Customer Reviews

The Opium Wars: The Addiction of One Empire and the Corruption of Another

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

...of gunboat diplomacy in perhaps its most tragic and despicable grandeur. I enjoyed this book and learned a great deal about an intriguing but, by me, previously unexplored history of events. Anyone who is interested in modern Chinese history and affairs including East/West relations would, I think, greatly benefit from a study of the events covered in this book. The UK, which thanks to Wilberforce and others, had suppressed the African slave trade, squandered so much of its moral authority in trying to force a dysfunctional Imperial China into commercial relationships that would fund the UK addction to Chinese silk and tea. Virtually all the Brits could find to sell the Middle Kingdom was opium and thus the UK became a sanctimonious, hypocritical superpower insisting that China admit, on the one hand, missionaries to preach the Gospel and liberate Chinese souls and, on the other, opium merchants to ensnare Chinese addicts and their treasure. (As another reviewer noted, it is hard indeed to read of the events in this book and not be reminded of how modern addictions of cheap petroleum and drugs have had a deleterious effect on the US balance of payments, foreign policy, and world image.) However, whether this particular volume would, for the serious scholar, be the best book on this fascinating subject, I cannot say. Reading it, I was constantly struck by the conviction that this book would have benefitted enormously had it been placed in the respective hands of a well-informed critic and a good editor prior to being published. I enjoyed the authors' hip and humorous style - each chapter reminded me of an entertaining college lecture - but since I found the editing so wanting, I was less confident in how thorough, balanced, and reliable the authors actually were with the mass of information they presented.

This book (initially) really draws you in. The cleverly ambiguous subtitle and the powerful modern analogy in the introduction draws you into a different time and place, less different than our own. The characters are fascinating and the motives of each are illuminating. The writing style is seemingly consistent and easy to digest.

But after a while, you realize that the grand overview of the conflict is a little hazy. Factual discrepencies seem to emerge. Also, with two authors writing the book, you would have thought that some effort would be made to avoid repetition. To the extent that effort was taken, the results seem unavailing. The reader is told twice of the role of Lord Elgin's father in Greece. Twice we are told that the leather straps that prisoners were bound to caused pain, discomfort, and illness. Not a book breaker, but sloppy nonetheless.

An interesting book. An interesting topic. Still, I am sure it could have been done better (or has been).

This book represents literally the worst scholarship I have ever seen. It makes no pretense of careful, thorough, or new research into its subject, but relies almost exclusively on two secondary sources--both in English, both still in print. Its dependence on Jack Beeching's book on the same subject is so thorough that it renders this book completely superfluous. I feel like my time and money were wasted on this when I could have skipped it entirely and headed directly to the source.

In addition to its total lack of new insight into the subject, the book seems not have benefitted from editorial oversight prior to publication. In one chapter, the same quotation is used in two different contexts, citing two different sources, with no attempt at explanation. Indeed, I was surprised to find several ungrammatical sentences scattered throughout, as if an early draft had somehow made it to the presses. If this was a term paper, it would have been handed back for a rewrite. There is no excuse for something of such poor quality sitting on bookstore shelves.

It is insulting to the reader that this book was ever allowed to the see the light of day. The authors ought to have their academic credentials revoked.

The Opium Wars is a well written chronicle of the shameful period in the nineteenth century when Great Britain sank to the level of an international drug cartel. The British Empire forced China's Qing Dynasty to allow huge shipments of opium into its territories in order to reduce Britain's huge trade deficit. The details of how Britain contributed to the decline of China are astounding but well documented.

A particularly interesting aspect of this book are the numerous references to and comparisons with present day issues and situations. The writing is scholarly but highly readable. Those who read it will have a better understanding of a less than glorious period of British history and a new appreciation of the anger and distrust China still feels towards the West as a result.

I thought the book was well written and interesting. It tells an amazing story of China's history. The author includes interesting parallels to the 20th century as well. I recommend it to anyone interested in learning more about how the British sold Opium to China in the mid 1800s.

Colourful history that tends to ask more questions than provide answers. Not as successful as Maurice Collins' 1946 classic "Foreign Mud".

Deeper research is still needed into the merchant companies, their composition and practices, that participated in the opium trade world-wide: a trade that made huge fortunes for individuals and Imperial nations in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

This is a very good book , indicating a lot of research and studies

For the layman who has no knowledge of China's decline in the 18th and 19th centuries, this a must-read.

There are, to me, a few points of inaccuracies and incompletenss about Hong Xiuquan and his Taiping Tianguo.Hong's fall was not
solely due to Zeng Guofeng. The English mercenary General Charles Gordon was not mentioned at all. In addition, in-fighting and disunity among Hong's subordinates played a very crucial role.

None the less, the book is highly recommended