Ch 17 - A Clash of Cultures

Storm Clouds on the Horizon

The British took a staunch defensive position against the intimidation of Chinese authorities. Mutual ignorance and misunderstandings led to open fighting and the first significant battle of the Sino-British Opium War.

Adamant in their refusal to deal with Chinese authorities through Canton's hong merchants, the British were continually frustrated in their attempts to reach a satisfactory trade agreement with China. The problem was aggravated by the fact that both countries were colossally ignorant of one another. Chinese and Manchu officials considered the English to be "foreign devils," while the British regarded the Chinese as uncivilized and their contempt for and irritation at Chinese customs and traditions bordered on the extreme. The continuing influence of the opium trade only complicated matters.

China and Great Britain stood in sharp contrast and opposition to one another. China struggled against the opium trade and tried to maintain its ancient tribute system of foreign relations, while Great Britain struggled to expand its own colonial and commercial interests. The British were accustomed to international relations based on sovereign equality, while Chinese tradition required dealing with nations on the basis of a superior-inferior relationship, an intolerable situation to the British. The dramatic differences in legal procedures and traditions between China and Britain continually exacerbated existing problems.

The Chinese legal system clashed head on with Western legal concepts of individual responsibility and assumptions concerning the rights and responsibilities of an individual under Anglo-Saxon law. Founded on ancient precepts of group responsibility, China's Confucian-based justice system included the arbitrary arrest and torture of accused persons, behavior viewed with repugnance in the West. The British regarded Chinese justice as high-handed and unjust and after 1784, the British at Canton refused to allow their subjects to submit to Chinese jurisdiction in homicide cases. The Americans instituted a similar policy in 1821, the net effect of which created a degree of extraterritoriality in Canton - foreign legal jurisdiction over foreign nationals - a situation that was never explicitly assured by the Manchu government.

Had the British actually adhered to their concept of national sovereignty, a basic principle of international law in which they professed to believe, they may have realized they had no treaty rights in China and were there only at the sufferance of the Qing dynasty. Finally, if they were unhappy with the terms under which the Chinese permitted them to remain, their only peaceful options were to properly ask for a modification of those terms or withdraw. Sadly, such was not the temperament of 19th century Europeans toward non-Europeans. The strong admiration of the Celestial Kingdom that permeated Europe during the 18th century had been replaced by a combination of irritation, condescension and contempt. Driven by the industrial revolution, a strong desire for new markets and a passion for colonial power backed by modern weapons of war, Great Britain rode the crest of Western expansion and maritime commerce directly into a collision with two thousand years of Chinese history. Something had to give.

After destroying the opium stockpile at Chuanbi, Imperial Commissioner Lin Zexu reopened the port of Canton as promised. Lin permitted foreigners to travel to Macao if they chose to do so. He also issued the merchant ships in Whampoa their sailing papers and allowed them to sail with their loads of tea. Sixteen of the most notorious opium smugglers, including Dent and James Matheson, who between them had supplied more than half the total volume of opium surrendered, received the only penalty imposed by Lin;  not one of the sixteen men would ever be allowed to set foot in Canton again.

Superintendent Charles Elliot quashed any hope Lin may have held that he would be able to report to Emperor Xuanzong that he completed his mission or that he had restored the comfortable tenor of the Canton trade system. The British community had put its head in the Dragon's mouth once and Elliot was not going to let it happen again. Instead of agreeing to sign the bond against future participation in the opium trade, less than one week after surrendering the opium stock Elliot ordered the entire British community out of Canton. He also ordered them to remove their trading ships from the Pearl River to either Macao or the Hong Kong Roads. Elliot was determined to keep the British out of Canton as virtual hostages and away from the whims of Commissioner Lin and the hong merchants until he received detailed instructions from London, which he felt could not be before February or March of 1840. As for the 1839-1840 trading season, the American merchants, most of whom had been involved in the opium traffic, remained in Canton and agreed to handle the British trade as commission agents for England to keep the tea trade moving.

Once in Macao, Elliot sent a series of heated dispatches to Foreign Secretary Lord Palmerston urging, among other things, the immediate initiation of a "powerful intervention" in China. For their part, the British traders jointly petitioned Lord Palmerston to vigorously protect their interests in China and to take steps to reimburse them for their lost opium. Elliot however, carefully distanced himself from the opium traffic. Clearly ashamed of it, he wrote that it was little better than "plain buccaneering ... discreditable to the character of the Christian nations under whose flag it is carried." Elliot also wrote to Lord Auckland, Governor-General of India, asking him to send ships to protect British subjects pending instructions from London.

Throughout June and July of 1839, the British residing in Macao felt the growing financial impact of suddenly removing over twenty thousand chests of opium from the market. It drove up the price per chest. The increased price produced a potential for tremendous profits which led directly to a marked increase in the desperation and violence of opium smugglers. Heavily armed clipper ships of the big trading firms cruised the China coasts bringing in more opium from India than ever before, just as Imperial Censor Bu Jitong had warned would happen in a memorial to the emperor. Adding to the rising tension was the uncertainty of what would happen once Imperial Commissioner Lin discovered the opium traffic he thought he had destroyed continued to flourish.

Following the destruction of the opium stock at Chuanbi, Commissioner Lin Zexu intended to conduct a purge of officials in the Customs Office, but discovered that too many of them were deeply implicated in the drug trade. Even when he could stir them to take vigorous enforcement action, the smugglers adopted more ingenious tactics designed to circumvent the law. Opium was sometimes hidden in women's apartments in the rear of houses with the intent of embarrassing the searchers. Sometimes it was buried in forests, or in temple precincts. It had even been packed into chests disguised as coffins and buried in tombs until needed. Commissioner Lin even found it difficult to get reliable informers. They were of little use to him unless they knew the traffic, but if they knew that much they generally worked for the smugglers, who paid better.

Imperial Commissioner Lin Zexu was a key player in the first large-scale demonstration of just how impractical and ineffective prohibition really was in suppressing traffic in a drug as addictive as opium. Opium addicts would pay any amount charged by the smugglers just to get their hands on the drug. If supplies shrank because of effective interdiction efforts, the price climbed. This resulted in greater profit margins for the dealers and made even more money available to bribe customs officials. Opium smuggling was so extensive that thousands of Chinese, from crews of the "fast crabs" to opium smokers, developed a vested interest in not only violating the law, but in protecting others who broke it as well. Every respected citizen or high government official who became involved in the traffic presented a new opportunity for extortion and blackmail. Worse, the more severe the punishments for opium offenses, the greater the risk that those involved would willingly commit acts of violence, even murder, to avoid being captured.

Anxieties around Canton were intensified by an incident that occurred near Hong Kong on July 7, 1839. A number of American and British ships tied up in the Hong Kong Roads routinely gave their crews shore leave to relieve the boredom of sitting at anchor. In Kowloon, a drunken brawl between six quarrelsome English sailors and a group of villagers resulted in the death of a Canton resident named Lin Weixi. When Captain Charles Elliot first learned of the tragedy, he immediately knew the Chinese would demand the man responsible for Lin Weixi's death. The Canton authorities had always insisted that whenever a Chinese was killed by a foreigner, the guilty party must be handed over to them for execution. To hand the man over was out of the question. Elliot flatly refused to acknowledge Chinese criminal jurisdiction over British subjects, and went to great lengths to keep the entire affair quiet. The killing of Lin Weixi quickly brought into focus the long-standing dispute over legal jurisdiction between Britain and China.

By this time, Imperial Commissioner Lin Zexu had learned of the resurrection of the opium traffic and decided to use the matter of Lin Weixi's death as a device to get the British under control. As expected, he claimed the equal application of Chinese law over natives and foreigners alike and demanded the guilty seaman be delivered up for punishment. While Commissioner Lin raged over the issue, Captain Elliot convened a summary court and tried the six suspects himself aboard the merchant ship Fort William anchored off Hong Kong. Two of the seamen were fined £15 and sentenced to three months hard labor in England and three were fined £25 and sentenced to six month's imprisonment. The last sailor, Boatswains Mate Thomas Tidder, was charged with Lin Weixi's murder. The jury held there was insufficient evidence to convict him however, and Tidder was acquitted. When word of the verdict reached Commissioner Lin - acquitted of manslaughter for lack of evidence - he refused to accept it and stopped British trade at Canton. On their return to England, all six men went unpunished because the British Admiralty ruled that Elliot had no authority to try them in the first place.

The dispute surrounding the murder of Lin Weixi widened during the summer. Thoroughly irritated with British obstinacy, Commissioner Lin stepped up the pressure on foreigners living in Macao by descending on the Portuguese settlement with a contingent of Chinese troops. The Imperial Commissioner and his troops camped north of the Barrier on the narrow peninsula leading to Macao. Even though Macao had always remained Chinese property - it had never been ceded to Portugal - no high Chinese dignitary or troops had ever entered the settlement before. Not knowing the reason for the "visit," Charles Elliot feared that Lin was going to force the surrender of Boatswains Mate Tidder, confine the British in Macao, and press him to halt the opium clipper trade.

Elliot, whose principal duty had become the protection of all British subjects, decided it was too unsafe for any of them to remain in Macao. The sloop H.M.S. Larne had sailed for India carrying dispatches, leaving him with no naval support whatsoever. He issued a public notice on August 21 advising all British citizens to leave Macao and move northeastward across Canton Bay to live aboard the more than fifty merchant ships anchored in the Hong Kong Roads. Monday, August 26 was set as the evacuation date. Portuguese Governor Adriao Accacio da Silva Pinto disavowed any responsibility for protecting British lives on Macao. Although Commissioner Lin and his troops remained north of the Barrier, anxiety bordering on panic set in as the British, fearing the worst, hurriedly evacuated the Portuguese enclave. One week after the British departed, Commissioner Lin Zexu and his troops entered Macao on what was presented as a visit of ceremony to his Excellency da Silva Pinto. After a splendid, day-long parade through Macao to emphasize the British had fled before the Chinese, Commissioner Lin retired to Canton.

China and Britain were sitting on a powder keg, fused by the unresolved issue of signing the Chinese bond against future opium trafficking. Elliot based his refusal to sign the bond on his persistent contention that imposition of the death penalty without a fair trial was not only uncivilized, but contrary to British justice. Less than a week after the British arrived at the Hong Kong Roads, Commissioner Lin issued a proclamation intended to put a stranglehold on the British position. He ordered the residents of Kowloon and the area around Hong Kong to "faithfully ...intercept and wholly ...cut off from the English all supplies, that they may be made to fear and to pay tribute of fealty."

Commissioner Lin Zexu also authorized local Chinese to arm themselves and to capture or open fire on British subjects seeking to obtain food and supplies. Even getting water was prohibited. Lin truly believed this tactic would quickly end the British problem. Either they would submit, abandon the opium trade, and reenter the Pearl River to trade in the ancient manner, or they would have to go home. Lacking knowledge of world affairs, Lin Zexu never seriously considered that the British, under strength as they were in the fall of 1839, might stand and fight. He never expected they would be reinforced from home. On the very day Commissioner Lin issued his proclamation, the answer to Elliot's letter to Governor-General Lord Auckland arrived in Hong Kong from India;  the twenty-eight gun frigate H.M.S. Volage, Captain Smith commanding. Smith reported that a second frigate, the eighteen gun H.M.S. Hyacinth, was following and would arrive soon.

Commissioner Lin received a disturbing report on August 31 announcing the British frigate's arrival at Hong Kong. He had the use of a Chinese fleet of warjunks at his disposal however, and was not frightened by the arrival of a single British warship. Just as he believed that Europeans were a primitive people, that British fabrics were inferior to Chinese silk, British earthenware was inferior to Chinese ceramics, and the general behavior of British seamen seemed uncivilized, he mistakenly assumed that the British navy must be inferior to the Chinese navy. He did not know that even British merchant ships were armed with cannon that were far deadlier and more accurate than any guns used in the Chinese fleet.

Captain Charles Elliot became concerned enough about the community's provisions that on September 4 he set out to discover what could be done to alleviate the shortages. Taking the cutter Louisa, the small, armed ship Pearl, and a small scout ship from the frigate Volage, Elliot set out for the village of Kowloon in search of supplies. Elliot soon spotted three large Chinese war junks anchored in line ahead formation under a strong, seemingly fully­manned shore battery. After pulling to with a pistol's shot of the Chinese ships, Elliot sent a small party including his interpreter, the Reverend Karl Gützlaff, in a small boat to the largest junk with instructions to deliver two documents to the ship's commanding officer. The first requested water, the second asked for food. The Chinese officer refused to accept the documents and after Gützlaff explained their content, stated he could do nothing in light of Commissioner Lin's orders. In an effort to get rid of the unwelcomed visitors, the officer politely referred Gützlaff and his men to one of the other junks. Aboard the second ship the British were given a similar reception, politely received, but referred to another ship. Karl Gützlaff tried unsuccessfully to plead for food and water from each of the Chinese commanders. Though sympathetic with the British plight, not one of the Chinese officers had any authority to grant such a request and tried their best to put the British off by saying it was a matter that had to be referred to Commissioner Lin for a decision.

After six hours of frustrating and fruitless conversation, Elliot ordered Gützlaff and his men to a village further down the shoreline, where they succeeded in buying provisions. Before the boat could be loaded however, a group of Chinese police appeared and forced the villagers to take back the supplies. Elliot and Smith had been impatiently riding at anchor for most of the day. When the empty boat finally rowed back alongside the Louisa, Elliot's badly worn temper gave way to open anger. The Louisa, the Pearl, and the scout ship from the Volage opened fire on the anchored warjunks without warning. The Chinese ships quickly returned fire in concert with the nearby shore battery. After thirty minutes of exchanging cannon shot at close range, Elliot's squadron retired undamaged to resupply with ammunition, leaving three badly damaged Chinese ships to limp to the safety of a small cove. By late afternoon, with their powder and cartridges replenished and their guns cleaned and ready for action, the Louisa and the Pearl reengaged the warjunks to renew the fight while Captain Smith returned to the H.M.S. Volage aboard the scout ship to bring his frigate into the action.

During the second attack, the Pearl fell behind leaving the Louisa to engage the wounded warjunks alone. The assault continued until sunset, when Elliot decided to break off contact with the Chinese. Captain Smith, still excited over the day's fighting, urged Captain Elliot to permit him to sink the junks the following morning and land armed men to attack the shore battery. The day's fighting had quenched Elliot's anger however, and after reflecting on the day's events he decided the Chinese had been punished enough. The honor of the British flag had been upheld.

Between August 12, 1637, when British Navy Captain Wedell fired on the Chinese for refusing him food and water, and September 4, 1839, when Captain Charles Elliot repeated the action for precisely the same reason, the British had never fired on the Chinese except on those few occasions when the Chinese fired on them, as in the Battle of the Bogue. There was one big difference between the two incidents, however;  Wedell and his men were truly desperate for food, Elliot was not. Captain Elliot's precipitant action put the British in an awkward position. Not only had Elliot, i.e. Great Britain, fired the first shot, they did so in response to the inconsequential act of being refused permission to buy food and water, permission no Chinese naval officer had the power to give in the first place. Captain Charles Elliot's naval action in the "Food Fight" off Kowloon became the opening battle in the first Sino-British Opium War.