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The events of the XIX century, called the “Opium Wars”, are still remembered by many representatives of not only the Chinese people. However, they are described in history, to put it mildly, one-sidedly, which does not allow us to present them as one of the stages of the Global Historical Process.We will try to fill in some gaps, especially now it is becoming obvious that the impact of these events on China is far from in the past, but rather in the near future.
The XVII — XVIII centuries were marked for the Chinese Empire by the Golden Age of the Qing Dynasty. Although, the word “golden” does not quite objectively describe that period. It should be clarified, the Qing dynasty was not exactly Chinese. She came from Manchuria. The homeland of the ethnos is Manchuria — these are vast lands located outside the Great Wall of China. During the internal Chinese civil strife, the Manchu army takes Beijing and in 1644 begins the almost three-hundred-year era of the Qing Dynasty in China.
During this period, China turned from a decline and economic crisis into a strong power. Domestic prosperity and development allowed the ruling dynasty to unite provinces, minimize internal civil strife and conquer new territories, which are currently the territory of the Chinese state — so it is written in many encyclopedias.
However, not everything was as smooth as it is written in the history textbooks. Manchurian nationality was a priority in the distribution of senior positions in military and administrative affairs. Industrial production was considered shameful for the Manchus. For criminal acts, the Chinese and Manchus received different punishments, naturally the worst option awaited the former. The Chinese held positions in leadership structures, but these were not the most important and responsible jobs. Other ethnic groups did not participate in the distribution of posts at all.
This could not but cause discontent among the indigenous inhabitants of the Celestial Empire, however, we will return to this important fact later.
Meanwhile, if you turn to various sources describing the Chinese economy, you can read something like the following. The state was self-sufficient, that is, everything that people needed was produced inside the country. China supplied mainly tea, silk, porcelain, spices to foreign markets.
We will describe our understanding of the causes and objectives of the opium wars below, and now let’s refresh our memory with historical information that many of us have read, watched and which is considered by legitimate science to be the only correct one.
So, as of the middle of the XIX century, the population of England “got hooked” on tea, which became (for some reason — a separate topic) an element of national tradition. It was imported from China so much that the “trade balance” was not in favor of England. And many people did not like it also because China practically did not buy anything from the “lady of the seas”. Foreigners could purchase Chinese goods only on condition of payment in silver and exclusively in one place ― the port of Canton (Guangzhou). The rest of China was closed to “overseas barbarians”.
However, among the few imported goods that were still in demand in China, there was opium.
In those years, opium was not banned, it was used in medicine as an analgesic, and as a sedative, and smoked for pleasure, mixed with tobacco. However, science did not stand still and already in the first third of the XIX century, opium was learned to purify so that it turned out almost heroin with all the ensuing consequences — addiction, mental disorder, and so on. The monopoly on the Bengal opium trade was then owned by the East India Company. She was engaged in illegal sale in Guangzhou, taking tea back to England.
The drug, of course, played a role, the demand for it has grown, a huge number of Chinese residents have become addicted to it. For several years of such trade, the trade balance from the point of view of the British returned to normal, but the Chinese emperor was more concerned not with this, but with the fact that a huge number of civil servants, army ranks, and ordinary workers became drug addicts. To put an end to this, in 1839, the emperor appointed his man, Lin Zexu, to the post of extraordinary representative for combating opium smuggling.
Arriving in Guangzhou, the official begins to act boldly and decisively. Mostly English traders, who were in the only port open to foreigners, concentrated large stocks of drugs. Lin Zexu ordered them to be handed over, and after being refused, he blocked the warehouses with troops. As a result, more than 19 thousand boxes and 2 thousand bales of opium were seized.
Lin Zexu acted not only with prohibitive measures. Foreigners were offered the right to continue trading with China, but with a written promise to permanently stop the opium trade. The official was ready to compensate for the lost opium to those who would make a deal by providing expensive Chinese goods in return.
But things have gone too far. Even people close to the emperor were involved in drug trafficking, who strongly advised the monarch to “stop the nightmare business.” On the other hand, the supporters of the power line proposed to expel the Europeans from China completely
Lin Zexu saw that complete isolation would only give Britain a reason for military intervention, which she openly sought. But he could not influence the emperor. In December 1839, the Emperor of China announced the complete closure of the country to foreign traders.
In 1840, Great Britain declared war on the Qing Empire. About 4,000 soldiers and 40 ships joined the battle from England.
The advantage of the British army was in more advanced artillery, their commanders were well versed in tactics and strategy. Although the Chinese army had about a twenty-fold advantage in manpower, they were not familiar with the tactics of warfare, could not competently organize the construction of defensive structures, and their artillery could not conduct targeted fire.
The beginning of hostilities is noteworthy. On July 5, 1840, the commander of the British squadron lined up ships along the coastline of Chusan Island, where there were defensive structures and launched boats with troops. After the first shot from the ships, the Chinese returned fire with their guns. However, the British artillery had the upper hand and after 9 minutes (!) of the battle, the Chinese fled. (According to other sources, it was a naval battle and in the same 9 minutes the Chinese squadron was defeated. Why such discrepancies? Yes, there are a lot of lies and biased value judgments in this story in general). The landing party landed on the shore and occupied the peak crowned with a temple, which was abandoned by the Chinese. 2 hours after the landing of the infantry units, four amphibious guns were brought ashore and placed on the mentioned peak. From the commanding height, one could see the city of Tin-gai, closed by hills from the side of the raid and located in a fairly extensive valley. It was surrounded, like other cities, by a quadrangular wall almost 5 meters thick. The city wall was surrounded by a rather deep water moat, interrupted only at the north-western corner. On each side of the quadrangle there were gates opening into the field. The amphibious artillery, immediately after taking up a position, opened fire on the city with grenades, which forced residents to escape. The assault on Tin-gai, due to the coming darkness, was postponed until the next morning. The troops settled down for the night in the suburbs, near the squadron. With the dawn of July 6, it turned out that the city was abandoned by both residents and troops.
Let’s remember this episode, which became absolutely typical for that war. We will omit further details, saying that the British troops took city after city. In early August 1842, the British approached Nanjing, the southern capital of China, and forced the emperor to accept all their conditions.
On August 29, 1842, the Treaty of Nanjing was signed, according to which China paid a contribution of 15 million lians of silver, transferred Hong Kong and opened five ports for English trade: Guangzhou, Xiamen, Fuzhou, Shanghai and Ningbo. Independent legislative and judicial bodies were to operate in these cities. Thus, a system of “open” ports was founded, the number of which by the beginning of the twentieth century in the Qing Empire had grown to several dozen. Access to the domestic market was opened for Western states, and an even more active spread of opium led to a larger-scale fascination of the Chinese population with opium smoking with all the ensuing sad economic and social consequences.
The second “opium war” is considered to be the conflict between Great Britain, France and China, which lasted from 1856 to 1860. According to another point of view, the so—called third “opium war” also stands out – military clashes in 1859-1860. But in the professional literature on international relations in the Far East, the whole complex of conflicts from 1856 to 1860 is most often considered one conflict, with a single set of reasons.
It can be said that as a result of the “opium” conflicts, a new type of wars has appeared — they are also called “police” — for the establishment of a new order in a country or region convenient for the advancing player. Among the goals of one of the parties to such a conflict, well-known in the modern history of international relations, may be the overthrow of an undesirable regime. In some works, the second “opium war” is sometimes even referred to as the first anti-terrorist operation. It is difficult to say exactly why it is “anti—terrorist” – perhaps it means its “punitive” nature. For England, the point was precisely in imposing its will on the Qing authorities, establishing rules of the game that were convenient for it. Therefore, of course, from this point of view, the second “opium war” concerned not only the opium trade, Great Britain and France had larger goals.
England sought to expand its spheres of influence in Inner China, including gaining access to river ports. Together with France and the United States, taking advantage of the political turmoil in the Qing Empire during the Taiping Uprising, which began in 1850, she sought from the Qing court the right of unrestricted trade in the empire, the establishment of an embassy in Beijing. In 1854, the powers demanded to renegotiate the treaties signed as a result of the first “opium war”, but were refused. When the forces of Great Britain and France were released after the Crimean War, a reason was quickly found for unleashing a new conflict in China.
Guangzhou was attacked again, as well as Tianjin, and in 1858 the Tianjin Treaties were signed, which granted new privileges to the West: additional ports were opened, consular jurisdiction was introduced. During the conflict, the Manchu troops put up serious resistance several times, and the Europeans’ expectation of an easy victory was not justified. The Manchus sought negotiations, while trying to delay time. However, despite attempts at organized defense, the Dagu forts were taken, the Allies approached Tongzhou and threatened Beijing. In addition, in October 1860, the British and French looted the summer imperial palace of Yuanmingyuan. Trophies from it are still valuable exhibits of European museums. By the time the Allies approached Beijing, the demoralized Qing army and Prince Gong, who found himself face to face with danger, had already given up resistance and handed over the Andingmen Gate to the control of the attackers. It is worth noting that Russia and Prince N. P. Ignatiev personally played a major role in preventing the looting of Beijing by England and France.
The second “opium war” ended with the signing of the Beijing Treaty at the end of October 1860, according to which, unfortunately for China, Great Britain and France were able to meet the requirements, and even more. The Qing dynasty undertook to pay a substantial contribution — 8 million lians of silver. Tianjin was opened for trade (today it is a city of central subordination, one of the attractions of which is the European colonial quarter). France and Great Britain received the right to export Chinese as labor to other colonies. And of course, the treaty paved the way for an even more active growth of the opium trade. In addition, the poppy began to be grown on the territory of China itself, moreover, by the Chinese themselves.
Russia also signed its Beijing Treaty with China, which was of great importance. Not participating in the “opium wars”, however, she could not allow a significant imbalance of power in international relations in the Far East in favor of Great Britain, France and the United States. Having supported the Qing in the defense of Beijing, Russia received the consent of the Manchus to establish and document the border along the Amur and Ussuri. And on November 14, 1860, the Russian-Chinese treaty was signed, meaningfully continuing the Aigun and Tianjin Treaties.
Most of the military battles in the centuries-old history of China were lost by them, and the enemy did not always surpass the Chinese army as much as defeats turned out to be devastating. Above we cited an episode that is indicative not only for this war, but also for others. Let’s try to look for the root cause of this.
In general, how a person behaves in different situations depends on his ideas about the world, in particular about life and death, mission, goals, values, which can be combined with one concept — worldview. Especially vividly these deep worldview attitudes manifest themselves in acute, critical situations, in particular — in war.
And the most effective tool for the formation of the worldview not only of an individual, but also of an entire nation are creeds. The dominant (by number) creeds in China are Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism. It is with the aim of searching for ideological rules that do not allow the Chinese to achieve Victories, that we have considered these creeds.
Within the framework of the article, it will not be possible to consider the entire multi-layered construction of the meanings of these creeds, we will touch only the most obvious ones, especially since all three creeds are quite close in the meanings formed.
First. The sources of the origin of the creeds of China were the magical-shamanic cults of the ancients, the doctrine of immortality and magical practices. The same Taoism was “promoted” by numerous Taoist magicians and preachers, healers and shamans who joined Taoism, who skillfully synthesized some philosophical ideas of Taoism with primitive beliefs and superstitions of the peasant masses. Hence the first conclusion is the hope that the desired thing will happen (“can’t not happen”) in some magical way, by magic. Accordingly, when this does not happen and the enemy troops get something that should not work, templates and installations are torn, people fall into confusion, and in any incomprehensible and dangerous situation there are generally two ways: hit or run.
Second. If most other religious systems, in the name of gaining immortality (salvation of the soul), offer to fight “for the soul”, and only then for the body, then Taoism, on the contrary, gives preference to the primary improvement of the body, seeing in this the guarantee of immortality (salvation of the soul). Hence, the choice between “hit or run” tends to “run”, because the dream of achieving immortality, established deep inside the psyche, may be threatened if the body dies, especially vividly it begins to manifest itself at the moments when enemy shells arrive and comrades-in-arms begin to die en masse.
The third. Taoism is a religious system that, like Buddhism, is aimed at completely depersonalizing people in the process of merging the psyche of the latter (“enlightenment”) with a powerful egregorial system that unites all “subjects”. From this we can conclude that the “average” warrior feels like a part of a huge team, but not a lone hero, not a person capable of leading, performing a feat, showing an example to his comrades.
We know that there have been, are and will be outstanding personalities, masters of combat, and heroes among Chinese warriors, but the worldview attitudes described above form mass statistics of people’s behavior, and a few (non-systemic) heroes do not change the overall picture.
There is another interesting element in the creeds of the East — the principle of “non-action”. It sounds something like this: in areas that are harmful to Nature and biocenoses, before taking any action, it is necessary to harmonize the latter with the objective laws of the Universe. And if this is not possible, it is better to observe the principle of non—action, so as not to harm yourself and the environment. We think that in many ways this principle “helped” to oversleep the penetration of opium smoking deep into all strata of society, and the preparation of Western countries for war, and much more.
What Chinese leaders need to do to change such a “rock” hanging over the whole people. We think they understand everything correctly and do it right. Participation in joint military exercises, in places of armed conflicts with those whose algorithms have the ability to win, for example, with the Russians. Joint actions allow us to connect, to enter into the same information array with us, which contains those algorithms of thinking and actions that led our soldiers to glorious victories.
One more important point needs to be mentioned. The dominant creeds of China have another significant facet. By establishing a rigid hierarchy in their omissions, which essentially supports the slave-owning system, they proclaim equality and justice in their pronouncements. Perhaps that is why, seeing the loyal venal relations of the hierarchs of the creeds to the imperial “elite”, numerous and rather lengthy peasant uprisings broke out, and we will talk about this below.
Before we go on to describe our version of events during the “opium wars”, we need to highlight another vivid episode of those years, which in history was called the “Taiping Rebellion”. In the official history, this peasant war coincides in time with the “second opium war”, the dates 1850 — 1864 are indicated and the number of victims is from 30 to 100 million people. But about everything in order.
High taxes, corruption, degradation of society, including due to the spread of drugs, aggravated the contradictions between the ruling ethnic group (Manchus) and the rest of the Chinese. Against this background, the village teacher Hong Xiuquan enters the historical scene. He had dreamed of a career as an official all his life (and Chinese people were taken to the position of officials in a very limited number, and even then only after strict “casting” in the form of exams). When Hong failed another such exam, he became disillusioned with the whole system and fell into religion. And not in any, but in the Christian.
Some sources convey this moment as follows: “like the Christian saints, Hong, after the third failed exam, which became the end of his former life for him, was near death for 40 days and nights, raving about verses in which he mixed Christian elements with traditional Chinese. After recovering, he no longer thought about passing exams, but intended to change the world.”
Declaring himself the son of God, respectively, the brother of Jesus Christ, Hong founded a new creed — a variant of Chinese Protestantism with elements of Taoism. He proclaimed the beginning of the war for equality and freedom — the welfare State of Taiping Tiango. Xiuquan’s ideas turned out to be very attractive to commoners. The Messiah banned drugs, alcohol, gambling and prostitution. In return, Hun proposed the participation of the people in the governance of the state, gender equality, the abolition of taxes, the distribution of all benefits equally and other elements of communism, and he also proposed the confiscation of property from the rich.
In addition, the former teacher set a goal — the overthrow of the Manchu Qing dynasty, which imposed its cultural customs on the indigenous Chinese. As a result, many destitute poor, peasants, pirates, robbers en masse joined the ranks of the newly converted Taiping. In 1850, their number reached 20 thousand people, and Guangxi Province rebelled. After capturing the first big city, the county seat of Yun’an, they create their own government and proclaim a new state. It was called the Kingdom of Heaven of the Greatest Happiness – “Tai-Ping Tien-Go” — and the rebels began to be called “Taiping”.
Government troops and police are unable to put up effective resistance, and the insurgency quickly spreads to neighboring regions. By 1853, Nanjing had fallen. The uprising has engulfed most of Southern China.
Inspired by the success of the Taiping, the northern and central regions of the empire rose: the uprising of the Society of Small Knives in Shanghai, the Redheads in Guangdong, the Niangjun in Anhon, etc.
The Taiping fought with red headbands, which apparently brought them closer to the ideas of communism and brought good luck in battles.
The Taiping movement was a very complex phenomenon. It was both a traditional peasant war against the ruling bureaucracy (a social explosion that included a clan war), and a traditional national liberation movement against a foreign dynasty. It was a religious war of the new “Christian” worldview against traditional Chinese (especially against Confucianism in its most bony forms) — and at the same time a war for the revival of ancient Chinese ideals dating back to the Zhou era, which ended three centuries before Christ.
However, we will not describe the entire course of the Taiping rebellion, which, by the way, was fought not only by imperial troops, but also by the troops of foreign invaders (we will highlight this fact below). Let’s just say that it was suppressed and the reason, in our opinion, was that, having managed to rouse the peoples to fight, the leaders of the uprising failed to organize the work of state institutions necessary for the normal life of people. Hong Xiuquan himself, seeing the destruction of his life’s work, committed suicide.
When considering any event, and especially such a large-scale one as a war, it is possible to identify the presence of a Global Management entity, its goals and methods. It is not necessary to fall into conspiracy theories, looking for conspiracies of the “world government”, Global governance is so arranged that it is impossible to find a structure, all participants in the events act as if for their own interests, but at the same time interests of a higher order are also achieved. The same British, and then French and American politicians, merchants and the military acted on the basis of mercantile considerations and those methods that they considered permissible in relation to other peoples. But at the same time, they built a certain configuration of countries and peoples, launched long-term processes that came to the surface decades later, and some will come out in the future. We discussed the mechanisms of Global Governance in more detail in the article “GP — people or function?”
Let’s talk about a Global entity, looking at the situation in that region from its perspective. The Qing Dynasty, in general, satisfied Global players by the fact that it reliably and steadily governed Chinese society. It is clear that not everyone was satisfied with some points, for example, the policy of closeness, which prevented “cultural cooperation”, namely the penetration of ideas from the West. This is exactly what was “corrected”, at the same time solving several other problems, which we will talk about now.
Let’s express an idea that at this stage of immersion in the topic may seem seditious: Foreign interventionists and the troops of the Qing Empire were on the same side in these wars. No, there were no joint military headquarters where common operations were developed, everything was adult-like. Although the idea of the absence of joint military headquarters may not be entirely true — the Taiping uprisings were suppressed by both troops. In part, the fact is that the historical descriptions of the events of those years have come down to us mostly from liberal-Western positions (the winner writes history).
But even such thoroughly liberal heralds mention that the imperial troops engaged not with English troops, but with local ones. However, this is explained by the fact that Chinese society is so mired in corruption, sycophancy and loyalty that it was more expensive to report failures “to the top”, and since it was impossible not to report at all, they smashed their own, accusing them of having surrendered to enemy troops. The results of such “victories” with the number of killed and wounded “rebels” were transmitted to the emperor, and it was easier than engaging in a clash with the British.
The British troops, having won several victories, taking several key cities, did not overthrow the emperor and put their governor. They concluded an agreement under which they received a contribution, seized Hong Kong and opened trade, including opium, through many ports. Someone will say that they would not have been able to “digest” the whole of China, so they took as much as they could. But it seems to us that the emperor was quite satisfied with them, besides, in the further management of Chinese society, all “unpopular” decisions and clearly anti—popular actions could be explained by losing the war – you lost, you suffer.
Let’s arrange the “benefits” in ascending order of importance.
First, curbing population growth. Although this is rather a secondary goal, it is not necessary to discount it. They are trying to limit the population now, but this does not mean that there was no talk about it then. It’s not just about the war with the victims of more than 100 million people, it’s more about drugs. The total damage from their actions can hardly be calculated, but it seems huge.
Secondly. After the “opium wars”, Chinese society ceased to be closed, Western values and creeds began to penetrate there by means of “cultural cooperation”. And this made it possible to form the worldview of the society of almost the entire Planet without any isolated “enclaves” in which, without their influence, such ideological constructions could be formed that it would be difficult to work with in terms of management (remember the Indians of North America).
Thirdly, the stability of the Qing Emperor’s administration was supported, and the brewing general people’s liberation uprising was prevented in advance, the echo of which was the Taiping uprising, which is mentioned above. The fact is that peasant uprisings like the “Taiping rebellion” did not begin in 1850, and since the seizure of power by the Manchus, uprisings have flared up here and there. The growing contradictions increased the scale of the fights, the moment of a general uprising could come, and then the imperial troops, without the support of the interventionist forces, could hardly keep the situation under control.
And most importantly. Did the indigenous Chinese peoples protest only against the alien Manchus? No. We have written above about the ideological attitudes that form the dominant creeds among them. Although they maintain the stability of the virtually slaveholding hierarchy in the omissions, but in the announcements they form ideas about a just life, about equality. For a Global actor, there was a risk that some Chinese version of communism would prevail in China, and they were not ready to confront it yet, mainly at the ideological level. Then, already in the twentieth century, “communism” will come to China, it will fall very well on the dreams of the Chinese people about the future, but it will no longer be the same communism, it will be emasculated by the teachings of Marx. In fact, this means that the Global Entity preemptively prevented the emergence of communism in such a large state when the Globalists did not yet have an ideological weapon against it.
It was these tasks that were solved under the guise of “opium wars” by the hands of profit-hungry businessmen, politicians, and the military. We should not forget those “bookmarks” that were made for the future. The same agreement under which the Far East was transferred to Russia. It was this fact that was then repeatedly used to aggravate relations with Russia and to foment conflicts up to a military clash. We think that at the conclusion of this agreement, the British understood this perfectly well and went to it precisely for the sake of creating a hotbed of tension, into which they will from time to time throw fuel, solving their tasks. Here it is, the strategy of “divide and conquer” in all its “glory”.
The Chinese know their history. In the memory of the Chinese people, those feelings have been preserved when your people are exterminated simply because they do not have such modern weapons, they carry out genocide with drugs because they are “second-class” people. Interventionists set their own rules of the game due to the fact that they consider themselves a “white bone”.
This has not only not been forgotten, but is becoming increasingly important when the Chinese see that even now they are being used by Western “partners” as cheap labor, as a meek mass. They see that the descendants of those who committed genocide in China are sitting in the same House of Lords. Not only have they not been punished, they have not repented, they continue to consider themselves the “elite” who are allowed everything. We are now on the threshold of grandiose events, a split, a change of world leaders. These memorable thoughts not only about the British, but about the entire Western world (it was not for nothing that the French and Americans were connected then) will allow Chinese society to be torn out of the orbit of the Western project, and maybe even unleash a military conflict. It is clear that it is far from an independent Chinese path here, but the memory of the “opium wars” will be “warmed up” by Globalists and used to reshape the world according to new patterns.
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