Ships of the East India Company launch an attack on Chinese war junks during the first Anglo-Chinese Opium War. (Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis)

Wars between Great Britain and China in which new naval technology facilitated a British victory. The conflict stemmed from the British desire to increase trade with China in the face of opposition from the Chinese government. By the eighteenth century, the British imported a variety of Chinese goods, but the principal commodity was tea. They had little to offer the Chinese in return for the tea because China was economically self-sufficient. This problem created a trade imbalance where British gold and silver reserves were steadily drained off in payment. Equally galling to the British was that the trade they did conduct with China was strictly limited to a handful of merchants in the port of Canton (now Guangzhou). Peking (now Beijing) instituted this policy to prevent any loss of control to the foreigners.

 

This situation changed in the late-eighteenth century when the British realized that a market for opium was growing in China. The British East India Company, which held a trading monopoly with the Chinese, began to ship opium to China in exchange for tea. This redressed the trade imbalance and promised greater commerce as the market grew, but tensions mounted after 1834 when the British East India Company lost its monopoly. Private traders soon began to smuggle opium into China at great profit rather than go through restricted channels at Canton.

 

In March 1839 Peking ordered the opium trade stopped at its source in Canton. Opium stocks were destroyed there in November. Great Britain then declared war. This was done in the name of free trade, but Britain also hoped that a victory would lead to enhanced trade and profits.

 

The Chinese relied on land forces while Britain’s strength was its sea power, which, however, could not penetrate China’s interior. The advent of the gunboat helped break this deadlock. The first of these vessels used in the Opium War was the Nemesis. She mounted 2 × 32-pounder and 5 × 6-pounder guns and had a draft of only six feet. The latter enabled her to sail up previously inaccessible Chinese rivers.

 

The impact of the gunboat was soon apparent with the November 1840 arrival of the Nemesis in Chinese waters. Initially the British warships consisted of conventional sailing warships and supporting craft that could not penetrate shallow, inland waterways. Thus the British spent the first five months of the war harassing coastal towns. The Nemesis enabled a much more aggressive strategy. In January 1841 the British attacked and destroyed the Chinese forts that protected the passage to the port of Canton. The British then sailed to Canton, where the Nemesis penetrated the previously inaccessible shallow canals to the rear of the city. The Nemesis and technological innovations such as the Congreve rocket struck terror in the city and contributed to the fall of Canton.

 

The British expected the Chinese to surrender at the end of 1841 after the loss of Canton and other coastal cities, as well as the island of Hong Kong. The Chinese refusal to do so prompted a British military operation to strike at the Grand Canal, the trade route that supplied rice to the capital of Peking. In June 1842 a British task force of 8 sailing men-of-war, 10 steamboats, and 50 transports sailed up the Yangtze River to the Grand Canal. The force also included the Nemesis and four other gunboats. The Chinese defense was inadequate in the face of Britain’s more technologically advanced ships. By July 1842 the British fleet had captured Chinkiang (now Jinjiang) at the intersection of the Yangtze River and the Grand Canal.

 

The threat this posed to Peking’s rice supply forced the Chinese government to sue for peace. On 29 August 1842 the Chinese accepted the Treaty of Nanking (now Nanjing). This agreement ended China’s strict controls on foreign trade. It also ceded Hong Kong to the British and opened five cities, one of which was Canton, to overseas trade. A supplementary treaty signed in October 1843 amplified Britain’s trading privileges. China’s defeat also allowed France and the United States to demand similar trading advantages.

 

The power of the gunboat and other naval innovations against a country without modern technology was demonstrated again in the Second Opium War of 1856–1860. As with the first, the issue that sparked the conflict was resistance to further Western penetration. The fleet that took part in this Anglo-French effort included more than 25 gunboats. The Anglo-French fleet attacked Canton and forts near Peking via China’s inland waterways. In June 1858 the Chinese surrendered and signed the Treaty of Tientsin (now Tianjin). This opened 11 more Chinese cities to trade, allowed Christian missionaries into the interior, and further reduced China’s economic controls on foreign commerce. In 1859 perceived Chinese resistance to the treaty led to a renewal of hostilities and the occupation of Peking by British and French forces in 1860. The Chinese subsequently adhered to the treaty.

 

The gunboat made possible what had previously been unthinkable: the defeat of China by naval forces. This defeat in war subjugated China to the West, a condition the Chinese did not overcome until the mid-twentieth century.

 

References

Carter, Harvey. The Opium War in China: An Analysis of Great Britain’s Use of War as an Element of Power. Carlisle Barracks, PA: U.S. Army War College, 1990.

Headrick, Daniel. The Tools of Empire: Technology and European Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1981.

James, Lawrence. The Rise and Fall of the British Empire. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994.