Distrust and greed

Lead review

The opium wars waged between Britain and China in the 19th century are among the most studied and discussed events of modern world history. They are considered to be the beginning of the modern age in Chinese history and mark a turning point in the relations between Europe and Asia, perhaps as much as the landing of Vasco da Gama in Calicut. The Opium War – Drugs, Dreams and the Making of China by Julia Lovell is yet another addition to the story of those wars. But it is as much about the perceptions about the wars in modern China as about the wars themselves. History becomes relevant and meaningful only when it is related to the present. The import of events changes according to the interpretations given to them on the basis of the realities of the present and expectations about the future. Lovell is more concerned about the use of the memory of wars by the Chinese Communist Party and the government than about the course of the wars and what they meant to those who were parties to it.

Lovell, who teaches modern Chinese history in the University of London, is proficient in Chinese and is one of a new generation of  Sinologists. She has translated works of contemporary Chinese writers into English and has also written about China. This is her third book on China. She says she has offered in her book both the British and Chinese perspectives on the wars, and she wants to show how two different countries can understand the same history in completely different ways.

The British were the most important colonial and  trading powers in the world in the beginning of the 19th century. China was an insular society, needing little from the outside world and unaware of the changes taking place there. Britain waged the opium wars to open up the Chinese market, in the process selling opium to the country and turning millions of Chinese into addicts. The British needed Chinese silver, tea, silk and porcelain, had a big trade deficit with China, but the Chinese wanted nothing from it and were unwilling to grant Britain any trading rights. The wars were a result of the British economic need to trade with China. Wars have been waged in history for many reasons, but the immorality of waging what amounts almost to, in modern terminology, a biological war on a people was stark in the case of the opium wars. There was little to justify it, except colonial logic and economic imperatives.

While Lovell does not gloss over the untenability of the British attitudes and policies, she is more concerned with what modern China thinks about them. The wars have been seen by China as the most humiliating event in its history. Lovell’s argument is that the Chinese government is trying to bolster nationalism and derive legitimacy by reminding the people of the country’s “pre-eminent national wound” and making it out as “the first emblematic act of western aggression, as the beginning of a national struggle against a foreign conspiracy to humiliate the country with drugs and violence.” She has noted that the attempt to picture China as a victim of the west has intensified after the Chinese Communist Party liberalised its economic policies and tightened its political control in the wake of the Tiananmen revolt in 1989. She considers it a strategy resorted to by all authoritarian regimes to persuade the people to blame all problems on a foreign enemy, thereby justifying any sacrifice required of the people.

Governments, not only authoritarian but others too, of countries which have suffered from colonial repression, exploitation and unjust treatment, have  tried to build nation states and promote nationalism by emphasising their victimhood and resistance to foreign domination. Even after accepting the argument that the Chinese leadership lacks in democratic credentials and needs a crutch of historical memory to prop itself up,  it is difficult to accept the thesis that the whole official attention paid to the opium wars is a myth-making exercise. China was certainly a victim of an unfair war which humiliated and shamed it.

Lovell, however, does not whitewash the British policies and attitudes and acknowledges that there was much for Britain to be embarrassed about. She does not accept the justifications offered by some British historians and even observes that there was opposition to the wars in Britain.  That imparts some even-handedness to her account.

The book is valuable for the wealth of details about the wars, the state of China before and during the wars, and about the personalities, Chinese and British, who were involved in them. It was an uneven contest with a technologically advanced and purposeful empire clashing with a weak and backward country. The emperor was ignorant and ill-informed and was not in control, the methods and weapons of war were ill-matched, the communication system was inadequate, China was ill-prepared in every way to counter British plans and actions. A lot of this is already known. But Lovell has provided much more information culled from official documents, communications, literary records and eye witness accounts. Even one of the most researched events in history becomes more vivid with fresh information, insights and interpretations.

Lovell updates her view of the opium wars and China’s response to them with the latest Chinese policies on climate change, the hard stance on the yuan’s exchange rate, and the current trade relations with the west. She thinks China, in its present stage of frothy nationalism, is not as stable or monolithic as the Communist Party would like it to be. She also feels it has as many reasons to fall apart as it does to stick together.

And, with all of China’s engagement with the west, she thinks its rulers are primarily preoccupied with happenings within the country, as always in the past. These may be ideas that may help the world to fine tune its China policies, but it may as well take them with a pinch of opium.

The Opium war – drugs, dreams and the making of china
Julia Lovell
Picador
2011, pp 352
Rs. 499