, and he was tasked by his heavenly relatives to clean China off any demonic influences in order to create the Kingdom of Heavenly Peace. His efforts to create this Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace heralded a bloody civil war with a body count that would make most video gamers blush.In this episode, we tackle ethnic conflicts in China, Christian missionaries in Canton, uber-difficult Imperial exams, the Pablo Escobar of the 1800s having the British navy on her side, foot binding, Great Britain solving a trade deficit by flooding China with drugs, the First Opium War, and much more. If you feel generous and enjoy History on Fire, please consider joining my Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/historyonfire to access plenty of bonus content. All the links to History on Fire social media can be found at https://linktr.ee/danielebolelli Including the HOF YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFCiqHbWJO26nFzUP-Eu55Q Substack: https://substack.com/@danielebolelliInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/historyonfire/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@historyonfirepodcast Bison is some of the healthiest meat you could possibly eat. Get yours at https://dakotapurebison.com/ History on Fire listeners get a discount by using the code HOF10 at checkout. If you'd like to go to Japan for a historical tour with yours truly as a guide, please check out https://geeknationtours.com/tours/signature-battlefield-series-classic-samurai-from-the-gempei-war-to-the-mongol-invasions-2023/And a big thank you to the sponsor for today's episode, Factor, America's #1 Ready-To-Eat Meal Delivery Service. Head to FACTOR MEALS dot com slash historyonfire50 and use code historyonfire50 to get 50% off. That's code historyonfire50 at FACTOR MEALS dot com slash historyonfire50 to get 50% off!

Last time we spoke about the final days of the first Sino-Japanese War, the invasion of the Pescadores Islands, Taiwan and the Treaty of Shimonoseki. The Japanese had taken Port Arthur, Weihaiwei and were on the verge of marching upon Beijing. The Qing were slow to action on the negotiation front leading to three attempts to reach a peace agreement. However in the meantime the Japanese prolonged things for just enough time to allow their amphibious forces to invade the Pescadore islands and Taiwan. Li Hongzhang became the scapegoat for the entire conflict and was forced to sign the humiliating Treaty of Shimonoseki. However in the end it would also be Japan getting served a nasty deal because of the Triple Intervention of Germany, France and Russia. The balance of power in the east had dramatically changed, and with change comes movement, the movement of many people, all over the world.   #55 This episode is, Overseas Chinese   Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on history of asia and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War. I did not know when I was going to tackle this subject, but I figured after the first Sino-Japanese war would be a good place. The 1890's-1900 is a sort of odd window of time for China where a lot of change occurs. When I was doing my undergraduate in History, a requirement of my University was to take a certain amount of courses in specific fields of history, one was Canadian history as I am from Quebec and its just forced on you. In one of those courses I had to spend an extensive amount of time learning about the Chinese-Canadian experience, particularly during the end half of the 19th century. Now I know the majority of you listeners are American and probably know the general history of Chinese immigration to America during the 19th century. For Canada is quite similar, first thing that comes to mind for all of you I imagine is the railroad work. Its a fundamental part of both America and Canada's history, the building of some of the great railroads and unfortunately the terrible mistreatment of Asian immigrants. In this episode however I don't want to just talk about Canada and the United States, because in truth, Chinese immigration saw Chinese going to all sorts of nations, for various reasons. I also believe it gives us a better understanding of all the events we have spoken about and how they affect the common person. There are more than 50 million Oversea Chinese today, most of them are in Southeast Asia, in places like Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei, Thailand and such. They represent one of the highest figures of immigration in the world. Their migration goes back to ancient times, roughly 2000 years ago during the opening of the maritime silk road. Chinese immigrants were moving mainly to Southeast Asia. When the 15th century came around, Chinese began moving to places like Sumatra and Java, establishing what we call today, Chinatowns. Where trade went, so did the Chinese and by the 16th century trade began to pick up with Europe. Europeans began to establish themselves in the Far East, looking to trade and in the process integrated numerous places within a world trade network. European powers began to compete with another to expand and develop colonies in places like Southeast Asia and this in turn increased a demand for Chinese merchants and laborers. When the 17th century rolled around, there was an estimated 100,000 or so Chinese scattered about Southeast Asia and 20-30 thousand perhaps in Japan. Many Chinese came over during the Wokou years, setting up bases in Japan to help raid mainland China as pirates. When the Manchu conquered the Ming dynasty, numerous Chinese refugees fled to Japan to escape Manchu rule.  Now its during the 19th century when we really begin to see massive movements to the far reaches of the globe. When the age of colonialism was at its height so too would Chinese immigration be at its height, and with it a diaspora began. By the starting of the 19th century, millions of Chinese pulled up stakes and left for unfamiliar and faraway places, why? During the final century of the Qing dynasty, China began to struggle with mounting challenges as I think we all have seen in this series. These problems were both internal and external in nature. Internally, the Qing had doubled their territory, incorporating areas in the north and west which were sparsely populated, adding ethnic and religious diversity to the empire. There were Manchu, Hans, Mongolians, Tibetans, Muslims and such. Alongside this, the population exploded because of new irrigation and water management techniques that were helping tackle China's most troublesome historic nemesis, floods and droughts. New crops had come over from the America's such as corn, sweet potatoes and peanuts. The new foodstuffs could be grown in areas of China that historically always had trouble growing stuff, allowing for new lands to be expanded upon such as the southwest and northeast. As the nutrition improved, China's population exploded. By 1740 the Qing dynasty numbered 140 million, but by 1850 this increased to a whopping 430 million. Population growth holds numerous benefits to a nation, such as increasing economic activity, but it can also cause great strain. China took a very very long time to industrialize. In the early half of the 1800s, most Chinese supported themselves through farming, but with the population booming, less and less land pushed more and more to find new lands. The Qing government meanwhile, as we have seen in this series, proceeded to become incredibly corrupt. Their officials neglected the common people and engaged in corruption purely to enrich themselves, and they gradually became more and more inept at governance. With a corrupt government and a booming population of dissatisfied people, 19th century China was ripe for conflict. The first major one was the White Lotus Rebellion of 1796-1804. It broke out in response to famine, overcrowding of land and from the harassment by corrupt Qing officials. The cult lashed out, resulting in the deaths of millions and costing the Qing dynasty nearly 100 million taels. Then the First Opium War broke out against Britain resulting in a humiliating defeat and the beginning of unequal treaties upon China. After this, the worst civil war in history, the Taiping rebellion broke out, yet again during a time of famine, with another cult, the Taiping led by Hong Xiuquan who nearly toppled the Qing Dynasty leading to the death of over 20 million or so people. Alongside the Taiping was the Nian rebellion and the second opium war, inviting more death and humiliating treaties tossed upon China. The Dungan revolt killed another 10 or so million people, causing countless Hui Muslims to flee into surrounding neighboring states.  The turmoil of the mid 19th century caused terrible suffering on the people of China whether it be from drought, famine, war, governmental harassment or simply incompetence and when this becomes your everyday life, what do you do to improve it? Well after witnessing such foreign barbarians nearly toppling your government multiple times, showcasing technologies you've never seen before, you might get curious what its like in their nations. Once the bans were lifted Christian missionaries were pouring into China from these nations. These people didn't not simply sail over to China either, in the mid 19th century the invention of steamships made sea crossings much faster and safer. With steamships came railroads, a much more efficient way to move raw materials and people across land. Steamships and railroads would have a profound effect on China. The construction of railroads required a lot of work, particularly dangerous work of clearing land and laying tracks. European colonies, the Americas, Southeast Asia, Oceania and other far reaching places had enormous demand for laborer, whether it be in construction, agriculture, mining, railway building, etc. Plantations for rice, rubber, fruit, sugar, tea, hell the mining of guano was huge, talk about a shitty job. Like we see today, companies sought cheap and exploitable pools of labor to fit their demands, many of them turned to China. China because of the Opium wars and later the First Sino-Japanese War had opened up countless treaty ports, she was burst open. Now there were fundamentally two rationales for Chinese migration, the first being flight and the second economic. Flight refers to those literally driven to flee where they were because of war, famine, disease, natural disasters, terrible government and persecution. Economic refers to the drive to just improve one's life, maybe the grass is greener on the other side as they say. Both of these rationales could lead to temporary move or permanent and it did not necessarily mean leaving China either, let's not forget a ton of internal moving was occurring.  Now during the Taiping Rebellion as the violence escalated countless people fled. Take for example the wealthy class, whenever Taiping entered an area, obviously these people feared losing everything as the Taiping confiscated all wealth. Therefor countless fled to newly opened treaty ports like Shanghai where foreign protection was to be found. They began dealing with the foreigners and discovered some mutual interests. This was a large reason places like Shanghai and Hong Kong were transformed into booming sophisticated cities. But for the countless common people, the Taiping-Qing war saw a large mobile population, wandering wherever seemed safe at the time. Many of these people fled to provinces in the southwest and southeast of China. When the war ended, major food and tax producing provinces were de-populated, take Jiangsu for example which saw 70% of its population of around 24 million people. Anhui and Zhejiang lost around 50% of their respective 15 million or so people. When the war was finally over, the flight migrants did not all return. Hubei, Hunan and Henan saw a ton of their people simply pack up and set up shop east. A lot of people also fled into Manchuria which had always been sparsely populated, even though it was one of the richest areas for agriculture and natural resources. The Qing had always limited migration to Manchuria, trying to protect the Manchu homelands, but beginning in the 1860's the Qing leadership had a change of heart. There were two major reasons for this; number 1 the Taiping rebellion had ravaged the governmental budget, prosperous agricultural regions that provided a ton of tax revenue were depopulated. China had indemnity payments to pay the British and French, money needed to be made, so the Qing began selling land in Manchuria and increased taxes upon it once it started to become more productive. The second reason was Russia. Russia was encroaching into Manchuria, and the Qing worried its sparse population would leave it vulnerable, so they opened the doors to the Han to help out. Now it was not just the Russian encroaching into Manchuria, the Japanese also had their eyes on the region. As I explained briefly towards the end of last episode, the Russians basically swindled the Japanese with the triple intervention, managing to seize a 25 year lease over the Liaodong peninsula in 1898. The Russians quickly went to work developing the region's agriculture, mining and crucially its railways. All of this required the pumping of money into Manchuria further building up the desire for Chinese migration to fill the large demands. Now this was all internal movements, what about the external? Millions of Chinese responded to the international demand for labor during the mid to late 19th century, taking them first to Southeast Asia, and then to all the corners of the world. The major reason they were able to do this in large scale was because of the new steamships and the increase of foreigners inside China telling them about the various nations they came from. The majority of early migrants came from the wealthy class, who sought to move their families and businesses abroad. These types of businesses were typically, Luandromats, stores, restaurants and such. They mostly came from Guangdong and Fujian as southern China was in turmoil due to the opium trade and Taiping Rebellion. Southern China had become fertile grounds for western companies to come over and recruit or even Shanghai laborers. The British picked up Chinese and brought them to build up their colonies in Malaya and Singapore, while the Dutch brought them over to Sumatra. They worked in sweltering hot plantations, for tea, rubber, rice, fruit or in the great tin mines of Malaya for example.  This all of course becomes quite dark, I briefly talked about the “pig trade”, the pigs being Chinese coolies who were either hired or kidnapped into indentured servitude overseas. Britain had outlawed slavery in 1807, but the experience for these poor souls would be very reminiscence of the western african slave trade. The term “shanghaied” comes from this time, when Chinese were sometimes drugged up or boozed up and tossed onto ships going to various places like Trinidad, British Honduras, Jamaica, New South Wales, British Guiana, Peru, Cuba, all over really. Now the Pig trade was quite reviled, take this passage from 1852 by foreign secretary Lord Malmesbury “iniquities scarcely exceeding those practiced on the African coast and on the African middle passage have not been wanting…the jails of China [have been] emptied to supply ‘labour' to British colonies…hundreds [of coolies] gathered together in barracoons, stripped naked and stamped or painted with the letter C (California), P (Peru) or S (Sandwich Islands) on their breasts, according to destination.” It was actually the gradual abolition of the Atlantic slave trade and slavery itself that rose the demand for Chinese coolies. The British were the pioneers on this front sending 200 Chinese laborers over to Trinidad in 1806 to quote “in an attempt to establish a settlement of free peasant cultivators and laborers” these initial shipments saw Chinese on vessels that had been used to transport African slaves in previous years. The Trinidad experiment failed, only 20 to 30 of the 200 Chinese remained on the island by the 1820's, however such stories inspired people like Sir John Gladstone to bring Chinese over to sugar plantation in British Guiana in the hopes of replacing the lost Afro-Caribbean workforce because the slave trade was coming to an end. Now the logistics of coolie labor were, murky lets say. Most in theory were under contract, paid, to be temporary, one would say consensual. Regardless many in Britain rightfully saw how horrible it was and tried to fight to end the trade or at least improve conditions for the Chinese coolies. Many of these humane reformers argued the Chinese would be tricked into signing employment contracts based on misleading promises, often kidnapped or even sold by coolie merchants within China. Yes a lot of these unfortunate men, had debts, like gambling debts and their lenders simply sold them off. But there were many who volunteered, because they were offered free passage and paid something like 20 cents per day. While I have been focusing on the British, everyone was in the game somewhat, take for example the Portuguese who held Macao which was the center of the coolie trade. It was said from 1848-1873 Macao's only real business was trading coolie slaves, and eventually it became so bad the British forced them to ban it. Spain sent Cuba two large shipments of Chinese Coolies in 1847 to work the sugar fields in Havana, these men came from Xiamen, one of the treaty ports that opened after the Treaty of Nanking in 1842. When Guangdong opened up, Peru saw a ton of Chinese coolies come over to work in their silver mines and in guano cultivation. When their contracts were up, many integrated into the countries of Peru, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and Cuba. Before 1959 when the Cuban revolution broke out, Havana held latin americans largest Chinatown, a result of the coolie trade. South America saw around 100,000 Chinese indentured laborers come over between 1850 and the late 1870s. The most vulnerable would be those poor souls deceived by false contracts or kidnapped who saw themselves basically thrown into slavery. For the majority who went to Cuba and Peru this was to be the case. After a 4 month grueling journey crammed onto a ship like a sardine, they would arrive to be met with cruelty and abuse. Most would find their contracts were written in such a way that it would make it nearly impossible for them to ever repay the cost of their passage, which was not covered for, also housing and food. When reports began to surface between 1847-1854 about the abuse of those going to Cuba and Peru, British tried to take responsibility by closing ports sending these people off in China, such as Amoy, but this simply led Macao to become the largest coolie port in the end. Hell some of these Chinese participated in the War of the Pacific known also as the Saltpeter war, where they burned down many of the haciendas they worked for. 2000 Chinese coolies joined a Chilean Army in Peru helping the wounded and burying the dead. The Germans brought some over to German Samoa to work on their plantations which only ended during WW1 when Anzac seized such islands. The French shipping of Chinese coolies to Guadeloupe, Martinique, French Guiana, the French west indies and such, as this also involved Indian coolies. Then came the age of Gold Rushes, all around the world large scale gold rushes emerged, in Oceania, Africa, South American and North America. In Australia the population tripled from 430,000 in 1851 to 1.7 million in 1871, making Australia the first multicultural society during the gold rush period. The gold rush began in may of 1851 after a prospector named Edward Hargraves claimed to have discovered gold in Ophir. Hargreaves had been to California's goldfields learning gold prospecting techniques such as panning and cradling. Victoria would see the first large goldrush in July of 1851 and word spread fast. 290,000 migrated to Victoria from British territories, 15,000 from European nations, 18,000 from the US, but not all were welcome. In 1855, 11,493 Chinese arrived in Melbourne, which saw Victoria enact the Chinese immigration act of 1855 in response. This severely limited the number of Chinese passengers permitted on an arriving vessel, but to evade the new law, many Chinese began landing in southern parts of Australia and would hike it sometimes 400kms across the country to get to the Victoria goldfields. In 1865 Richard Daintree discovered the Cape River Goldfield which soon attracted Chinese to Queensland for the first time. In 1872 James Mulligan discovered gold in the Palmer River around Cooktown, seeing 3 years of waves upon waves of Chinese prospectors. By 1977 over 18,000 residents were Chinese miners. I wanted to leave the United States and Canada for last if you were wondering, as I think they are the most well known stories of Chinese immigration. Also there are numerous nations I could not cover, this story is far too expensive I do apologize. So lets start with a very popular story, that of the great Californian Gold rush. In 1848 James W Marshall found Gold at Sutter's Mill in Coloma, California. The news soon brought over 300,000 people to California. While most were Americans, the gold rush also attracted thousands from Latin America, Oceania, Europe and China. The Chinese began arriving in 1849, the first major rush was to Gum San nicknamed “Gold Mountain” by the newly arrived Chinese. In 1849, around 90,000 people had come over, of which around 50-60 thousand were american. By 1852 20,000 Chinese had landed in the San Francisco area. Their distinct dress and appearance made them particularly recognizable in the goldfields and they were met with a ton of racism and violence. The American miners were frustrated with all the foreigners encroaching and the Chinese were easier target than other groups. Initially the Chinese worked for themselves or labored with other miners, but the American miners began to press upon the government to thwart more Chinese from coming over. The California legislature passed a foreign miners license law in 1850, charging non-US citizens 20$ per month. The law would be repealed within a year because of how exorbitant the fees were. This did not dissuade the Chinese who would go on to found America's first Chinatown in San Francisco, where by 1852 the Chinese now accounted for 30% of all immigrants. In response the California legislature passed another foreign miners tax now at 4$ per month. Many Chinese thrived during this time despite the hurdles they faced. Chinese mining companies like John China Placer Mining company and Hong Kong China Wing Dam company hired up to 20 workers and provided industrial equipment, expanding large scale operations. Small scale workers cooperatives amongst the Chinese also thrived in the 1850's which operated similar to the larger companies, using a share-risk system amongst workers. Many Chinese also chose to work for wages from white employers. Its estimated though it varies greatly, that Chinese miners were making around 39-50 dollars a month which would have been around the average wage for white miners. But as you can imagine there was much hardship, and the violence could get incredibly bad. Take for example what is known as the Hells Canyon Massacre. In 1887 two groups of Chinese miners headed to Oregon's Hells canyon to search for gold. On May 25th of 1887, 7 White Horse gang members, these were horse thieves, they robbed, murdered and mutilated between 10-34 of the Chinese miners who were employee's of the Sam Yup company. Its said they stole up to a possible 50,000$ worth in gold. Historian David H Stratton described the massacre as such,  “The brutality of the Snake River atrocity was probably unexcelled, whether by whites or Indians, in all the anti-Chinese violence of the American West. After the first day's onslaught at Robinson Gulch, the killers wrecked and burned the camp and then threw the mutilated corpses into the Snake River. The bodies of the other Chinese received similar treatment. Since it was the high-water stage of the spring runoff, the dead Chinese were found for months (some accounts say for years) afterwards along the lower river.” On the 26th more Chinese showed up to investigate the scene and 8 were shot dead by the gang. Later on in 1888 one Frank Vaughn confessed to taking part in the crime giving up the names of 6 associates. Most had departed america save for Vaughn and another man named Hughes. Their gang leader, Bruce Evan's known as “old blue” was blamed for everything, but he escaped custody. Now by the 1860's the goldrush was quieting down, leaving many Chinese looking for work and they found it in railway construction. The first major railway seeing Chinese workers was the first transcontinental railroad which linked up California to the eastern united states. Construction began in 1863 with terminal points at Omaha, Nebraska and Sacramento. Despite the Goldrush raising California's population, a large number of Chinese were recruited in 1865 to help build up the railway. Many of these were former gold or silver miners and it was Charles Crocker a manager of the Central Pacific Railroad who was one of the first trying to hire Chinese. As he pointed out to his colleagues, hiring Chinese as opposed to whites as they cost a third of the salary. Crocker also pointed out they could hire the Chinese immigrants to do much of the grueling work and particularly the dangerous jobs. Crocker soon broke records for laying track, finishing the project 7 years ahead of time. This was due to the fact he worked the men to down to the bones. The central pacific track was constructed primarily by Chinese, Crocker initially hired every Chinese he could find in California, but soon began importing Chinese workers directly from China. The railroad had to pass over river and through canyons requiring bridges to be made and tunnels to be blown open. Many of the Chinese workers would be sent into tunnels to break through using hand tools and black power bombs. To tunnel through places like the the foothills of Sierra Nevada, the Central Pacific began to use the newly invented but extremely unstable Nitro-glycerine explosives, aka TNT. This greatly accelerated the rate of construction and deaths for the poor Chinese workers who used them. The work often saw Chinese workers tossed in large baskets with the explosives down to hard to reach areas, they would lit the fuse and the basket would be pulled as fast as it could away from the blast area, not safe. Over 11,000 Chinese took part in the project and they made up 90% of the work effort. A large portion of them came from Guangdong, recruited through a network of small firms and labor contractors. Its estimated around 1000 Chinese died building the Central Pacific Railroad.  Now as the Chinese came to the US for the Goldrush and then railroad construction, they were met with a lot of racism, violence and legislative efforts. I mentioned the American miners pushing for legislation against them, but when the Chinese began working on the railways this greatly expanded. In the 1870's various legal discriminatory measures were being made against the Chinese. In San Francisco Chinese school children from 1859-1870 were segregated, but in 1870 the requirement to educate them was simply dropped. Also in 1870 the Naturalization act which extended citizenship rights to African Americans specifically barred Chinese on the grounds they could not be assimilated into American society. Chinese immigrants were thus prohibited from voting, jury duty (which lets be honest is a blessing) and faced alien land laws prohibited them from purchasing property or establishing permanent homes or businesses. In 1873 the Pigtail Ordinance, you heard that right, targeted Qing dynasty immigrants based on their Queues. The law required prisoners in San Francisco to have their hair cut within an inch of their scalp and any Qing citizens who went to prison and had their queues cut, meant they could not go back home until it grew back. The law was passed with the idea it would dissuade Chinese immigration. Two years later came the Page Act of 1875, barring Chinese women from entering the US. This was justified under the guise many who came over were performing sex work. In reality it was another measure taken to dissuade Chinese immigration. This was followed up in 1882 by the infamous Chinese exclusion act which prohibited the immigration of Chinese laborers. All of this was strongly driven by frustrated American workers who saw the Chinese as a threat to their jobs. Miners and railway workers pressed unions which pressed the legislatures to toss countless anti-Chinese laws trying to dissuade them from coming to the US. With so much discrimination and hurdles tossed at them, the Chinese began moving somewhere else to make ends meet. Chinese immigrants began arriving to the then Colony of Vancouver island in the late 1850's looking for gold. The colony of British Columbia, much like California was seeing a gold rush. The first Chinese community was established in Barkerville where half its population were Chinese. Soon other Chinatowns emerged in Richfield, Van Winkle, Quesnellemouthe, Stanley, Antlery and Quesnelle forks. By 1860 the Chinese population of Vancouver island and British columbia was around 7000. Then in 1871, British Columbia agreed to join the confederation of Canada and one of its conditions to do so was for the new federal government of Canada to build a railway linking BC to Eastern Canada, yes its basically the exact same thing as California with the Eastern US. Prime Minister John A Macdonald along with numerous investors realized the project would be unbelievably expensive. They also realized they could cut costs by employing Chinese laborers, as Macdonald told Parliament in 1882 “it is simply a question of alternatives either you must have this labour or you can't have the railway”. In 1880 Andrew Onderdonk, one of the main construction contractors in British Columbia for the new Canadian Pacific Railway began recruiting Chinese laborers from California. Learning from the Americans he also began importing Chinese workers from Guangdong and Taiwan. The Chinese workers were hired for the first 320 kms of the CPR which was considered to be the most difficult and dangerous segments, particularly the parts going through Fraser Canyon. Like their american counterparts they were paid much less than white Canadians, around 50% on the dollar.  Between 1880-1885, 17000 Chinese workers came to build the CPR with around 700 dying due to the terrible work conditions. The CPR's construction resulted in the establishment of Chinatowns along the rail line which further resulted in Chinese communities spreading across Canada. Following directly in the footsteps as the Americans, when the CPR was finished in 1884, the following year saw the infamous Chinese Head Tax. The Canadian government levied its first of many to come, anti chinese immigration acts, to discourage Chinese from coming to Canada. The head tax system stipulated all Chinese people entering Canada first had to pay 50$ ie: the head tax. This would be amended to 100$ in 1900, 500$ in 1903 and so forth. Because of this, basically no Chinese laborers could afford to bring over their families, though BC's Chinese communities still grew. In British columbia the perception of all the asians coming into the province, as it was not just the Chinese, many Japanese came over particularly for the fishing industry, well they perceived these people to be taking their jobs. Australia likewise had tossed up immigration restriction acts in 1901, the infamous “white australia policy” which eliminated asian immigration after their federation, and Canada would try the same. The Asian Exclusion League in Canada, yes there was a league just for this lobbied as much as they could to thwart Chinese immigration. I did not want to delve into the 20th century in this episode, but I did want to touch upon the violence that would occur in BC. In 1907 tension had increased, as more and more Asian immigrants were flooding over into BC from the US as a result of their anti chinese regulations, kind of a hot potato situation. By the end of October 1907 over 11,440 immigrants came over, 8125 were Japanese, 1266 Chinese and Sikhs made up 2049. Anti-Asian acts were blowing up and soon full blown riots spread.  The Asian exclusion league developed a new immigration act, but the federal government refused to back it. This led to outrage which led to its members starting a parade on September 7th of 1907. This parade turned into a mob riot where Chinese and Japanese neighborhoods were attacked. Asian owned businesses were vandalized, beer bottles were tossed at windows, fires were lit, the rioters were trying to destroy businesses. They came to Japantown where armed Japanese residents fought back, over 50 stores had their windows broken in and the entire riot only died down around 3am. Labour Minister MacKenzie King, yes the soon to be Prime Minister of Canada conducted a commission into the riots finding the damage to be worth around 26,000$ for the Chinese community and 9000$ for the Japanese. The riot directly led to the 1908 “gentleman's agreement”, one I might add not many people know about, not as notably as the head tax, but this was a secret agreement between Japan and Canada to restrict the number of passports issued to Japanese annually at under 400 peoples. It was a dark part of Canadian history. I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me. I do apologize if this episode is more on the gloomy side, but do not forget these asian communities are thriving today all around the world. I plan to do another episode on Overseas Chinese in the 20th century, so I hope you enjoyed this one and come back for some more!

In The Global in the Local: A Century of War, Commerce, and Technology in China (Harvard UP, 2023), Dr. Xin Zhang tells the story of globalization in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as experienced by ordinary people in the Chinese river town of Zhenjiang. On July 21, 1842, numerous women in the southeastern Chinese city of Zhenjiang chose to end their lives rather than succumb to invading British soldiers. These events, occurring during the First Opium War (1839-42), exemplify the various ways in which global changes encroached upon local Chinese communities in the nineteenth century. Previous historical accounts have primarily depicted this encounter as a European challenge to a submissive China, while others sought to uncover the nation's "authentic" history through native sources. In contrast, this book presents a groundbreaking approach to modern Chinese history, focusing on the intricate negotiations between local societies and global transformations. This unique "glocal" perspective is developed through three case studies that explore warfare, commerce, and technology in China during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By avoiding a narrow European or Chinese standpoint, these case studies meticulously illustrate how wider processes of modern imperialism, economic integration, and technological progress reconfigured the fabric of everyday life. The book vividly portrays the experiences of ordinary Chinese individuals as they grapple with forces that reshaped the entire world. Terrified residents of towns resort to self-destruction to evade British soldiers, unscrupulous brokers exploit prostitutes to facilitate their business dealings, and small-scale merchants embrace steam-powered ships for the first time to transport their goods to market. Ultimately, this book reveals how the forces of globalization in the 1800s were filtered through local idiosyncrasies, with no single region of the world serving as an ultimate "core," including Europe. It challenges the notion of a centralized world and proves that not only is the world flat, but it lacks a defined center. Huiying Chen is an Assistant Professor in History at Purdue University. She is interested in the circulation of people, goods, and ideas and how societies in history and today cope with the challenges wrought by increased travel in aspects of culture, politics, commerce, law, science, and technology. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

In The Global in the Local: A Century of War, Commerce, and Technology in China (Harvard UP, 2023), Dr. Xin Zhang tells the story of globalization in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as experienced by ordinary people in the Chinese river town of Zhenjiang. On July 21, 1842, numerous women in the southeastern Chinese city of Zhenjiang chose to end their lives rather than succumb to invading British soldiers. These events, occurring during the First Opium War (1839-42), exemplify the various ways in which global changes encroached upon local Chinese communities in the nineteenth century. Previous historical accounts have primarily depicted this encounter as a European challenge to a submissive China, while others sought to uncover the nation's "authentic" history through native sources. In contrast, this book presents a groundbreaking approach to modern Chinese history, focusing on the intricate negotiations between local societies and global transformations. This unique "glocal" perspective is developed through three case studies that explore warfare, commerce, and technology in China during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By avoiding a narrow European or Chinese standpoint, these case studies meticulously illustrate how wider processes of modern imperialism, economic integration, and technological progress reconfigured the fabric of everyday life. The book vividly portrays the experiences of ordinary Chinese individuals as they grapple with forces that reshaped the entire world. Terrified residents of towns resort to self-destruction to evade British soldiers, unscrupulous brokers exploit prostitutes to facilitate their business dealings, and small-scale merchants embrace steam-powered ships for the first time to transport their goods to market. Ultimately, this book reveals how the forces of globalization in the 1800s were filtered through local idiosyncrasies, with no single region of the world serving as an ultimate "core," including Europe. It challenges the notion of a centralized world and proves that not only is the world flat, but it lacks a defined center. Huiying Chen is an Assistant Professor in History at Purdue University. She is interested in the circulation of people, goods, and ideas and how societies in history and today cope with the challenges wrought by increased travel in aspects of culture, politics, commerce, law, science, and technology. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

In The Global in the Local: A Century of War, Commerce, and Technology in China (Harvard UP, 2023), Dr. Xin Zhang tells the story of globalization in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as experienced by ordinary people in the Chinese river town of Zhenjiang. On July 21, 1842, numerous women in the southeastern Chinese city of Zhenjiang chose to end their lives rather than succumb to invading British soldiers. These events, occurring during the First Opium War (1839-42), exemplify the various ways in which global changes encroached upon local Chinese communities in the nineteenth century. Previous historical accounts have primarily depicted this encounter as a European challenge to a submissive China, while others sought to uncover the nation's "authentic" history through native sources. In contrast, this book presents a groundbreaking approach to modern Chinese history, focusing on the intricate negotiations between local societies and global transformations. This unique "glocal" perspective is developed through three case studies that explore warfare, commerce, and technology in China during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By avoiding a narrow European or Chinese standpoint, these case studies meticulously illustrate how wider processes of modern imperialism, economic integration, and technological progress reconfigured the fabric of everyday life. The book vividly portrays the experiences of ordinary Chinese individuals as they grapple with forces that reshaped the entire world. Terrified residents of towns resort to self-destruction to evade British soldiers, unscrupulous brokers exploit prostitutes to facilitate their business dealings, and small-scale merchants embrace steam-powered ships for the first time to transport their goods to market. Ultimately, this book reveals how the forces of globalization in the 1800s were filtered through local idiosyncrasies, with no single region of the world serving as an ultimate "core," including Europe. It challenges the notion of a centralized world and proves that not only is the world flat, but it lacks a defined center. Huiying Chen is an Assistant Professor in History at Purdue University. She is interested in the circulation of people, goods, and ideas and how societies in history and today cope with the challenges wrought by increased travel in aspects of culture, politics, commerce, law, science, and technology. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/east-asian-studies

In The Global in the Local: A Century of War, Commerce, and Technology in China (Harvard UP, 2023), Dr. Xin Zhang tells the story of globalization in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as experienced by ordinary people in the Chinese river town of Zhenjiang. On July 21, 1842, numerous women in the southeastern Chinese city of Zhenjiang chose to end their lives rather than succumb to invading British soldiers. These events, occurring during the First Opium War (1839-42), exemplify the various ways in which global changes encroached upon local Chinese communities in the nineteenth century. Previous historical accounts have primarily depicted this encounter as a European challenge to a submissive China, while others sought to uncover the nation's "authentic" history through native sources. In contrast, this book presents a groundbreaking approach to modern Chinese history, focusing on the intricate negotiations between local societies and global transformations. This unique "glocal" perspective is developed through three case studies that explore warfare, commerce, and technology in China during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By avoiding a narrow European or Chinese standpoint, these case studies meticulously illustrate how wider processes of modern imperialism, economic integration, and technological progress reconfigured the fabric of everyday life. The book vividly portrays the experiences of ordinary Chinese individuals as they grapple with forces that reshaped the entire world. Terrified residents of towns resort to self-destruction to evade British soldiers, unscrupulous brokers exploit prostitutes to facilitate their business dealings, and small-scale merchants embrace steam-powered ships for the first time to transport their goods to market. Ultimately, this book reveals how the forces of globalization in the 1800s were filtered through local idiosyncrasies, with no single region of the world serving as an ultimate "core," including Europe. It challenges the notion of a centralized world and proves that not only is the world flat, but it lacks a defined center. Huiying Chen is an Assistant Professor in History at Purdue University. She is interested in the circulation of people, goods, and ideas and how societies in history and today cope with the challenges wrought by increased travel in aspects of culture, politics, commerce, law, science, and technology. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/chinese-studies

1.  1815 – Congress of Vienna – Series of international diplomatic meetings to discuss a new European order post the downfall of Napoleon that led to agreements on national boundaries within Europe, Neutrality Pacts, freedom of navigation.  2.  1823 – Monroe Doctrine by James Monroe, then President of US - Any intervention by external powers in the politics of the Americas is a potentially hostile act against the US.  3.  1824 – Calvo Doctrine –  Jurisdiction in international investment disputes lies with the country in which the investment is located. (Carlos Calvo, Argentine Jurist). Used mostly in International Investment Law.  4.  1842 – Treaty of Nanking – Ended the First Opium War between Britain and Qing Dynasty – Its provisions involved cession of Hong Kong to the crown. Was considered an unequal treaty.  5.  1864 – First Geneva Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded in Armies in the Field.  6.  1865 – Establishment of International Telegraph Union to deal with international interconnection, standardization of equipment, tariffs etc.  7.  1871 – Sino-Japanese Friendship and Trade Treaty – Mutual pledge for friendship and cooperation, exchange of ambassadors, trade related provisions.  8.  1899 – First Hague Peace Conference – Establishment of Permanent Court of Arbitration.  9.  1914-1918 – First World War10.  1919 – Treaty of Versailles – Disarmament of Germany, payment of reparations by Germany, territorial concessions etc.  11.  1920 – Paris Peace Conference – Establishment of League of Nations – a worldwide intergovernmental organization to maintain world peace.  12.  1920 - Establishment of Permanent Court of International Justice.  13.  1923 - Establishment of the Hague Academy of International Law  14.  1928 – Kellogg-Briand Pact – International Agreement on peace – was aimed at preventing the second world war.  15.  1939-1945 – Second World War16.  26.06.1945 – Signing of Charter of United Nations  17.  18.04.1946 – Replacement of Permanent Court of International Justice by International Court of Justice.  18.  10.12.1948 – Adoption of Universal Declaration of Human Rights by UN GA.

The 5 C's of History: Causality Series, #1 of 4. According to the website of Britain's National Army Museum, the first Opium War started when, “In May 1839, Chinese officials demanded that Charles Elliot, the British Chief Superintendent of Trade in China, hand over their stocks of opium at Canton for destruction. This outraged the British, and was the incident that sparked conflict.” In popular culture, and especially among European and American historians, the “Opium Wars” have long been framed as a conflict between the powerful/domineering British and the weak/insular Chinese, in which the British exploited China by getting the Chinese people addicted to opium and then went to war when the Chinese government finally tried to stop them, and the British used their military might to then extract punishing and unequal trade relationships with the Chinese for the next 100 years. Certainly elements of this framework, of this cause and effect, are true. There was a confrontation in May of 1839, and the Nanking Treaty absolutely created an exploitative and unequal trade relationship between the British and Chinese. And yet, unsurprisingly, this is far from the whole story - and far from the only way historians have interpreted the “Opium Wars”. Today we're going to discuss the causes of the first Opium War, and the different - sometimes problematic - ways historians have framed the 1839-42 Anglo-Sino conflict.  Select Bibliography Transcribed Qianlong emperor's letter to King George III - in Chinese, and in English Song-Chuan Chen, Merchants of War and Peace: British Knowledge of China in the Making of the Opium War (Oxford University Press, 2017) Paul French, Through the Looking Glass: China's Foreign Journalists from Opium Wars to Mao (Hong Kong University Press, 2009).  Henrietta Harrison, “The Qianlong Emperor's Letter to George III and the Early-Twentieth-Century Origins of IDeas about Traditional China's Foreign Relations,” American Historical Association (2017).  Stephen Platt, Imperial Twilight: The Opium War And The End Of China's Last Golden Age (Penguin, 2019) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey y'all welcome to episode 103! Today Kat gives us an *actually* fun topic - High Heels! Then Kaleigh harshes the vibe with her coverage of the First Opium War.  Let's Chat! Twitter: @TINAHLpodcastEmail: thisisnotahistorylecture@gmail.comRemember to rate us wherever you can!

Research into the history of computers sometimes leads down some interesting alleys - or wormholes even. My family would always go out to eat Chinese food, or pick it up, on New Year's day. None of the one Chinese restaurants in the area actually closed, so it just made sense. The Christmas leftovers were gone by then and no one really wanted to cook. My dad mentioned there were no Chinese restaurants in our area in the 1970s - so it was a relatively new entrant to the cuisine of my North Georgia town. Whether it's the Tech Model Railroad or hobbyists from Cambridge, stories abound of young engineers debating the merits of this programming technique or chipset or that. So much so that while reading Steven Levy's Hackers or Tom Lean's Electronic Dreams, I couldn't help but hop on Door Dash and order up some yummy fried rice. Then I started to wonder, why this obsession?  For one, many of these hackers didn't have a ton of money. Chinese food was quick and cheap. The restaurants were often family-owned and small. There were higher end restaurants but concepts like P.F. Chang's hadn't sprung up yet. That wouldn't come until 1993. Another reason it was cheap is that many of the proprietors of the restaurants were recent immigrants. Some were from Hunan, others from Taipei or Sichuan, Shanghai, or Peking (the Romanized name for Beijing). Chinese immigrants began to flow into the United States during the Gold Rush of California in the late 1840s and early 1850s.  The Qing Empire had been at its height at the end of the 1700s and China ruled over a third of humans in the world. Not only that - it was one of the top economies in the world. But rapid growth in population meant less farmland for everyone - less jobs to go around. Poverty spread, just as colonial powers began to pick away at parts of the empire. Britain had banned the slave trade in 1807 and Chinese laborers had been used to replace the slaves. The use of opium spread throughout the colonies and with the laborers, back into China. The Chinese tried to ban the opium trade and seized opium in Canton. The British had better ships, better guns, and when the First Opium War broke out, China was forced to give up Hong Kong to the British in 1842, which began what some historians refer to as a century of humiliation while China gave up land until they were able to modernize. Hong Kong became a British colony under Queen Victoria and the Victorian obsession with China grew. Art, silks (as with the Romans), vases, and anything the British could get their hands on flowed through Hong Kong. Then came the Taiping Rebellion, which lasted from 1851 to 1864. A Christian was named theocrat and China was forced to wage a war internally with around 20 million people dying and scores more being displaced. The scent of an empire in decay was in the air. Set against a backdrop of more rebellions, the Chinese army was weakened to the point that during the First Sino-Japanese War in 1894, and more intervention from colonial powers. By 1900, the anti-colonial and anti-Christian Boxer Uprising saw missionaries slaughtered and foreigners expelled. Great powers of the day sent ships and troops to retrieve their peoples and soon declared war on the empire and seized Beijing. This was all expensive, led to reparations, a prohibition on importing arms, razing of forts, and more foreign powers occupying areas of China. The United States put over $10 million of its take from the Boxer Indemnity as they called it, to help support Chinese students who came to the United States. The Qing court had lost control and by 1911 the Wuchang Uprising began and by 1912 2,000 years of Chinese dynasties was over with the Republic of China founded in 1912, and internal conflicts for power continuing until Mao Zedong and his followers finally seized power, established the People's Republic of China as a communist nation, and cleansed the country of detractors during what they called the Great Leap Forward, resulting in 45 million dead. China itself was diplomatically disconnected with the United States at the time, who had backed the government now in exile in the capital city of Taiwan, Taipei - or the Republic of China as they were called during the Civil War.  The food, though. Chinese food began to come into the United States during the Gold Rush. Cantonese merchants flowed into the sparkling bay of San Francisco, and emigrants could find jobs mining, laying railroad tracks, and in agriculture. Hard work means you get real hungry, and they cooked food like they had at home. China had a better restaurant and open market cooking industry than the US at the time (and arguably still does). Some of he Chinese who settled in San Francisco started restaurants - many better than those run by Americans. The first known restaurant owned by a Chinese proprietor was Canton Restaurant in 1849. As San Francisco grew, so grew the Chinese food industry.  Every group of immigrants faces xenophobia or racism. The use of the Chinese laborers had led to laws in England that attempted to limit their use. In some cases they were subjugated into labor. The Chinese immigrants came into the California Gold Rush and many stayed. More restaurants were opened and some catered to white people more than the Chinese. The Transcontinental Railroad was completed in 1869 and tourists began to visit San Francisco from the east. China Towns began to spring up in other major cities across the United States. Restaurants, laundries, and other even eastern pharmacies. New people bring new ways and economies go up and down. Prejudice reared its ugly head. There was an economic recession in the 1870s. There were fears that the Chinese were taking jobs, causing wages to go down, and crime. Anti-Chinese sentiment became law in the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, which halted immigration into the US. That would be repealed in 1943. Conservative approaches to immigration did nothing to limit the growing appeal of Chinese food in the United States. Merchants, like those who owned Chinese restaurants, could get special visas. They could bring relatives and workers. Early Chinese restaurants had been called “chow chow houses” and by the early 1900s there were new Chop Suey restaurants in big cities, that were affordable. Chop Suey basically means “odds and ends” and most of the dishes were heavily westernized but still interesting and delicious. The food was fried in ways it hadn't been in China, and sweeter. Ideas from other asian nations also began to come in, like fortune cookies, initially from Japan. Americans began to return home from World War II in the late 1940s. Many had experienced new culinary traditions in lands they visited. Initially Cantonese-inspired, more people flowed in from other parts of China like Taiwan and they brought food inspired from their native lands. Areas like New York and San Francisco got higher end restaurants. Once the Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed, plenty of immigrants fled wars and cleansing in China. Meanwhile, Americans embraced access to different types of foods - like Italian, Chinese, and fast food. Food became a part of the national identity. Further, new ways to preserve food became possible as people got freezers and canneries helped spread foods - like pasta sauce.  This was the era of the spread of Spam and other types of early processed foods. The military helped spread the practice - as did Jen Paulucci, who bought Chun King Corporation in 1947. The Great Depression proved there needed to be new ways to distribute foods. Some capitalized on that. 4,000+ Chinese restaurants in the US in the 1940s meant there were plenty of companies to buy those goods rather than make them fresh. Chop Suey, possibly created by the early Chinese migrants. A new influx of immigrants would have new opportunities to diversify the American pallate.  The 1960s saw an increase in legislation to protect human rights. Amidst the civil rights movement, the Hart-Celler Act of 1965 stopped the long-standing practice of controlling immigration effectively by color. The post-war years saw shifting borders and wars throughout the world - especially in Eastern Europe and Asia. The Marshal Plan helped rebuild the parts of Asia that weren't communist, and opened the ability for more diverse people to move to the US. Many that we've covered went into computing and helped develop a number of aspects of computing. They didn't just come from China - they came from Russia, Poland, India, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, and throughout. Their food came with them. This is the world the Hackers that Steven Levy described lived in. The first Chinese restaurant opened in London in 1907 and as well when people who lived in Hong Kong moved to the UK, especially after World War II. That number of Chinese restaurants in the US grew to tens of thousands in the decades since Richard Nixon visited Beijing in 1972 to open relations back up with China. But the impact at the time was substantial, even on technologists. It wasn't just those hackers from MIT that loved their Chinese food, but those in Cambridge as well in the 1980s, who partook in a more Americanized Chinese cuisine, like “Chow mein” - which loosely translates from “fried noodles” and emerged in the US in the early 1900s.  Not all dishes have such simple origins to track down. Egg rolls emerged in the 1930s, a twist on the more traditional Chinese sprint roll. Ding Baozhen, a governor of the Sichuan province in the Qing Dynasty, discovered a spicy marinated chicken dish in the mid-1800s that spread quickly. He was the Palace Guardian, or Kung Pao, as the dish is still known. Zuo Zongtang, better known as General Tso, was a Qing Dynasty statesman and military commander who helped put down the Taiping Rebellion in the later half of the 1800s. Chef Peng Chang-kuei escaped communist China to Taiwan, where he developed General Tso's chicken and named it after the war hero. It came to New York in the 1970s. Sweet and Sour pork also got its start in the Qing era, in 18th century Cantonese cuisine and spread to the US with the Gold Rush. Some dishes are far older. Steamed dumplings were popular from Afghanistan to Japan and go back to the Han Dynasty - possibly invented by the Chinese doctor Zhang Zhongjing in the centuries before or after the turn of the millennia. Peking duck is far older, getting its start in 1300s Ming Dynasty, or Yuan - but close to Shanghai. Otto Reichardt brought the ducks to San Francisco to be served in restaurants in 1901. Chinese diplomats helped popularize the dish in the 1940s as some of their staffs stayed in the US and the dish exploded in popularity in the 1970s - especially after Nixon's trip to China, which included a televised meal on Tiananmen Square where he and Henry Kissinger ate the dish.   There are countless stories of Chinese-born immigrants bringing their food to the world. Some are emblematic of larger population shifts globally. Cecilia Chiang grew up in Shanghai until Japan invaded, when she and her sister fled to Chengdu, only to flee the Chinese Communists and emigrate to the US in 1959. She opened The Mandarin in 1960 in San Francisco and a second location in 1967. It was an upscale restaurant and introduced a number of new dishes to the US from China. She went on to serve everyone from John Lennon to Julia Child - and her son Philip replaced her in 1989 before starting a more mainstream chain of restaurants he called P.F. Chang's in 1993. The American dream, as it had come to be known. Plenty of other immigrants from countries around the world were met with open arms. Chemists, biologists, inventors, spies, mathematicians, doctors, physicists, and yes, computer scientists. And of course, chefs. Diversity of thought, diversity of ideas, and diversity-driven innovation can only come from diverse peoples. The hackers innovated over their Americanized versions of Chinese food - many making use of technology developed by immigrants from China, their children, or those who came from other nations. Just as those from nearly every industry did.

Last time we spoke the entire Second Opium War of 1856-1860. The forces of Britain and France brought the Qing dynasty to its knees, forcing yet again unequal treaties and humiliation. While the opium wars were certainly a large contributor to the century of humiliation, the story we are about to talk about is arguably a lot more significant. During that five part series there was an ongoing and much more significant event occurring within China, that being one of if not the deadliest civil wars in human history, the Taiping Rebellion. Both the Taiping Rebellion and Second Opium War are intertwined, they influenced another greatly and together they are a large reason for the eventual downfall of the Qing dynasty. Buckle up folks because we are taking an extra long dive into an event that killed an estimated 20-30 million people.    #24 This episode is The Taiping Rebellion part 1: Hong Xiuquan the self proclaimed brother of Jesus   Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on history of asia and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War. I first need to take a moment to explain something. I am literally writing this down after finishing the last page of my first draft of the entire series and without the last final touches I can tell it will be a whopping 10-12 episodes long gasp. I in no way expected this, I thought hell it would be the longest for sure, but maybe 6 episodes, not 12! But what really drove me to write so much, 99 pages to be exact cough, was fantastic sources I had not read until recently. One source looked at the event from a religious point of view, another was much older from the 1970's which simply explained the events in a large picture, the old school way of history. Then a third source, which is a much more recent book tied up everything quite nicely with a lot of primary sources and feelings of the people from nobility to the commoners. I could not bring myself to cut down as a result and I do apologize if its a long venture, but for all of you who can rough it out I ensure it will be worth it. This is an incredible story filled with hardship, dramatic change, religion and insanity, and since the Qing dynasty is involved a hell of a lot of corruption. Stating all of that thank you so much to all those who have been listening you guys are awesome I greatly appreciate you all. If you want to reach out to suggest anything for the future, have critique and so on, please reach out to me by commenting at my Youtube channel the Pacific War Channel or if your are on the Kings and Generals discord shout out to me there! Please enjoy the Taiping Rebellion.   In 1852, Theodore Hamberg, a young Swedish Protestant missionary with a thin chinstrap beard was in Hong Kong. He was one of the first Europeans of his generation to brave the Chinese countryside, as he left the relative safety of Hong Kong, which was by this time a british colony to preach in a village 100 miles up the Pearl River. Hamburg was one of the first non chinese to learn and speak the dialect of the Hakka people. These were as described by one of my sources “a gypsy minority that thickly populate south CHina. They are sometimes referred to as the “guest people””. All of this amounted to nothing of too much importance, save for one short, round-faced Hakka, Hamburg converted named Hong Rengan. Hong Rengan had a incredible story to tell it seems.   Hamburg was surprised and found it a bit odd, that a lot of the Hakka he met already knew about God and Jesus despite these people being well beyond the narrow reach of the Hong Kong missionaries. Hamburg listened to Hong Rengan recount stories of battles, armies and congregations of christian believers all being led by a heavenly prophet, a Hakka one no less. This prophet claimed to be hunted by agents of the Qing dynasty and lived in disguise under an assumed name. He was once kidnapped, but escaped and lived in a forest for 4 days and a cave for 6. Hamburg confessed the stories this man told him were confusing “I could form no clear conception of the whole matter”. Hamburg did not know what to make of it all, so he asked Hong Rengan to write the stories down for him. Hamburg thought little of any of this for nearly a year, then in the spring of 1853 news came that Nanjing had fallen in a torrent of blood. Hamberg then realized Hong Rengan's stories were very real.    News of the great upheaval in China reached those like Hamberg in Hong Kong and along the coast where foreigners did business. Reports of local uprisings and small scale banditry in the countryside were never anything of much importance, it was just the same old news in China. Then Catholic missionaries deep within the interior began to spread rumors of a larger movement led by a man known as “Tian de” or “heavenly virtue”. Some said the man was actually dead, killed by Qing forces, others questioned his very existence. Without any concrete news, little attention was paid to any of it, just bandits disrupting the production of silk and tea, a common problem. But when Nanjing, the southern capital of China fell in 1853, well this suddenly brought attention to foreigners that a very real and very large civil war was occuring in China. Those in Shanghai were alarmed, and rightful so, Nanjing was very close to what was now called “The Taiping Tianguo - The heavenly kingdom of Great peace”. A million rebels were flooding down from central China on a grand flotilla of commandeered ships to what was formerly called Nanjing. A ton of cities were emptied and Qing defenses lay in rubble as these small local bandits were a grand rebel army on the march. Fear gripped the city of Shanghai, communications with Nanjing were cut, rumors spread that Shanghai would be attacked.   Shanghai's citizens boarded up their homes, many of the Chinese fled into the countryside for safety. The foreign settlers called for defenses to be erected, for volunteers to take arms. British, French and American steamers began to bring men to defend the walls of Shanghai. Yet there was no attack, at least for the time being, apparently the Taiping rebels went to march upon Beijing if it was to be believed! The capital of the Manchu were under threat from these rebels who held Nanjing. A single British vessel went over to Nanjing in april of 1853 but brought back very conflicting news of what was occurring there. It became the opinion of the British plenipotentiary at the time that these so called Taiping were “nothing but superstition and nonsense”. Despite the scarcity of clear information, raw accounts of this apparent civil war in China began to get out of Shanghai and Hong Kong to the western world. Tales that the Chinese were fed up with their Manchu rulers and were rising up spread. The economist read “a social change or convulsion such as have of late afflicted europe. It is singular to find similar commotions at the same time in Asia and Europe”.   Karl Marx, yes the Karl Marx wrote in 1853 as the London correspondent for the New York Daily Tribune about the situation in China. He considered the rebellion to be a symptom of China's integration into the global economy, as a result of Britain's opening up of CHina during the First Opium War. What was happening in China was not merely a rebellion, it was a “formidable revolution”, one that demonstrated the interconnectedness of the industrial world. Marx argued what was happening in China would come to Europe “the next uprising of the people of Europe, and their next movement for republican freedom and economy of Government, may depend more probably on what is now passing in the Celestial Empire—the very opposite of Europe—than on any other political cause that now exists.” The disorder that China faced was caused by the opium trade, and exposure to the world. The old was facing the new as they say and Marx believed “dissolution must follow as surely as that of any mummy carefully preserved in a hermetically sealed coffin, whenever it is brought into contact with the open air.” Marx argued the Qing dynasty may dissolve and that it would not be limited to just China. The whole Taiping revolution was for Marx, Britain's fault and now the effects of her actions overseas would go back to bite her ass at home  “the question, is how that revolution will in time react on England, and through England on Europe.” Marx predicted the loss of the Chinese market because of the Taiping would undermine British exports, particularly textile. By the way as I pointed out in previous episodes that very much was not the case, textiles from Britain went up actually because of the Taiping rebellion killing the Chinese trade network internally resulting in foreigners making up the demand. But then again when has Marx ever been right, shots fired. Marx believed the Taiping revolution would cut off England's source of tea imports and that the price of tea would spike in England leading to economic downfall and further revolution. “It may be safely augured, that the Chinese revolution will throw the spark into the overloaded mine of the present industrial system and cause the explosion of the long-prepared general crisis, which, spreading abroad, will be closely followed by political revolutions on the Continent.”  Many news outlets and intellectuals had differing accounts of what exactly the Taiping were and what was going on. Some made analogies to the African slaves rebeling in the United states to that of Chinese under the Manchus. Yet almost no one had any real explanation for the origin of the movement. Its rather funny to say, one of the very best accounts to explain it all could have been found in a desk in Hong Kong on some scribbled pieces of paper that Theodore Hamberg shoved in his desk.   Hong Rengan came back to Hamberg at a village outside Canton, but this time the Swedish missionary knew the man for who he was: he was the cousin and lifelong companion of the prophet of the Taiping, the Heavenly King. Hong Rengan was the only person to come into contact with a foreigner who had firsthand knowledge of the Taiping and that of their leader. Hamburg and Hong Rengan formed a close friendship, Hamburg even got to baptize Hong Rengan in september of 1853. Hamburg educated the man in Lutheran doctrine, preparing him to serve as an assistant to the foreign preachers and eventually to take their brand of Christianity over to the Taiping in Nanjing. As they worked together, Hamburg kept asking Hong Rengan about the movement, stories of the man who started it. And so here we can now learn about the famous Hong Xiuquan.   Hong Rengan told the story of his cousin, Hong Xiuquan who was 9 years older and had always been brilliant. They lived in neighboring villages roughly 30 miles away from Canton. Many of the villagers were relatives of their clan which back in the Song dynasty had been a grand one with countless high officials and imperial advisers amongst their ranks. Yet as time passed they had all become poor farmers. One thing they held with great esteem was a small schoolhouse where Hong Xiuquan began studying the confucian classics at the age of 7. He was extremely gifted and spent years memorizing the four books, the 5 classics and other necessary texts required for the civil service examinations. When Hong Xiuquan was a teen he was very well read on Chinese history and literature, he even read ancient texts without assistance. His family dreamed that he would restore their family to its former glory and several teachers worked without pay to provide him with the knowledge he would need to pass the exams to become a Qing official. As time went on his educative needs took him outside the village and his family got together all the money they could to support the 16 year old who at the point was already supporting himself as a schoolteacher with a small salary paid in lard, salt, rice and lamp oil.    The key to gaining an official appointment in the Qing government was passing the Confucian civil service examinations and this was a goal shared by both Hong cousins. But the exams were extremely difficult and if you failed an attempt you had to wait years for another opportunity to take them. The exam process took 3 days in a small cubicle in Canton. Hong Rengan never had much success, but Hong Xiuquan ranked high on the first day of his first attempt in 1827. As the grueling exam went on, he began to slip through the ranks and by the end of the 3rd day he fell out of the winners circle. It was to be 9 more years before he could qualify again to take the exam in 1836. Wow and I thought it was brutal trying to gain entry to a graduate program at my university for Neurobehavioral science sheesh. Well Hong Xiuquan did not give up, he took the exam a second time and failed. Hong Rengan likewise failed, but unlike Hong Xiuquan he was not carrying the entire family's hope upon his shoulders. Thus between the 2 cousins its was Hong Xiuquan that succumbed to a mental breakdown.   Hong Xiuquan had his first visions in 1837, right after failing the examination for a third time. He was greatly weakened by the ordeal and was carried home afterwards. When he got home he simply collapsed into bed and called for his family to crowd around him. He apologized to them all and said his life was over, he had let them all down. It is said he closed his eyes and lost all strength, many thought he was dead. Eventually he woke up and began telling his family about strange dreams. In his dreams, a dragon, a tiger and a cock entered his room, followed by musicians and a sedan chair. They all carried him away to a wondrous and beautiful place full of people who rejoiced when they saw him and an old woman washed him to remove all defilements from his body. Then a group of old men appeared and he recognized some of them to be sages of ancient China. They opened his body with a knife and removed his organs, replacing them with new healthier ones, before closing him up. Not a trace of incision could be found afterwards and he was escorted back to a grand hall where an old man in a black robe with a flowing golden beard sat upon a throne. The man said to him “they take of my gifts and therewith worship demons; they purposely rebel against me, and arouse my anger. DO not though imitate them”. The man then gave him a magical sword for which he said its purpose was to kill demons, but he told him to never use it on his brothers and sisters. Alongside this was a seal and a piece of yellow fruit which he ate. The old man led him to look upon the people of earth where they could both see defilement and perversions.    Hong's visions continued for 40 days and Hong Rengan was one of those who stuck by his cousins side listening to his waking stories. There were other recurring characters in his dreams, one was a middle-aged man he referred to as ‘elder brother” who traveled with him to far regions of the world to slay demons with his magical sword. The old man in black at some points began berating Confucius for failing to teach proper doctrine to the Chinese people and Confucius confessed guilt and shame as such. Those around Hong Xiuquan say he often lept out of bed screaming “kill the demons” while he slashed wildly into thin air. His clear insanity drew at first curiosity and amusement of neighbors, who came to see the famous sleeping madman. At one point he woke up and claimed to be the emperor of China. Hong Rengan said to Hamberg “His friends and relatives only replied, that the whole was strange indeed, without thinking at the time that there was any reality in the matter.”   Eventually Hong Xiuquan recovered and he was a completely different person. He was taller, stronger, more intelligent. He seemed more handsome, fair skinned and his gaze had “become piercing and difficult to endure”. He seemed healthier and he quickly returned to his teaching and prepared for another attempt at the civil service exams. In 1843 he tried for a 4th time and failed yet again, this poor guy. That same year Hong Xiuquan found a Christian text that a missionary had given him years before in Canton and he decided to read it. Upon reading the text closely he came to an epiphany. The book seemed to unlock the secret of his dream-visions over the past 6 years. He suddenly realized the old man in black robes with a golden beard was God and the elder brother who helped him slay demons was none other than Jesus Christ. The demons were the idols worshiped by the Chinese that believed in Confucian and Buddhism, but Hong Xiuquans real brothers and sisters were that of the Christian Chinese people. Hong Xiuquan baptized himself and threw away the Confucian texts within his schoolroom.   Hong Rengan became Hong Xiuquans first convert followed by a neighbor named Feng Yunshan. They all baptized themselves in a river and cast away the Confucian idols from their classrooms. The 3 men began to study together, gathering Christian texts where they could find them. Hong Xiuquan preached to them and soon others began to join the flock. Hong Xiuquan believed the bible was literally written for him. The converts first came from parents, siblings, extended family and such. It was not easy, for example Hong Rengans older brother beat him with a stick for losing students at the local school he taught after the Confucian tablets were cast away. Hong Xiuquan and Feng Yunshan both left their villages in 1844 to spread the gospel to other villages throughout the province of Guangxi. Hong Rengan desperately wanted to join them, but his relatives forced him to stay and remain a schoolteacher because he was only 20 years old. Hong Rengan was forced to bring back the Confucian texts and idols so that his students would return, but even so he simultaneously baptized at least 50 new converts.    So Hong and Feng preached from village to village throughout Guangxi and the movement spread. Autonomous congregations sprang up, numbering in hundreds who began to refer to themselves as the “god worshippers”. They took the man named Hong Xiuquan, whom many had not even met as their prophetic leader. Hong Xiuquan came back home in 1845, preaching the gospel while disparaging the Manchu, the Qing dynasty and Confucianism. He said things like “God has divided the kingdoms of the world, and made the Ocean to be a boundary for them, just as a father divides his estates among his sons, Why should these Manchus forcibly enter China and rob their brothers of their estate?” His religious movement thus was becoming a political one.   By 1847, the god worshippers grew to around 2000, mostly Hakka. They began to smash Buddhist idols and temples and all of this was driving iere from the Qing authorities. Then in 1850, a pestilence ravaged Guangxi and rumors spread that Hong Xiuquan's prayers to the Christian God could heal those sick of the infliction. This exponentially increased their ranks and the passing of the disease gave credit to Hong Xiuquans religion. Yet despite all of this, they were no army. Then some small violence broke out amongst Hakka settlers in Guangxi province. The Hakka settlers were scrambling to find land and water rights and the long standing local families were unhappy with the encroachments. This led to a small scale war between Hakka and other villagers in the autumn of 1850. The non Hakka burned the homes of Hakka and this led them to turn to the God worshippers for protection and help. Local authorities had already been suspicious of the sect and now began to view them more so as troublemakers. According to Hong Rengan, Hong Xiuquan predicted all of this and was waiting patiently to make a move.    As the Hakka vs other villager violence spread, Qing officials placed blame squarely on the Hakka and sent a detachment of soldiers to arrest Hong Xiuquan and Feng Yunshan. The god worshippers heard of the incoming threat and began to arm themselves with swords and spears to defend their leader. For those of you who heard my podcast on the White Lotus rebellion, it is eerily similar. The Qing detachment was easily overwhelmed and routed. Hong Xiuquan sent word calling out for all the god worshippers to gather for the first time and prepare for what he called the next step of their great movement. Countless members sold their homes and lands and marched. The following days saw tens of thousands gathering. The god worshippers leaders told the converts to converge on the town of Jintian and soon a force of 10-30 thousand seized the town. In preparation for a rebellion, Hong Xiuquan began organizing the people into military formations, each led by commanders with military ranks. The Chtin “army corps” consisted of 13,156 men divided into 5 Shih regiments 2500 men with officers. Each shih was divided into 5 “leu” battalions of 500 men and each had 5 “tsu” companies of 100. Each tsu had 5 “liang” platoons of 25 men with a sergeant. A Liang was made up of 4 “wu” Squads of privates with a corporal. Now the Qing garrison of Guangxi was not particularly strong at this time as they were dealing with other uprisings, this is 19th century China afterall, not a year went by without a few.    The Qing commander at Xunzhou, Li Dianyuan led the Qing forces went attack Hong Xiuquans residences within the village of Huanzhoushanren in Pingnan county. It was a dangerous situation, but both Hong Xiuquan and Feng Yunshan were saved by reinforcements sent by Yang Xiuqing and the god worshippers retained Jintian. Then a Qing force led by Zhou Fengqi alongside his subordinate Li Dianyuan attacked Jintian and erected a siege of the town. The god worshippers anticipated this and ambushed the Qing forces along the way to the Jintian at a smaller village called Caijiang near Thistle mountain. The Qing forces were ambushed by the god worshipers both men and women wielding mostly pikes and halberds. The Qing forces were defeated and one of their high ranking officers was killed.   Then on January the 11th of 1851, Hong Xiuquans birthday, the god worshipers proclaimed an uprising in Jintian and Hong Xiuquan declared the founding of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom with himself as its new emperor, or better said Heavenly King. Feng Yunshan alongside 3 other lt's were appointed the kings of four directions: Feng Yunshan was the South King, Wei Changhui the North King, Xiao Chaogui the West King and Yang Xiuqing the East King. Eventually there was also an additional king, the flank king who was Shi Dakai. These men would go on to control roughly 100,000 people each including their own army.  Hong Xiuquan ordered the god worshippers to cut their manchu queues as a universal symbol of severing their allegiance to the Qing dynasty. Many of the Taiping would go on to let their long hair grow leading to the nickname “chang mao tsei / long haired bandits”.    Now from 1851-1852 the Taiping army began to fight its way north, absorbing the poor, disenfranchised, the criminals and all those other groups who hated their manchu overlords. It was a blend of those seeking to be part of something, to join the religious aspect of it and those who simply hated the Qing dynasty and sought to overthrow it. Yes its very much like the White Lotus rebellion 2.0. Now I had mentioned there was another rebellion going on, in fact if you look up a list of how many rebellions take place in the 19th century for China its….just comical, its insane. One rebellion was led by the Tiandihui and a large reason the Taiping won at Jinian was because the Qing were too busy dealing with the Tiandihui. After the victory at Jinian many Tiandihui joined them bolstering their ranks. Meanwhile the Qing began tossing more and more forces at the growing Taiping menace.    General Xiang Rong led 3000 men and was aided by other Qing forces led by General Li Nengchen and General Zhou Fengqi. The idea was simple, the forces would converge on the rebels to encircle them. Their 3 armies attacked the Taiping at Dahuangjiangkou on February 18th. As they approached the town from the west and east they ran straight into minefields set up by the Taiping and were ambushed leading to hundreds of casualties. The Qing forces were eventually forced to stop their offensive and hunker down for a siege. Now something important to note is what exactly is the Qing forces I am speaking of. If you remember during my opium wars episodes I explained the difference between the Green Standard army and the Eight banner army. To brutally summarize, the manchu armies that conquered the Ming used the banner system, with each colored banner being a different group. Well the eight banner army by the turn of the 19th century had become sort of a ceremonial, guardsmen type force. They were extremely ineffective as a large standing force and thus the Green Standard army was formed as a need for a more…well standard army haha. The Green standard army can be seen more so as a police force, but when the White Lotus rebellion broke out they proved to be very ineffective and in decline. The major reasons for this was their pay did not rise with inflation requiring many of them to seek additional work: they were widely dispersed preventing centralized training; more often than naught their ranks came about only in times of conflict; rampant corruption from higher officials led to embezzlement and I mean insane levels, a lot of armies left their rosters unfilled so officers could simply pocket soldiers pay and pretend they were leading more men than they had; soldiers literally could hire substitutes, often poor people to train and fight in their place; overall lack of morale and discipline; and the ultimate culprit at the time, opium addiction. The reason I bring this up is much like the White Lotus Rebellion, the Qing officials would find the Eight banner army and Green Standard army unable to cope with the task of quelling a rebellion and would be forced to find new alternative ways to find armies. This very well became a major reason for the downfall of the Qing dynasty and why China would find itself in a warlord era from 1916-1928, something I am currently writing a seven part series about on my personal channel, the pacific war channel. Lame plug in I know forgive me, but the Warlord Era is fascinating and the Taiping period holds so much roots for it.   Now when the Qing began to strangle the Taiping, they yet again broke out at night on the 10th of March marching towards the East village in Wuxuan county. The Qing forces pursued them but every time they got near the Taiping ambushed them. The Taiping and Qing eventually found themselves in a stalemate near Sanli Dyke. In early april the governor of Guangxi province, Zhou Tianjue and General Xiang Rong rallied 6000 troops to attack East Village, but yet again the rebels repelled them. By May the Qing were losing more and more men when the Taiping broke out of another siege and marched towards Xiangzhou. General Xiang Rong decided to coordinate a net strategy and had the aid of General Wulantai stationed at Liangshan Village while his men struck out from Jie Ridge.    The Taiping fought the 2 Qing forces at the battle of Du'ao Ridge just due north of Liangshan village and General Wulantai's force were smashed. Despite the major Qing losses, they still had managed to encircle the Taiping for the 4th time. The Taiping fought a war of attrition until july when they pulled out of Xiangzhou to a former base of operations at Mt. Zijing in Guiping. The path north was effectively blocked to the Taiping by the Qing forces, but the entire time and everywhere the Taiping went they converted more and more to their cause.   I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me.  And so the self proclaimed brother of Jesus Christ, Hong Xiuquan gathered his flock and chose to wage a war on the demon Manchu who sat upon the Dragon Throne. Hong Xiuquan and his kings now march forward to their destiny.  

Today is the third instalment of my series examining the life of General Sir Hugh Gough. One of the pre-eminent men of British military history.   Historian Chris Brice joins me on the show again and explains Gough's performance during the 1st Opium war in China - an interesting war that, full-disclosure, I currently know absolutely nothing about.    Chris does though as he has written a book on Gough - called Brave as a Lion which can be purchased from Helion.co.uk - listeners of this show will also receive a 20 percent discount by putting in the code LION2020 at checkout.  Please subscribe to my newsletter for a free ebook on the Anglo-Zulu War - http://bit.ly/redcoathistory 

Last time we spoke about the end of the infamous First Opium War of 1839-1842. The Qing tried to procrastinate as much as they could in the face of a goliath force wrecking havoc upon them. Their cannons were simply outmatched and as a result the British armada was easily brushing aside their war junks and fortifications. Many horrible battles were fought and countless Qing commanders took their own lives in shame after defeat. The closer the British forces got to Beijing the more desperate the Qing became and eventually Emperor Daoguang was forced to send diplomats to negotiate a peace. The result was the infamous treaty of Nanking a utter humiliation for the Qing dynasty, marking the beginning of the century of humiliation for China. Britain grabbed Hong Kong, the Qing would pay 6 million taels of silver in reparation. But the treaty made zero mention of why the war had occurred at all, Mr. Opium. Was Mr. Opium gone..no by no means was he. #18 This episode is The Trade of Poison and Pigs Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on the history of asia and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War. So the last time we left off, on October 12th of 1842, the last $6 million dollars of payment reached the British armada and they finally departed from Nanking. The tension between the Chinese and British was still raging however. In fact there would be another skirmish so to say. In november of 1842, opium merchants decided to bring their wives for a trip from Whampoa to Canton violated a Chinese taboo against mixing of sexes. The Chinese residents of Canton seized and burned the Union Jack flying over the British factory there. Defenders of the American factory shot 5 rioters before the Qing police managed to calm things down. Then the shipwrecked survivors of the Ann and Nerbuda were grabbed from jail and beheaded by angry Chinese. This pressed Pottinger to threaten retaliation and soon the viceroy of Canton, Yiliang rushed to the scene to arrest the ringleaders of the executions and sent them to Beijing to be punished.  The British press, such as the Illustrated London News hailed the Treaty of Nanking as “It secures us a few round millions of dollars and no end of very refreshing tea. It gives an impetus to trade, cedes us one island in perpetuity, and in short puts that sort of climax to the war which satisfies our interests more than our vanity and rather gives over glory a preponderance to gain,”. Now just like the Treaty of Nanking itself, the press made zero mention of the reason for the war in the first place, Mr. Opium. Now with Hong Kong island in the hands of the British, it would be used as an offloading point for opium, go figure. Despite the horror of the war, the demand for the opium was still raging and thus the poisonous relationship between the two empires remained alive. Now not everyone in Britain was jubilant about the situation. The Times of London condemned the opium trade and criticized the treaty of Nanking quite a bit. They went a step further by calling the victors of the war “early victorian vikings” a nickname that would soon denote the raping and pillaging that would occur in the second opium war. Alongside this the Anglican Church members of the Tory party railed against opium. On January the 4th of 1843, Lord Aberdeen, the new boss of Pottingers foreign office told a British envoy to China “The British opium smugglers must receive no protection or support in the prosecution of this illegal speculation”. An order from the Council gave Pottinger the power to quote “forbid the opium traffic in Hong Kong”. For Pottinger's part, he paid lip service to this by issuing lukewarm threats on August 1st of 1843 ““Opium being an article the traffic in which is well known to be declared illegal and contraband by the laws and Imperial Edicts of China, any person who may take such a step will do so at his own risk, and will, if a British subject, meet with no support or protection from HM Consuls or other officers.”. Officially, at the least and to what degree it mattered, there would be no more gunboat diplomacy nor gunboat protection for opium smugglers. Now as you can imagine there were those who saw the dollar bill signs such as Jardine & Matheson who could not help themselves. They were not alone, the British Exchequer also wanted to see tax revenues from the opium trade to balance the budget. At the time of the first opium war, the opium trade accounted for 10% of the Exchequers budget. James Matheson sent a letter to a colleague indicating he was untroubled by the status of parliament and Pottingers tiny threats because he knew it would come to nothing, “The Plenipotentiary [Pottinger] had published a most fiery Edict against smuggling, but I believe it is like the Chinese Edicts, meaning nothing, and only intended for the Saints [High Church Anglicans] in England. Sir Henry never means to act upon it, and no doubt privately considers it a good joke. At any rate, he allows the drug to be landed and stored at Hong Kong.”. And so the opium smugglers simply ignored their homelands attempts to stop them. The opium trade did not just continue it would increase. The end of the first Opium War was not the end at all to the opium problem. In fact British parliament was coming to the conclusion the only resolution to the issue was the legalization of opium in China. As countless had done before, many in parliament were shifting culpability to the users and their leaders rather than the dealers. Many blamed Emperor Daoguang, stating he did nothing to halt the distribution and use, which is simply a lie and a dumb one. The Opium smugglers and English textile manufacturers were purchasing the mouths of members of parliament to promote their interests.  Now back to the “early victorian vikings”, the heroes of the war such as Sir Henry Pottinger well he was rewarded the grant post of Governor of Madras, and an annual pension of 1500 pounds. Charles Elliot was sent to the backwaters of Bermuda, Trinidad and in a rather symbolic fashion ended up in Napoleon's place of exile, St. Helena. Jardine & Matheson both left China and entered parliament as Whig supporters. Jardine died in 1843 to an undiagnosed and painful illness leaving Matheson to represent the seat of Ross and Cromartry in parliament from 1847-1868. Jardines death produced a bit of a myth that he was cursed from the opium trade, but Matheson lived to the ripe age of 91 so take that with a grain of salt. Jardine & Mathesons Qing counter party, Houqua died from diarrhea, so I guess ⅔ could be said to have some sort of curse on them. As for the heroic figure of Lin Zexu, his effigy became a cynosure at a museum with a plaque under his statue stating he destroyed 2.5 million dollars worth of British property without mentioning that the property was opium. The Emperor forgave Lin Zexu in 1845 and allowed him to return to service, but as for Yilibu the Emperor shunned his ass into exile. The Treaty of Nanking can be better seen as a truce, or perhaps in the same regard as the treaty of versailles. The interval between the two opium wars was that of an armed truce rather than a peace. After the first opium war, Opium began to get into the port of Shanghai, then onto the Yangtze river which provided a highway for it to infiltrate the Chinese hinterlands. The Chinese population were becoming more and more addicted to the substance as the British traders became more addicted to the profits. The grand vision of the English textiles penetrating China's market turned out to be a complete waste. The Chinese preferred their own homespun cloth and failed to buy the British products while the British could not stop their increasing demand for Chinese silk and of course Tea. Now while the British addiction to Tea did not result in weeks of den dwelling and intoxication, they were still very much addicted and this contributed to another trade imbalance. Yes the silver was flowing again out of Britain and back to China, by 1857 the British would be paying China 15 million for silk and tea. Despite the enormous demand for Opium, the Chinese were spending 7 million on it, 1.5 million on cotton textiles from India and another 2 million from Britain still leaving Britain to owe back 4.5 million. And the Chinese policy of only accepting silver never changed.  After the first Opium war, the illicit trade became known as the Poison trade. Around the same time another terrible commerce began nicknamed the Pig trade. The “pigs” in this case were referring to coolies who were either hired or literally kidnapped and forced into indentured servitude overseas. Britain had outlawed such practices back in 1807, but this did not stop the trade and it differed little from African slavery. Interesting thing to note here, the term “shanghaied” was born from this situation. When coolies were drugged up and thrown onto ships often from Shanghai, this is how that term was born. For the Chinese part, often the Qing officials would open up their jails and hand over prisoners. As indicated in a letter complaint to the foreign secretary, lord Malmesbury from a British official in Canton  “iniquities scarcely exceeding those practiced on the African coast and on the African middle passage have not been wanting…the jails of China [have been] emptied to supply ‘labour' to British colonies…hundreds [of coolies] gathered together in barracoons, stripped naked and stamped or painted with the letter C (California), P (Peru) or S (Sandwich Islands) on their breasts, according to destination.” Now the British wanted to keep the poison trade rolling, but the pig trade was really infuriating the Chinese. This led many of the opium merchants to push for action to be made to stop the pig trade. Powerful lobbies pushed the British parliament to enact the Chinese passenger act of 1855. While this act did not outlaw the trade of coolies, what it did do was codify and improve the conditions in which coolies could be transported to their place of labor. In 1850 the Daoguang Emperor died and within his will he begged for forgiveness for agreeing to sign the shameful treaty of Nanking. His fourth son became his successor, Xianfeng who was 19 at the time he took the dragon throne. Unlike his more industrious father, Xianfeng did not care much for government. Xianfeng was married to a Manchu princess, but he chose to spend the majority of his time with his concubines, one named Cixi who will become one of the most important figures in modern Chinese history. Cixi participated in the selection for wives for Xianfeng alongside 60 other candidates. She was one of the few candidates chosen to stay and Xianfeng became obsessed with her to the point he spent most of his time in bed with her while taking puffs from his opium pipe, oh yes the emperor even took up the illicit drug. Cixi ended up bearing his only son and this earned her the rank of co-empress with the title of Empress of the Western Palace, Xianfengs actual wife held the title of Empress of the eastern palace. As the mother heir, Cixi held enormous influence at the imperial court. Now going way far into the future, Emperor Xianfeng would die in 1861 after a very short life of overindulgence and he would leave his 6 year old son, Zaichun as his successor. A day before his death on his death bed he made an imperial edict that 8 men would act as a regency council to aid his son, later to be enthroned as the Tongzhi emperor. He gave the 8 men power of regency, but indicated their edict must be endorsed by the Noble Consort Yi and the Empress Consort Zhen, these being Empress Dowager Cixi and Empress dowager Ci'an. However Cixi performed a palace coup against the regency council and installed herself and Xianfengs first wife as co-regents, who would rule China until her son came of age. After the death of the co-empress, Cixi ruled China alone until 1908, yeah 1908, this woman was a monolith of modern Chinese history and not looked upon too favorably mind you. Cixi's was an opium addict which is shocking given the incredible power grab moves she made and the amount of dominance she held over the Qing dynasty. Many historians believe she stuck to an opium maintenance dose that prevented both impairment and withdrawal. Anyways she will be a large part of the story in the future, but I just wanted to give you a taste of her now. Meanwhile in China countless disasters were occurring both man made and from mother nature. The high government office of the Qing dynasty which was filled by those who had to pass the rigorous imperial examinations, well that system had guaranteed the competence of the ruling class, but something had changed. Now anyone who had around 800 pounds could get around the examinations and this led a flood of mediocrities, albeit rich ones to come to power. These people proved to be unequal to the responsibilities they had simply purchased and the once industrious and highly educated Qing bureaucracy decayed rapidly. Adding to this was a horrible natural disaster. In 1856 the Huang He River overflowed and destroyed thousands of acres of rice paddies. The capital began to starve and with such a drastic problem came drastic solutions. As had happened to China countless times before, the decay of the Imperial court combined with famine amongst the people would lead to one if not the worst rebellion in human history. Now I would to stipulate this here, there is going to be two large events that will both require a number of episodes each, but both events overlap. The Taiping Rebellion of 1850-1864 and the second opium war of 1856-1860. I will be covering both separately and in depth, beginning with the second opium war than the Taiping Rebellion afterwards. However it's impossible to talk about one without the other, so I will sprinkle information here and there and apologize for the tease. Now the Taiping Rebellion is a colossal event in modern Chinese history. It began in the southeastern province of Guangxi. At its zenith the Taiping rebels controlled 17 provinces in south and central China. It was the most destructive civil war in human history causing massive hardship via military action, religio-political repress and retaliations and wide scale famine as a result of mother nature. All told the estimations for deaths because of this civil war are unreal, somewhere between 20 to 30 million people.  Now like I said I will have an entire mini series on the Taiping Rebellion, so I will not be going into any fine detail, but for now I want to at least explain a bit about why it is going on in the background. The leader of the movement was a man named Hong Xiuquan, the 4th son of a hard working rural family in Guangdong. His family was Hakka, they are a minority group in southern China with a unique culture that differed from Han Chinese. Hong's family did everything they could to get enough money so their son could get a good education and attempt to pass the first imperial examination in order to become part of the scholar-gentry class. Hong failed his first two attempts and was left humiliated so he left home and went to Canton where he hoped to continue his studies in order to pass a third time around. In Canton Hong came across Protestant missionaries and studied some of the bible under them. When Hong attempted the imperial exam for a third time he failed yet again and because of this he had a nervous breakdown. Hong began to suffer delirium and a series of dreams or what he called visions that would change his life and that of China. He found himself talking with an older bearded man with golden hair and a younger man whom he referred to as “elder brother”. The younger man gave him a magical sword and taught him how to slay demons. Now as I may have mentioned in a previous episode my first degree is in neurobehavioral sciences, but you don't need a degree in the field of psychology to know Hong probably was schizophrenic. At first he did not associate these weird visions with anything else nor act out, instead he worked for 6 years as a village schoolteacher, still studying to give the imperial examination a 4th go. In 1843 Hong failed the imperial examination a 4th time and it broke him. His ambition to become a member of the scholar Gentry class was shattered and he suffered a full nervous breakdown. He apparently was catatonic for a month and would come out of this stupor sporadically screaming things like “kill the demons”. These demons he spoke of he later identified as the traditional Chinese gods and the Emperor of the Qing dynasty. As he gradually recovered from his breakdown, Hong began to reread Christian texts until he came to the sudden realization that the men in his visions were God and Jesus. With some quasi logically thinking, he began to explain to himself that he failed the imperial examination because he had a greater purpose and because he referred to Jesus as Elder brother in his dreams, he must be the brother of Jesus. Yes folks, Hong Xiuquan the self proclaimed brother of Jesus Christ. Hong returned to Canton in 1847 to study the bible more thoroughly under an american southern baptist missionary named Isaacher Roberts. Shortly after he relocated to eastern Guangxi in a rugged area known as Thistle mountain where he began preaching and developing a new doctrine. Many converts flocked to Hong, notably many Hakka's and other minority groups, hell even triads joined in. The triads of course had inner motivations such as wanting to overthrow the Manchu and reclaim the ming dynasty. Hong afterall was saying they all had to destroy the demons and restore China on the path of righteousness. Now again I don't want to get into the finer details, but in 1851 Hong began a rebellion using thousands of his converts known as the God Worshippers. Hong's doctrine was that of opium abstinence and he attracted countless opium addicts to his flock and helped cure them of their addiction. In many ways the Taiping movement was something like a 12 step program for recovering addicts, but it also encompassed so much more. It including communalism, socialism, stealing from the rich and giving to the poor Robinhood mentality and it was quite Marxist. Hong had his forces take all the plunder and funds and pooled it in a common treasury shared equally by members of the collective. Hong advocated to abolish private ownership of land and impose the death penalty on those trying to hold onto their wealth. He also made a long list of taboos including alcohol, gambling, tobacco, prostitution, concubinage, the pig trade and other forms of slavery. And before any of you start screaming at your headphones, by far and large many including Hong did not follow these rules, like I said it was very Marxist, haha shots fired. Hong called his movement the Taiping Tianguo “heavenly kingdom of the great peace” and named himself the heavenly king. The Taiping talk of expropriating land scared the hell out of Beijing and even Queen Victoria who received news of the rebellion. The obvious actions took place, the emperor sent forces to quell the insurrection in guangxi province. The emperor sent Zhen Zuchen at the ripe age of 67 to exterminate the rebels. Zhen was a devout Buddhist, but he respected the god worshippers and targeted the Triads. By 1850 China had suffered 4 years of famine, right at the time the emperor began to escalate his attacks on the Taiping. Because of  Zhen's choice of only targeting triads, the emperor choose to bring out of retirement and disgrace none other than Lin Zexu. Lin Zexu was given the task of eliminated the Taiping, but at the ripe age of also 67 he died while en route to Guangxi. Lin Zexu never got his last hurrah chance to redeem himself. So by 1851 the Qing forces performed horribly and were repulsed from Thistle Mountain by the Taiping rebels who were armed with pikes and halberds for the most part. Cool side note, women fought alongside men for the Taiping and there was a real attempt at equality amongst the sexes, keyword attempt. Hong eventually adapted the ten commandments for Chinese sensibilities. He named the emperor a false god in his first commandment and added complete obedience to himself and his officers as the 4th. The commandments led Hongs rebel group to become a bonafide theocracy. By the fall of 1851 the Taiping ranks had grown to a whopping million, mostly built up from starving peasants fleeing famine torn areas of Guangxi. The Qing sent forces against them in Thistle mountain only to lose each time. Ironically a major reason the Taiping kept winning battles may have been  because of their opium ban. Some sources estimate the Qing military engaging the rebels in this region may have been suffering 90% opium addiction rates, which is insane if thats true. Regardless by september 25th of 1851, Hong felt confident enough to move out and this led his army to conquer vast amounts of territory. By January 12th of 1853 Hong's forces took the city of Wuchang after blowing up its gates and massacring all the Manchu people they could find deeming them demons. At this point Hong set his eyes on a very grand prize, the old capital of China, Nanjing. Nanjing was being defended by only 7000 Machus alongside 6000 Qing regulars. Hong tossed 80,000 men and women soldiers into a siege of Nanjing on february 28th and after two weeks they blew a hole it Nanjings walls. Now I don't want to spoil anymore and honestly everything I brutally summarized will be covered much much more indepth, but what you need to know is Hong established his own capital, the heavenly kingdom in Nanjing. He builds up his forces even more, performs wide scale reforms and creates a very large administration. The Taiping become a very real threat to Beijing and honestly could have overthrown the Qing dynasty at multiple points. The Qing for their part in the later 1850's were not only dealing with the bloodiest civil war the world had ever seen, but we're fighting western forces cause the second opium war was raging. And that is what I am building towards folks, trying to lay this rather insane 3d chess table of stuff going on simultaneously. Now I said it before, but much like the Treaty of Versailles, the Treaty of Nanjing caused more problems than it solved and simply led to another war. China was humiliated by the conditions of the treaty, it surrendered her symbolic and practical forms of sovereignty to Britain. That bitterness was simmering since 1842 and like a powder keg would eventually explode in 1856. In february of 1856, a french priest named Abbe Auguste Chapdelaine, god the old french names are dreadful haha, well Abbe was converting a village called Xilin in the province of Guangxi, ironically in the center of the Taiping rebel control.  So Mr Abbe was arrested and imprisoned, they tossed him in a cage and set it up in the village square. Chapdelaine was in violation of Chinese law because he was performing missionary work in China's interior. Another thing that did not help his cause was the fact he shared the same beliefs as the Taiping…well I mean not exactly mind you he was a catholic and the Taiping were on a more protestant footing, but tomato tomato. In fact Mr Abbe and the other Catholic missionaries were appalled by the bastardized proto protestant movement of the Taiping and they actually supported the Qing rule. Abbe was at the wrong place and wrong time so to say. On February 29th of 1856, Abbe was beheaded, dismembered and eviscerated by his executioners whom the rather hysterical French press claimed later took pieces of Abbe and cooked it and ate it, specifically his heart. Historians agree that the cannibalism story here was most likely urban legend.  The French representative at Canton, Comte de Courcy was powerless and furious. He began sending letters to Cantons viceroy, Ye Mingchen, but took no military action to avenge the death of the priest. It seems Ye Mingchen believed the French had no stomach for a fight, so he sent Comte an insulting reply to his letters explaining that that atrocity was a simple case of mistaken identity “Chapdelaine dressed and spoke like a Chinese, nobody thought him to be french”. Well the French would not be alone in their grievances with the Qing. On October 8th, the 127 ton lorcha, the Arrow, a hybrid ship, it had a British hull but Chinese junk sails, was registered in Hong Kong as a British vessel. But in reality it was owned by a Chinese merchant and manned by a crew of 14 Chinese. Well the Arrow docked in Canton with a cargo of rice from Macao en route for Hong Kong. The Arrow's figurehead captain was a 21 year old Belfast native named Thomas Kennedy. His role on board was literally just to make the ship seem British owned and operated as British vessels held privileges because of the Treaty of Nanjing.  Well on that day, Kennedy was not aboard the arrow, he had gone over to another lorcha captained by another figurehead captain named John Leach. Also aboard was Charles Earl, the captain of the Chusan. At 8am the friends were having breakfast when they noticed 2 large Qing warships flying the emperors flag, carrying 60 Qing marines, the ship was heading towards the Arrow. Qing officials boarded the Arrow and arrested her Chinese crew, bound them all and tossed them onto a Qing warship. Leach, Earl and Kennedy jumped into a sampan and rowed towards the warship. To make the situation a bit more fun, a Portuguese lorcha nearby stated later in testimony the Arrow had not had its Union Jack flying. Kennedy would claim the Qing marines pulled down the Union Jack. Regardless when Kennedy got to the warship he  began protesting their seizure, but the Qing forces simply sent curses his way. Kennedy tried to smooth things over asking if just 2 of his crew could be allowed to stay on the Arrow as caretakers and the Qing officials agreed and handed 2 men over, but took the other 12 away. Now the Arrow might seem an unlikely prize for the Qing to seize since it was just carrying rice, but the Arrow had a dark past so to say. The Arrow had been built by the Chinese as a cargo ship, but it had been captured by pirates then recaptured by Cantons viceroy, Ye Mingchen who sold it at an auction to a comprador employed by a British firm. The comprador registered the Arrow as a British ship, but something the new owner did not look into was changing the existing crew of the ship which included 3 pirates. The Qing would use the presence of these pirates as a justification for seizing 12 of the crew. Later it would turn out the registration had also expired, so by that technicality it was not a British ship at the time also, don't you hate getting pulled over? Kennedy went crying about the seizure to the acting British consul, Harry Parkes who was the consular official of 4 out of the 5 ports opened by the treaty of Nanjing. The problem of Arrow's status did not deter Parkes who immediately went on the offensive. Parkes ranted about “the gross insult and violation of national rights the Chinese had committed”. Parkes began arguing about the treaty requiring the Chinese to first ask permission before arresting a Chinese citizen serving on a British registered ship. Parkes demanded that all 12 of the crew be handed over immediately. The Qing commander explained that one of the sailors was the father of a notorious pirate and suspected other of the crew to be pirates, hence he would hold them. When Parkes persisted in his demands, one of the Qing officials slapped him, uh oh.  The humiliated Parkes, returned to the British consulate and wrote a letter to Ye Mingchen who ontop of being the viceroy of Canton was the viceroy of Guangxi, Guangdong and Imperial commissioner in charge of foreign affairs. “I hasten therefore to lay the case before your excellency Ye, confident that your superior judgment will lead you at once to admit that an insult so publicly committed must be equally publicly atoned. I therefore request your excellency that the men who have been carried away from the Arrow be returned by the captain to that vessel in my presence and if accused of any crime they may then be conveyed to the British consulate, were in conjunction with proper officers deputed by your excellency for the purpose, I shall be prepared to investigate the case”. Now Ye Mingchen was not the kind of Qing bureaucrat to whom adhered to lets say, the fine points of international law. Ye Mingchen had crushed the Taiping rebels within his two provinces of control with great brutality. He had executed every captured Taiping rebel along with their wives and children, sheesh. It is said in Canton alone the butchery was around 200 Taiping per day. Parkes also sent word to his superior, Sir John Bowring, the governor of Hong Kong. Parkes told him the crewmen were flying the Union Jack and deserved the same rights and protections as British subjects. Well Mr. Bowring was super excited at the opportunity that the Arrow's seizure had provided, he sent word back to Parks “cannot we use the opportunity and carry the city question? If so, I will come up with the whole fleet”. That fleet would consist of 16 men of war and 3 steamships all docked at Hong Kong harbor. Bowring wanted to at least be given permission to move out of the factories and set up shop within Canton proper as pertaining to the treaty of Nanjing. However that part of the treaty was written out properly in English while the Chinese translation literally stated instead that the foreigners and Chinese should remain segregated. The justification for this, we shall call it translation error, was the fact the Qing officials argued there was a ton of xenophobia in Canton. If the British came to live amongst the Cantonese, some might attack or even kill the British, thus segregation was for their protection. Lord Palmerston had given orders not to push the issue of British housing in Canton because he did not think the risks were even worth the reward, but his representatives it seems ignored these orders.  After two days, Ye Mingchen responded to Parkes letter stating he could free 9 out of the 12 crew, but insisted on keeping the remaining three because they were former pirates. As for the Arrow, Ye claimed the captured crew swore an oath that the ship was Chinese made and owned. Ye sent the 9 crew with the letter as a show of good faith. Now at this point it seems obvious Parkes was looking to make a diplomatic point more so than get back the crew cause he refused to accept custody of them. Instead Parkes sent another letter to Bowring in Hong Kong suggesting the British should retaliate by seizing a Chinese junk, particularly one that was involved in grabbing the arrow. On october 14th, the British gunboat Coramandel boarded a Chinese junk without a fight and towed it to Whampoa. Turns out the British did not really think things through, as the ship ended up being a private craft, not owned by the Qing government. Ye Mingchen simply ignored the matter. Bowring then took the chance to inspect the registration of the Arrow, something Parkes had failed to do. Bowring soon discovered Arrows registry as a British ship had expired on september 27th, so by that technicality, the Qing had not violated British territoriality by seizing her. Despite Bowring learning the truth of the matter, this did not change his determination to goad Ye Mingchen into action. Bowring told Parkes to write a letter to the viceroy again on october 21st. This time the letter was an ultimatum. Ye Mingchen was given 24 hours to free all 12 crewmen and to provide an official apology and promise to respect all British shipping in China. If Ye did not comply “her majesty's naval officers will have recourse to force you to compel complete satisfaction”. Ye Mingchen was in a pickle, while he knew full well the British backed up their threats he also needed to save face. So Ye returned all of the crew, but refused to apologize and offered that in the future he would only consult with foreign interlopers over criminals like the Arrow's pirates. Ye wrote to Parkes “Hereafter if any lawless characters conceal themselves on board foreign lorchas, you, the said Consul, shall of course be informed of the same by declaration in order that you may act with the Chinese authorities in the management of such affairs,”. Ye also however offered a compromise to avoid similar incidents in the future by adding “Hereafter, Chinese officers will on no account without reason seize and take into custody the people belonging to foreign lorchas, but when Chinese subjects build for themselves vessels, foreigners should not sell registers to them… for it will occasion confusion between native and foreign ships, and render it difficult to distinguish between them.”. Well Ye's response was just what Parkes and Bowring needed to commence hostilities and that is just what they did. On october 23rd, Parkes ordered Rear Admiral Michael Seymour to seize and destroy the 4 barrier forts 5 miles south of Canton on the pearl river. The Coromandal was the first to fire upon one of the forts, the first shot of the second opium war. Two of the forts fired back on the British fleet before ultimately surrendering. 5 Chinese defenders died and they would be the first casualties of the war. Rear Admiral Seymour placed blame on the Chinese for the casualties reporting to Parkes “loss of four or five killed on the part of the Chinese [was] solely arising from their ill-judged resistance to our force.”. Seymours easy victory bolstered Parkes war mongering and drove him to bring the war straight to Ye Mingchen. Parkes wrote to Seymour “should Ye still be contumacious, I think that the residence of his excellency, which is not far from the waterside, should also in that case feel the effects of bombardment”. Yes this guy was pretty much an asshole.  I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me.  Well things got out of hand pretty quickly. The arrow incident while small in scale was just a match to ignite a growing powder keg. As Gandalf said “the board is set, the pieces are moving”. The second opium war had begun.

Last time we spoke, the ironclad steam warship Nemesis had made a name for herself wrecking havoc upon the Qing navy. Lin Zexu was dismissed and Qishan began negotiations with the British. Hong Kong island was now under British occupation, Chuanbi fell to the British and it seems a treaty would be ratified but both the Emperor Daoguang and Britain's parliament rejected it forcing Britain to continue its war. The British attacked the Bogue, the First Bar island, Whampoa Island and soon Qishan was rushed to Beijing and cast into chains by the Emperor. Then the British attacked Canton hoping to force the Qing government to come to a deal. Emperor Daoguang was being fed false reports from his officials of the ongoing war, but how long could they delude him until everyone realized this was a serious war? This episode is the First Opium War Part 3: treaty of nanjing   Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on history of asia and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War.   As usual the reports coming back to the emperor were embezzled. It was said the British were stopped at the walls of Canton by the army of General Fang and repelled. In fact, on top of the Qing forces beating back the British it was said a peasant militia had killed thousands of British forcing them to flee Canton. Some went further than this and said the British expedition was on its last legs. Yishan's report to the Emperor said “the barbarians had begged the chief general that he would implore the great Emperor in their behalf, that he would have mercy upon them, and cause their debts to be repaid them, and graciously permit them to carry on their commerce, when they would immediately withdraw their ships from the Bocca Tigris, and never dare again to raise any disturbance."The Qing court urged the emperor to build upon the great victory and to bring an even larger army into the field against the barbarians. Now that the factory quarter was secure, Elliot turned his attention back to Amoy, but he still had a large problem. The British force was full on facing an epidemic of malaria and dysentery causing numerous casualties. The British warships were becoming hospitals for the countless decimated troops. Elliot had to take the force to Hong Kong island to treat the men. On July 21 of 1841 while Elliot was forming plans to attack Amoy a merchantman from India arrived with opium and a copy of the Canton Press. The newspaper read that Elliot had been dismissed by Palmerston on April 30th of 1841! It turned out the British press had vilified Elliot for making truces with the Chinese instead of pushing for a decisive victory. The Canton truce was lambasted because the 6 million was just a fraction of their demands. Elliot sent word back to Palmerston to ask why he was being dismissed and got a reply. “Throughout the whole course of your proceedings, you seem to have considered that my instructions were waste paper, which you might treat with entire disregard, and that you were at full liberty to deal with the interests of your country according to your own fancy.”. Elliot would make a public statement “it has been popularly objected to me that I have cared too much for the Chinese. But I submit that it has been caring more for lasting British honour and substantial British interests to protect a helpless and friendly people”.   Even Queen victoria made a statement about Elliot when she wrote to her uncle King Leopold of Belgium “All we wanted might have been got, if it had not been for the unaccountably strange conduct of Charles Elliot, who completely disobeyed his instructions and trie to get the lowest terms he could”. Sir Henry Pottinger, a diplomat and veteran of the Afghan wars replaced Elliot as superintendent of Trade and given an annual salary of 6000 pounds, twice that of Elliots to rub it in. Sir William Parker was also sent to be commander in chief and both he and Pottinger held impressive resumes and vast military experience. Pottinger served during the Napoleonic wars as a cabin boy at the age of 12 and then later joined the Indian army. Parker at the age of 31 retired with the rank of captain and a large fortune in prize money from the French ships he captured during the Napoleonic wars. Parker had been spending 15 years on his estate in Litchfield as a gentleman farmer before being called out of retirement by Palmerston. Parker and Pottinger arrived in August of 1841 and were met graciously by Charles Elliot before he left with his family back home to England. The opium smugglers were delighted to finally be rid of Charles Elliot and his moralistic distaste for the opium trade. They had hoped the new guys would be more amenable than Elliot and were in for quite a shock. One of the first things Pottinger did was tell the residents of Canton “could allow no consideration connected with mercantile pursuits…to interfere with the strong measures which he might deem necessary, and if they put either themselves or their property in the power of the Chinese authorities, it must be clearly understood to be at their own risk and peril.”. While Elliot was argued to be a Sinophile, Pottinger was the very opposite a Sinophobe. Pottinger did not have any understanding of Chinese culture nor their protocol for saving face in dealings. When the governor of canton came to greet Pottinger in Macao, Pottinger simply sent a subordinate to meet the man insulting him greatly.  On August 21 of 1841 the British armada was 32 ships strong, with 4 regiments of over 27,000 men aboard them. Pottinger left 1350 men to garrison Hong Kong and sailed for Amoy (present day Xiamen). Amoy was a granite island around 300 miles north of Macao and not really of any value, it was quite barren, but it was closer to Beijing and thus a threat to Emperor Daoguang. Amoy had been fortified by the Qing recently, they built a few batteries on Gulangyu island which lies just off the coast of Amoy and they prepared defenses all along Amoy's coast. Amoys coast held 96 embrasures and over 200 cannons to defend its harbor. Then the Qing sent a force to garrison it, adding an additional 42 cannons and 10,000 troops. Gulangyu island's batteries had 76 cannons including some more modern artillery smuggled over from singapore. The British armada first made contact with Gulangyu island as it protected the approach to Amoy and the Druid, Blonde and Modeste blasted its fortifications from 400 yards away. As was typical of this war, the cannons at Amoy and Gulangyu were antiquated and in fixed positions. To give you a visual idea of the issue, these cannons could not swivel well, they were basically fixed to the ground, greatly hampering range and accuracy. Thus when the British ships began to bombard them they could not effectively return fire. After 90 minutes of bombardment, the Qing cannons went silent and the British began landing troops without any opposition. Major General Gough disembarked from Nemesis by 3:45pm as Amoy's batteries were neutralized and 26 chinese war junks in the harbor were put out of commission. Despite the ferocity of the British bombardment , Amoy's fortresses cannons began opening fire upon the troops and Gough personally led a bayonet charge towards the fortresses southern wall. The Qing soldiers on the fort began to fire their matchlocks at the British but were overwhelmed by the enemy's gunfire. Soon many of the Qing soldiers routed and when the Qing commander realized the situation was hopeless he marched straight into the sea committing suicide by drowning himself. The reports going back to Emperor Daoguang were “that the Manchu commander rushed out to drive back the assailants as they landed, fell into the water and died” sort of a positive spin on the story. The British forces scaled the forts walls and opened its gates. Inside the fort the British found a large number of opium pipes lying beside the cannons its alleged. When the British found Amoy's treasury they found a record indicating that there were thousands of silver taels, but none were to be found. It turned out the Qing officials had snuck the silver out before the British arrived. Pottinger took no time ordering the armada to refit and continue sailing north, now he wanted to make up for Elliot's giving away of Chusan.  On September 25 of 1841, the armada assembled to attack the fort of Dinghai on Chusan for a second time. Dinghai was much better fortified than Amoy and held more cannons. Dinghai's garrison was commanded by General Keo who had a large number of Gingalls. Gingalls are quite interesting and a bit comical to look at. Google one up and you will understand immediately, try to imagine a giant gun that takes a tripod and 2 men to fire. The gingall was one of the most used weapons by the Qing during this part of the century and it was not very effective against the British. The defenders of Dinghai put up an impressive resistance as noted by the British. The British sent the 55th foot to assault them and took the Dinghai fort, losing 2 men with 28 wounded. When General Keo knew the British had won the battle he slit his own throat. The British found 100 iron guns, 36 outdated brass cannons and 540 gingalls in the fort indicated the capability of the Qing military. Pottinger wrote back to Palmerston to make his resolve adamantly clear “under no circumstance will Dinghai and its dependencies be restored to the Qing government, until the whole of the demands of England are not only complied with, but carried into full effect”. Catastrophe hit again when the British ship Nerbudda transporting some British and Indian soldiers went aground off Taiwan. The British soldiers fled in lifeboats leaving the Indians behind who spent 5 days on ship until dehydration and starvation forced them to go ashore on rafts. The Qing forces in Taiwan seized them and imprisoned them. In march, an opium ship named the Ann also went aground on Taiwan and 14 of her survivors were imprisoned alongside the Indians from Nerbudda. The Qing officials were desperate for good news and sent reportes to the Emperor that a large naval battle had been won at Taiwan and 2 ships were sunk. Emperor Daoguang was delighted and rewarded the Taiwan officials with honors and silver.   Meanwhile the British armada left a garrison at Dinghai and sailed for Jintai which lies 10 miles east of the mainland. They began to bombard Jintai's forts on October 10 and it proved to be a difficult task as its forts were atop a large cliff. Around 4000 Qing troops garrisoned the city, quite a few were Mongol bannermen. Major General Gough sent a force of 15000 men to flank the fort on the cliff while Wellesley and Blenhem covered their march with bombardment. By the afternoon the British had 3 men dead and 16 wounded, but as they allegedly killed several hundred Chinese. Jintai was taken by the late afternoon and the Qing commander Yukien attempted to drown himself, but having failed to do so committed suicide by overdosing on opium. The British captured around 150 cannons and noticed amongst the majority which were antiquated, the usual sort they kept finding, a few were state of the art. The Qing were replicating the British style cannons it seemed. Many prisoners were taken, but Gough had to let them go; he simply did not have enough men to spare to guard them. Yet before letting the POW's go, the British attempted a rather heinous act. The British marines used their jackknives to cut off the Manchu queues of the Qing prisoners as take away gifts. Before too many of these marines were able to do so, to the credit of Gough he ran to the scene to stop the act.   After securing Jintai, the British sent Nemesis up the Yung River and soon discovered it was crossable and that they could navigate it to get to Ningbo. On October 13th, the British armada landed troops on Ningbo 10 miles southeast of Jintai. Ningbo's gates opened for them without a fight as the Royal Irish band played “saint patrick's day in the morning”. The British found the building that held the prisoners from the Kite and burned down the prison. Pottinger wrote to Palmerston that he “looked forward with considerable satisfaction to plundering Ningbo as a reprisal for the maltreatment there of British prisoners” and that is just what he did. The British looted 160,000 in funds and placed a 10% taxation on its citizens. Pottinger also confiscated provisions, Chinese ships, property and the main Pagoda's bell as a prize sent back to India. The Qing authorities left Ningbo and the British failed to set up any form of police and thus many looters ran rampant, Chinese and British alike. Gough and Parker were livid at the conditions, the inhabitants of Ningbo had opened the gates without a fight and should be left unmolested. They both argued Pottinger was allowing British honour to be stained at Ningbo.  Now while a lot of these victories seemed easy they were also pyrrhic in nature. Disease continuously reared its ugly head reducing the British troops. Every place they occupied had to be garrisoned and now they were down to 700 able men and had to winter in Ningbo. The humiliated and pissed off citizens of Ningbo began hurling rocks at the occupiers. Soon it became very apparent police were needed at Ningbo and thus a Qing official was set up as the chief of police named Yu Dechang. In reality the British were having Yu Dechang compile a list of the wealthiest residents of Ningbo so they could extort them for more money. Yu was also doing something else, he was spying for the Qing military who was currently massing troops outside Ningbo to retake the city! Emperor Daoguang had taken up action as soon as reports came that Ningbo had fallen. He sent his cousin Prince Yijing to recruit an army to “drive the English into the sea”. Prince Yijing was a 48 year old general and a honored veteran of wars against Muslim rebels in Xinjiang province from a decade earlier. Yijing brought with him quite an unlikely band of literary scholars whose expertise lay in confucian teachings and not the art of war. The scholars also happened to be rampant opium addicts and were deemed by the British later to be “weekend warriors”.  On march 10th of 1842, Yijing had a force of 5000, mostly ill trained intellectual types. When they came to the gate of Ningbo they were met with a head impaled on a pike and a sign reading “this is the head of the Manchu official Lu Tai-lai who came here to obtain military information”. Prince Yijing was enraged and ordered his men to scale the walls and charge the center of the city. However the British had spies of their own who had warned them of the incoming assault force. The British had deliberately left the city's western city gate quasi open in order to give the impression they did not mean to defend it. In truth the western gate had been mined heavily and when the Qing rushed to it, the mines exploded killing many. Over in the southern gate the Qing pushed back some British defenders all the way up to the city center. British soldiers reported that the Qing attacks appeared to be visibly impaired by opium, including their 2nd in command General Zhang Yingyun who was leading the rearguard once the city was breached. In the city center Major General Gough with 150 men and a field artillery piece met Zhang's force with massive gunfire. The artillery piece, a single howitzer tore the Qing troops to pieces at such a close range. Corpses began to pile apparently 15 feet high blocking the streets if you believe British sources. Not all of the Qing were these intellectual types by the way, there was a volunteer force of 150 aboriginal Chinese from Golden River. This group were not using matchlocks and instead pikes,swords and spears which were their favored weapons traditionally. The 150 unfortunate and very brave souls had rushed the British position and were completely annihilated. The British lost 5 men and reported to have inflicted up to 600 casualties upon the Qing. Bei Qingjiao a literary scholar with the Qing forces reported Zhang to behaving bizarrely during the battle in the city center. Bei reported that Zhang was commanding with an opium pipe in his mouth and collapsed in a narcotic daze. When his men began to rout, Zhang also abandoned the fight by crawling onto a litter and fleeing.  It was also reported the Qing forces had devised a rather comical military tactic during this battle. In order to destroy the British warships, some of the Qing wanted to throw monkeys holding firecrackers at the ships to set them ablaze. This was not the first time the idea was thought of during the first opium war by the way, though there is little evidence it ever occurred. There was also an idea put forward to sent Chinese merchants with smallpox contaminated meat to weakened the British prior to the attack, but General Yijing vetoed this plan deeming it to be too unethical. The battle had a devastating psychological effect on the Qing military. They had suffered nearly 600 casualties and taken nearly no British down with them. The Qing commanders were realizing the British technological superiority was too significant and a defeatist mindset began to set into the Qing military as a whole. For failing to retake Ningbo, Emperor Daoguang sentenced Prince Yijing to death. Prince Yijing would escape death and instead was exiled to Turkestan. When the Qing forces made their retreat from Ningbo and sent over 270 Chinese vessels to blockade Jintai, but it seems the commander of that force, Chen Tingchen did not want to risk an invasion and never landed troops. Instead they found a British shipwreck and salvaged pieces from it to sent to Beijing as proof they had won a great naval victory. Having failed to take Ningbo, the Qing began to poison its food supply which prompted the British to attack a village named Tzeki just up the river in retaliation where many Qing soldiers had fled to. Pottinger returned to Hong Kong in February of 1842 and found the city transformed since he last saw it. Now it really looked like a westernized city, there was a four mile road, 2 dozen brothels and builders busy constructing everywhere. The tea trade was continuing in Canton and so was the opium trade. It was estimated every 4th ship that stopped at Hong Kong was carrying opium at this point. Another 100 ships were sent to China carrying thousands of troops. Gough went from having a force of 3000 to 10,000. By may of 1842 the hostilities would fire up again. On may 18th, the British were sailing further north edging closer to Beijing to put pressure on the Emperor and came across Chapu, a town 75 miles northwest of Chusan island. Major General Gough divided his force of 2220 men into 3 groups with a right and left wing and artillery in the center. The British force landed on Chapu without resistance until they reached a joss house further inland. There were 300 Chinese barricaded inside the joss house who refused to surrender and fired upon the British inflicting casualties. The fight over the joss house went on for many hours as the British stormed parts of Chapu city bombarding its walls with artillery. Gough lost one of his senior officer Lt Colonel Nicholas Tomlinson who died leading a breaching party of the 18th Royal Irish storming the city. Aside from the Joss house fight and the initial breaches the battle went over quite well for the British as the Qing defenders had only seriously guarded one side of the city walls. In Goughs words after the battle “the enemy were completely taken by surprise as usual, they were unprepared for anything except a frontal attack. They gave way on all sides and took to flight, with the exception of a body of some 300 Tartar troops who seized a small joss-house and held it with indomitable pluck and perseverance”.  The Royal Irish were infuriated at the loss of their commander and wanted to kill POW's, but British officers intervened. Instead the POW's were subjugated to having their Manchu queues tied up together in groups of 8 to 10 men and marched in public after the city was officially captured. Despite this many POW's were bayoneted. When the British found the main Qing barracks they found a horrid scene. The Manchu had a military tradition of not being taken alive and a large force of Manchu had committed suicide after poisoning their wives and children. Black and bloated faces were seen alongside soldiers with slit throats. The British reported 13 dead and 52 wounded taking the city while the Qing they claimed lost thousands. Next the British sailed forth to attack Wusong which lay at the mouth of the Yangtze River. By taking Wusong they would be able to cut off the important second capital of Nanking from its riverway. They believed taking Nanking would bring the Qing to the bargaining table and would be easier than an attack on Beijing itself. They could also take Shanghai and cut its tax revenue to Beijing. On June 13th, the British armada made it to Wusong after being fired upon by forts along the Huangbu river, an estuary of the Yangtze which caused 3 deaths. They laid anchor off Wusong and began naval bombardments of its port on June 16th. After a few hours the Qing forts stopped returning fire and the British began landing troops to assault them. As was becoming typical, the Qing defenders had mostly fled during the cannon exchange but some stayed put to meet the invaders such as the Qing commander Chen Huacheng. Chen would go down fighting to the end as the British scaled the fort walls and occupied them. Hundreds of Qing soldiers were killed during the invasion and bombardments and by the late evening Wusong was occupied in full.  On June 19th, the British marched on Shanghai just a few miles south of Wusong. They found no sign of the enemy there, just 2 pieces of artillery left on the city's walls. The invaders scaled the walls and opened the gates as its residents fled the city. The residents of Shanghai bribed the British with 300,000 dollars to prevent looting, but the British officers simply let their men plunder. An eyewitness saw some of this pillaging go down. A wealthy and respected Qing official named Cao was living in a walled home with a courtyard in the suburbs of Shanghai when some British soldiers kicked down his front door. They began to loot the man's entire food supply and demanded of Cao to show them where he was hiding his silver. They put a knife to his throat and shouted “fan ping! Fan ping!” meaning “foreign cakes” an idiom for silver. Despite their belief the man was hiding silver about, they did not find any. Cao and his family lost all their food and to make matters worse after a few days some Chinese looters came by and stole some food Cao's family had found. Cao was forced to go door to door begging for food to feed his family, but the city had been picked clean. Cao himself wrote “foreigners have contented themselves with loot and rape, but as the city fell without resistance there has been no general slaughter. They are pressing the people into their service to do all their heavy work, such as shifting gun emplacements and gunpowder. They take anyone, buddhist monks, notables, and well known people”.  Despite Shanghai's commercial and strategic importance, the British only occupied it for a week before marching towards Nanking. By taking Nanking they hoped to end the entire war, but between them and Nanking was the walled city of Zhengjiang around 50 miles west of Nanking.  Zhengjiang held around 1583 bannerman and 2700 Green Standard Army troops and by mid july the British were blockading the route between the Yangtze river and the grand canal. On the morning of July 21 the British landed 4 brigades and attacked Zhengjiang from 3 different directions. The 1st brigade of 2310 soldiers and supported by an artillery brigade made a frontal assault attacking a Qing army in front of Zhengjiang's walls. The 2nd Brigade of 1832 men attacked Zhengjiangs western gate supported by a naval bombardment. The 3rd brigade consisting of 2155 soldiers attacked the northern gate.   At 7am the British 3rd brigade landed at Beigu mountain and its grenadiers charges the north gate as bannermen atop Zhengjaings walls fired down upon them using gingalls mounted on tripods. The 3rd brigade managed to set up artillery battered the defenders atop the walls who in the haste were trying to fire back with their own artillery. After an hour the artillery of the bannermen were knocked out and the British grenadiers bayonet charged the gate and scaled the walls bringing the fight to the wall tops.  The British 1st brigade landed and took some highlands near Jinshan and by 8am began to attack the Green standard army stationed outside the walls of Zhengjiang. When the 1st brigade began to battle the Green standard army, the British 2nd brigade stormed the western gate as the armada naval bombarded its walls. There were many houses in front of the western gate which the British occupied and fired from at the wall top defenders. The bannermen atop the walls desperately fired using gingalls upon the invaders but could not stop the British grenadiers from reaching the gate. British engineers blew up bombs using gunpowder at the west gate and it was soon breached. The Green Standard army occupied with the 1st british brigade saw the city had been breached and fires were emerging. They assumed the city was a lost cause and the commander of the Green standard army ordered a retreat. Within the city the street fighting was fierce and the British third and second brigades managed to fight towards another pincering the bannermen within the city. The Manchu commander of the bannermen, General Hailin ordered the Manchu to kill themselves rather than fall to the enemy. Again families were poisoned and soldiers strangled or slit their throats. General Hailin gathered up all his court papers into a pile, sat upon the pile and lit himself on fire. Pottinger wrote of this scene “he was worthy of a nobler and better fate”. The non Manchu residents of the city did not share this view however as before his death General Hailin ordered all the non manchu residents executed on charges of treason. I am hardly qualified to explain this, but just know the animosity between the Manchu and Han Chinese at this time was particularly bitter. A poet named Zhu Shiyun who lived on the outskirts of Zhengjiang city gave an account of this event. Of General Hailin he wrote “Hailin was in a very excited state. All over the town he arrested harmless people on the ground that they were in league with the enemy. He handed them over to the Prefect to imprison and flog. It was only at the four gates that he had a cannon pointing outwards. Inside the city his whole activity consisted in arresting passersby on suspicion of their being traitors. Whenever women or children saw Manchu soldiers, they fled in terror, upon which the soldiers ran after them and slew them, announcing to Hailin that they had disposed of traitors , for which he gave them rewards. The Barbarians different and the same were now on both sides of the gates”. The British had around 40 dead, a hundred wounded and allege they killed perhaps a thousand Chinese.   In contrast to the Manchu led horror, public opinion in the city improved of the invaders on July 24th when the British hung a rapist and looter from their own ranks. They hung placards to the men warning anyone would face the same fate for such crimes. It should be said, both these men happened to be Indian, a noticeable pattern in this war, the blaming of everything upon Indian soldiers. By August 16, a proclamation was made officially forbidding looting oh and on September the 5th opium was proclaimed fully legal and traded to the residents.  Major General Gough used his artillery to blast holes in Zhengjians walls before taking the army to march onwards, making sure the city could be easily retaken later if need be. With the capture of Zhengjiang, the British gained control over the traffic upon the Yangtze river. The British quickly blockaded the Grand Canal paralyzing the region. The governor of Nanking, Yilibu sent word to the emperor summing up the situation “The Yangtze River is a region like a throat, at which the whole situation of the country is determined. Now they have already cut off our salt and grain transportation and stopped the communication of merchants and travelers. That is not a disease like ringworm, but a trouble in our heart and stomach.”. In addition to all of that, the path to march upon Nanking was now wide open. After that it was Beijing that could be marched upon! Emperor Daoguang appointed Yilibu and a Manchu court official named Qiying to negotiate with the British. The emperor gave Qiying plenipotentiary power and ordered both men to do anything necessary to halt the British advance before it reached Beijing. Meanwhile the British were marching towards Nanking with naval forces sailing the river threatening to bombard the city. Yilibu quickly raised the white flag before a shot could be fired. Unlike previous Qing officials, both Yilibu and Qiying recognized the impending disaster should they embellish reports to the emperor. No they knew they had to tell him straight what was occuring to make sure they were not caught doing anything that would bite them in the ass later so to say. One of their first reports back to Emperor Daoguang to explain the situation in Nanking read “should we fail to ease the situation by soothing the barbarians, they will run over our country like beasts, doing anything they like”.  Yilibu approached the British displaying the typical arrogance the British had become accustomed to in China. Yilibu sent a low ranking soldier to meet Pottinger. Pottinger as you might remember was …well an asshole honesty, a complete sinophobe who knew not much about the rigid Qing protocol and its hierarchical nature, but he knew when he was being insulted. Pottinger declined the low ranking solider and demanded to meet with Yilibu himself, whom he assumed held plenipotentiary power. Pottinger accused the Qing of performing the same ruse they did with Elliot countless times, making promises without the emperors authority so they could just back out of them later. While Yilibu hesitated, Pottinger made a point by ordering attacks on local villages along the Yangtze river. Yilibu did not hold plenipotentiary power however and the Emperor quickly dispatched a seal to give it to him when Yilibu pleaded for it. As Yilibu stalled waiting for the seal, Pottinger brought up the steam warship Queen and trained her guns on the walls of Nanking and began setting up 18 howitzers on the beach to rain hell into the city. Yilibu panicked and sent his subordinate Zhang Xi to meet the British aboard the Queen. Zhang Xi took a very aggressive stance with Pottinger demanding he stop his threatening actions or else. Pottinger replied he would attack Beijing after Nanking fell, a blunt message. Zhang Xi retorted that the British military successes were only due to the kindness and forbearance of the Emperor saying “who cannot bear to kill or injure human creatures. But if pushed too far would arm every inhabitant of the great empire to fight off the invaders”. The interpreter Thom looked at Zhang Xi and objected to saying his message to Pottinger and Zhang Xi screamed while pounding the table with his fists an spitting on the floor “you kill people everywhere, plunder goods, and act like rascals; that is very disgraceful; how can you say you are not rebellious?”. Zhang Xi was escorted off the ship after his outburst which honestly could have made the British attack Nanking at any moment, kinda a loose cannon of an official. Luckily on August 9th, Yilibu received the seal of plenipotentiary power just as the British brought Cornwallis into firing range of the city walls and landed troops to camp outside them.  On August 11, Yilibu offered 3 million off the bat to postpone the British attack upon Nanking, he even said Qiying would bring it himself to Queen Victoria. Pottinger agreed to postpone and begin negotiations. Yilibu then began the classic Chinese ploy of procrastination instead of negotiation. He hoped to weary the enemy down. When Pottinger sent Yilibu a treaty, he pretended to examine it, but in truth was just biding time. Then the British told him they would commence attacks on August 13th. Yilibu was cornered now, he begrudgingly made an appearance aboard the Queen and promised to begin serious negotiations if the British called off the attack. Yilibu and other emissaries met for 4 days traveling back and forth from ship to shore until Yilibu agreed to terms. However despite his potentiary powers, Yilibu argued he still had to send a copy of the treaty to the Emperor for approval. Basically the terms were so terrible he knew he was facing death if he just signed off on them. The British understood Yilibu's predicament and allowed for this, then they invited him and his colleagues aboard Cornwallis on August 20th to wine and dine them. They served the Chinese tea and cherry brandy and Yilibu and Qiying put on a show of Qing manners by bowing before a painting of Queen Victoria. Macartney, Napier and Amherst probably smiling from their graves. While Yilibu awaited Beijing's approval, Pottingers spoke to him about the opium trade. At first Yilibu refused to discuss the subject all together, until Pottinger told the interpreter to tell him the meeting would be kept secret. Then Yilibu explained the decades of hardship opium had brought upon the Qing dynasty and suggested a common solution. Why could the British simply stop the production of the crop in its held parts of India? Pottinger replied that the Americans, French or some other nation would simply take up the business and added “If your people are virtuous, they will desist from the evil practice; and if your officers are incorruptible, and obey their orders, no opium can enter your country.”. Yilibu quickly realized the opium issue was a deal breaker and dropped the matter.  Yilibu was under terrible stress, while he was dealing with the British he was simultaneously receiving orders from Beijing to not meet with the British until they sailed away from Nanking. Yilibu ignored these imperial edicts and continued negotiations which was quite brave of him. When the British demanded Fuzhou be opened to British trade, Beijing ordered him not to allow it, but Yilibu ignored that order, also accepting the term.  The result of the negotiations was the Treaty of Nanking and it represented a total diplomatic defeat for the Qing dynasty. The original demand for 6 million in reparations for the 20,000 chests of confiscated opium and the cost for Britain's war reparations ballooned to a sum of 21 million. That was half of China's yearly tax revenues back then. Yilibu accepted the amount to be paid in installments. The British gained everything they wanted except for the legalization of the opium trade in China. Despite written instructions from Lord Palmerston to “strongly impress upon the Chinese plenipotentiaries how much it would be to the interest of that Government to legalize the trade,” Pottinger did not press upon the issue after receiving a message from Emperor Daoguang through Yilibu “gainseeking and corrupt men will for profit and sensuality defeat my wishes, but nothing will induce me to derive revenue from the vice and misery of my people.”. The Emperor Daoguang refused to agree to a formal recognition of the treaty and sent another letter to Yilibu to give Pottinger “Our nations have been united by friendly commercial intercourse for 200 years. How then, at this time, are our relations so suddenly changed, as to be the cause of a national quarrel from the spreading of the opium poison? Multitudes of our Chinese subjects consume it, wasting their property and destroying their lives. How is it possible for us to refrain from forbidding our people to use it?”. The Qing government did not want to admit publicly that a shocking amount of the Chinese population were suffering from opium addiction. On August 27th of 1842 Beijing approved what it thought to be the complete text of the treaty of nanking. The draft was signed on August 29th aboard the Cornwallis and Yilibu was so sick he had to be carried onto the British ship to sign it. The signatories, Yilibu, Qiying, Parker, Gough and Pottinger gathered in the cabin of Cornwallis as the seals were fixed. A lunch was served afterwards as the Qing banner and Union Jack flew on Cornwallis's masts. Qiying insisted on stuffing Pottinger's mouth with a candied plum at dessert time stating it was a Manchu custom and symbol of agreement. An English crewmember who witnessed this said “I shall never forget Sir Henry's face determined resignation”. The Qing left after lunch and despite Qiyings playfulness with the plums it masked their despair at the terms of the treaty. The British had agreed to give back Chusan and Amoy after the reparations were paid in full. They demanded access for trade and permanent residence at the ports of Canton, Amoy, Fuzhou, Ningbo and Shanghai. Each port had to have a British consular official and the limited trade through the Cohong system was to be abolished. The pretense that Britain was a tributary inferior nation to the Qing dynasty was to be abolished and now they were to be treated as equal nations. Hong Kong island was to be a permanent British colony and Nanking would be blockaded by Britain's armada until the first reparation payment of 6 million was paid. Yilibu was so terrified of the Emperor he sent an edited version of the Treaty of Nanking to Beijing omitting the points the Emperor and screamed not to allow. The British flotilla at Nanking remained for several weeks until the British crews began to all get sick. By october 12 of 1842 the 6 million was paid and the British fleet departed Nanking. Those shipwrecked prisoners from the Ann and Nerbudda would become unfortunate victims. The Daoguang emperor ordered their execution and on August 10th the captives were taken 3 miles outside the city walls and executed. As reported in the Chinese repository a publication in Canton All the rest—one hundred and ninety-seven [prisoners]—were placed at small distances from each other on their knees, their feet in irons and hands manacled behind their backs, thus waiting for the executioners, who went round, and with a kind of two-handed sword cut off their heads without being laid on a block. Afterwards their bodies were all thrown into one grave, and their heads stuck up in cages on the seashore. Pottinger threatened retaliation for the massacre but the governor of Canton Yiliang said he arrested the ring leaders and they would be punished at Beijing for their crimes. Back in Britain the Treaty of Nanking was hailed,  the Illustrated London News crowned  “it secures us a few round millions of dollars and no end of very refreshing tea. It gives an impetus to trade, cedes us one island in perpetuity, and in short puts that sort of climax to the war which satisfies our interests more than our vanity and rather gives over glory a preponderance to gain,”. The London Times hailed it and the British fleet “early victorian vikings”.  Much like the Treaty, the press made no mention of the reason why the war occurred, ie the illicit opium trade. Now Hong Kong island would fill its function as an offloading point for opium. Despite the Qing governments best efforts, demand in China rose for opium and it continued to flood into China. Many in the British parliament wanted to abolish the trade and many tried. In the end most paid lip service to it. An Order in Council gave Pottinger the power to “forbid the opium traffic in Hong Kong.” Pottinger paid lip service by issuing a lukewarm threat on August 1, 1843: “Opium being an article the traffic in which is well known to be declared illegal and contraband by the laws and Imperial Edicts of China, any person who may take such a step will do so at his own risk, and will, if a British subject, meet with no support or protection from HM Consuls or other officers.” The Opium merchants ignored Britain's sanctions and efforts to stop them were laughable. The Opium trade continued to thrive in China and the end of the First Opium war had done nothing to end the controversy over the illegal trade. Jardine and Mathson both left China and entered parliament as staunch Whig supporters. Their Chinese counterpart Howqua died of diarrhea a year after the signing of the treaty of nanking. Howqua most likely died the richest man on Earth at the time. Lin Zexu was eventually forgiven by the Emperor in 1845 and assigned a new post but died near Canton in 1850 before he could return to service. Emperor Daoguangs wrath over the treaty of Nanking fell unevenly. Qiying was still in his favor, while Yilibu was sent into exile in chains. I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me.  And so the Qing dynasty sued for peace, but at what cost? The underlying problem had not changed, that of Opium. Could China rid itself of the illicit substance or what conflict rear its ugly head yet again?

Last time we spoke, Lin Zexu's efforts against opium were not going well enough and he was losing favor with Emperor Daoguang and it seems his aggressive actions had brought war upon the Qing dynasty. The British warships proved too formidable, their cannons superior and the Qing were losing territory such as Chusan Island. Even the mighty Dagu forts were no match for the British warships who sailed through Chinese waters uncontested. Qishan began talks with the British, telling them Lin Zexu might be fired at any moment and that he would most likely be his replacement. Elliot faced a hostage crisis yet again with the captives from the Kite being held in Ningbo and had to negotiate a ceasefire in the meantime, but now Britain's most powerful weapon had just arrived in China, the Nemesis. This episode is the First Opium War Part 2: The Nemesis Terror   Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on history of asia and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War.   The emergence of Steam power in the 19th century is somewhat comparable to the emergence of nuclear power in the 20th century. Its power would make its worldwide debut during the First Opium War. The 660 ton steam warship Nemesis was launched in 1839 and arrived in China at the height of the Ningbo prisoner crisis. Nemesis had an iron hull giving it outstanding armor for its time. The coal consumption for the Nemesis was an absolute nightmare and this made it journey from Britain to China quite a slow process as it had to make numerous coal stops. Nemesis arrived to Macao on November 25 of 1840 and soon crossed the Gulf of Canton to sent anchor in Danggu, awaiting the arrival of the man of war Melville. Nemesis arrived at the perfect time to intimidate the Qing as Qishan and the 2 Elliots negotiated. The 3 men would meet aboard the Melville outside Canton harbor on November 29th and Qishan offered some promising news. Governor General Lin Zexu had finally been fired by Emperor Daoguang as a result of not fully eradicating the Opium trade. The Emperor had said to Lin Zexu “Externally you wanted to stop the trade, but it has not been stopped. Internally you wanted to wipe out the outlaws, but they are not cleared away. This has caused the waves of confusion to arise and a thousand interminable disorders. In fact you have been as if your arms were tied, without knowing what to do. It appears that you are no better than a wooden image” ouch.  Lin Zexu tried to make his case to the Emperor stating the barbarians were being ruined by dysentery and malaria and predicted they would be unable to maintain the troops so far from their home and soon have to depart. Lin Zexu begged Emperor Daoguang not to give into the barbarians. They would best deploy the military rather than diplomacy. “The more they get the more they demand, and if we do not overcome them by force of arms there will be no end to our troubles. Moreover there is every probability that if the English are not dealt with, other foreigners will soon begin to copy and even outdo them”. Emperor Daoguang angrily replied to this “if anyone is copying, it is you, who are trying to frighten me, just as the English try to frighten you!”.  And so, Lin Zexu left Canton in disgrace, but while enroute to Beijing he was given orders to return to Canton to assist Qishan in negotiations with the barbarians. The 2 Elliots when hearing about Lin Zexu's dismissal were quite relieved, they assumed this meant the Emperor was planning to make peace. Charles Elliots at this time would also lose the help of his cousin George Elliot as George had developed heart problems and had to sail back to England. For the negotiations at Canton, Elliot wanted to bring some more intimidation so he gathered some warships and more troops at Canton. Qishan began negotiations on December 4th, by apologizing for the cannon attack on the British by the Bogue forts and as I said previously handed over poor old Stanton. Elliot began negotiations by demanding 4 ports be opened to trade, Shanghai, Ningbo, Fuzhou and Amoy. He also demanded the surrender of an unspecified island, reimbursement for the confiscated opium chest and of course reparations for the war itself, quite a large pill to swallow. Elliot was also hoping such demands would be met quickly, because the British began to fear both France and Russia would begin joining into the war and plying for their own share in its spoils. Qishan agreed to pay 5 million over the course of 12 years, Elliot however wanted 7 million in 6 years and the surrender of at least Amoy and Chusan. The men eventually agreed to 6 million, but Qishan refused any territorial demands. Elliot resorted to threats “there are large forces collected here, and delays must breed amongst them a very great impatience”. Soon Elliot began ordering his troops to go ashore and perform military drills and target practice. At the beginning of 1841 negotiations were still stagnant. Then a rumor spread that the Emperor had chosen war and Elliot decided to prepare. On January 5th of 1841, Elliot informed Qishan that if an agreement was not reached within 2 days he would recommence war at 8am on July the 7th. Well no agreement came and Elliot made do with his threat. On the morning of July 7th, a force of 1500, soldiers, marines and sailors aboard Madagascar, Enterprize and Nemesis landed at the mouth of the Canton River. Their escort force 4 sailing and 4 steam warships began to bombard the Chuanbi Fort and the walls of Tyocoktow Fort across from Chuanbi. When the 8000 Chinese defenders in the forts saw the British ships they initially screamed at them and waved flags in defiance while they opened fire from their batteries. However the Chinese cannons were all tied down and could not be properly aimed at the invaders and thus after 20 minutes of firing at the barbarians they stopped. When they stopped firing the British took advantage of the cease fire and 2 companies of marines scaled over the walls of the Chuanbi earthen walls at 9:30am. The muddy flats in front of the fort made dragging the artillery pieces a nightmare as the men looked up at the forts to see Qing soldiers screaming and waving flags at them. Yet the British bombardment was targeting the Chinese cannons and soon they were getting knocked out one by one. Many of the Qing soldiers were told the British killed all their prisoners and thus many resisted to the bitter end. A British officer said of the carnage “a frightful scene of slaughter ensued, despite the efforts of the British officers to restrain their men”. By 11am, the Qing banner was lowered by the British whom raised the Union Jack in its place. The British reported they had killed 600 Qing soldiers and took another 100 prisoner. The British reported 30 casualties of their own, but as they put it, not because of any Chinese defender, no only because of accidental explosions from their own overheated artillery pieces. Many Qing defenders fled the city, but Major Pratt of the 26th regiment flanked their retreat forcing many back into the forts. The British warships continued to shell the city killing numerous defenders. Once it looked like Chuanbi was simmering down, the British ships began to fire upon 11 Chinese war junks anchored at the mouth of the river using Congreve rockets. One British officer who witnessed this stated “The very first rocket fired from the Nemesis was seen to enter the large junk ... and almost the instant afterwards it blew up with a terrific explosion, launching into eternity every soul on board, and pouring forth its blaze like the mighty rush of fire from a volcano. The instantaneous destruction of the huge body seemed appalling to both sides engaged. The smoke, and flame, and thunder of the explosion, with the broken fragments falling round, and even portions of dissevered bodies scattering as they fell, were enough to strike with awe, if not fear, the stoutest heart that looked upon it”. Both the Chinese artillery on top of the forts as well as the Chinese war junks did not return fire. Instead the defenders were fleeing or jumping overboard to get away from the naval bombardments. The British fired muskets at them as they did so killing many. Inside one of the forts many Qing defenders were becoming burned and horribly disfigured because they antiquated matchlocks gunpowder would often explode on them. The British gunfire only added to their misery. A staff officer who took part in the battle wrote later in life “The slaughter of fugitives is unpleasant, but we are such a handful in the face of so wide a country and so large a force that we should be swept away if we did not deal our enemy a sharp lesson whenever we came in contact.”. As the British warships bombarded the Chinese War junks the Chinese captains fell into a rout scattering into Anson's Bay just east of Chuanbi. There, the nightmare ship, Nemesis went forward by itself attacking over 15 Chinese war junks. An extremely lucky congreve rocket fired from Nemesis hit one of the war junks powder magazines exploding it to pieces. The 14 other war junks witnessing this continued to scatter and many of their crew jumped overboard to escape. Nemesis did not pursue them any longer and instead steamed up river torching a few war junks as it went along and seizing others before rejoining the armada.  3 more fort remained operation near Chuanbi and next day the British began to prepare their ships to bombard them, but a white flag was lifted over them and a messenger arrived telling the British Admiral Guan was requesting a 3 day ceasefire so he could speak with Qishan. Charles Elliot was quite mortified by the massacre of Chuanbi and accepted the 3 day cease fire. Elliots soldiers however were livid with this decision and wanted to simply march on Canton. To alleviate the men, Elliot ordered them to demolish the walls of Chuanbi and the Tycocktow forts. Qishan then met with Elliot to negotiate at the Lotus Flower Wall due south of Canton city. Elliot brought with him a show of force, 56 royal marine, a 15 member fife and drum band and Captain Rosamel commander of a French corvette named Danaide. Inviting the French captain was a diplomatic courtesy and a method of keeping an eye on the French whom the British like I said feared might take a shot at the spoils of war. Qishan performed the customary wining and dining of Elliot and his entourage and eventually they began their diplomacy again. By January 20th they agreed to what has become known as the Chuanbi Convention. The British agreed to purchase Hong Kong island for 6 million and the Chinese would pay 6 million for the war reparations, sort of a swap in other words. Both nations would exchange ambassadors and now contact between the nations would be direct and official, no more tributary status. Above all else trade would resume and the British would hand over all the forts and places they had captured, including Chusan island. Qishan presumed Emperor Daoguang and his Qing court would agree to these terms and even made plans to exhort the 6 million in reparations directly from the Hong merchants to sweeten the deal. Elliot had to assume Britain would be pleased, because messages took a long time to get back home, but in fact Palmerston and others in Parliament were quite livid Elliot did not get the 20,000 opium chest amount and the war reparation amount they had demanded. The British foreign minister said of the Chaunbi settlement “after all, our naval power is so strong that we can tell the Emperor what we mean to hold, rather than that he should say what we would cede”.Emperor Daoguang was so pised off when he found out about the Hong Kong cession he recalled Qishan immediately to Beijing and ordered the execution of Charles Elliot. Elliot would eventually received word from Parliament about the Chuanbi convention and the it turned out the British government refused to ratify the agreement, uh oh. On the same day the Chuanbi convention was signed, January 20th of 1841, Emperor Daoguang ordered Qishan to stop negotiations with the barbarians, because he was sending reinforcements to Canton from the interior. Thousands of Qing troops were enroute under the command of a 70 year old general named Yang Fang. Yang Fang was so old, it was alleged he was deaf and had to give his men orders in writing. The Emperor also sent with him his cousin Yishan as a new diplomat. Charles Elliot was completely aloof at the looming conflict, nor the Emperor's rejection of the Chuanbi agreement. On January 26th Lt Colonel George Burell occupied Hong Kong island in accordance with the Chuanbi agreement. Similar to the Chusan island situation, Elliot allowed opium to be stored on Hong Kong island. In a letter at the time from Matheson to Jardine he mentioned “Elliot says that he sees no objection to our storing opium there, and as soon as the Chinese New Year holidays are over I shall set about building”. Soon Matheson began building an enormous stone fortress in Hong Kong and moved the companies HQ there.  Hong Kong became a brilliant new jewel in the crown of her Majesty. It held a deep harbor and a very small population that would not give too much trouble. The British were overjoyed to leave the malaria dysentery filled nightmare of Chusan for Hong Kong. By February 1st, Charles Elliot proclaimed Hong Kong island an official British territory and its residents subjects under the crown, something the Chuanbi convention never stipulated.  Elliot met Qishan again, this time at a place called Second Bar, a small island 20 miles southeast of Canton to put the imperial seal upon the Convention of Chuanbi. Qishan informed Elliot that he had been fired and that the Emperor was pissed off like hell much to the shock of Elliot. Qing soldiers began to mass around the Bogue and as noted by Commodore James Bremmer in his military dispatch “I must confess that from this moment my faith in the sincerity of the Chinese Commissioner was completely destroyed, my doubts were also strengthened by the reports of the Officers I sent up to the place of meeting, who stated that military works on a great scale were in progress, troops collected on the heights, and camps protected by entrenchments, arising on both sides of the river, and that the island of North Wangtong had become a mass of cannon” Elliot decided yet again to take up arms. On february 26, the Modeste, Druid, Wellesley, Queen and Melville began to bombard the forts on Wangtong and Anunghoi island on the Bogue. There were 3 forts on Anunghoi island holding 42, 60 and 40 cannons atop them each. The warship Blenheim alongside Melville, Queen, and four rocket boats approached the southernmost fort, dropped anchor 600 yards away, and fired their broadsides. The Melville approached five minutes later and within 400 yards of the fort, and fired broadsides in quick succession. A British officer who witnessed the scene said "The firing of these ships was most splendid: nothing could withstand their deadly aim ... One or two shot were sufficient for the 'dragon-hearted' defenders of the north fort, who, 'letting' off their guns, fled up the hills." The 3 forts cannons were stationary guns set at such a high elevation that when they return fired they were only able to hit the topsails of the British ships. The Chinese return fire lasted only 15 minutes,  by 1:20 pm the forts stopped returning fire and  300 Royal Marines stormed the forts. By 1:30 pm, the 3 forts were captured 250 killed or wounded in Anunghoy.  Over on Wangtong island there was 40 gun fort on its western side called Yong'an Fort. Between this fort and the forts on Anunghoi was a large boom chain cable to stop warships and passage could not be made until all the forts were taken. Commodore Bremer aboard his flagship Wellesley alongside 7 other warships began to bombard the fort and its batteries and in less than an hour the Chinese stopped firing back. By 1:30pm Major Thomas Simson Pratt commanded 1037 troops to storm the beach of the island. In the words of British officer Edward Belcher “Opposition there was none. The unfortunate Chinese literally crammed the trenches, begging or mercy. I wish I could add that it was granted”. Belcher also alleges some Indian soldiers would begin executing prisoners when he personally tried to stop them “two were shot down whilst holding my shirt, and my gig's crew, perceiving, my danger, dragged me away exclaiming ‘they will shoot you next sir!”. There were around 2000 Qing defenders on the island and it is estimated 250 were killed and or wounded. The British claim to have only 5 casualties. When the British and Indian force entered the forts they found that the defenders had most likely fled the moment the battle began. Within 2 hours, the forts on Anunghoi and Wangtong were seized with minimal effort. Charles Elliot stated he had almost died in the battle from a Chinese cannonball that nearly hit him as he sat reclined in a hammock on the deck of his ship. You can't make that stuff up…or perhaps you really can if you are the British during the 19th century trying to show off. Honestly folks, when I give reports from this war, a lot of it comes from British primary sources and I can assure you they are embellishing the shit out of it. A thousand Chinese were taken prisoner. Admiral Guan's body lay among the defenders, a bayonet in his chest. The British gave the old warrior a cannon salute from the warship Blenheim when his family retrieved the body and sailed off with it. With the fall of the Bogue forts, the mouth of the Canton River and the gateway to Canton belonged to the British. Lin Zexu wrote of the event "I got home at the Hour of the Monkey [that is 3 p.m.] ... and when night came heard that the Bogue forts and those on Wangtong Island were being invested, preparatory to attack, by the English rebels. I at once went with Deng to Qishan's office and at the Hour of the Rat [that is 11 p.m.] we heard that the Wangtong, Yung-an and Kung-ku forts have fallen. All night I could not sleep." On February 27, Elliot made his way up the Canton River aboard Nemesis when they came across the warship Cambridge which was in trouble. Cambridge had been captured and surrounded by Chinese War junks. When Nemesis alongside some other British steamers approached, the Chinese war junks opened fired on them. When the British ships managed to maneuver into a position where they could fire broadsides they sent a tremendous volley. Added to the shells were congreve rockets which set fires to many of the war junks. The Cambridge was also opening fire upon the British as Chinese crews were operating her. The British bombardment after an hour soon sent the ships scattering about and many of their crews jumped overboard. On the sides of the river were some earthworks defense with batteries and British troops began to land and stormed their positions. Captain Thomas Herbert of warship Calliope said of the event “I landed with the seamen and marines and stormed the works, driving before us upwards of 2 thousand of their best troops, and killing nearly 300”. Lt John Elliot Bingham of the Modeste wrote “As the enemy fled before Lt Stranshams party, they attempted to cross a deep branch of the river in which numbers of them perished and many were shot”. Thus the British claimed to have killed 300 Chinese during this battle near the First Bar Island on the Pearl River at the cost of losing 1 man with a couple wounded. The day after the battle Lin Zexu wrote "I hear that yesterday the English rebels broke resistance at Wu-yung. The regulars from Hunan were stationed there, and had heavy losses, their Commander Hsiang-fu being also among the killed."   After the battle was over the British realized they could not tow the Cambridge, so Elliot ordered the ship scuttled. During the firing upon the Chinese war junks, a British sailor died when his musket exploded in his hands. Elliot awaited some other ships and men before continuing to sail towards Canton.  On March the 2nd, Commodore Bremer dispatched a force to prod Whampoa Island which held a battery of around 25 cannons and had around 250 Qing troops defending it. The smaller naval force of 3 British warships bombarded the island destroying the cannons and defensive structures with ease. The marines who stormed the island reported around 20 dead defenders and lost a man to grapeshot. Lin Zexu wrote in his diary on the day of the battle “I hear that the English rebel ships have already forced their way to the fort at Lieh-te. Early in the morning I went to talk things over at the General office in the Monastery of the Giant Buddha”.  As the armada made its approach to the city the 10,000 civilians fled, including Lin Zexu's family. An American merchant in Canton wrote of the scene “Canton never looked so desolate. The hatred of those who had not fled registered in their faces. They scowl upon every one of us in a way indicative of a greater dislike than I have ever before observed”. Cantons harbor was too shallow for the Nemesis to dock, so Elliot took her completely alone up the Canton river and back down destroying apparently a few forts and 9 Chinese war junks. If that is to be believed, Nemesis truly lived up to its name wow.  Poor Qishan was again recalled to Beijing to be punished. He was not only recalled, but arrested and cast into chains. He made it to Beijing by March 12th and his entire fortune of 425,000 acres of land, 135,000 ounces of gold and 10 million in cash was taken from him by Emperor Daoguang. Luckily for Qishan his death sentence was reversed by the Emperor to just hard labor at a military encampment near China's northernmost border with Russia. Lin Zexu did not receive blame for the military blunders and instead remained in power at Canton. The reason as to why this came to be might be because Lin Zexu was as guilty as every other Qing official in sending the Emperor very embellished stories about the war. “Our regular troops sank 2 of their dinghies and shattered the mainmast of one of their warhips after which they retired”. Like the other officials playing broken telephone, Lin Zexu also feared the Emperors wrath and for good reason. By March 13, the rest of the British armada arrived outside Canton and began to blow all the Chinese ships to pieces within the harbor. The armada also bombarded the city's walls knocking out its cannons. On march 19, British marines and sailors landed near the foreign factories district forcing Chinese defenders there to pull back giving no resistance. The next day the British occupied their old English factory and planted the Union Jack back upon its roof.  Our old friend Houqua came to Elliot at the English factory begging for a truce on behalf of General Fang. Elliot greeted Houque kindly and agreed, he also told everyone in Canton that trade was to be restored. The months of the opium smugglers were watering at this, but Elliot then dictated that all the opium found on any British ship was to be confiscated. Elliot was trying to make it known they were here for the tea trade and to show Britain was going to be on its best behavior. Unbeknownst to Elliot, the truce was a feint. For the next few days, the British watched Chinese ships full of Qing soldiers sail past the factories vantage point.  Despite Elliots talk of confiscating all opium, the smugglers were more bold than ever. With the British armada as armed guards, the smuggler ships came in some carrying more than 1000 chests each! Elliot was furious and tried to stop the opium vessels from unloading their cargo in Canton, but the merchants simply ignored him. Elliot feared getting chewed up by members at parliament if he molested the dealers anymore, knowing full well parliament had a ton of opium lobbyists working full time. Its actually scarily like current governments today. Some, albeit I bet a few politicians in the congress/senates/parliaments of large nations today actually want to put a stop to the worlds most horrible troubles, but lobbyists are a powerful force and when your political job is at stack…well like Mr. Elliot, how much do you put your neck out on the line? Also Elliot had greater issues to worry about, when the British took back the factory the Qing officials set a price upon the heads of any British citizen and a king's ransom of 50,000 for Elliot's head.  Ever since the first battle at the Bogue, Qishan and Lin were both sending reports to Emperor Daoguang about how the war was going. Lin Zexu was sending amazing tales of Qing victories, all fabrications. Qishan was sending report, of how corrupt the Qing military had become and how it had fallen to such lengths it could not hope to match the barbarians. Qishan counseled strategic surrender and hinted towards resuming the opium trade. Well we all know what happened to Qishan for his more honest words on military matters. General Yang Fang also urged the Emperor to allow the opium trade to continue arguing that if the British occupied themselves with making money, they would have little time or any desire for war. The Emperor replied to General Fang “If trade were the solution to the problem, why would it be necessary to transfer and dispatch generals and troops?”. Emperor Daoguang ordered General Fang and his colleagues Ishand and Longwen to take back Hong Kong island. By late March, Elliot had decided the next target was to be Amoy, around 400 miles northeast of Canton. Elliot thought it would be a good time to attack Amoy in May, but in the meantime he fell quite ill while in Macao. In the meantime he was receiving intelligence reports from Canton that the city was being surrounded by more and more Qing troops. It seemed General Fang was amassing forces trying to bring the British back to the peace table. Elliot headed the show of military might by putting off the Amoy plans and concentrating on arming Canton. On May 11th, Elliot took Nemesis over to Canton and quickly saw the Chinese were building fortifications outfitted with new cannons. He also saw the Chinese navy was increasing its presence in the area. To that end he sent a letter to the governor asking they cease military preparations but received no word back. On May 21st, Elliot ordered the British and even urged the Americans to leave the factory quarter. All of the British quickly left, just a few Americans stayed and in less than 24 hours the factory quarter was shelled by the Chinese military from the opposite side of the river. The Chinese then began sending fireboats from the river at the nearby British warships. Elliot had Nemesis begin bombarding the Chinese war junks nearby which were using the fireships as cover. The fireships failed to hit any of the British vessels and instead ran into shorelines setting parts of Canton ablaze. Nemesis began firing on fortifications and Chinese artillery positions and by the morning the battle over the sea dissipated.  On May 25th, Nemesis escorting 70 other vessels full of thousands of troops made its way to Tsingpu, 2 miles northwest of Canton proper. Tsingpu had a natural harbor from which the British formed a beach head to assemble its forces and equipment. The military strategy involved multiple ships bombarding differing parts of Cantons defenses and 2 invasion forces. The first force which I will call right force was led by the warship Atalanta consisting of 330 men of the 26th Cameronians, Madras Artillery and some Engineers. They were going to bombard the south walls of Canton while they landed troops at the factory quarter to occupy it. The other force was that of Nemesis which landed at Tsingpu, designated as left force consisting of 6000 men with various troops such as  the 49th foot, 27th Madras infantry, some Bengal Volunteers and 380 Royal marines.  Leading left force was Major General Hugh Gough whom performed a reconnaissance of the area and said “the heights to the north of Canton were crowned by 4 strong forts and the city walls, which run over the southern extremity of these heights, appeared to be about 3 miles and a half distant”. Basically if you had a map, which can be found of this battle the left force has landed northwest of Canton. To its east lies various hills and forts that protect the approach to the large wall defense of Canton city. There were 4 large forts each holding various cannons and troops.  Gough's force at 3am was being fired upon by the 2 most western forts of the 4. Then the British managed to place their artillery, 12 pounder howitzers, 9 pounder artillery pieces, half a pound mortars and a ton of Congreve rockets. The British began to fire back upon the 2 western first and cover of fire, Lt Colonel Morris of the 49th advanced up a hill towards the nearest fort, while Major General Burrell led the 18th royal Irish to support his flank. While this was occurring, the Qing sent a large force to hit the right flank, but General Gough saw this coming and ordered some royal marines to close the flank up. With their land based artillery and warships bombarding, the left force was able to capture all 4 forts taking light casualties and when they occupied the forts they held a vantage point looking into Canton city.  On may the 25th Goughs force began setting up around these 4 forts, they saw an incoming force coming from the northeast of around 4000 Qing soldiers. They were advancing through an open paddy field and attacked the British 49th at 3pm. The 49th were putting up a good fight, but then General Yang Fang showed up to the scene rallying the troops trying to overwhelm the 49th. Gough quickly ordered the 18th division with some royal marines to reinforce the 49th position and placed Major General Burrell in charge of repelling the enemy. The fighting was intense, but the British force managed to rout the enemy and in turn burnt down their military encampments.  By the early morning of may 26th, Gough had prepared his men for an invasion of Canton's city walls, but at 10:00am a white flag appeared overhead. Gough sent the British interpreter Thoms to find out what the Qing wanted. The Qing envoy begged for hostilities to end, Gough agreed to a ceasefire, but said through Thoms that he would only negotiate with the commander of the Qing forces in Canton. “"I had it explained that, as General commanding the British, I would treat with none but the General commanding the Chinese troops, that we came before Canton much against the wishes of the British nation, but that repeated insults and breaches of faith had compelled us to make the present movement, and that I would cease from hostilities for two hours to enable their General to meet me and Sir Le Fleming Senhouse.". No Qing commander came forward, so Gough resumed preparations to attack Cantons walls. Then 7am the next morning, just as the British artillery was getting ready to fire, another white flag was raised and some Qing soldiers were shouting the name of Charles Elliot. It turned out the reason they were shouting this was because Elliot had been negotiating with the Qing during the course of the battle. Now since may the 26 Major General Gough was in a standstill position. His forces were occupying those 4 forts north of Canton city's walls and his transport ships were over at the beach head some 5 miles west of him. So there was Gough with 6000 soldiers just loitering about in the blazing hot sun, basically in the middle of some paddy fields north of Canton. You wont hear from this from my main source which I will add seems to be quite skewed to the British side, but a minor incident occurred. A local villager named Wei Shaoguang accused a British soldier had raped his wife. The local village populace became enraged and soon a crowd of over 10,000 began swarming around the British position. They were armed with pikes, swords and all the common village weapons you can think of. To make matters worse for some of the British, many of their muskets were sodden because of the marshy paddy field geography and were failing to fire when villagers attacked. A 2 hour long siege occurred and the British had to withdraw to one of the western forts which was soon surrounded. Gough sent word to the governor of Canton Yu Baochun telling him if the villagers did not stop the siege his force would commence an attack upon Canton city. Yu tried to stop the villagers, only to be labeled a traitor to the people of Canton. It sounds like a lackluster event, but it actually is the beginning of a larger issue. The villagers had taken matters into their own hands to deal with the foreign invaders because they saw their Qing government appeasing them. This feeling that the Qing were weak or not doing enough would feed into multiple movements that would later break the Qing dynasty. Then on May 29th, General Fang broke the ceasefire and ordered his men to suddenly attack, shouting “exterminate the rebels!”. Fire rafts were launched at the nearby British warships docked at Whampoa, but failed to do any damage. Stinkpots were tossed at British warships and some war junks tried using grappling hooks to board them. Some of Fang's forces broke into the factory quarter and began to pillage it. The British in response sent ships up the Pearl River to bombard the walls of Canton, but no soldiers were sent in to invade the city. The secret reason as to why was because at this point the British troops were being decimated by dysentery. In reality the British had some 2500 able fighting men to face off against a possible Qing force of 20,000 within Canton city. Luckily for the British their warships bombardments were enough to draw out a truce agreement.  Now the Qing agreed to pay 6 million in the course of 7 days if the British promised not to sack Canton. The Qing military would pull back at least 60 miles from Canton and the British would pull back to the Bogue and occupy the forts there. There still remained major issues, the status of the opium trade and that of Hong Kong island, trade was still not resumed and the compensation for the 20,000 opium chests confiscated. The British knew the situation was tense and ignored these issues for now to allow Canton to normalize again. The British also made sure to avoid mentions of a military victory over the Chinese as they wanted the Emperor to save face and thus be more likely to accept their deal.  I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me.  The British attacked  Chaunbi, Bogue, the First Bar island, Whampoa Island and now Canton in their war to bring the Qing government to meet their demands. It seemed by taking Canton a treaty might be formed at long last and perhaps peace could be restored.  

Last time we spoke, Lin Zexu had brought the foreign barbarians to their knees and Elliot was forced to hand over 20,000 chests of opium. Lin zexu destroyed the illicit substance riding his nation of its filth. Elliot made a terrible error when he told the opium merchants the British government would compensate them for the confiscated contraband. This would all lead to Captain Henry Smith of the Volage firing the first shot of the First Opium War. Britain was in a financial bind, they needed their tea fix and China was closing off trade to them. How was Britain going to compensate the opium merchants and open up China to keep the tea flowing? That is when Thomas Macaulay made the suggestion to Lord Palmerston, a rather out of the box idea. Why not make China pay for it all. This episode is the First Opium War Part 1   Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on the history of asia and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War.   Lin Zexu's attempt to send a letter to Queen Victoria proved to be a failure, no one cared. But back in China Lin Zexu's war against Opium earned him a promotion. He went from high commissioner to taking Deng Tingzhen's title as Governor-General. This seems to have bolstered Lin Zexu's resolve to deal with the foreign barbarians as he wrote at the time “Only by knowing their strengths and their weaknesses can we find the right to restrain them”. Lin Zexu shared his countrymens contempt for the foreigners, but he knew he had to learn more about this enemy in order to defeat them. Lin Zexu was a scholar and had a practical mindset for how to go about the task. Lin Zexu began by buying the British warship Cambridge for use to the Chinese navy and anchored it around the mouth of the Canton River. The only problem was that Elliot made sure to order all of Cambridge's cannons removed before it was sold and the Chinese sailors were unable to properly sail the vessel, thus it was literally towed to the canton river.  By spring of 1840, there were only a few small limited battles between the Chinese junks and some British vessels still attempting to smuggle opium into canton. Elliot decided the first course of action was to map the Yangtze river so he could provide good intelligence to the incoming British force. He sent a ship from Jardine Matheson & Co called the Hellas, unbeknownst to Elliot, Matheson told its captain Frederick Jauncey to try and sell opium while they navigated the Yangtze to hedge his profits. The Hellas ran into trouble on May 22nd of 1840 when Captain Jauncey ran into what he originally thought were just a few Chinese merchant ships, but were in fact 8 war junks. They opened fire on Hellas and attempted to ram and board her, but Hellas was able to keep the fire fight at a distance until some strong wind picked up allowing Hellas to make an escape. Captain Jauncey earned a broken jaw and almost lost an eye during the battle and a few of his crew were hurt, but there were no fatalities. By the end of May the Hellas limped back to Macao for some medical treatment. On June the 8th, a Chinese fleet of fireships loaded to the brim with gunpowder were sent into the British ships anchored at Capsingmum some 45 miles east of Macao. Many of the British vessels fled for their lives, but the warships, Volage, Druid and Hyacinth rushed forward to stop the fireship attack. They used grappling hooks to tie up the fireships from a distance and towed them away from the rest of the British flotilla thus saving them all. The next day, the long awaited British force Palmerston promised finally arrived in Chinese waters. There was a scarcity of sailors hindering what could be amassed for hte China expeditionary force, due to the ongoing wars and other operations against the French in the mediterranean sea and the forces of Mohammed Ali in Egypt. By the end of June 17 men of war had assembled including 3 line of battle ships, the Wellesley, Melville and Blenheim. The East India Company also lent a hand providing 4 armed merchantmen steamers, the Enterprize, Madagascar, Atalanta and Queen. Following behind the force was 27 troopships carrying the 18th Royal Irish, the 49th Bengal Volunteers, the 26th Cameronians,a corps of Bengal engineers, and another corps of Madras sappers and miners. On its way to catch up to this force was British most devastating weapon, a brand new ocean-going Iron warship, the first of its kind named Nemesis. She was launched in 1839 and deployed to China as her first operation. She was powered by 2 60 horsepower Forrester engines and armed with 2 pivot mounted 32 pounders and 6 6pounder guns. She had watertight bulkhead, the first to be used for a warship at the time enabling her to survive a lot of hull damage. It goes without saying this one warship will have a daunting part to play in this story and the Chinese would nickname her “devil ship”.  The British armada did not just bring military assistance, it also was secretly carrying more opium, because of course why not. Over 10 thousand chests were snuck away aboard the ships ready to flood the Chinese market. The large British naval presence would allow the smugglers to offload their opium at Lintin during broad daylight with impunity. The armada gathered itself at Singapore to devise a strategy going forward. There in Singapore, the marines practiced amphibious assaults while Chinese war junks in the distance observed from a distance. By June 1 of 1840 enough warships had gathered at Singapore to launch the invasion of the Qing dynasty. So on June 16 the first ship, a steamer named Madagascar entered the Gulf of Canton followed a bit later by a large part of the armada. Aboard the Wellesley, captain Elliot met with the commander of the expeditionary force, Commodore Sir J. J Gordon Bremer and they discussed strategy. Jardine had made a proposal, to commit some warships to blockade the entire eastern and southern coasts of China and seize the island of Chusan. Jardine argued they should also blockade the mouth of the Bei He River which flowed into the Yangtze, the waterway for food and other shipments directly to Beijing. Chusan island was a critical depot for the Qing, more than a quarter million ton of grain pass through it to go to Beijing to feed the capital. Depriving the capital of a major food source and revenue would bring the Chinese to a peace settlement and thus a British victory.  The British Admiralty's Sir John Barrow thought Jardine's proposal was too much, threatening the Qing capital would just result in the Chinese digging in deeper to defend themselves and not bring them to the peace table. Barrow argued they should focus around the gulf of canton, shell the city and seize Hong Kong. Charles Elliot argued a middle ground: take Canton then sail up the Bei He river to threaten Beijing. Elliot also argued they could instead attack Shanghai because attacking such a prominent city would make the Qing lose face and intimidate them. Another man who had just arrived was Elliot's cousin, Admiral Sir George Elliot who had been given co-plenipotentiary powers. He brought with him a peace treaty with orders to make the Qing government agree to every article of it and to continue the way until it was done. Sir George Elliot arrived in the later part of 1840 and ordered a blockade of the Gulf of Canton using 5 warships while he and the rest of the armada sailed north. The British merchants were disappointed, they expected a direct assault upon Canton, they had hoped to open the city back up for trade. Both Elliot's got aboard the Wellesley as the armada made its approach towards Chusan. George Elliot also had with him a letter from Palmerston to inform the emperor Britain intended to blockade and seize various Chinese ports as a response to the Qing siege of the Canton factories. Palmerston also cheekily added that if the Emperor wanted to stop the opium trade he should probably convince his people to stop smoking opium. At the end of the letter Palmerston added that to avoid “unpleasantness” the Emperor was invited to send a delegation to a shipboard meeting with the two Elliots who most likely would park their warships at the mouth of the Bei He River. The Elliots gave the letter to a Captain named Thomas Bourchier whom went ashore with a white flag at Namoy just 300 miles north of Canton. As Thomas entered the harbor some Qing officials came aboard. Thomas explained to them that the armada meant to bombard the city if they did not respect the white flag. As he explained this to them, along the coast a ton of Chinese began to form a crowd near his boat so he sailed off. With his ship a few hundreds yards away from the shore he waited to see what the Chinese would do. Then Thomas noticed cannons being mounted on a nearby fort. Thomas sent his translator named Robert Thom on a small raft with a large placard repeating what retaliation the Chinese could expect if they fired upon his ship. Thom also began to shout the orders at the crowd along the beach, but they simply screamed insults in return. Then some of the people on the beach began to swim out towards Thom's boat and some arrows and gunshots were fired at him. Suddenly one of the cannons from the fort fired and some nearby chinese junks joined them all aiming for poor Thom. Thom dashed back to Captain Thomas and reported to him what had happened. Captain Thomas responded by sending another letter explaining that the British government had no quarrel with the Chinese people, only their emperor. He sent the letter with a courier in another small raft and as it approached the shore the mob rose up yet again and soon gunfire was going off. It is alleged after this Captain Thomas literally threw a message in a bottle before sailing off towards Canton.  By July 1st the armada anchored in the harbor of Dinghai on Chusan Island. Dinghai held around 40,000 inhabitants within a 5 sided 22 feet high wall city. It held many towers and was surrounded on all 4 sides by a canal. The city had 16 hundred defenders, but in reality they were all just some fishermen, sailors and quickly raised up militiamen armed with spears, bows and some matchlocks. There were also 12 chinese war junks that had followed the British armada keeping a safe distance. The British noticed one of the Chinese war junks had a banner indicated a high Qing official was aboard and they signaled they wanted to talk. The Chinese war junks invited a British delegation aboard their flagship. Commodore Bremer went aboard with his interpreter and met with the Qing commander of the Chusan garrison. Bremer did not mash words he was quite blunt demanding the “surrender Chusan or face the consequences”. The Qing host was not intimidated however and sent the British back to their boats. When the British were back aboard their vessels, instead of blasting the chinese war junks, well they simply invited the Chinese aboard the Wellesley to wine and dine them. In the 1997 movie “the opium war” this scene is quite well done, I highly recommend watching it. So the Qing officials dined and one Qing officer even analyzed some of the 74 guns aboard Wellesley. That officer was quoted to say “it is very true you are strong and I am weak. Still I must fight”. After dinner, Commodore Bremer demanded their surrender again and gave them 24 hours to comply. The Chinese in the meantime ran ashore and began to stuff a ton of sandbags with rice and other things to strengthen the defenses around Dinghai's walls. The 24 hours passed and Bremer brought the Wellesley closer to the shore, but he had to wait for some more reinforcements to arrive to launch an amphibious assault. By 2pm on July 5th, 6 British warships arrived to the scene and Bremer fired a single cannon targeting a tower on a small fort. The Qing fired a single cannon in response, which led Bremer to start shooting volley's every 10 minutes. As the maelstrom was going on, Lt Colonel George Burrell led the 18th Brigade in an amphibious landing. Suddenly the Chinese stop firing just as the 18th brigade landed ashore. The British took the situation by storm and began bombarding the Chinese war junks to pieces and Dingshai's fort towers. Lord Jocelyn, a military secretary said of the scene. “The Crashing of timber, falling houses and groans of men resounded from the shore. Even after the bombardment ceased, a few shots were still heard from the unscathed junks. We landed on a deserted beach, a few dead bodies, bows and arrows; broken spears and guns remaining the sole occupants of the field”. The 18th brigade found no resistance on the beach. The Qing defenders had fled almost as soon as the first cannons had gone off. A Qing commander on scene, Brigadier Zhang had refused to give up the fight, but had both his legs blown off by cannonade and had to be whisked away on a litter. The local magistrate and some of his subordinates watched in horror as the defenders departed and they all committed suicide.  A detachment of the 18th brigade set up 8 9 pounder artillery pieces and some howitzers on a hill which had a vantage point overlooking the city of Dinghai. They then began to shell the now defenseless inhabitants forcing countless to flee for their lives. The British reported not a single casualty during the volley exchange nor the beach assault. Lord Jocelyn described the planting of the Union Jack by the Joss house in Dinghai “the first European banner that has floated as conqueror over the flowery land”.  The city of Dinghai was a mile from the shoreline and Colonel Burell slowly marched his men to its formidable walls as artillery rained hell upon them. The residents of Dinghai responded with their own artillery forcing Colonel Burrell to hold back his men from a distance and wait it out until the next day to assault the city. During that lull the British soldiers found some samshu in a local fishing village and proceeded to get drunk as hell and looted the fishing village during the night. An Indian soldier said of the incident “A more complete pillage could not be conceived. The plunder ceased only when there was nothing to take or destroy”. The artillery was going on throughout the night and at around midnight of British 9 pounders hit a gunpowder deposit inside Dinghai turning the city into an inferno. The next morning the British saw most of the defenders were fleeing and sent a detachment of 12 men to approach the south wall to prod it. There was no resistance so the men began to climb the rice bag defenses that had been piled almost 2 stories high in front of the wall. Within minutes they were over the top and could see the city that once held 40,000 people was all but deserted. Lord Jocelyn said of the city “The main street was nearly deserted, except here and there, where the frightened people were performing the kow-tow as we passed. On most of the houses was placarded "Spare our lives;" and on entering the jos-houses were seen men, women, and children, on their knees, burning incense to the gods; and although protection was promised [to] them, their dread appeared in no matter relieved.”  The British reported that perhaps 2000 Chinese died, which is complete nonsense, the Chinese state something like 25 died so the actual number is somewhere in between, quite a large range I know. The British themselves might have lost up to 19 men. They found a ton of antiquated weapons and armor as they looted the city such as padded cotton jackets which displayed the disparity between the 2 forces. Robert Thom who witnesses the looting said “No one has been killed in cold blood that I am aware of, and only one or two cases of rape occurred perpetrated it is said by the sepoys”. By the way a lot of the primary sources for this war will lay blame on the Indian soldiers for misconduct and take it was a grain of salt. I am not saying it did not happen, it most certainly did, but the idea that the British redcoats were not taking part in such ventures seems dubious.  By Jul 11th, Jardine and Matheson reached Chusan and found out Admiral Elliot was forbidding their opium ships from landing on the island. Yet they pressed their team of smugglers to persist and against Elliots wishes unloaded opium. Chusan would become a storehouse for opium and by November of 1840 43 opium smuggling ships were using Chusan as an offloading point. 12,000 chests of opium would be brought to Chusan by the end of the year.  Chusan island would also bring quite a lot of misery to the British. Colonel Burrell refused to allow his troops to occupy the abandoned city of Dinghai fearing repercussions from the Chinese and instead kept his men in a particularly malaria infested paddy field. With the scorching heat and an order that all men keep their top buttons on their uniforms fastened almost 500 men would die to malaria and dysentery. A lot of variables were at work, bad provisions, too much Samshu, stagnant water and the most evil culprit, malaria invested mosquitos took a heavy toll on the British. By October, only 2036 out of 3650 troops would be fit for duty.  By december more than 5000 men were admitted to hospitals and 448 deaths would occur. If anyone knows the story of Japan's invasion of Taiwan in the 19th century, it really reminds me of that ordeal. Taking an island by force and with incredible ease, only to fall victim to brutal mother nature. On july 27th, Elliot had gathered many warships at Dinghai and felt he had enough firepower to proceed 500 miles north to Beijing. A week after Dinghai fell, Beijing got the word. However this is where a large problem would emerge for the Qing dynasty. The Emperor was given word through Qing officials, and if the news was bad, the officials would fear enraging the Emperor and more often than naught falsify what they told him. In this case the officials downplayed the severity of the incursion. They told him of alleged weaknesses of the foreign invaders. The governor of Jiangsu Province lying at the mouth of the Yangtze River, Yukien told the Emperor “take our fort at Woosung. From the bottom upward there is the stone base, then the clay base, and finally the fort itself. It is even elevation far above the level of the barbarian ships. If they shoot upward, their bullet will go down and consequently lose force. Moreover the barbarians are stiff and their legs straight. The latter, further bound with cloth, can scarcely stretch at will. Once fallen down, they cannot again stand up. It is fatal to fighting on land”. Yukien would also make remarks about how the barbarians lacked bows and arrows. While this might come off as humorous, I bring it up for important reasons. The Emperor will continuously be given these sort of reports, downplaying of events such as battles, made up stories about victories over the British and much more. The Emperor will be reacting accordingly based on the information he is given and this will be quite the crux of the entire war.  The British armada approached the mouth of the Bei He River in a course of 10 days and was only 75 miles southwest of Beijing. However at the mouth of the Bei He River lied one of the Qing dynasty's most formidable defenses, known as the Dagu forts. 2 Dagu forts guarded the mouth, though to Elliot they looked pretty decrepit and deserted. Elliot was still trying to find a Qing official who would take Palmerstons letter to the Emperor and at the mouth he saw several Chinese war junks. Elliot sent a man with the letter to the war junks and the commander of the warships replied that he would send the letter to a higher ranking Qing official who was only a short distance away. Thus Elliot waited to see what would occur and it turned out the Qing official was Qishan, the governor of Chihli province. Qishan sent word to Elliot that his letter was sent directly to the Emperor, but that Elliot would need to wait for a reply.  On May 13 of 1840, one of Qishans subordinates came aboard the Wellesley providing the British with food and water and this was followed up for several days with more gifts. Then Elliot was told the Emperor had officially received the letter, but it would be regretfully another 10 days or so for the Qing court to discuss with the Emperor the letters contents. Do not forget, the story I spoke of about the malaria and dysentery outbreak on Chusan was raging by this point and thus Elliot decided it best to scatter the armada in search of cleaner water because the Chusan wells seemed to be the culprit at the time. Some of the ships went hundreds of miles away in search of water and as this all occurred, 10 days had come and gone. When all of the armada regrouped with their fresh water reserves, Elliot decided they needed to speed up the Qing courts process. Elliot ordered the warships Madagascar and Modeste to begin firing at some forts on Chusans outskirts, but before the shelling could begin a messenger from Qishan suddenly appeared. Elliot was invited to meet with Qishan in 3 days time. The meeting would be on july 30th and the location was a fort in southern Chusan. Qishan brought gifts and food with him for the British and had a flotilla built up so the British would not have to walk in mud to the fort. Elliot, Qishan and Jocelyn had a large dinner and then they discussed the Palmerston letter for over 6 hours. Qishan during the meeting made a mention of the precedent set by the Macartney and Amherst missions, that of the tributary system. Elliot insisted both men were not tributaries, but ambassadors holding equal status to the Emperor. Qishan could feel the tension in the room and changed the subject, he pointed out that the occupation of Chusan island was unacceptable for the Emperor. Elliot understood and said the British occupation was temporary, they were merely using it as a base of operations. Then the largest looming subject emerged, Opium. Qishan demanded a promise from Queen Victoria that Britain would stop exporting opium to China. Similar to Lin Zexu, the Qing had a difficult time understanding the representatives of authority for other nations and assumed Queen Victoria held a similar position to their Emperor. Elliot said plainly that he did not have the authority to grant such a concession and then made the remark “if the Chinese wanted the opium trade to end, they should stop using it”. Elliot also made a remark that most of the Opium was coming from other sources outside British influence, but he had little evidence to support this. Qishan swallowed this resentfully but did not quibble over it. Instead Qishan moved to the subject of reparations as Palmerston had demanded compensation for the 20,000 seized opium chests and for war reparations for Britain who was invading China! Qishan flat out called these demands ludicrous, when he said this, Elliot began to write something on Palmerstons letter and when Qishan asked him what he was writing Elliot replied “I am writing what is your opinion on the matter, because many of the Emperor other officials might have differing ones”.  Qishan then began to explain to Elliot that Lin Zexu had fallen out of favor with the Qing court and that Qishan agreed with the British that Lin Zexu had mistreated them and employed unnecessary violence. Qishan made a remark that the Emperor was most likely going to fire Lin Zexu and punish him. It seems Qishan was hinting to Elliot that he might be replacing Lin Zexu as his successor and with it plenipotentiary powers. So you get the idea here, Qishan is basically hinting while nothing can be done right now, perhaps when he is in charge he will help the British out. Qishan also kept stating that the British should go to Canton, as it was the center of foreign trade and a much more logical and practical place for them to go to further negotiations. But both Elliot and Qishan knew why he was stating this repeatedly, he wanted the British to get as far away from the Emperor as possible.  George Elliot informed Charles Elliot that he felt the armada was quite vulnerable sitting in Bei He Bay and urged him to end the negotiations and leave. Likewise upon hearing the news that Lin Zexu was going to be dismissed soon, Charles Elliot agreed and they too the armada and sailed away. This rather abrupt partie however gave the Chinese the impression the barbarians were done with the war all together. As you can imagine many Qing officials began telling Beijing this. As you can also imagine the British departure was only temporary. By September of 1840 the British armada re-emerged at the mouth of the Bei He River. The Elliots had order the armada to up the pressure on the Qing and Charles Elliot had written a note to Palmerston at this time “It is notorious that the Daoguang Emperor entertains the utmost dread of our enterprising spirit”. What he meant by this, was by sending periodic naval patrols he was trying to scare the shit out of Beijing. Back over in Canton, despite the incredible efforts of Lin Zexu, the opium trade was still rearing its ugly head. Since Jardine & Matheson were now able to shove their contraband on Chusan island it began to flood right back into the Canton market. By the fall of 1840 6500 chests had gotten through the Canton trade from Jardine & Matheson Co alone. Many hundreds of others were flooding in from the other independent smugglers and despite the severity of punishment for using the substance, there was still an enormous demand. The Elliots of course banned the trade of opium on Chusan, but they were not morons, they knew it was simply going to Canton in the end. Of course they were allowing the trade to go on, they were after all quite broke. The Elliots had no other way of raising money to continue the war effort other than relying on the sale of opium. Both Elliots understood the fiscal dependency they had on the opium smugglers and the prohibition of its sale on the island of Chusan was merely symbolic, a way of keeping face, so typically british. Thus vessels were allowed to offload opium near Chusan with zero interference from the British armada, which in turn was patrolling the waters thus protecting the opium dealers in the end. The hope in the end was by symbolically banning the substance at Chusan, perhaps this would alleviate the Emperor while simultaneously allowing the condonation of revenue for the war effort by allowing its trade to ports like Canton.  Over in Beijing, Emperor Daoguang hesitated over Lin Zexu, he was not yet comfortable dismissing him. This embolden Lin Zexu, whom began to crack down even more so on the Chinese opium consumers. Lin Zexu put out an edict limiting the amount of time opium addicts had to wean themselves off the drug “while the period is not yet closed, you are living victims. When it shall have expired, then you will be dead victims”. Yet despite his efforts Lin Zexu could do little against the opium vessels which were being protected by the British armada making patrols in the Gulf of Canton, Amoy, Chusan and the Mouths of the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers. Then to the horror of the Chinese the British began seizing Chinese ships along the coast and taking their cargo to sell and finance the war effort. Imagine how cash strapped a nation has to be to start performing this sort of looting. Between June and July of 1840 the British armada had seized 7 large trading vessels plundering their cargo. In retaliation the Chinese raised a price for the heads of any British military personnel at 100$ for a soldier taken alive, 20$ for a corpse, $5000 for a British captain and for a British ship 10,000$, cha ching. Things got out of hand quite quickly, Chinese desperate to make some coin turned to attacking European and American civilians such a missionaries. Gangs of Chinese would hunt them down beating them nearly to death. On August the 5th, Vincent Stanton a tutor of a British merchants children alongside a missionary named David Abeel made the terrible decision to go swimming in Macao' bay. Stanton was kidnapped and brought to Canton. Until this point Macao was seen as the last safe spot in China for foreigners, but the kidnapping of Stanton broke that. Adding to everyone's fears, 8 Chinese war junks docked at Macao sending the Portuguese colony into a frenzy.  It turns out Stanton's kidnapping was masterminded by Lin Zexu, it was psychological warfare. He was not able to go after the British warships, but he was able to target anyone on land. The Governor general of Macao, Pinto pleaded with Lin Zexu to return the man, but it came to nothing. The British felt they had lost face, Stanton was one of theirs and they had even tried allowing the Portuguese aid the situation to no avail. 2 weeks after Stantons kidnapping the British had had enough. 4 British warships from the Armada were sent to Macaos Casilha Bay alongside 400 soldiers. The British warships opened fire upon the Chinese war junks whom returned fire. However the Chinese war junks cannons were old and obsolete, they could not match the range the British were firing from. The Chinese crews began to panic when their return fire was literally only matching half the distance of the British and soon jumped ship. Meanwhile the british warships simply continued to rain hell upon the war junks. As noted by British officer “The [Chinese] junks, which were aground in the inner harbour, were utterly useless, for none of their guns could be brought to bear, though several of the thirty-two pound shots of the ships found their way over the bank, much to the consternation of the occupants of the junks." The Chinese crews tried to establish a defense on the coast, but the British soldiers overwhelmed them with musket fire. The Chinese war junks still intact made a break for it, as the rest of the Chinese fled into the fortifications. The British warships battered the walls of Macaos fortifications until their batteries stopped returning fire and the British and Indian soldiers soon scaled the walls. By 5pm the Chinese routed inside the Macao fortifications as the British set fire to multiple barracks. In the end the Chinese suffered upto 60 dead with 120 wounded and the British reported only 4 wounded, but take the number with a grain of salt. In Beijing Qing officials told Emperor Daoguang there had been a major victory at Macao and that many British were dead and multiple British warships laid at the bottom of Casilha Bay. These Qing officials were court officials who were received false reports from the military at Macao. Its sort of like the game broken telephone, where every link embellishes the story to make it more and more positive. All the Chinese soldiers began to abandon Macao and no more Chinese War junks came to its harbor. In the eyes of the Portuguese and British they had saved Macao, in the eyes of poor Stanton…well he was imprisoned in Canton.  The Stanton kidnapping distressed the foreign community in China, but there was another incident that scared the shit out of them. A french missionary named Father Jean Gabriel Perboyre was illegally operating in Hubei Province and got captured in September of 1839. He was tortured and interrogated for over a year and on September 11th of 1840 he was executed publicly at Wuchang. The priest was killed by strangulation, but the Qing authorities decided to place his body on a cross after his death. This set a panic into the foreign community as others were likewise captured and killed and the British on Chusan island were falling victim to malaria, dysentery and starvation, because all the food on Chusan had dried up. They began to eat moldy rice from Chusans stockpiles and bread made from worm ridden flour stuck aboard their ships for quite a long time. It is alleged that the pickled beets and pork on the British warships was so rancid even the iron-stomachs of the British couldn't tolerate it. The drinking water likewise was a source of disease, contaminated by the local sewers. The interpreter Thom wrote a letter to Matheson stating “even the natives hold their noses because of the waters smell. Unless we can manage to get the canal and town cleared out, I fear that we shall be getting some contagious distemper among us. The climate moreover is moist and mosquitoes swarm in amazing numbers. Let no man come here without mosquito curtains else he will bitterly repent of it”. The British did not realize the mosquitoes were the culprit of their malaria nightmare as the belief at the time for europeans was that malaria came from rotten vegetables. The dysentry killed more people than the malaria however, coming from the horrid food and water situation. 12 soldiers died in August, the next month 24, while 250 were hospitalized and by mid september a third of the force was too sick to fight. Being a specialist in the Pacific War I do have to say what amazing parallels this will play out for the Japanese and Americans in the island hoping warfare. Not fun to battle the elements, malaria and a terrible provision situation.  Then there was horrible incident when a commercial ship called the Kite ran aground on a sandbank on september 15th. The Captain named John Nobles lost his 5 month year old baby, and he, his wife and 26 crew members clinging to the boats wreckage until a Chinese war junk captured them. All of them were put in chains and imprisoned at Ningbo. They were placed in wooden cage, the wife of John Nobles stated “mine was scarcely a yard high, a little more than three quarters of a yard long, and a little more than half a yard broad. The door opened from the top. Into these we were lifted, the chain around our necks being locked to the cover. THey put a long piece of bamboo through the middle, a man took either end, and in this manner we were jolted from city to city to suffer the insults of the rabble, the cries from whom were awful”. Some of captured crew were beat to death, 3 men died of dysentery and those who were Indian amongst them were treated extra harshly. One of the English prisoners believed the Chinese treated the Indians worse, because they ate their rice with their fingers which angered them.  When Charles Elliot heard the news of the captives from the Kite he was mortified, particularly because one of the prisoners was a woman! He went to Ningbo aboard the Atalanta to negotiation their release and was immediately told, all the prisoners could go if the British gave back Chusan. The British did not say no, but did nothing to indicate they would hand over Chusan, so the Chinese began to threaten to kill the prisoners. This prompted the Charles Elliot to demand a meeting with Qishan at Chinhai only 10 miles away from the prison at Ningbo. Elliot stated to Qishan if the prisoners were not handed over he would end the peace talks outright. Qishan played some hard ball demanding Chusan returned, but eventually a compromise was made. Elliot agreed to stop British ships from seizing Chinese vessels and blockading the ports and in return the Chinese would still hold the prisoners, but they would improve their living conditions. To show good faith, Qishan released poor old Stanton from his prison in Canton and handed him over to Elliot. The situation did not satisfy the British, but while they danced around with diplomacy, more and more troops from India were being brought to Chusan and the most fearsome weapon Britain had at its disposal had just arrived, the Nemesis.    I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me.  Lin Zexu's efforts against opium were not going well enough and was losing favor with Emperor Daoguang, the British were winning battles and taking territory. How will the Qing Dynasty rid themselves of the invaders? Join us next time to find out. 

Opium Wars, two armed conflicts in China in the mid-19th century between the forces of Western countries and of the Qing dynasty, which ruled China from 1644 to 1911/12. The first Opium War (1839–42) was fought between China and Britain, and the second Opium War (1856–60), also known as the Arrow War or the Anglo-French War in China, was fought by Britain and France against China. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/you-betterknow4/message

Opium Wars, two armed conflicts in China in the mid-19th century between the forces of Western countries and of the Qing dynasty, which ruled China from 1644 to 1911/12. The first Opium War (1839–42) was fought between China and Britain, and the second Opium War (1856–60), also known as the Arrow War or the Anglo-French War in China, was fought by Britain and France against China. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/you-betterknow4/message

Last time we spoke, the British government was walking a tight rope between getting their tea fix and not being banned from trade with China. When Britain ended the East India company's monopoly over the China trade, they assumed they could not be implicated in the illegal opium trade and they were soon proved very very wrong. Britain had managed to fix their silver problem, but at the cost of draining China's silver and that tight rope they were walking, well they fell. China was becoming chaotic again, revolts were likely to be on the horizon. The Qing dynasty had had enough of the situation and began to crack down in the 1830's more and more so. Now China is sending one man who had proven he knew how to stop the opium trade and soon he would wage war on the illicit trade.   This episode is Lin Zexu vs big opium   Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on the history of asia and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War.   Lin Zexu gave the strongest and swiftest voice of approval and he was no ordinary official. Lin Zexu was the son of a schoolteacher and proved to be a great student. He passed the brutal competitive examination in Beijing in 1811 at the age of 26 emerging top of his class. Working as a judge in the 1820's he earned a reputation for fairness and the nickname “Lin, Clear as heaven” or “Lin the Clear sky” which was a testament to his incorruptibility. Over the years of his work he earned great renown as a pragmatic administrator deeply versed in how to deal with water management and flood relief. He was a rare official who could be relied upon to put the welfare of the people ahead of his own gain. He was frankly, incorruptible and because of this, in 1838 he was Emperor Daoguangs favorite minister and reached a rank comparable to Deng Tingzhen in Canton while being 10 years younger than him. He was a beacon of honesty and virtue in a time when the Qing government was full of corruption. One and a million as they say.    Lin Zexu's primary concerns had always been domestic, he had no dealings with foreigners as that was exclusively a Canton issue. Foreign relations were very far from his mind and this shaped his way of thinking. His main concerns were with the Chinese, not the foreigners when tackling the problem of opium. Lin Zexu was quite conservative and his support for suppressing opium was based on his abiding faith in moral suasion. When Huang Juezi made his proposal it marked a turning point for Lin Zexu. He seized on the proposal almost like a religious crusade and immediately offered the Emperor a detailed action plan. He recommended the confiscation and destruction of opium pipes and other equipment for using the drug. Local moral campaigns, education campaigns to teach the evils of opium to the people and active suppression of opium dens and corrupt officials. He also recommended medical treatments to help addicts wean off opium. He described various elixirs used to combat opium addiction.   One thing of interest to me as my first degree is in neurobehavioral science, Lin Zexu talked about giving patients a mix of small amounts of opium combined with herbs that would make the patients sick. This idea has been used in the field of addiction and can be effective. The Idea is based on operant conditioning, by linking to the act of taking opium with a negative stimulus you might get the patient to be more and more reluctant to take the drug. I will attest this in practice is a hit or miss depending on the drug or action. Anyways Lin Zexu's action plan was quite formidable and was hitting the issue at the source at multiple angles.    After sending his action plan to the Emperor, Lin Zexu took the initiative to test it out in his provinces of Hunan and Hubei. In august of 1838 he launched the campaign first setting out to hospitals to treat addicts. Then he jailed dealers, issued proclamations condemning the use of the drug and ordered local officials to round up and destroy whatever opium or opium using equipment they could find. Reports began to pour into Beijing about the success of Lin Zexu's plan. Tens of thousands of pipes were and ounces of opium were confiscated. Mind you 10 thousands ounces of opium was around 10 chests worth, during a time when 30,000 chests were coming into China annually. The pipes and opium were burnt publicly, which was a crucial element to the plan as they needed to prove to the public they indeed were destroying the substance, otherwise the public would assume they were taking it for themselves! Lin Zexu's reports to the Emperor were increasingly triumphant and their tone pressed the urgency to unleash the action plan outside Hunan and Hubei. In September of 1838 Lin Zexu declared opium to be the largest problem the Qing dynasty was facing. “Before opium was widespread, those who smoked it only harmed themselves. The punishments of canning and exile were enough to keep them in line. But when its evil influence has penetrated into the whole country, the effect is tremendous. Laws should be put into rigid enforcement. If left in a lax state, then after a few decades, there will be no soldier in this Central Empire to fight against invaders, nor money to bear the military expenses. I have the fear, that if the evil be suffered to grow at this critical moment there may be no more chance for remedy”.    In October of 1838, the Daoguang Emperor was leaning heavily towards initiating the suppression campaign while some of his officials still believed he might legalize opium. Those same officials were feeding Charles Elliot stories that at any moment the substance would be legalized and this influenced his actions. Then on November the 8th a Manchu official named Qishan who was the governor general of Zhili province reported the largest drug bust in the history of the Qing empire to that point. The confiscated opium was found in Tianjin, not too far away from Beijing. Qishan stated the opium had come from Canton through the Cantonese traders who managed to ship it north through various means. The major drug bust indicated to the Qing court, perhaps they needed to perform the same action in Canton. Emperor Daoguang then made the decision to summon Lin Zexu to Beijing in December of 1838. After the meeting, Emperor Daoguang tasked Lin Zexu with a mission to obliterate the opium trade in Canton. Lin Zexu would travel south as an imperial commissioner, holding the power to act on behalf of the Emperor, answerable to no other local officials. He would have command over all naval forces at Canton and Deng Tingzhen would give him support. Thus in early January of 1839, while Charles Elliot expected legalization of opium to be declared at any moment, Lin Zexu made his way to end the illicit trade once and for all.   Charles Elliot was being fed false information about the ongoing court battle over the opium question in China and he worried about his lack of authority over the British subjects in Canton. If the opium smugglers provoked a crisis under his watch, he was placed in quite a predicament. The British traders and Chinese did not actually know what Elliot's authority was and on many occasions tried to pry the information out of him. The English newspapers for example repeatedly asked him to clarify what his authorization was, but he refused to ever answer.  Elliots became increasingly concerned with British sailors getting into fights with local chinese and organized a naval police force to deal with the issue. Yet when he began doing this he was scolded by Palmerston for overstepping his authority. “You have no power of your own authority to make any such regulations. The establishment of a system of police at Whampoa within the dominions of the Emperor of China was in violation of the absolute right of sovereignty enjoyed by independent states”.    By the early winter of 1839 it seemed governor general Deng Tingzhen's ongoing efforts to crackdown on the Chinese opium smugglers was working. As noted by William Jardine “Not a broker to be seen, nor an Opium pipe; they have all vanished. The authorities are seizing smokers, dealers and shopkeepers innumerable. We must hope for better times and brisker deliveries”. Up to this point Deng Tingzhen limited his actions towards the Chinese and did not target any foreigners. Occasional shots were fired between government boats and foreign smuggling vessels, but nothing had gotten out of hand. Then on December 3rd, a small drug bust was performed and 2 Chinese workers were caught smuggling opium for a British merchant. In response to the incident, Deng Tingzhen decided to make an official statement to the foreign community. On december 12 a small force of Qing soldiers went to the gates of the foreign factories and hammered a wooden cross on the gate indicating they were about to execute a convicted Chinese opium dealer. The site of the execution was to be in front of the foreign factories, obviously Deng Tingzheng was sending a message to the foreigners, that they were responsible for the man's execution.    Its hard to know who acted out first. Elliot was at Whampoa and did not witness the event to come and those involved on the British side said they had no involvement. Its been theorized British sailors may have perpetuated it, regardless some foreigners decided that the execution in front of their homes was too distrubed and began to tear down the gallows being erected. The local Chinese soldiers did nothing to resist, some even began to help tear it down. A crowd of Chinese formed to watch the event and its remained peaceful, until some rowdy British began shoving their way through the crowd. These British hit several Chinese with sticks and some threw rocks, as you can imagine soon fights began and a full riot burst. Several thousand Chinese came and began pelting the foreigner with rocks prompting the Chinese soldiers to intervene and escort the foreigners back into the factories. In the end the gallow was torn down, but the convicted Chinese smuggler was executed elsewhere.    Palmerston demanded to know what had occurred, he was furious the British subjects had the audacity to get involved in Chinese affairs. “On what grounds did the traders imagine themselves entitled to interfere with the arrangements made by the Chinese officers of justice for carrying into effect, in a chinese town, the orders of their superior authorities”. Elliot was quite shaken by the situation. He knew he had to do something to thwart any further incident, but he had no real authority to do anything. He wrote back to Palmerston “that the danger and shame of the opium trade had reached a point where it was falling by rapid degrees into the hands of more and more desperate men”. Elliot then decided to take firm action, on december 18 he issued a proclamation ordering all British vessels carrying opium to depart the inner waters of Canton immediately. He had no authority to confiscate their cargoes, nor to arrest them and thus he fell back on the authority of the Qing government. If any British vessels refused, he would personally turn them over to the Chinese “Her Majesty's Government will in no way interpose if the Chinese Government shall think fit to seize and confiscate the same”. Simultaneously he wrote the governor of Canton pledging his support for the campaign against opium.    The opium traders were all very very pissed off. The superintendent, Elliot was supposed to protect them! James Matheson complained to the British press “that Elliot had adopted the novel course of assisting the Qing government in this, against his own countrymen! It appears to be the intention of Captain Elliot to offer himself as a kind of chief of the chinese preventive service”. Another execution of a convicted chinese opium smuggler took place in february of 1839, this time it was done much faster and with a large guard. William Jardine left Canton in late January of 1839, leaving Matheson to watch over the business. Enroute to Canton was Lin Zexu who was being counseled by many Qing officials. Qishan warned Lin Zexu not to start a war against the foreigners. Another official Gong Zizhen who was prolifically anti opium, advised that if Lin should try to shut off the source of opium directly at Canton, then both the foreign and Chinese dealers might start a revolt and China might not have sufficient military power to control them both. He recommended a gradual approach, first take action to reduce imports and only against the Chinese merchants and consumers while simultaneously increasing the military defenses at canton. He argued that China's existing naval forces could not possibly match the British and that efforts should be made to increase coastal and inland defenses. With all that being complete, in time they would be able to shut off the foreign merchants completely. Enroute to Canton, Lin Zexu visited Bao Shichen a official who had written since the 1820's on the subject of shutting down foreign trade to prevent the drain of silver from china. Bao Shichen told him “to clear a muddy stream you must purify the source. To put a law into effect you must first create order within”. Lin Zexu took this to mean he should first begin arresting all the government officials who had violated the ban on opium. Then he must completely shut off the flow of foreign opium imports coming into Canton. Bao Shichen would later state that Lin Zexu misunderstood him completely and that shutting down foreign trade was too dangerous.    In March of 1839, Canton was anxious about Lin Zexu's arrival. Everyone knew the great powers invested upon him, but nobody knew how he would use them. He arrived on March 10th and immediately struck hard. He began with mass arrests of the known Chinese smugglers and put up proclamations announcing his mission was to destroy the opium trade in its entirety. He ordered marchants to abandon the trade and for users to hand over their pipes to be smashed. Thousands of pounds of opium and tens of thousands of pipes were confiscated. In 3 months after his arrival, he would arrest 5 times the amount of people that Deng Tingzhen had done in his 2 year reign. As things were going along successfully with the Chinese affairs, Lin Zexu then decided to address the foreign merchants. On march 18 he issued an edict ordering the British merchants to surrender all of their opium to him and gave them 3 days to comply. The Hong merchants as the traditional mediators between the foreigners and the Qing government bore the heaviest blame and Lin Zexu began interrogating them all. Many were brought before him on their knees under threat of execution if they should lie.    The foreign merchants initially made no efforts toward surrendering their opium, they all wanted to see how far Lin Zexu would actually go. Lin Zexu was not accustomed to being disobeyed and quickly lost his patience. By March 19 he announced that no foreign merchants would be allowed to leave the Canton factories until they gave up their opium and signed papers stating they would never trade the drug again in China under penalty of death. Boom. If they continued to defy him after the 3 day, he would execute Houqua and other Hong merchants on the morning of March 22. The Hong merchants all panicked and pleaded with the British merchants to help. The British caved in someone and agreed to hand over 1000 chests of opium on the morning of march 22. Word came that the amount of chests would not be enough and thus the British simply held back.    Houqua and some other Hong merchants were paraded around the Canton square with iron collars and chains. Lin Zexu threatened to execute them if British merchants did not hand over the opium, but the deadline had passed and many were suspicious if Lin Zexu was bluffing. One person who did not think Lin Zexu was bluffing was Elliot who was in Macao when he heard of the situation. Elliot feared the British merchants would all be put on trial and executed. Elliot resolved to save them by standing up to the imperial commissioner, but also while trying to appease him. Elliot wrote to Palmerston “to save the merchants a firm tone and attitude was all that he needed to efuse the unjust and menacing disposition of the Imperial commissioner, but that he would also appease him by using his best efforts for fulfilling the reasonable purpose of the Qing government”.    Elliot arrived at the Canton factories at sundown of March 24 in a rowboat in full captain's uniform with a cocked hat and his sword in hand. He proclaimed to the merchants “given the imminent hazard of life and property and the dark and violent natures of Lin Zexu's threats, they should begin immediate preparations to evacuate the Canton factories. If Lin Zexu refused to grant them passage from Canton to Macao within 3 days, Elliot would conclude that the Chinese intended to hold them hostage. So long as their proceedings were moderate, defensible and just I will remain with you to my last gulp!”. That night Lin Zexu ordered all the Chinese staff in the factories to leave. The cooks, linguists, porters, servants and such all packed up and left. Then Lin Zexu shut off all supplies from entering the factories and surrounded them with soldiers. The foreign factories had become a prison for roughly 350 people, not all of whom were British. There were Americans, Parsis, some Dutch alongside the British. Lin Zexu was careful to order all guards to not provoke nor molest the foreigners, he wanted everything to be peaceful. Nobody was going to starve however, provisions were plentiful in the factories, however the merchants found cooking for themselves disastrous. One report came from the Americans who said Robert Frobes attempt at ham and eggs came out a hard black mass approximating the sole of a shoe.    Elliot was terrified they were all going to starve or be executed. Elliot resolved that they had to cooperate with Lin Zexu and hand over all the opium for if they didn't, he feared they would all be executed. In the name of her majesty, Elliot ordered everyone to surrender the opium to him and in return he would sign a promissory note guaranteeing that the British government would pay them its fair market value. The offer seemed too good to be true to the merchants. The Qing authorities could at any moment seize all the opium by force and with it their tremendous losses. James Matheson said “our surrender is the most fortunate thing that could have happened”. Throughout the afternoon on march 27th, the merchants brought Elliot statements of the amount of opium under the control of their firms and he in turn signed notes of guarantee payments by the British government. All told the amount was 20, 283 chests with a market value of roughly 10 million dollars. There was one glaring problem with this solution, Elliot had absolutely no authority to do it.   Elliots decision would turn out to be the crux of many events to come. Elliot had no authority nor any instructions to do what he did. It seems in hindsight it was a rash decision made in panic. From Elliots point of view he had to immediately save the lives of the British subjects and the overall trade relations between Britain and China. After making the choice he wrote to Palmerston “I am without doubt, that the safety of a great mass of human life hung upon my determination”. All the merchants who went along with it knew full well Elliots did not have the authority to purchase 10 million dollars worth of opium on behalf of the Crown, but because he had been so ambiguous in the past about his authority, they could all play coy that they went along with it believing he did have the authority. The signed document would give them a strong case against the British government for compensation if and when it came to that. Facing the choice of having their contraband seized by Elliot or Lin Zexu, it was a no brainer they had better chances dealing with their own government to get reimbursement. Both Elliot and the traders assumed there would be a compensation of sorts and with it the termination of the Indian Chinese opium trade for good. They had no idea how events in Britain would unfold as a result of all of this.    And so Elliot wrote to Lin Zexu informing him he would be surrendering all of the opium, which would be the single largest seizure of opium recorded in Chinese history up to that point. Lin Zexu wrote to the emperor on april 12 1839 after the seizure detailing how enormous the success was. He got them to seize all the opium in a short time and they made little conflict over it, hell no military force was really necessary “naturally they were cowed into submission”. Lin Zexu recommended they show benevolence towards the foreigners, to forgive them of their past crimes and send them a large gift of livestock, since he imagined they were starving and they no longer had their trade to support them. Yet Lin Zexu did not immediately release them, Elliot was livid! Lin Zexu told Elliot they could only be granted to leave once ¾'s of the opium had been collected a process that would take weeks, possibly months. Elliot sent a secret dispatch to Palmerston begging him for a naval fleet “it appear to me, my lord, that the response to all these unjust violences should be made in the form of a swift and heavy blow, prefaced by one word of written communication”. Elliot further argued for naval blockade of Canton and the Yangtze River, the capture of Chusan island all followed up by a northern expedition to demand the “disgrace and punishment” of Lin Zexu and Deng Tingzhen. Emperor Daoguang should be forced to apologize for the “indignities heaped upon the Queen and to pay an indemnity to satisfy British losses. The Qing government must be made to understand its obligations to the rest of the world.    It would take 6 weeks for all the opium to be collected and the Qing officials expected the opium to be sold off to reimburse the countless Chinese traders that had lost out. Emperor Daoguang however ordered Lin Zexu to destroy it all, and that is just what he did. I would like to mention at this time, I covered what is to come, the first Opium war on my personal channel, its a 45 minute or so documentary so please check it out it would mean a lot to me. But what I also want to let you know is there was a British/Chinese movie made on the Opium war called…the Opium War haha, which came out in 1997. I won't sugar coat it, not a amazing film by any measure, but the scene where Lin Zexu destroys the opium is quite impressive and does more merit to the story then me narrating it, so check it out if you would like! Over the course of 3 weeks in June, Lin Zexu destroyed the opium at a specially built site near the Tiger's Mouth. An american missionary named Elijah Bridgeman witnessed it and there are artist renditions of the event. In rectangular pools around 7 feet deep the opium balls were crushed and tossed in. Chinese workers would stir the thick opium filled water into a froth then cover it all with lime and salt for a few days before casting it out to sea.   Lord Palmerston learnt of the confiscated opium from the traders themselves before Elliots letter arrived. The letter that informed Palmerston was from James Matheson who was launching a campaign to make the government pay up. Suddenly petitions from all the merchants poured into Palmerstons office. A bunch of drug dealers were shaking down the British government to pay for their lost drugs. There was another major problem, since march of 1839 all trade with China had halted and there was no way to tell when it would open back up. Ships full of cotton textiles were stuck at Macao and tea shipments were stuck in Whampoa. All the non opium traders were petitioning Britain to do something and fast. Collectively the domestic manufacturers of goods that went to Canton held significant political power, much greater than the opium claimants. They demanded “prompt, vigorous and decided measures to reopen Canton and put the regular China trade on a more secure and permanent basis”. What they wanted was a treaty, done via force if necessary.   William Jardine arrived in Britain in September right as the news from Canton was spilling in and began a lobbying campaign. For the british government the talk of the opium trade was embarrassing and they wished to make the entire matter disappear as quickly as possible. However the amount of money owed to the opium traders was enormous and the Treasury of England was in no state to compensate them. Palmerston was in a terrible situation and he brought the issue of China to a cabinet meeting at Windsor castle on October 1 of 1839. He was being bombarded by business lobbyists demanding action, Elliots letter pleading for help and the English press. Britain was involved in a war in the Ottoman Empire against Russia, with a dispute between Maine and New Brunswick and an invasion of Afghanistan thus all the ministers did not want to distract themselves too much with the China problem. Palmerston offered a quick solution, he tossed in front of the cabinet several maps of the Chinese coast and explained how a small British squadron could blockade China's crucial ports and rivers to force the Qing government into submission. The plan was almost identical to a plan formulated by James Matheson in 1836 after Napiers death. The Prime minister Lord Melbourne was not so much concerned with the military aspect of the plan, but how were they going to pay the 10 million to the opium merchants, they had no financial resources to spare. They did not want to take on anymore government debt, the debt was already high after the Napoleonic wars. Also it was going to look terrible bad that the British government was paying off drug dealers. Then the solution came, the brand new secretary at war, Thomas Macaulay made a suggestion to Palmerston, a rather out of the box idea. Why not make China pay for it all.   Palmerston put forward Macaulay's idea and the cabinet agreed boom. The matter was settled, a naval squadron, not too large would be dispatched to obtain reparation from China for Lin Zexu's taking of Elliot and the other British subjects hostage. On may 21st of 1839, Lin Zexu finally allowed the foreigners to leave Canton and Elliot ordered all British subjects to abandon the factories and go to macao. Despite this more tense events would follow.    In early July there was a drunken melee in Hong Kong harbor. The comprador of the British ship Carnatic was arrested and the sailors of the Carnatic demanded his return, but the Chinese refused. Thus 30 sailors on July 12th from the Carnatic and Mangalore, both ships owned by Jardine Matheson & Co went ashore and to the village of Jianshazui on the Kowloon Peninsula. They all proceed to get drunk off Samshu, a fortified rice wine and vandalized the local temple and beat to death a man named Lin Weixi. Elliot was livid when he heard the news, he was trying to bide time in the hopes Britain was sending reinforcements. He immediately tried to rush to Jianshazui to bribe the family of the victim, but the bribery was to no avail. When Lin Zexu heard of the affair he demanded that the culprits be handed over for Chinese justice. At this time Lin Zexu he had just received new regulations from the Emperor that formully mandated the death sentence for opium users in China and for the first time also for foreigners who sold opium.The British assumed it was a death sentence to give the men up. Lin also put up postings that if any Chinese killed a foreigner unjustly they would be executed. Instead of giving up the men, Elliot called for a court of inquiry and charged 5 British sailors with riot and assault, but brought no murder or manslaughter chrages. Lin Zexu accused the British of denying China's sovereignty by issuing a court of their own.   Elliot then invited Lin Zexu to send government officials to observe a new trial for the said sailors, but Lin Zexu refused and promulgated an edict that forbade anyone from giving food or water to all the British citizens in China under penalty of death. The situation was growing more and more tense and Lin Zexu tossed Elliot a rope. On August 17 he ordered Elliot to hand over the murderer without specifiyng the perpetrators identity. Thus the idea was that Elliot could simply send whomever he wanted and the matter could be settled. From Elliots point of view however, to handover any British citizen would cause an uproar back home and he refused to do so.     On August 24, an English passenger aboard a boat near Hong Kong was attacked at night. The Chinese stripped the man naked, cut off his ear and stuffed it in his mouth. Rumors began to spread that Lin Zexu was amassing thousands of soldiers to invade Macao. Then the Portuguese governor general of Macao, Don Adraio Accacio a Silveira Pinto told Elliot he had been ordered by the Chinese to expel the British from the colony. He also told Elliot that the Chinese were secretly forming a military force to seize all the British in Macao. That very same day 2 ships belonging to Jardine Matheson & Co arrived to Macao, the Harriet towing the Black Joke. Living up to its name, the Black Joke was covered in blood all over her decks and her crew was missing. The crew of the Harriet reported that unidentified Chinese had boarded the Black Joke as it passed the island of Lantao and massacred the entire crew except for a single sailor they had rescued. Governor Pinto was so alarmed by this development he simply ordered the British to leave immediately.   Elliot finally took action. Elliot ordered all the British women and children to depart aboard some merchant ships and sail to Hong Kong Island. With no more hostages at stake Elliot now felt free to make a counterattack if necessary, but for now he would bide his time hoping that Britain was sending a squadron. His hopes were raised when a warship from India arrived, the Volage which held 26 cannons, she also brought with her news that another warship, the Hyacinth and 18 gunner was on its way shortly. Thus Elliot and all the men boarded the ships and sailed to the Kowloon peninsula and set up a flotilla just above Hong Kong island.   Lin Zexu got a report of the exodus of Macao and felt he had finally won and wrote to Emperor Daoguang “no doubt they have on their ships a certain stock of dried provisions; but they will very soon find themselves without the heavy, greasy meat dishes for which they have such a passion”. On September 1 the Emperor sent Lin Zexu a letter asking if the rumors were true that the barbarians had purchased female children and used them in diabolical rites. Lin Zexu replied that the foreigners employed Chinese adults as plantation workers and miners and a few children, but he did not believe that any black magic was involved in their employment. The Emperor also asked if the confiscated opium contained human flesh which he theorized might explain the illicit drugs preternatural addictive powers. Lin had heard these ridiculous rumors before, but he could not contradict the Emperor as it amounted to Lese Majeste, so he replied that the opium may have contained flesh of crows that second handedly eat human flesh.   After dealing with the Emperor letters which said a lot about the perspective of Beijing on the matter, Lin went to Macao to thank the Portuguese governor for his help. Then Lin Zezu learnt of the British flotilla at Hong Kong. Lin Zexu began to issue orders forbidding the supply of food or water to British ships under the penalty of death. Again the Chinese staff were removed and Chinese war junks began to surround the kowloon peninsula and Hong Kong harbor. Signs were raised stating that the wells and streams had been poisoned.   Elliot tried one last ditch effort at diplomacy and took 3 ships, the 14 gun cutter Louisa, the 6 gun schooner Pearl and the 18 gun Volage to Kowloon to demand provisions. They soon ran into 3 anchored Chinese war junks who were blocking them from landing. Elliot sent an interpreter to demand they be allowed food and water. The Chinese captains refused to comply and Elliot said if they did not comply by 2pm that day he would be forced to bombard them. 2pm came with no indication of provisions being sent and no response from the Chinese. So Captain Henry Smith of the Volage fired on the nearest Chinese war junk and the first shot of the First Opium War had been made.   According to Adam Elmslie a young superintendent clerk was witnessed the event Henry Smith ordered the volley and “The Junks then triced up their Boarding nettings, and came into action with us at half pistol shot; our guns were well served with grape and round shot; the first shot we gave them they opened a tremendous and well directed fire upon us, from all their Guns (each Junk had 10 Guns, and they brought all these over on the side which we engaged them on) ... The Junk's fire, Thank God! was not enough depressed, or ... none would have lived to tell the Story.—19 of their Guns we received in [the] mainsail,—the first Broadside I can assure you was not pleasant.”   Thus the outdated cannons aboard the Chinese war junks were aimed too high completely missed all the British ships. The ships continued to exchange fire and the shore batteries opened fire to support the war junks. By 4:30pm the British had used up almost all their ammunition and made a getaway with the war junks in quik pursuit. Adam Elmslie had this to say when the fire fight recommenced.  “The junks immediately made sail after the Louisa and at 4:45 [pm] they came up with the English vessels. We hove the vessel in stays on their starboard Beam, and the 'Pearl' on the larboard [portside] Bow of the van Junk, and gave them three such Broadsides that it made every Rope in the vessel grin again.—We loaded with Grape the fourth time, and gave them gun for gun.—The shrieking on board was dreadful, but it did not frighten me; this is the very first day I ever shed human blood, and I hope it will be the last”. During the second engagement the Chinese war junks retreated to their previous positions and the 3 British ships returned to the flotilla causing a stalemate. The captains of the Chinese war junks sent word to Lin Zexu of a great naval victory over the British claiming to have sunk a number of enemy ships and inflicting 50 casualties. The truth was there were no British casualties and no ships sunk however, in fact the Chinese had 2 killed and 6 wounded. Captain Henry of the Volage bagged Elliot to let him attack the Chinese war junks near Hong Kong harbor certain of victory, but Elliot refused fearing the outbreak of a wider battle and wanting the foreign ministers approval first before escalating things anymore. Despite the reported victory of the Chinese war junks, food and water was sent to the British ships. Lin Zexu was facing a personal and painful problem, an excruciating hernia. Chinese doctors were trying to help him to no avail, so Lin Zexu visited the office of one Dr. Peter Parker, no not spiderman, this was a Yale educated missionary. Parker fitted Lin Zexu with a truss that helped with the pain. After this Lin Zexu began reviewing the military situation at hand, at this time he wrote a poem about the battle of Kowloon “A vast display of Imperial might had shaken all the foreign tribes/And if they now confess their guilt we shall not be too hard on them.”. The Chinese began to war game while at Hong Kong the Hyacinth arrived to reinforce Elliots Flotilla. Lin Zexu continued to demand the surrender of the sailors who killed Lin Weixi, but as time went on the anger caused by the event had dissipated. Then a sailor allegedly drown from one of Jardine Mathesons & Co's ships and the Chinese volunteered to let that dead sailor be identified as the murderer, case closed.  Yet trade between Britain and China did not resume and Lin Zexu kept demanding all those who wished to trade in China sign the contract promising not to deal opium under penalty of death. Elliot told the traders not to sign the waivers and to simply sit tight for the time being as he waited for a British fleet. Some of the traders undercut his orders however and went ahead and signed the waiver and thus were allowed to trade legal cargo. One of these traders was Captain Warner of the British cargo ship Thomas Coutts and Lin Zexu was so impressed by the man he asked him to take a letter back to Britain for Queen Victoria. The letter was a remarkably frank document that explained the situation in Canton. It described all the evils of the opium trade and how it was hurting China and the response the Qing government was making to the opium crisis. It also stipulated how they could amend the situation to get rid of the opium menace and resume legal trade. Captain Warner alleges he made good on the promise to bring the letter, first to Lord Palmerston, but his office refused to receive the letter, and there is little evidence Queen Victoria read the letter in question. The Times of London did publish the letter however, it seems Captain Warner must have simply given it to them in the end. When Lin Zexu found out another British warship had joined the Flotilla he took action. He suddenly proclaimed the corpse of the drowned sailor was no longer sufficient for the murder of Lin Weixi and renewed his demands for the murders to be handed over. Failure to comply would result in the expulsion of the entire British colony. In the fall of 1839, 38 British trading vessels and 28 trading companies aboard them remained in Hong Kong harbor. Elliot begged the governor of Macao to let them come back, but he refused fearing the Portuguese would be dragged into what looked like an impending war. Then on October 20th, Elliot received a letter from Palmerston informing him that early next summer, 16 British warships with 4000 men were enroute to rescue the flotilla and to sit tight. However in the meantime more captains were signing the waiver and at the end of October Lin Zexu ordered all British ships to leave within 3 days time. Elliot set sail aboard the Volage with Hyacinth backing him up, for the Bogue as the British called it, it is also known as the Humen, it is a narrow strait in the Pearl River Delta. When Elliots ships reached Chuanbi near the mouth of the river on November 2nd, they came face to face with a Chinese fleet consisting of 15 war junks and 14 fire ships commanded by an old and revered Admiral named Guan Tianpei. Elliots ships came to a halt when he ran into Guan's fleet and they began to exchange a series of messages trying to ferret out the intentions of the other. Guan threatened to seize either ship if it was holding the murderer of Lin Weixi “All I want is the murderous barbarian who killed Lin Weixi. As soon as a time is named when he will be given up, my ships will return into the Bogue. Otherwise, by no means whatsoever shall I accede”. Elliot failed to persuade Guan that he was no threat and the admiral fleet began to maneuver into a position to attack the 2 British Warships. As this was occurring, the Royal Saxon arrived on the scene on its way to Canton. Elliot was anxious to not allow another Captain to sign the opium waiver and fired a warning shot across the Royal Saxon's bows to prevent the ship from entering the river. Guan proceeded to anchor hit ships in between the British warships and the Royal Saxon. Captain Smith pleaded with Elliot to allow him to attack before it was too late and Elliot gave in. The 2 British warships closed in and began to fire their broadsides. The stationary guns aboard the Chinese war junks could not be aimed effectively and fired right over the British masts. One lucky British volley hit a war junks magazines causing it to explode tremendously and sink. This caused the Chinese captains to panic as the Volage continued to score hits at point blank range. 3 more junks were hit and sunk and some of the crews aboard other ships literally jumped overboard. The entire Chinese fleet baegan to scatter and flee, all except for one ship, Admiral Guan's which suicidally stayed to return fire. Guan's ship posed a minimal threat and Elliot impressed by the old Admiral's courage, ordered Smith to stop the barrage and allow the damaged flagship of Admiral Guan to sail off. The Chinese fleet had 1 junk exploded, 3 sunk, countless damaged and the Volage sustained light damage to its sails while Hyacinth's mast received a hit from a 12 pound cannon ball. 15 Chinese sailors were dead with 1 British wounded. The battle of Chuanbi was over and the way to Canton was now open. News of the sea battle reached England and the government remained in denial about the cause of the conflict IE: the opium trade. A group of lobbyists led by William Jardine began to pelt the British press to save the opium trade while simultaneously demanding the British government reimburse the opium merchants. Parliament began to debate how to go about the situation and there emerged an anti-war camp and a war camp. One anti war advocate, Sir William Ewart Gladstone said   “Does he [Macaulay] know that the opium smuggled intoChina comes exclusively from British ports, that is, from Bengal and through Bombay? That we require no preventive service to put down this illegal traffic? We have only to stop the sailing of the smuggling vessels…it is a matter of certainty that if we stopped the exportation of opium from Bengal and broke up the depot at Lintin [near Canton] and checked the cultivation of it in Malwa [an Indian province] and put a moral stigma on it, we should greatly cripple if not extinguish the trade in it. They [the Chinese government] gave you notice to abandon your contraband trade. When they found you would not do so they had the right to drive you from their coasts on account of your obstinacy in persisting with this infamous and atrocious traffic…justice, in my opinion, is with them [the Chinese]; and whilst they, the Pagans, the semi-civilized barbarians have it on their side, we, the enlightened and civilized Christians, are pursuing objects at variance both with justice and with religion…a war more unjust in its origin, a war calculated in its progress to cover this country with a permanent disgrace, I do not know and I have not read of. Now, under the auspices of the noble Lord [Macaulay], that flag is become a pirate flag, to protect an infamous traffic.” Palmerston blamed the purchasers of the opium and not the sellers and that the effect of halting the opium exports to China would just drive Turkey and Persia to sell it instead. “I wonderwhat the House would have said to me if I had come down to it with a large naval estimate for a number of revenue cruisers…for the purpose of preserving the morals of the Chinese people, who were disposed to buy what other people were disposed to sell them?”   After 3 days to debate the house of commons voted on April 9th of 1840 271 vs 262 to proceed for war. On 20 February 1840 Palmerston sent 2 letters, 1 to Elliot and 1 to Emperor Doaguang. The letter to the Emperor informed the Qing dynasty that Britain had already sent  a military expeditionary force to the Chinese coast. These measures of hostility on the part of Great Britain against China are not only justified, but even rendered absolutely necessary, by the outrages which have been committed by the Chinese Authorities against British officers and Subjects, and these hostilities will not cease, until a satisfactory arrangement shall have been made by the Chinese Government. Palmerston's letter to Elliot instructed him to set up a blockade of the Pearl River and forward the letter from Palmerston to Emperor Daoguang. After that Elliot was to capture the Chusan Islands, blockade the mouth of the Yangtze River, start negotiations with the Qing officials. Palmerston also issued a list of objectives that the British government wanted accomplished, with said objectives being Demand to be treated with the respect due to a royal envoy by the Qing authorities. Secure the right of the British superintendent to administer justice to British subjects in China. Seek recompense for destroyed British property. Gain most favoured trading status with the Chinese government. Request the right for foreigners to safely inhabit and own private property in China. Ensure that, if contraband is seized in accordance with Chinese law, no harm comes to the person(s) of British subjects carrying illicit goods in China. End the system by which British merchants are restricted to trading solely in Canton. Ask that the cities of Canton, Amoy, Shanghai, Ningpo, and the province of northern Formosa be freely opened to trade from all foreign powers. Secure island(s) along the Chinese coast that can be easily defended and provisioned, or exchange captured islands for favourable trading terms. It was left to Elliot as to how these objectives would be fulfilled, but noted that while negotiation would be a preferable outcome, he did not trust that diplomacy would succeed, writing; To sum up in a few words the result of this Instruction, you will see, from what I have stated, that the British Government demands from that of China satisfaction for the past and security for the future; and does not choose to trust to negotiation for obtaining either of these things; but has sent out a Naval and Military Force with orders to begin at once to take the Measures necessary for attaining the object in view.   And so because of a drug cartel, run by some ruthless characters like Jardine & Matheson, Britain choose to go to war with the Qing Dynasty and begun a century of humiliation for China. I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me.  The incorruptible Lin Zexu was the perfect man for the job of putting an end to the opium problem. However the nefarious opium dealers would not go down without a fight and in the end this all would result in the first opium war. Buckle up it's about to get messy.   

The First Opium War formally ended when Britain and China signed the Treaty of Nanking, the first of the ‘unequal ...

Michael is joined by Dr Keith Suter, Managing Director of the Global Directions Think Tank, on the 25th anniversary of the Hong Kong handover which formally passed authority over the colony of Hong Kong from the United Kingdom to the People's Republic of China. Hong Kong had been a colony of the British Empire since 1841, except for four years of Japanese occupation from 1941 to 1945. After the First Opium War, its territory was expanded on two occasions; in 1860 with the addition of Kowloon Peninsula and Stonecutters Island, and again in 1898, when Britain obtained a 99-year lease for the New Territories. At midnight on 1 July 1997, the event ended 156 years of British rule in the former colony.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Long Intro   China is one of the world's four ancient civilizations, alongside Mesopotamia, the Indus valley and Egypt. It has a written history dating as far back as the Shang Dynasty, that's around 1600 BC, over 3000 years ago! Now as you can also imagine  you are not getting the full rundown of the entire history of China, it's simply too immense for the overall story we are getting into. The story I want to tell has been termed by scholars, “the century of humiliation” dating 1839 until 1949. During this period China or better called the Qing Dynasty and later Republic of China faced terrible and humiliating subjugation by Western powers and the Empire of Japan.The story we are going to begin today is one of pain and hardship, but it is also a tale of endurance and resilience that created the China we see today.    This is the Fall and Rise of China Podcast I am going to let you in on a little secret, I myself am quite new to the vast history of China. As some of you listeners might already know, I am the writer and narrator of the Pacific War Podcast week by week. I specialize in the Pacific War and Japanese history and I ventured into a journey to explain everything that is the Pacific War of 1937-1945 when I began my personal Channel called the Pacific War Channel on Youtube. Yet when I sat down to begin writing about the history of Tokugawa Japan and how Japan would find itself on a path towards virtual oblivion, I thought to myself, well what about China? This is when I fell down a rabbit hole that is 19th century China. I immediately fell in love with it. I am a westerner, a Canadian, this was knowledge not usually told on my side of the world. So I thought, what are the most important events that made the China we see emerging during the Pacific War, or to be more accurate the Second Sino-Japanese War? I fell upon the first opium war, by the time I read a few books on that, it was the second opium war, then the Taiping Rebellion, the Nian Rebellion, the Boxer rebellion, the list goes on and on. 19th Century China is one of the most fascinating albeit traumatic episodes of human history and has everything to do with the formation of the China we see today. The term a century of humiliation or 100 years of humiliation is how many Chinese historians describe the time period between the First Opium War and the end of the Chinese Civil War. I do not speak the language nor have a full understanding of the culture, I am a lifelong learner and continue to educate myself on the history of one of the most ancient peoples of our world. This will be a long and honestly difficult story to tell, but I welcome you to join me on this journey.   Stating all that I want to begin our journey explaining how the Ming Dynasty fell and the Qing Dynasty rose up.  This episode is the rise of Nurhaci Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on world war two and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War.   The Ming-Qing transition is a story filled with drama and corruption, heroes and villains, traitors and martyrs. Peasant rebellions, corrupt politicians and terrifying invaders would eventually collapse what was the Ming dynasty.   The Ming Dynasty was the ruling dynasty of China between 1368 and 1644. It would be the last dynasty to be ruled by Han Chinese. They had overthrown the Mongol led Yuan dynasty of 1271-1368 which fell for a plethora of reasons such as class conflict caused by heavy taxation and ethnic conflicts. During the entire history of China, there is always room for rebellions, and quite a number of Han revolts would occur such as the Red Turban rebellion beginning in 1351. Now amongst these many rebellions taking place there was Zhu Yuanzhang a man born into a impoverished peasant family in Zhongli county, present day Fengyang of Anhui Province. He had 7 older siblings, of which several were sold off by his parents because there was not enough food to go around. When he was 16, a severe drought ruined his family's harvest and this was accompanied by a plague that took the lives of both his parents and all his siblings, save for one brother.  Around this time the Yellow River dykes had flooded causing a widespread famine. More than 7 million people would starve as a result of the drought and famine in central and northern China. The now orphan Zhu would then dedicate his life to become a buddhist monk at the Huangjue Monastery near Fenyang to avoid starvation, which was a common practice of the poor. Then the monastery where he lived was destroyed by an army suppressing a rebellion. I would say enough had been enough for Zhu because this prompted him in 1352 to join a local rebel group associated with the White Lotus Society against the Yuan Dynasty. So he began to live a life as a bandit, stealing from the rich and giving to the poor as it's said. The leader of the rebel group was a man named Guo Zixing who led an attack to capture Haozhou. Zuo became his second in command and took on the name Zhu Yuanzhang. Guo quickly began to see the rising star that was Zhu as a rival, but would eventually die in 1355, leaving Zhu to take leadership of the rebel army. Zhu attacked and captured towns and cities in eastern China and as Zhu did this he also found scholars who could educate him. This allowed Zhu to learn the principles of good governance and soon his abilities were beginning to show. This local rebel group in turn eventually joined the larger Red Turban Army rebels against the Yuan Dynasty. Eventually young Zhu rose through the ranks and would emerge the leader of the rebellion. Zhu early on ordered the scholars in his ranks to portray him as a national leader against the Mongols rathan that just a popular rebel.  In 1356 Zhu's forces captured the strategic city of Nanjing which would become the future capital of the Ming Dynasty. Zhu would then emerge as the national leader against the Mongols, though he had rivals such as Chen Youliang based in Wuchang and Zhang Shicheng based in Pingjiang. Both rivals declared themselves leaders of new dynasties, Chen as emperor of the Han dynasty, Zhang as a prince of the Zhou dynasty. Zhu managed to defeat Chen's naval forces at Lake Poyang in 1363 and Chen would die with the destruction of that fleet. With the conquest of Chen's holdings at Wuhang, Hubei, Hunan and Jiangxi, Zhu soon proclaimed himself a Prince of Wu. Then Zhu was able to capture Zhang Shicheng who committed suicide, after this many rebel groups fell into submission. After continuing the fight against the Yuan and other warlords until 1368 when he then proclaimed himself emperor of the Ming Dynasty adopting the name Hongwu meaning “vastly martial”, though he is more correctly referred to as the Taizu emperor.    Emperor Hongwu sent out his armies to conquer the north while provinces in China submitted to his rule. The northwest was first to fall, followed by the southwest and by 1382 unification would be complete. Under his rule, the Mongol bureaucracy that had dominated the Yuan dynasty were replaced with Han Chinese officials. He re-instituted the imperial Examination, something that had roots going as far back as the Three Kingdoms period. He began major projects such as a long city wall around Nanjing. Now Hongwu was a very paranoid, cruel and even irrational ruler and this would increase as he aged. Upon taking power he immediately transformed the palace guards into a quasi secret police force and began a massive campaign to root out anyone who might threaten his authority. Hongwu set his secret police to work which resulted in a 14 year campaign of terror. In 1380, the prime minister Hu Weiyong was found to be plotting a coup to take the throne, he would be executed alongside 30,000 or so officials. Hongwu would abolish the prime minister and chancellor roles in government. Yet this did not satisfy him and 2 subsequent campaigns would occur resulting in the killing of 70,000 other people ranging from government officials all the way down to servants, your typical new emperor stuff.    Emperor Hongwu began a process of stationing members of his royal family all across the empire. He did after all have 26 sons, wow, and those who survived long enough became princes and were assigned a territory and military to rule. This system he built up would have some dire consequences down the road. Now just because Hongwu had overthrown the Mongol led Yuan dynasty and drove them up north, but this did not mean they were gone. Zhu envisioned early into his reign a border policy where mobile armies along the northern frontier would guard against the Mongol threat. Adding to this he wanted 8 outer garrisons near the steppe and a system of forts and other defensive structures. The inner line of this defense would end up being the  Ming Great Wall, part of the Great Wall of China. Manchuria and parts of outer mongolia remained under the control of Mongols and they held what is called the Northern Yuan dynasty. They too would be conquered by Hongwu's forces and after the emperor's death would be “complacent”, though they would claim to still be the legitimate heirs to the throne. Speaking of heirs to the throne, Hongwu would eventually die and he was succeeded by his 15 year old grandson Zhu Yunwen who would take up the title Jianwen Emperor in 1398.    Now Hongwu had chosen Zhu Yunwen to succeed him, but as is common throughout history, there would be someone else who would vie for the position. Now following somewhat in his grandfather's footsteps, the Jianwen Emperor began his emperorship by trying to limit the power of those who could threaten him, IE: his family. One of the first edicts he would make was for his uncles to remain in their respective territories, while he simultaneously began to effectively reduce their military capabilities. The first uncle he threw proposals at held the largest territory and most powerful military, he was Zhu Di the Prince of Yan and he simply refused the proposals. Then Jianwen arrested one uncle on treason charges, stripped his family of their royal status and exiled them. Jianwen followed this up by doing the same thing to 4 more uncles. Well as you can imagine a rift began to emerge between the families being targeted and that of Jianwen, so the Prince of Yan, Zhu Di who was the eldest surviving uncle and had the most formidable military assumed leadership amongst the targeted families. This prompted Jianwan to appoint several officials to go to current day Beijing where Zhu Di was stationed to stop his uncle from allegedly planning a coup. Zhu Di feinted being ill to illude the officials, but they reported back to the Emperor they thought a coup was about to occur. Thus the emperor gave the order to arrest his uncle at court, but a official at court leaked this information to Zhu Di.   Zhu Di soon began a rebellion against his nephew which led to a 3 year civil war (also known as the Jingnan Rebellion). This all cultivated in the end with Zhu Di personally leading his forces to take the imperial palace in Nanjing. Allegedly, Emperor Jianwen set the imperial palace on fire in his own despair. His body was never located and it is alleged he may have made an escape and went into exile. Zhu Di regardless held a imperial funeral for his nephew and was crowned the new Yongle Emperor which means “perpetual happiness”.    The Reign of Yongle is considered a second founding of the Ming Dynasty because of the enormous amount of achievements made. Nanjing was demoted to a secondary capital and now Beijing was made the main one. Yongle began the construction of the Imperial City and Forbidden City employing hundreds of thousands of workers. He decided to build a treasure fleet in 1403 and from 1405 to 1433 there were 7 maritime expeditions undertaken by the Ming treasure fleet. The ambitious project resulted in the construction of upto almost 3000 ships and expanded the Chinese tributary system to other countries as far as India, the Persian Gulf and east coast of Africa. An entire podcast could be dedicated to the Ming treasure voyages alone.   Yongle would stage 5 giant campaigns against the Mongols and Oirats north of the Great Wall which in turn would lead to more building up of the Great Wall of China throughout the 15th to 16th century. Indeed Emperor Yongle's efforts allowed the empire to be stable and prosperous for a century before it began to weaken. After Yongle the 6th & 8th Emperor of the Ming Dynasty, Emperor Zhengtong and yes you heard that right 6th and 8th allow me to explain. Emperor Zhengtong was encouraged by an influential court eunuch named Wang Zhen to lead a force personally to face off against the Oirats of the Northern Yuan dynasty leaving his half-brother Zhu Qiyu in charge temporarily. The Oirats had begun a 3 pronged invasion of the Ming dynasty At the age of 21, Emperor Zhengtong personally led the battle of Tumu Fortress against the Oirat leader, Esen Taishi. He lost one of the most humiliating battles in Chinese history, some rather ridiculous sources state half a million Ming forces fell to a Oirat cavalry force of just 20,000. Zhengtong was captured by Esen Taishi and held for ransom leading to what is called the Tumu Crisis. In the meantime his brother took the throne as the Jingtai Emperor. Zhengtong would eventually be released in the year of 1450 and return home, only to be put under immediate house arrest by the Jingtai Emperor for 7 years. Jingtai would be succeeded by Zhengtons son as the Chenghua Emperor, but Jingtai stripped him of his royal title and installed his own son as heir. That son died and the Jingtai Emperor would follow soon as the former Zhengtong Emperor led a palace coup against him. The Zhengtong emperor seized the throne and changed his regnal name to Tianshun meaning “obedience to Heaven”, then he demoted Jingtai to the status of a Prince and ruled for around 7 years. So yeah that's how you become Emperor twice apparently.    The Ming Dynasty was a very impressive empire and would be one of the most stable and longest ruling periods in Chinese history. Many enormous achievements were made by the Ming, as I mentioned they built up a large part of the Great Wall of China, the Forbidden City and led 7 massive voyages with the treasure fleet, but there was much much more. They created woodblock color printing and China's first metal movable type printing created by the Ming scholar Hua Sui in 1490. The first book printed using the technique was Zhu Chen Zou Yi. Alongside that the most comprehensible medical book ever written by Li Shizhen in 1578 about traditional Chinese Medicine, Compendium of Materia Medica (Bencao Gangmu). Another book was published during the Ming period and was called “Journey to the West” in 1592 by Wu Cheng'en and is considered one of the 4 great classical novels of Chinese literature. It built upon the accounts of the pilgrimage of the Tang Dynasty's Buddhist monk Xuanzang who traveled to Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent searching for sutras.   The economy of the Ming Dynasty was the largest in the world, following in the steps of the Han and Song periods to become known as one of China's 3 golden ages. With a massive agricultural surplus, porcelain goods and silk led to silver pouring into China. Speaking of porcelain it was one of the most loved exports of the Ming as they had perfected the technique built up during the Tang Dynasty. The blue and white porcelain became extremely popular in Europe. Speaking of Europe, while the Ming made such incredible achievements, one department they did less well in seems to be in terms of scientific discovery. The Ming Dynasty was characterized to be generally conservative and very inward looking, hard to blame them though when they were basically one of if not the pillars of the world. The west and east were not as isolated as one would think and the Ming by no means opened any relatively new relations with the west. For example there is evidence to support that Roman merchants during the reign of Marcus Aurelius had ventured as far as the Han capital city of Luoyang. Yet it would only be much later in history when one particular group made some waves in Ming China and that would be the Portuguese in the 16th century. The first to land on Lintin Island in May of 1513 was the Portuguese explorer Jorge Alvares which was the first time Europeans made contact with China via the sea route around the Cape of Good Hope. Then in 1516, the cousin of the famous Christopher Columbus, Rafael Perestrello became the first known European explorer to land by sea and trade in Guangzhou. The Portuguese would follow this up by attempting an inland delegation in the name of Manuel 1st of Portugal to the court of the Zhengde Emperor. Unfortunately for them the Zhengde Emperor would die in 1521 as they awaited an audience and they ended up being quasi blamed for the Emperor's death and would all be imprisoned for life. Rather hilariously one Simao de Andrade, the brother to the ambassador sent as a delegation, began to rile up the Chinese belief that the Portuguese were trying to kidnap Chinese children, allegedly to cook and eat them. There has been speculations this was all based on the idea Simao was purchasing and or kidnapping chinese children to take them as slaves. Well one thing led to another and the Ming Dynasty found itself enveloped in a small naval battle with the Portuguese naval force of Diogo Calvoin 1521. The Naval battle of Tunmen was the result of the Portuguese sailing up the river to Guangzhou without permission. Allegedly the Portuguese gave a cannon salute when they reached Guangzhou and this friendly gesture was quite alarming to the locals. Well while things were pretty cool for a bit, but then the delegation situation had gone sour at roughly and an edict was made to evict the Portuguese too which the Portuguese refused to comply with. The Portuguese cannons had superior range, but they were easily surrounded by a hoard of ships and the 5 Caravels were forced to use some bad weather to their advantage to flee the scene. By the way the slave purchasing / child kidnapper Simao continued for decades to do business in Xiamen and Ningbo. Eventually he ran into some trouble when he did what he did best, steal children and the locals banded together to slaughter him and those working with him.   Despite this, let's call it minor setback, the Portuguese continued to do limited trade along the Fujian coastline with the help of some rather corrupt local Ming merchants. By 1529 the Portuguese were sending annual trade missions to Shangchuan Island and by the 1550's the Portuguese established firmer feat in Macau where they established a trade colony. The Portuguese even began to help the Chinese fight off the hundreds of pirate ships running havok in the area. They then followed this up by fighting off the Dutch later in the 17th century. This of course would not stop the great Dutch maritime empire from eventually taking over, though the Portuguese found a very lucrative business in becoming middle men when the Japanese were banned from trade with China. The Portuguese would take Chinese silk, hock it for Japanese silver and presto, quite a good hussle.    Things were looking good for the Ming dynasty, but troubles loomed around every corner. One of those corners we hinted to just a bit, that being the Japanese. Japan had stopped sending tribute missions to China in 838 when it was the Tang Dynasty. 6 centuries later, between 1403-1547 the Ming Dynasty was quite powerful and the Japanese shogunate was relatively weak. The founder of the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang demanded Japan resume its tributary relationship with China if Japan wanted to trade with China. Japan agreed to recommence the tributary relationship with China believing that the trade would be beneficial and that China's recognition of the shogun as a partner would help to strengthen the shogunate. Thus the tributary relationship continued as of 1403 and it would be almost a century until Japan abandoned it again.   Speaking of Japan, by 1590, Japan's Warring states struggles came to an end when Toyotomi Hideoyosih emerged victorious and unified the nation. Yet soon the ailing leader of Japan, for a platitude of reasons decided to try and invade the Ming Dynasty, but to do so he would need to go through Korea. Historians argue one of the main reasons for the invasion of Korea was so Hideyoshi could keep his troops occupied as he may have feared them returning home would result in another domestic conflict. Hideyoshi did not study his enemy nor the territory his forces would be fighting upon. It really seemed Hideyoshi was in afit of egomania after unifying Japan and became convinced he would be able to conquer China. Now I cannot go into what is collectively known as the Imjin War of 1592-1598, but if you are interested you can check out King's and Generals over at Youtube where they have a few episodes on the event including: Imjin War: Beginning of the Japanese invasion of Korea / Imjin War: Rise of admiral Yi Sun-sin / Noryang Straits 1598.    What you need to know is that Hideyoshi asked, or rather ordered the Joseon Dynasty to allow his forces safe passage to go and invade their allies and protector, the Ming Dynasty. The Koreans gave a prompt no and did not stop Hideyoshi from transporting around 160,000 warriors to Pusan with the intention of marching them through Korea, then Manchuria and straight towards Beijing. This all would see Japan invading and fighting against the Joseon and Ming forces in 2 separate campaigns. Now initially the war went quite well for the Japanese, the Koreans were not prepared and the few thousand Chinese troops dispatched to help them, got stomped around the Yalu river. Well the Ming Emperor Wanli, surprised by the failure of his forces, decided to toss a much larger number of men, very much to the shock of the Japanese. The combined forces of the Ming and Joseon dynasty managed to push the Japanese out of the Korean peninsula. A cool fact of this war by the way was how the Koreans designed these armored warships known as turtle ships which held a ton of firepower. The turtle ships under the command of Admiral Yi Sun-sin out maneuvered the Japanese ships and decimated them, thus thwarting the Japanese from sending anymore troopships over to Korea. In the end the Ming Dynasty had quelled the Japanese challenge at their status as the supreme military power in East Asia and also affirmed that the Ming were willing to protect their tributary states like the Joseon Dynasty.  The Japanese by some estimates lost ⅓ their troops during the first year of the war. The cost of the war came at a steep price, it is estimated around 250-300 thousand died, perhaps 100,000 Japanese, 185,000 Koreans and 29,000 Chinese. And while that is truly horrible, the monetary costs were also quite steep, estimates put it in the range of up to 26,000,000 ounces of silver for the Ming Dynasty. Overall the war was a lose-lose situation for Japan, China and Korea. Yet it seems this war had a side effect that would prove to be one of the many nails that would be smashed into what was to become the Ming Dynasty's coffin. For while this venture played out down south in Korea, its effects rippled back all the way up to the Ming Dynasty's northern realm.   During this time period there were 3 major Jurchen tribes, the Wild Jurchens who lived in the most northern part of Manchuria. The Haixi Jurchens, who lived along the Haixi river and the Jianzhou Jurchen, who lives along the Mudan River in the region of Changbaishan. Jerchen by the way is something like a collective name for these people, their ancestors went by another name, the Manchu. They were semi-nomadic people and  heavily influenced by their neighboring Mongols. A Jianzhou Jurchen named Nurhaci had lost both his father Taksi and grandfather Giocangga, when a rival Jurchen chieftain named Nikan Wailan attacked them at Gure in 1582. Nurhaci demanded that the Ming hand over Nikan Wailan to him for execution, but they refused and went as far as considering to declare Nikan Wailan as new Khan of all the Jurchens, believing this would keep them all divided. It goes without saying Nikan Wailan forces were supported by the Ming. The Ming were utilizing the same strategy that had been done since the ancient times to deal with the peoples of the steppe, foster rivalries amongst the tribes and keep them disunified.    It is said that Nurhaci was a gifted mounted archer from youth, could speak multiple languages, and loved to read Chinese literature such as Shuihu Zhuan “water margin” and Sanguo Yanyi “romance of the 3 kingdoms”.  At the age of 25 Nurhaci avenged his father and grandfather's deaths by defeating Nikan Wailan in battle in 1587 sending him fleeing to the Ming for protection. The Ming would eventually execute him years later, but this would not satisfy Nurhaci. In 1589 the Ming Dynasty appointed Nurhaci as the Paramount Chieftain of the Yalu Region. It seems the Ming Dynasty believed that Nurhaci's tribe was too weak to unify the other tribes and become a threat to them, thus fulfilling their strategy of keeping them disunified.  Then Nurhaci managed to defeat a coalition of over 9 rival tribes, one of which was the Yehe tribe during the battle of Gure. In 1591, Nurhaci had consolidated a large swathe of territory stretching from Fushun to the Yalu River and this provoked the Yehe tribes who sent a force of over 30,000 against him. Nurhaci's men were able to turn back the Yehe menace and while Nurhaci continued to rally tribes under his command,  the Imjin War began.   As the Japanese were invading Korea, the rising Jurchen leader had some limited engagements against the Japanese along the border of Korea and Manchuria. This led Nurhaci to offer assistance to the Ming and Joseon dynasties for the Imjin War effort. But both the Ming and Joseon dynasty's would refuse his offer however, especially the Joseon who stated “to accept such assistance from northern barbarians would be disgraceful”. Now the Imjin War indirectly weakened the Ming Dynasty's position in Manchuria and gave the now rather insulted Jurchen leader Nurhaci an opportunity to expand his influence and territory. Nurhaci began to conquer and consolidate the unrelated tribes surrounding Manchuria. In 1599 Nurhaci had his trusted scholar Erdeni create a system of writing using the traditional Mongolian alphabet that laid out the foundation of what would become the Manchu alphabet. The Manchu as a people by the way are hard to really define and have been referred to as simply Jurchens, Tatars given who is speaking about them and what time period it is. In reality the Manchu is a rather broad umbrella for a few different groups of people in the large area of Manchuria and the term Manchu was chosen specially to create a sort of legitimate ancestry by those who eventually would bear its name.   In 1601 Nurhaci began to develop the Manchu military which became the banner system later on seen in the Qing dynasty. The banners derived from the niru “arrow” , a designation for a small Jurchen hunting band. This led to the organization of cavalry and infantry companies of around 300 men with subdivisions of 75. These units eventually evolved into differing banners, yellow, white, red and blue at first, then this increased to a total of 8 later on. If you have never seen the 8 banner army uniforms from the late Qing Dynasty, I highly recommend googling it. Absolutely awesome to see, unique colors for the armor and everything. Now the banner system was not purely military, it also became the established social hierarchy of what was to be a new state. Its important to note during his unifying efforts, Nurhaci also acquired a vast amount of Han Chinese defectors and with them Ming knowledge and technology such as firearms. A lot of these Han Chinese  would be married to Manchu women to form marriage alliances.The idea behind it was to take the tribe system and use it as building blocks for a military bureaucracy. This in turn also acted as a method of creating an administrative structure of the future Manchu people. Nurhaci built up his new empire's economy via mining and trade and managed to accumulate a lot of silver from tributary missions to the Ming Dynasty.    In 1607 Nurhaci declared himself the Kundulun Khan over what he proclaimed to be the Jin State, named after the former Jurchen led Great Jin Dynasty. Now this was also done to assert divine lineage to the Jin Dynasty of the 12th century and in some ways was an implied challenge towards the Ming Dynasty. Indeed, Nurhaci even began to publicly refer to the Ming Dynasty as merely the “Southern Dynasty”, implying equality with his new state. So it seems the Ming Dynasty had greatly miscalculated Nurhaci and now they had quite a threat bearing down upon them. In 1610 Nurhaci broke relations with the Ming imperial court and in 1618 he demanded they pay him tribute and sent them what is legendary known as the “seven grievances”. This was a list of 7 terrible acts the Ming Dynasty had performed against Nurhaci personally and that of the Manchu people, basically a highlight reel of everything they did to try and stop the tribes from unifying. Smack dab as number 1 by the way was supporting the man who killed Nurhaci's father and grandfather. The seven grievances also acted as a formal declaration of war against the Ming Dynasty. To think one day your financing the murder of some small tribal leaders, next thing you know their offspring has raised a new national peoples to take you out?    A confederacy of Jurchen tribes referred to as the Hulun tribes gradually began to recognize Nurhaci's authority, but some took more convincing so to say. The Jurchen tribes of the Hada, Hoifa, Ula were all defeated and assimilated by 1613, but then there remained one last Jurchen tribe that would not submit and it was one of the most formidable, the Yehe. In 1618 the Yehe leader Gintaisi united with the Ming Dynasty to combat the newly emerged threat that was Nurhaci.    As it would turn out, the flashpoint for the conflict that would ultimately lead to the downfall of the Ming Dynasty would occur at a frontier town in the northeast. The town held one of the 18 key fortresses established by the founder of the Ming, Emperor Hongwu. The first official battle with the Ming Dynasty would occur in Fushun. Fushun was located on the Hun River just east of Shenyang. Nurhaci sent a letter to the Yehe at Fushun stating “If there is a battle then the arrows shot by our soldiers will strike all in sight. If you are hit, you will surely die. Your strength cannot withstand. Even though you die in battle, there is no profit. If you come out and surrender, our soldiers will not enter the city. The soldiers attached to you will be given complete protection. But suppose our soldiers do attack and enter. The old and young inside the city will surely be in jeopardy, your official salaries will be taken away and your ranks will soon be reduced [for losing the battle]... If you submit without fighting I will not change your great doro (guiding principles; Ch., li yi) at all. I will let you live just as you did before. I will promote not only the people with great knowledge and foresight but also many other people, give them daughters in marriage and care for them. I will give you a higher position than you have and treat you like one of my officials of the first degree”.    In addition to being the first official military challenge to the Ming Authority, Fushun was connected to Nurhaci's strategy of assimilating the remaining rival Jurchen tribes such as the Haixi. Fushun also happened to be quite isolated and not as well-protected as the other great fortress cities. Commanding the defenses of Fushun was Li Yong Fang who had around 1200 men under him. Nurhaci would throw 20,000 at the city, but before he did this he sent around 50 men disguised as horse traders into the city. These 50 infiltrators opened the gates to Nurhaci's men who soon poured in. Li Yongfangs was horrified by the scene as several of his subordinates rushed to give their lives facing the invaders. Li Yongfang was captured and brought before Nurhaci who said to him “I know you are a man of many talents and have had many experiences and my state is in search of talent, as we are lacking in capable officials and are looking to employ capable generals. What purpose will your death serve? But if you surrender, you and all you soldiers will be safe”. Li Yong fang agreed to surrender if the people would be spared. Nurhaci honored this promise, in the end around 590 Ming soldiers died during the attack. Li Yongfang soon became a general under Nurhaci and even married one of his granddaughters. Li Yongfang became the first prominent Ming commander to defect and this would set a precedent for many many more. A large reason Ming officials like Li Yongfang defected was because they were not going to be forced to give up their own culture and customs.   After capturing the Fortress of Fushun, Nurhaci left 4000 men to guard it and now turned his attention to another fortress in Qinghecheng or known simply as Qinghe. The outraged Ming Court did not waste any time sending a counter attack to take back Fushun. The Ming dispatched commander Zhang Chengyin with 10,000 men to recapture the city. Zhang led the men and besieged the city, digging trenches and raining hell upon its walls using cannon and firearms. Nurhaci's sons Hung Taiji and Daisan took the force of 4000 men outside the city and to the shock of the besiegers charged directly upon them. It is estimated only 20% of the Ming force survived this devastating attack, and the rest fled or were captured.   The Ming Court was stunned by the loss of Fushun and knew it was not the only Fortress that would be attacked. Thus they dispatched an expeditionary force of 5000 men with 2 commanders, Li Rubai, the commander of Liaodong and Yang Hao the Military affairs commissioner to support the region, beginning with Qinghe. Both men were personally liked by Emperor Wanli, but both also had undergone scandals during the Imjin War when they messed up during a siege battle. With the new reinforcements brought over by the 2 commanders, Qinghe now had a garrison 6400 strong. Before leaving to help other areas, Yang Hao advised the commander of the Qinghe fortress, Zou Chuxian that he should lay an ambush out for the invaders, perhaps in the mountain pass nearby where they could take advantage of Ming firearms. Zou did not heed this and opted instead to remain within the fortress.   The reinforcing of the Qinghe fortress would prove to be fruitless. The defenders fired their cannons, hurled large boulders and logs and tossed hot oil all inflicting heavy casualties upon Nurhaci's men, but despite all of this the besiegers were able to take a corner wall as the defenders were busy loading their cannons. The siege quickly turned into bloody street to street fighting and with it the complete slaughter of the city's forces. Zou and his subordinates perished alongside most within the city. This prompted the Ming court to place a price over Nurhaci's head, 10,000 taels of silver. It is apparent, the Ming were not prepared to face the challenge pressed upon them by someone like Nurhaci. They had failed to anticipate Nurhaci's state-building efforts and now the fruits of his work were bearing witness.   With the fall of Qinghe and the surrounding towns, the Ming Court now dispatched a large force of 100,000 men to attack Nurhaci's forces. Yang Hao formulated the strategy for the grand operation, they would divide into 4 groups of around 30,000 men each and approach Nurhaci's stronghold of Hetu Ala from 4 different directions and surround it. Ma Lin would lead the northern group coming from Kaiyuan. Du Song from the west coming from Fushun. Li Rubo would come from southwest through the Yau Pass. Last, Liu Ting (also known as Big Sword Liu) would come from the Southeast from Kuandian supported by a 13,000 strong Joseon Dynasty Expeditionary force commanded by Gang Hong-rip. Despite all the planning, Yang Hao did not believe their forces had adequate training nor the supplies for the venture.    It is estimated that Nurhaci had around 60,000 men at this time. Nurhaci also had amazing scouts that provided him with great intelligence of the Ming plans and he decided the best course of action was to concentrate all of his forces together and pick off each Ming group one by one. Thus he sent small detachments of around 500 men each to intercept Liu Tin, Ma Lin and Li Rubo to misdirect them, while he would take the main force and smash Du Song, whom he deemed the greatest threat out of the 4 groups. To beat Du Song, Nurhaci snuck 15,000 of his men in the forested mountains near Sarhu for an ambush.   Du Song's force of around 30,000 set forth from Fushun which they had recently recaptured with ease as it was left undefended. Du Song was frustrated by this and wanted to face the enemy and finally found them when he came across the Hun River and saw a Jin force on the other side.    Du Song took 10,000 of his men to cross the river and attack, so that a beachhead could be formed and thus providing adequate room for a safe transfer of the rest of his forces and equipment. So he left behind the other 20,000 men with the war equipment who would follow them once the Jin force were pushed back. When Du Song's men were halfway across the river, Nurhaci sprung a trap. It turns out Nurhaci had ordered his forces to prepare the breaking of dams, and at the moment Du Song's 10,000 men got half way in, well they broke them. The Ming forces in disarray had to flee back from the raging water, abandoning a ton of their equipment. Now Du Song's force had to go from offense to defense, erecting 2 camps on the opposite side of the river frantically.  Those troops Nurhaci snuck in the forested mountains then came down upon the camp that held Du Song  and Nurhaci himself personally led 6 banners to attack the camp as well.   Nurhaci's forces much like that of Ghenghis Khan's, came in with horse backed archers to pelt the defenders. The Ming Musketeers divided themselves into 2-3 rows, taking turns to fire their guns and reload, known as “repeated fire”, basically a more rustic version of what you see during something like the revolutionary wars of America. Some of theses guns by the way are known as Zhuifeng Qiang “windchasing” guns. They are around 5 feet long and shoot fairly large lead bullets. With one of these you can probably hit something within 40 feet away effectively. So you must be thinking, well the Ming Musketeers must have shot the Jin cavalry up like a turkey shoot, but you would be wrong. Interesting little side note here, the bow and arrow historically has trumped firearms honestly until the invention of the repeating rifle and revolver. If you know something about the Aboriginal wars in the America's, it was this innovation that finally allowed militaries to defeat peoples like the Comanche. Until those were invented, horseback archers would be able to get off far too many shots by the time people using firearms could shoot and reload. And thats basically what happened, Nurhaci's horseback archers pelted the Ming Musketeers and began flanking them, until they began to break formation and soon fled. After this Nurhaci besieged the other camp at Jilin Cliff. Soon the Jin's had surrounded the force there and Du Song alongside 2 other generals were killed during the slaughter. It was said that “corpses piled up like a mountain and the fields were drenched in blood”.   Upon hearing that Nurhaci had annihilated the force under Du Song, the inbound force led by Ma Lin coming from a northern position chose to be much more cautious. Ma Lin's 30,000 men soon found the fleeing remnants of Du Song's force and quickly incorporated them into his own force. He then formed 3 camps at Xiangjiayan and fortified them with trenches and cannons. Nurhaci's sent a 1000 men to prod the defenses of the main camp that held Ma Lin's command and also to draw its attention. The 1000 men dismounted and moved forward cautiously, drawing the Ming gunfire their way.   Once Nurhaci had a good idea of the layout of their defenses, he sent in a joint infantry-cavalry assault to make a swift attack upon a weakest point on Ma Lin's camp. The Ming Musketeers could barely get off more than a single volley before the Jin horse riding warriors descended upon them. The front lines were being cut to pieces and soon the entire army's morale broke and several men were routed. Commander Ma Lin barely escaped with his life and many of his officers died in a nearby river turning it quote “crimson with their blood”.  The other 2 camps fell in a similar fashion. Thus Nurhaci had just annihilated 2 out of the 4 incoming armies and took some 4000 of his forces to Hetu Ala to recuperate their strength.    Yang Hao saw the absolute mayhem occurring and ordered the remaining forces to retreat and regroup, but the force coming in from the east led by Big Sword Liu Ting never got the orders. Now unlike his colleagues, Liu Ting was actually having some success against some Jin expeditionary parties. The 13,000 Joseon Expeditionary force was with Liu Ting consisting of 10,000 Musketeers and 3000 archers were proving themselves very capable warriors. He managed to capture a few fortresses, killed 2 Jin generals and inflicted a few thousand casualties. Nurhaci then decided to do something rather cunning: he slipped some saboteurs into Liu Ting's army. These saboteurs pretended to be messengers from Du Song, stating his force was already besieging Hetu Ala and desperately needed assistance for the final victory. Liu Ting proceeded to respond by increasing his army's speed to rush to Hetu Ala. Because of the increased speed they were going, Liu Ting's force became very stretched out and now there were practically 2 divided groups. Around 18 miles from Hetu Ala, Liu Ting's frontal force was ambushed in the Abudali Pass. This allowed 2 of Nurhaci's son's Daisan and Hong Taiji to both make cavalry charges one after the other into the front of Liu Ting's force. These back to back charges inflicted heavy casualties, and they soon managed to surround the Ming force, exacting an estimated 10,000 casualties upon them. It also claimed the life of Liu Ting who was said to go down killing several Jin with him, must have been waving around a pretty big sword. By the way I tried quite hard to find out how the nickname came about and failed to find anything concrete, if anyone knows let me know perhaps by commenting on one of my Youtube episodes!   The Korean Musketeers performed quite well, but the archers, it is alleged, fired without arrowheads, because the Joseon Dynasty intended to keep a neutrality with the newly emerged Jin people. The Joseon Musketeers were eventually overwhelmed by the Jin cavalry, because they lacked spearmen in their formations to thwart off the charges, something they would improve upon later down the road.  Gang Hong-rip ended up surrendering the remaining 4500 of his forces. Those who survived later captivity were eventually allowed to return to their homeland. Gang Hong-rip was proficient in the Jurchen language and was held hostage. Interestingly, once the battle was won and done, Nurhaci went back to Hetu Ala to celebrate and one of the first things he did afterwards was send a message to the King of the Joseon Dynasty asking why they sent an expeditionary force to aid the Mings. The king tried to play it cool and sent a letter of congratulations for the victory, but made sure not to write anything that recognized the Jin state. It seemed the Joseon dynasty was now stuck between the Ming-Jin conflict and this would hold dire consequences later.    Li Rubo had received the message to retreat from Yang Hao, so he was able to avoid disaster, losing around 1000 troops before getting out to safety. Overall it is estimated that the Ming lost some 45,000 troops, 28,000 horses and a ton of war equipment. The Jin claimed to have only lost 200 men, but better estimations put them at losing around 5000. The Ming Court was rocked by this loss and ordered the arrest of Yang Hao, sending the Embroidered Uniform Guard after him; those are essentially the Emperor's secret police. Li Rubo was impeached, because there were rumors he had only survived because he had a personal relationship with Nurhaci. Li Rubo would commit suicide before his trial and Yang Hao would rot in prison for almost a decade before being executed.   I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me.  Nurhaci did not stop after defeating the 4 armies, he continued to raise hell by capturing Kaiyuan, Tieling and Xicheng without breaking much of a sweat. Hell Nurhaci was said to have braved a hail of arrows when he personally led the assault on the east wall of Xicheng. Over in Chahar, some of Nurhaci's subjects were defeated at Guangning and this would lead to ongoing troubles between the Jin and Chahar mongols for 15 years. Now Xicheng was the last bastion of Nurhaci's Yehe Jurchen rivals, so now he looked towards more empire building activities. Alongside his advisors they began to plan the conquest of Shenyang and perhaps to establish a new Jin Capital in its place. 

The Taiping Rebellion: Introducing Hong Xiuquan In this episode, we introduce the founder of the Taiping Rebellion, Hong Xiuquan. The books we are relying on: God's Chinese Son by Jonathan D. Spence Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom by Stephen R. Platt Historical Context of Taiping Rebellion Because the Taiping Rebellion kicks off in the aftermath of the First Opium War (1839-1842), our coverage of the Taiping Rebellion will intertwine with the evolution of foreign intervention in Chinese affairs. As ordinary Chinese watched the British destroy the Chinese navy and force a treaty on the Chinese government, it provided a shift in impressions of the Qing government that opened the way for rebellions against it. Personal Background of Hong Xiuquan Born Hong Huoxiu, the founder of the Taiping movement grew up in a Hakka farming family in South China. He was educated, though he did not make it far in the Confucian civil service examinations. In 1836, he met a Protestant missionary who gave him a copy of Protestant convert Liang Afa's tract Good Words to Admonish the Age, a bundling of shorter works Liang had written. In 1837, he failed the exams and had a nervous breakdown. On his sickbed at home, he had visions of Chinese deities from heaven and hell and the heavenly family revealing him to be their son. Liang Afa's tract became the key to interpreting his visions. If You'd Like to Support the Podcast Subscribe, share, leave a rating. Give once, give monthly at www.buymeacoffee.com/crpodcast Subscribe to the substack newsletter at https://chineserevolutions.substack.com/ Also... Please reach out at chineserevolutions@gmail.com and let me know what you think!

Chinese Scholarly Discussion of Foreign Trade, Before the Opium Wars In this episode, we look at how Chinese scholars examined trade with foreign countries, prior to the First Opium War (1839-1842). Chinese academia was extremely sophisticated, but it was aimed toward passing exams for the traditional Confucian civil service in China. Bao Shichen (1775-1855) One of the key scholars examining foreign trade was Bao Shichen, from Anhui province. He passed the provincial level exams, but he never passed the national-level exams. He turned his attention to "statecraft" studies, including subjects like agriculture and military studies. He influenced a whole generation of scholars working for higher-level officials, who in turn influenced higher policy. Chinese Analysis of Foreign Trade Officials with experience in Canton would not take such a hard line as closing all trade with foreign powers, but they were all concerned with the opium trade draining silver out of China. They were able to correctly deduce that trade was the main thing foreigners wanted from China. They also noted the superiority of British naval power and highly advanced British naval artillery. Many of the themes picked up in this episode will return when we look at how China responded to the Opium Wars. If You'd Like to Support the Podcast Subscribe, share, leave a rating. THIS IS FREE! Give once, give monthly at www.buymeacoffee.com/crpodcast Subscribe to the substack newsletter at https://chineserevolutions.substack.com/ Also... Please reach out at chineserevolutions@gmail.com and let me know what you think!

The Opium Trade In this episode, we look at the opium trade into China. It's drug trade, pure and simple. How one of the first multinational corporations was bound up in it partly led to the First Opium War. This episode draws heavily from Imperial Twilight by Stephen Platt. Origins of East India Company Involvement Occupying India drained EIC finances, and the China trade was the last profitable part of EIC operations. The opium trade was too illegal for them to engage in directly, but they got in on the supply side. The East India Company did not directly engage in the sale of opium into China. They produced it in India, sold it to "country traders" (British and Europeans who traded in the East and not between Britain and the East), and country traders sold it to Chinese distributers. Chinese Suppression of Opium Trade Chinese emperors and local officials would ban opium and write against the trade and consumption of opium, but their efforts ultimately never went anywhere until the magnitude of opium coming into China went up in the 1820s. Chinese officials and scholars debated strictness vs. flexibility and moderation in dealing with opium. Yes, the drug was bad, but they had to deal with a complicated problem in the right way. In next week's episode, we are going to cover precisely that debate. If You'd Like to Support the Podcast Subscribe, share, leave a rating. THIS IS FREE! Give once, give monthly at www.buymeacoffee.com/crpodcast Subscribe to the substack newsletter at https://chineserevolutions.substack.com/ Also... Please reach out at chineserevolutions@gmail.com and let me know what you think!  

අද එපිසෝඩ් එකෙන් අපි කතා කරන්වා චීනය හා බ්‍රිතාන්‍ය අතර ඇති වුනු පළමු ඔපියුම් යුද්ධය ගැන. ඉතින් ඔයාලා එපිසෝඩ් එකට කැමති නම් තව කෙනෙක්ට අහන්න Share කරගෙනම යන්න. In today's episode, we are talking about the 1st Opium war, which was happened between China and Great Britain. If you liked the story, leave us a comment and share our episode. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/daylightpodcast/message

The First Opium War is often seen as the beginning of China's 'Century of Shame' , a time when Foreigners ran rampant, and China lacked the ability to set its own destiny.However even without the aggression of Great Britain,  China (Qing Dynasty) was undergoing a series of internal crisis, each with the potential to end the dynasty. Rebellion, Inflation, Ethnic Tension, Failures of Government, Piracy, and waning military power, all seemed to strike at once, and help explain why the Qing Dynasty would be so ineffective against the British during the 1840 Opium War.

What does the First Opium War in China have to do with the First Anglo-Afghan War and the disastrous British retreat from Kabul? Everything. Here is a story about the scarlet thread that runs through history.

Edward Rutherfurd returns to the Festival with his latest bestseller, China: The Novel, for a conversation with Janet Somerville, author, educator and reviewer of Historical Fiction for the Toronto Star. Edward Rutherfurd has enthralled millions of readers with his grand, sweeping historical sagas that tell the history of a famous place over multiple generations. Now, in China: The Novel, Rutherfurd takes readers into the rich and fascinating milieu of the Middle Kingdom. The story begins in 1839, at the dawn of the First Opium War, and follows Chinese history through Mao's Cultural Revolution and up to the present day. Rutherfurd chronicles the rising and falling fortunes of members of Chinese, British, and American families, as they negotiate the tides of history. Along the way, in his signature style, Rutherfurd provides a deeply researched portrait of Chinese history and society, its ancient traditions and great upheavals, and China's emergence as a rising global power. As always, we are treated to romance and adventure, heroines and scoundrels, grinding struggle and incredible fortunes. From Shanghai to Nanking to the Great Wall, China: The Novel, chronicles the turbulent rise and fall of empires as the colonial West meets the opulent and complex East in a dramatic struggle between cultures and people. Books are available from our friends at Perfect Books. The Ottawa International Writers Festival is supported by generous individuals like you. Please consider subscribing to our newsletter and making a donation to support our programming and children's literacy initiatives. Presented in partnership with the Ottawa Public Library.

How in the world did Britain's tea obsession get them involved in a war over drugs against China? This episode, we find out.

It's the Season Finale, nerds!For the culminating episode of their debut season, Sarah and Casie take it all the way back to 19th century China with The Opium Wars. Tune in to find out how the British's overbearing need to control foreign trade led them to create an opium epidemic throughout China. First Casie takes us through the First Opium War and its immediate and underlying causes. Then, Sarah brings it home with the Second Opium War (because one war wasn't enough!) Ring in the New Year with some lesser known world history and be the trivia star at your Zoom NYE party with The Opium Wars!

The First Opium War of 1839-1842 was a devastating west meets east story that holds grievances even till this day. By the early 19th century over 90 percent of the Qing Dynasty court and many members of the army were opium addicts. Britain was economically and literally addicted-to tea, primarily grown in China, and ended up paying for it with profits made from the illicit opium trade. When China tried to ban the use of opium and stop Western smugglers from bringing it through its gates, England decided to fight to keep open China's ports for its importation.

The first Opium War of 1839-1842 between the British Empire and the Qing Dynasty of China. Here you will hear about every battle that took place such, who the key figures were and why the war ended the way it did. The technology, military structures, tactics and countless lost lives over what was a corrupt business that never should have began. History Matters.

“The entire story of the Taiping Rebellion might be told, from one perspective, as the rage of a failed exam candidate writ large.” — Stephen Platt“They may not intend to harm others on purpose, but the fact remains that they are so obsessed with material gain that they have no concern whatever for the harm they can cause to others.” — Lin Zexu about British opium traders “Heaven is furious with anger, and all the gods are moaning with pain!... A murderer of one person is subject to the death sentence; just imagine how many people opium has killed! This is the rationale behind the new law which says that any foreigner who brings opium to China will be sentenced to death by hanging or beheading.” — Lin Zexu“… soothing, quieting and delightful beyond measure.” — Queen Victoria about opium If I were to ask you which is the deadliest conflict in history, you'd probably answer WW II. But if I were to ask you which is the second deadliest conflict ever—at least according to most historians—I'd bet the number of raised hands would shrink quickly. And I'd also bet that a good percentage of those taking their chances with an answer would probably be wrong. So, welcome to the wildest, weirdest, biggest conflict in history that few people have heard about (that is…unless you are quite knowledgeable about Chinese history). Millions of troops took part in this war. Something in the neighborhood of 600 cities changed hands over decade and half of fighting. Conservative estimates place the dead around 20-30 millions (some estimates go as high as 100 millions.) For frame of references, this is deadlier than the Iraq War, the War in Afghanistan, the Vietnam War, the Korean War, the Spanish American War, the American Civil War and the American Revolution put together. We can also throw in the 7 Years War, all three Punic wars and all of the Crusades for good measure. In light of this, it may begin to make sense why several historians believe this is the bloodiest civil war of all time. It all began with a Chinese man who, in the mid-1800s, dreamed of becoming a scholar and receive a government job. Seems like an innocent start, right? Well, our wannabe intellectual, a certain Hong Xiuquan, experienced a major crisis when he realized that no matter how much he studied, he would not succeed at passing the imperial exams, that were the prerequisite to getting the career he dreamed of. The fact that he failed was more than a personal tragedy for Hong. Rather, this failure would trigger a sequence of events leading to the death of millions. This was easily the most costly F in the history of education. Broken to the core, he had a mental breakdown, and began to experience visions. These visions revealed to him that he was God's son, and Jesus' younger brother, and he was tasked by his heavenly relatives to clean China off any demonic influences in order to create the Kingdom of Heavenly Peace. His efforts to create this Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace heralded a bloody civil war with a body count that would make most video gamers blush.In this episode, we tackle ethnic conflicts in China, Christian missionaries in Canton, uber-difficult Imperial exams, the Pablo Escobar of the 1800s having the British navy on her side, foot binding, Great Britain solving a trade deficit by flooding China with drugs, the First Opium War, and much more. If you feel generous and enjoy History on Fire, please consider joining my Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/historyonfire to access plenty of bonus content. All the links to History on Fire social media can be found at https://linktr.ee/danielebolelli Including the HOF YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFCiqHbWJO26nFzUP-Eu55Q Substack: https://substack.com/@danielebolelliInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/historyonfire/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@historyonfirepodcast Bison is some of the healthiest meat you could possibly eat. Get yours at https://dakotapurebison.com/ History on Fire listeners get a discount by using the code HOF10 at checkout. If you'd like to go to Japan for a historical tour with yours truly as a guide, please check out https://geeknationtours.com/tours/signature-battlefield-series-classic-samurai-from-the-gempei-war-to-the-mongol-invasions-2023/And a big thank you to the sponsor for today's episode, Factor, America's #1 Ready-To-Eat Meal Delivery Service. Head to FACTOR MEALS dot com slash historyonfire50 and use code historyonfire50 to get 50% off. That's code historyonfire50 at FACTOR MEALS dot com slash historyonfire50 to get 50% off!

On June 3rd, 1839, Chinese troops burned 20,000 crates of opium that was grown in India under British overseers, which had been intended to be sold in the illegal Chinese opium market.  Thus began what was known as a trade war, known to history (if ever mentioned) as the Opium Wars, in which tens of thousands of Chinese people lost their lives.

In this episode, I talk about what happened after the First Opium War. Of course there was the Second Opium War, which paved the way for the collapse of the Qing dynasty. And then what? To see the transcript, visit: https://chinesecolloquialised.com (https://chinesecolloquialised.com/)

In this episode, I talk about the First Opium War, which is the first war between China and the UK.  To see the transcript, visit: https://chinesecolloquialised.com (https://chinesecolloquialised.com/)

What would it look like if a modern army clashed with a medieval army on the battlefield? The First Opium War answers that question. In order continue their illegal opium trade in China, Britain engaged in a series of naval battles and fort assaults against the Chinese Empire, who was woefully underprepared for a modern war. When rifles meet bows and arrows, the result is devastating, and the consequences for the opium trade reached into the 20th century.

In the second episode of Podding Through Time, Jacob and Evan talk about even more great history topics, carrying on from last time:-What were Otto von Bismarck's policies regarding the relationship of the Prussian state to the Catholic Church?-When did agriculture first begin in New Guinea and which crops do we owe to their neolithic agricultural revolution?-What was the curious origin story of King Haakon IV of Norway, who brought the medieval kingdom to the height of its golden age?-What does the conclusion of the First Opium War have to do with the ongoing political situation in Hong Kong?-Who was Simo Häyhä and how does his record as a soldier and sniper compare to Lady Death from the last episode?

On June 3rd, 1839, Chinese troops burned 20,000 crates of British opium, leading to Britain initiating a “trade war” of aggression. It became known as the First Opium War. The purpose of it was to force China to import an addictive drug, in order to allow the British Empire to profit off of the misery of the Chinese people.

This is the first of several episodes which will give broad historical background for our upcoming discussion of the Chinese Revolution and the international spread of ideas related to the Chinese Revolution. This episode focuses on the background to and events of the First Opium War (1839-1842). China's defeat in the First Opium War began the Century of Humiliation at the hands of imperialist powers (Britain, France, Russia, Germany, USA, Japan) that ended with the revolution's victory in 1949.Good resources for more information on these events:Zheng Yangwen, The Social Life of Opium in China (https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/social-life-of-opium-in-china/F5A70808CF5B7621B0E949686E90406C)Stephen Platt, Imperial Twilight: The Opium War and the End of China's Last Golden Age (https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/221056/imperial-twilight-by-stephen-r-platt/9780345803023/)

First Opium War between China and British Empire, 1839-1842. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

The reason for Great Britain’s war against China in the First Opium War (1839-42) is often taken as a given. British merchants wanted to “open” trade beyond the port of Canton (Guangzhou) and continue dealing in the lucrative commodity, opium. Historian Stephen R. Platt’s book, Imperial Twilight: The Opium War and the End of China’s Last Golden Age (Knopf, 2018) proves that the path to war was not so simple. Internal rebellions weakened the Qing military and stretched resources thin. British themselves debated the merits of the Canton system that restricted all Western foreigners and their trade in China to a single port. Some Qing officials considered opium a wholly domestic issue while others considered how best to resolve opium smuggling–by legalizing opium or ejecting foreigners from Canton. Platt traces the narratives of figures who played significant roles in the mounting conflict and identifies lynchpin moments when the history of China and the West could have turned out much differently. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The reason for Great Britain’s war against China in the First Opium War (1839-42) is often taken as a given. British merchants wanted to “open” trade beyond the port of Canton (Guangzhou) and continue dealing in the lucrative commodity, opium. Historian Stephen R. Platt’s book, Imperial Twilight: The Opium War and the End of China’s Last Golden Age (Knopf, 2018) proves that the path to war was not so simple. Internal rebellions weakened the Qing military and stretched resources thin. British themselves debated the merits of the Canton system that restricted all Western foreigners and their trade in China to a single port. Some Qing officials considered opium a wholly domestic issue while others considered how best to resolve opium smuggling–by legalizing opium or ejecting foreigners from Canton. Platt traces the narratives of figures who played significant roles in the mounting conflict and identifies lynchpin moments when the history of China and the West could have turned out much differently. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The reason for Great Britain’s war against China in the First Opium War (1839-42) is often taken as a given. British merchants wanted to “open” trade beyond the port of Canton (Guangzhou) and continue dealing in the lucrative commodity, opium. Historian Stephen R. Platt’s book, Imperial Twilight: The Opium War and the End of China’s Last Golden Age (Knopf, 2018) proves that the path to war was not so simple. Internal rebellions weakened the Qing military and stretched resources thin. British themselves debated the merits of the Canton system that restricted all Western foreigners and their trade in China to a single port. Some Qing officials considered opium a wholly domestic issue while others considered how best to resolve opium smuggling–by legalizing opium or ejecting foreigners from Canton. Platt traces the narratives of figures who played significant roles in the mounting conflict and identifies lynchpin moments when the history of China and the West could have turned out much differently. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The reason for Great Britain’s war against China in the First Opium War (1839-42) is often taken as a given. British merchants wanted to “open” trade beyond the port of Canton (Guangzhou) and continue dealing in the lucrative commodity, opium. Historian Stephen R. Platt’s book, Imperial Twilight: The Opium War and the End of China’s Last Golden Age (Knopf, 2018) proves that the path to war was not so simple. Internal rebellions weakened the Qing military and stretched resources thin. British themselves debated the merits of the Canton system that restricted all Western foreigners and their trade in China to a single port. Some Qing officials considered opium a wholly domestic issue while others considered how best to resolve opium smuggling–by legalizing opium or ejecting foreigners from Canton. Platt traces the narratives of figures who played significant roles in the mounting conflict and identifies lynchpin moments when the history of China and the West could have turned out much differently. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The reason for Great Britain’s war against China in the First Opium War (1839-42) is often taken as a given. British merchants wanted to “open” trade beyond the port of Canton (Guangzhou) and continue dealing in the lucrative commodity, opium. Historian Stephen R. Platt’s book, Imperial Twilight: The Opium War and the End of China’s Last Golden Age (Knopf, 2018) proves that the path to war was not so simple. Internal rebellions weakened the Qing military and stretched resources thin. British themselves debated the merits of the Canton system that restricted all Western foreigners and their trade in China to a single port. Some Qing officials considered opium a wholly domestic issue while others considered how best to resolve opium smuggling–by legalizing opium or ejecting foreigners from Canton. Platt traces the narratives of figures who played significant roles in the mounting conflict and identifies lynchpin moments when the history of China and the West could have turned out much differently. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The reason for Great Britain’s war against China in the First Opium War (1839-42) is often taken as a given. British merchants wanted to “open” trade beyond the port of Canton (Guangzhou) and continue dealing in the lucrative commodity, opium. Historian Stephen R. Platt’s book, Imperial Twilight: The Opium War... Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/chinese-studies

The reason for Great Britain’s war against China in the First Opium War (1839-42) is often taken as a given. British merchants wanted to “open” trade beyond the port of Canton (Guangzhou) and continue dealing in the lucrative commodity, opium. Historian Stephen R. Platt’s book, Imperial Twilight: The Opium War... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Along the shores of the Great Salt Lake in Utah stands The Saltair Resort. The resort has three separate incarnations and seems to have been plagued with a curse of sorts, because the first two Saltair resorts were destroyed by fire and the third has suffered flooding. This originally was a family place for fun similar in style to Coney Island with carnival rides and games and today is a place that hosts concerts and other events. Historic events were hosted here and famous people visited. Tragedy has been a part of the story and this seems to have led to spirits. While the first two locations are abandoned, they still seem to host spirits and according to guests and employees, the third version of Saltair is quite haunted. Our listener Annjanette Beth suggested this location and helped with research. She joins us to share the history and hauntings of the Saltair Resort. The Moment in Oddity was suggested by listener Annjanette Beth and features Pawapicts and This Month in History features the start of the First Opium War. Check out the website: http://historygoesbump.com Show notes and pictures here: https://historygoesbump.blogspot.com/2017/11/hgb-ep-232-saltair-resort.html Become an Executive Producer: http://patreon.com/historygoesbump Music: Vanishing from http://purple-planet.com (Moment in Oddity) In Your Arms by Kevin MacLeod http://incompetech.com (This Month in History) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

In the aftermath of the First Opium War, the self-proclaimed younger brother of Jesus began his quest to convert China to his own unique version of Christianity. In part one of our two part series on the Taiping Rebellion, we discuss the early life of Hong Xiuquan and the events that led to the creation of the God Worshiping Society and the Taiping Rebellion.

This Women's class about Purim was presented on Tuesday, 2 Adar, 5777, February 28, 2017, at Ohr Chaim, Monsey, NY. Four sages, Rabbi Meir, Rabbi Yehudah, Rabbi Yosi and Rabbi Shimon, debate how much of the megilah must be read on Purim. Three of them suggest starting at the point in the story where the Jewish angle begins. Either from mid chapter two, where Mordechai is introduced. Or from chapter three where Haman is introduced. Or from ch. 6 where the king has a sleepless night and decides to reward Mordechai. Yet the verdict and Jewish tradition till this very day follows Rabbi Meir who says that we must read or listen to the entire book of Esther, in order to fulfill our obligation on Purim. But this viewand verdictseems strange. Why would there be a religious obligation to listen on Purim to the story of a Persian Kings feast? Of how he executed his first queen? These are interesting historical stories, but why the obligation to listen to them on Purim? Why is it that we fulfill the mitzvah of hearing the Megillah only if we learn of the detailed designs at the Kings 187-day party? True, if Vashi would have not been killed, Esther would not have become queen and would not be able to save her people. Yet, this is only the prerequisite to the storynot the story itself. Why is it that if someone decides to skip ch. 1 and go straight into ch. 2, they have to rehear the Megilah, as they have not fulfilled the mitzvah? We all know that you can get away reading a novel and mastering it even if you skip the introductionthe details that describe events prior to the main story and plot? The very name Purim, which in Persian means a goral, a lot, seems strange. Haman has cast a random lot to determine the right day in which to kill all of Jews. But then why do we call it Purim in the plural, not Pur? In 1840 the First Opium War took place between China and Britain. It was essentially a conflict about foreign trade in China. Finally in 1842, the treaty of Nanjing was signed, which essentially turned Shanghai into an international city, open freely for trade for people of all countries. If you were reading a newspaper in 1842, you would not see in this story anything essential to the story of the Jewish people and our mission in the universe. Just another bloody and tragic conflict in the East. But exactly 100 years later, we all discovered that this was part of a tapestry of events that saved generations of Jews. The Megillah teaches us how to view world-events. The story of Purim is not that G-d saves the Jews from annihilation. It is a much deeper story: that the lavish feast of a mighty King is part of a vast cohesive plan. In Judaism, small fragmented details of our lives are all part of an integrated tapestry. One warm good morning by a prisoner changes history.

At this event, Thomas H. Cox explores Warren Delano’s career and the complicated relations between early American, British and Chinese merchants which formed the basis for future U.S. foreign policy towards Asia. Warren Delano II, the maternal grandfather of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was one of the most successful early American maritime traders in China. Although he openly supported the British war effort during the First Opium War, he discreetly traded with Hong merchants and condemned British naval attacks on Chinese ports. As U.S. Vice-Counsel, Delano negotiated with the British for the return of Canton to China and helped secure the Treaty of Wangxia, the first U.S.- Chinese diplomatic agreement. Then, in the 1860's, he worked with British and Chinese partners to pursue opium profits in Hong Kong. Dr. Thomas H. Cox is associate professor of history at Sam Houston State University. He earned an M.A. and Ph.D in history at State University of New York at Buffalo. And he is the author of Gibbons v. Ogden, Law, and Society in the Early Republic. This event is sponsored with the UAA Confucius Institute.

Amitav Ghosh is a writer with a worldwide reach. Born in Calcutta, educated in Delhi, Oxford and Alexandria, he lives now between New York and Goa; his books have sold over 3 million copies, and have been translated into 33 languages. His books have won awards in Canada, Italy, France and Burma, but his greatest readership is in India and he has been awarded the Padma Shri, one of India's highest honours, by the President of India. His new novel Flood of Fire is his tenth, and completes his Ibis trilogy; the setting is the First Opium War in 1839, and it follows a cast of characters from India, China and Britain, as they are caught up in that war. In Private Passions he talks to Michael Berkeley about his childhood by the water in Bengal, and how the presence of the sea has influenced his writing. He admits that there is some truth in the charge that he is in essence a Bengali writer, writing in English. Amitav Ghosh chooses a highly original playlist reflecting the very different cultures which have been his creative influences. He includes a haunting Bengali boat song, a Hindu dance, and songs from China and Mauritius. He unearths a fascinating historical curiosity: perhaps the first ever example of East-West fusion, a version of 'Hindoo airs' adapted in the 18th century for English amateur musicians nostalgic for their days in India. And he celebrates the music of global connectedness, with a collaboration between Philip Glass and Ravi Shankar. Finally he muses on the notion of 'home', and where he would live if he could only choose one place. Produced by Elizabeth Burke A Loftus Production for BBC Radio 3.

Gary Bembridge of Tips for Travellers shares observations, tips and advice for visitors to Shanghai in China.Subscribe free to the show on iTunes, Stitcher Radio or TuneIn RadioThis show covers among other topics: Observations Dramatic changes over years I have been visiting. Modern without defining a distinctive Chinese feel while stunning  lit up at night. Always been the most cosmopolitan city in China Massive city over 20 million people. Shanghai means up from the sea  - massive port - busiest in world - but has some limitations. Pollution and smog - big issue - asthma and breathing issues History Started as a fishing village developed into centre of textile industry and major trading port developed from there. Chinese government made it free port (no taxes, not subject to Chinese laws) after the First Opium War and boomed with British then French and American concessions. Rich and decadent especially in 1930s - "Paris of the East" - Japanese occupied for time in WWII - after war hand back to Chinese and after Communist entered city in 1949 and became more closed. Now one of the four cities in china that are directly managed by Central Government Getting there Need a visa before go - plan well in advance - can be costly to process - consider using a visa agency. Watch what packing and bringing in as conservative and strict Two main airports - Pudong and Hongqiao Cruises port - modern Wusongkou International Terminal - 45 to 90 minutes to Peoples Square / Bund Getting around Maglev Train from Pudong airport to Pudong Longyanglu station (20km in 7 minutes) Busses -  complex Taxis - colour coded by company - avoid red ones as independent and not metered - always have where going written in Chinese Metro - modern and easy to navigate as also have English names - ticket machines coins. Car hire not recommended even though signs have English General Tips English often understood in tourist places. Safe but can be hassled a lot by vendors. Many attractions close at 4 or 4:30pm. Good tourist maps and leaflets in hotels and information centre Must Do: PudongOriental Pearl TV Tower-Shanghai World Finance Centre - 100th floor observation tower - including glass floor looking down 100 floors Jin Mao Tower - Grand Hyatt Hotel (tallest hotel lobby in world 56th floor) - observation floor on 88th - only 45 seconds to get to top Shanghai tower - 632 m high opposite opened in 2014The Bund and huge Huangpu Park Grand old buildings known as the World Architectural Gallery.People's SquareShangai MuseumMuseum of Contemporary ArtShanghai Art MuseumShanghai Grand TheatreNew Town HallUrban Planning Museum - past and future Shanghai Yuyuan Gardens and Bazaar In the old town, built in the Mid 16th C and took 18 years it buildBazaar aroudn it has many stores and it is fuJade Buddha TempleShoppingCounterfeit markets largely closed down and driven under ground nowNanjing Road Yuyuan BazaarNight River CruiseShanghai Acrobatic Show  

China is one of the oldest and richest civilisations in human history, traditionally occupying a central position in world affairs. Yet China descended into a century of decline after the First Opium War, a period of chaos that saw the demise of the Qing dynasty and the descent of the post-dynastic nationalist republic into civil war. This lecture documents China's century of decline and evaluates the forces that shattered the old dynastic order and plunged the country into political chaos. Copyright 2013 Benjamin Habib / La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

We look at the causes of the Opium War and what it meant, for China as a nation. We also explore the relationship between China and the East India Company.

Mariella talks to award-winning author Amitav Ghosh about River of Smoke - the second book in his Ibis Trilogy set in the waterways around Canton during the events leading up to the start of the First Opium War in 1839. In this week's Reading Clinic, author Joanna Kavenna recommends fiction in which women rise like a phoenix from the ashes. And writer and poet Iain Sinclair explains why Alexander Baron, the British novelist of the Second World War, should be rediscovered and re-read.

In this week's episode, we give an overview of the First Opium War, one of the most humiliating events in Modern Chinese history. From this event that culminated in the first of many unequal treaties in 1842, China began a steady downhill slide and suffered a multitude of setbacks and insults from foreign powers eager to trade with China and build market share. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this week’s episode, we give an overview of the First Opium War, one of the most humiliating events in modern Chinese history. From this event that culminated in the first of many unequal treaties in 1842, China began a steady downhill slide and suffered a multitude of setbacks and insults from foreign powers eager to capitalize on this conflict.