35 of 38 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Great Helmsman just said no, January 15, 2003
This review is from: The Opium Wars: The Addiction of One Empire and the Corruption of Another (Hardcover)
This well written narrative describes the roots and actions of the two Opium Wars (1839-42, 1856-1860) fought primarily between Great Britain and China. Its not a pretty story, and its not a story familiar to many Americans.
The gist of the problem for the British was that Britain had an insatiable demand for tea and silk, but there was virtually nothing the Chinese wanted to import from Britain. Therefore British traders in Canton imported opium from British-owned plantations in India, creating millions of Chinese opium addicts (including the emperor himself). Not only did drug dealing more than offset their negative balance of payments, it eventually generated nearly 10% of British tax collections.
The first Opium War erupted in 1839 when the Chinese officials got serious about suppressing the opium trade and resulted, among other things, in the British navy and numerically small but well-armed ground troops opening various Chinese ports by force and obtaining possession of Hong Kong. The second Opium War, in which French navy and army forces joined, resulted in the conquest of Peking and the destruction of immense artistic and cultural wealth when the Summer Palace complex was looted and burned. In fact the words loot apparently came into the English language in the first Opium War from a Hindi word lut. Queen Victoria even named a Pekinese dog sent to her from the sack of Peking Lootie.
Nobody comes off well. The British are uniformly horrible, and the French only slightly better. Americans are not active belligerents (excepting one occasion when a US Navy captain intervenes, despite contrary orders, to help the British), but American traders and consuls are involved in drug dealing. And, yes, the Chinese are victimized, but many Chinese grew wealthy as opium importers (the authors describe one Chinese as the worlds wealthiest man), most officials were corrupt, incompetent and uncaring regarding their citizens welfare, and Chinese soldiers serving in the British army commit as many atrocities as the Brits and Sikhs.
While the British ignore this sorry episode and Americans are largely ignorant of it, the Chinese remember Western aggression and their victimization all too well. Opium plagued China for another century, although most was home-grown by 1900. On the eve of World War II 10% of the population was addicted, with 30% of Hong Kongs population addicted (Not the image of efficient British colonial administration, is it?). Massive opium addiction did not end in China until the Communists brutally cracked down on it after their 1949 victory. The authors conclude, The Great Helmsman just said no.
I recommend this book as an excellent overview of 19th Century Western interaction with China and an important piece of knowledge for those who would understand Chinese wariness towards the West since 1949. The few reproductions of paintings and photographs are interesting, but the large scale map of China is inadequate to follow the complex series of military actions. There is a bibliography for those who want to study the subject further, although many of those books will be hard to come by outside a major university library.
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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The two wars between Great Britain and Manchu China., August 3, 2004
This is an OK read and the writing flows easily, but I have a problem with this book. Jack Beeching wrote an 1980's title called the The Chinese Opium Wars, and Travis and Hanes quote this extensively. Since I have read Beeching's book and rated it 5 stars, why write another book basically detailing the same story. I felt I was reading the same thing. This is a good book, but Beeching's book is better and the original is still on sale, even on Amazon. So readers, go with the original. This book is good, but Beeching's book has more detail. I enjoyed this book, and its more pro Chinese positions that the authors adopted.
The book details the two wars fought between Great Britain and China in the nineteenth century. The war was extensively over the drug trade in China. Great Britain imported quite a lot of tea and silk from China losing much silver in the process. As a means of equalizing the trade, Great Britain and certain wealthy traders started exporting opium from British India to China. The result was a deterioration in the Chinese population, corruption in the Manchu court, and more silver flowing from China to Great Britain. The two wars were fought to open up more trade to China, including that of opium. China was opposed to this, and the wars resulted. This was a grave injustice to China, imposed by the British. It also details the loss to the world of the Chinese Summer Palace, which the British burned in the war. The book reviews these two wars.
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26 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
The most sloppily written history book I have ever read., August 5, 2004
This review is from: The Opium Wars: The Addiction of One Empire and the Corruption of Another (Hardcover)
I wish that I had spent my money and reading time on a different account of this period. It is full of obvious errors, and since I read to learn about things I don't know about, I naturally worry about the unobvious errors. An example: "Beitang" is described as "8 miles north of Peking" on page 231, "160 miles north of Peking" on page 236, "fifty miles north of Peking" on page 242, and "8 miles north of Dagu" (making it about 75 miles southeast of Peking - apparently the correct location) on page 251. East and west are reversed more frequently than gotten right (literally), and dates given sometimes conflict with the stated sequence of events.
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