PRESENTER:'This is the Pearl River, 'and this is the great city of Guangzhou, 'what the Europeans call Canton.
PRESENTER:And it was here, in the mid-1700s, that the destinies of China and the British began to intertwine.
PRESENTER:'Britain had become a tea-drinking nation, 'but tea was only grown in China. 'So ships of the British East India Company 'came here to buy more and more of it.
PRESENTER:'But this created a huge balance of payments problem for the British, 'as the Chinese bought almost nothing in return.
PRESENTER:'During the course of the 18th Century, 'tea became a British obsession, their national drink.
PRESENTER:'And by then, 'they were importing millions of pounds weight of tea every year, 'it was 10% of the national revenue.
PRESENTER:No wonder then, that people said if the China tea trade was endangered, the British nation was in trouble.
PRESENTER:''This one-way trade was unsustainable, 'as every shipment had to be paid for in hard currency.'
PROF. ZHENG YANGWEN:'Europeans, and British in particular, 'were buying a lot from China.'
PROF. ZHENG YANGWEN:And China wasn't buying a lot from Britain and Europe. There was nothing really that they needed.
PRESENTER:'So the British set out to create the demand.
PROF. ZHENG YANGWEN:The British and other traders, the Portuguese, the Dutch, were all thinking, "What is it that the Chinese would buy, so that we can get that silver out, and then we can buy more tea?"
PROF. ZHENG YANGWEN:And… by the 1790s, I think, they figured it out.
PROF. ZHENG YANGWEN:That the Chinese were buying a little bit of opium every time, and that number was increasing.
PRESENTER:'The key to the opium trade was British control of India, 'where the opium was grown.
PRESENTER:'The East India Company bought raw cotton from India 'and then sold it back to them as finished textiles.
PRESENTER:'They then bought up Indian opium and sold it to China, 'buying tea in return.
PRESENTER:'And so they created a trading triangle. 'The profits were high, but so was the risk.
PRESENTER:'So the honourable East India Company continued to smuggle opium, 'despite public outrage back in Britain.
PRESENTER:'And soon the ravages of the drug 'became apparent in the streets of China, with millions of addicts.
PROF. ZHENG YANGWEN:'By the 1820s, opium addiction became visible socially.' Which means opium dens on the street, people dying off, dozing off on the street, it's becoming a social problem.
PROF. ZHENG YANGWEN:'Suddenly, there's a huge increase of court documents relating to this.'
PROF. ZHENG YANGWEN:If you search the 1790s, there's none. Then if you go to 1810s, maybe a few. 'Go to 1820s, there's a lot. 'Go to 1830s, there's a huge amount.'
PROF. ZHENG YANGWEN:'So I think by the mid-1830s, 1835, 36,' I think it's obvious they have to do something about this.
PRESENTER:'Shocked by the social effects of the opium trade, 'and by its drain on their silver supply, 'the emperor and his advisors debated what to do.
PROF. ZHENG YANGWEN:'The emperor spent time looking for an upright official.'
PROF. ZHENG YANGWEN:Because opium is something you could sell and make a lot of money. So you need someone who is upright and very Confucian, very moral.
PRESENTER:'Such a man was the incorruptible Commissioner Lin.
PRESENTER:'Of his appointment, an old friend wrote, "our great land needs thunder and lightning to revive it now."
PRESENTER:'Lin gave the orders to destroy all the opium 'held in British warehouses.
PRESENTER:'Commissioner Lin began the destruction of the British opium 'in early June, 1839.
PRESENTER:'There were 1,200 tonnes of it. 'It took 500 workers more than three weeks to get rid of it all.' Burning it, mixing it with lime and dumping in these ponds.
PRESENTER:'And at the same time, 'the commissioner wrote a letter to Queen Victoria. 'A letter that's touching in its almost naive belief 'in Confucian morality.'
PRESENTER:"We learn that your country is 60 or 70,000 li away from China," he said.
PRESENTER:"And yet foreign vessels come here to make great profit out of the wealth of our country.
PRESENTER:But by what right in return do they sell us this poisonous drug which does so much harm to the Chinese people?
PRESENTER:They may not necessarily intend to hurt us, but by putting profit above all things, they are disregarding the harm they do to others."
PRESENTER:So we ask you, where is your conscience?"
PRESENTER:'But the British were in no mood to discuss Confucian ethics. 'The fact that China had 50 times their population 'and lay the other side of the world was of no matter.
PRESENTER:'They were a maritime nation, the Chinese were not. 'In fact, the Chinese didn't really have a navy at all.
PRESENTER:'Did they understand that the balance of power in the world was changing 'because of maritime power?'
PROF. ZHENG YANGWEN:Yeah. I think for us historians, we're always asked that. Don't they realise that they were no match? Don't they know what's going on in the world.
PROF. ZHENG YANGWEN:I think the answer, I can be quite definite in that, is no. They still think we are the middle kingdom, and all under heaven respect China, admires Chinese civilisation.
PRESENTER:'Bringing ships and men from India, the British gathered a taskforce, 'and sailed to China. 'In new year 1841, they entered the Pearl River.
PRESENTER:'At the climax of the battle, a British rocket hit the powder store of the flagship Chinese junk, 'which blew up in a tremendous explosion.
PRESENTER:The British then rampaged up the coast 'and stormed the port city of Ningbo.
PRESENTER:'It was shock and awe, 19th Century style.
PRESENTER:'Here in this room in Nanking, 'they negotiated the first of what the Chinese call 'the unequal treaties.'
PRESENTER:'So power had come from the barrel of a gun.
PRESENTER:'The British had got what they wanted, 'trading rights, silver and a foothold in China, 'five treaty ports on the Chinese coast.
PRESENTER:'The treaty was signed out on the Yangtze River, 'in the admiral's cabin of HMS Cornwallis.
PRESENTER:'And so began what has come to be seen 'as China's century of humiliation. 'Out of which, a new China would eventually emerge.'
Historian Michael Wood visits a tea market to see the importance of the tea trade to Britain.
The role of the British East India Company in expanding the tea trade, and then the opium trade, is discussed with Professor Zheng Yangwen of Manchester University.
Opium was grown in British India, and smuggled into China. The Chinese resisted the opium trade. This led to war, after the Chinese destroyed all the British opium in China.
The Chinese army and navy were no match for the British navy.
As a result of losing the Opium War, China was forced to sign what the Chinese call the 'unequal treaties,' and give ports to Britain and other foreign powers.
The Chinese refer to this period as the 'Century of Humiliation'.
This clip is from the BBC series The Story of China. A series of short films exploring the stories, people and landscapes that have helped create China's distinctive character and genius over four thousand years.
Teacher Notes
You could ask your pupils to draw a diagram showing the triangular trade between Britain, India and China.
You could then ask:
Where else have they come across a triangular trade?
What does the Opium War tell us about the East India Company?
You could finish by discussing how significant the Opium War was in the history of China:
Which criteria will your pupils use to define 'significance'?
Curriculum Notes
This short film is relevant for teaching history at Key Stage 3 and 4 in England, Wales and Northern Ireland and at Third and Fourth Level in Scotland.
More from The Story of China
The Taiping Rebellion, 1850-1864. video
The story of the Taiping Rebellion - which historian Michael Wood calls the 'worst war of the 19th Century'.
The Rise of Mao ZeDong. video
Historian Michael Wood explores the origins and rise of the Chinese Communist Party, and the significance of Mao Zedong in the process.
