Decline, Fall, and Aftermath of the Qing Empire 103
than Guangzhou and concluding with a standard emperor’s command
to his lowly subjects: “Tremblingly obey and show no negligence!”^1
The emperor’s condescending attitude refl ected how little he under-
stood the power realities of the world at the end of the eighteenth cen-
tury. Lord Macartney, the British envoy to Qianlong’s court in 1793,
was struck by the ineffi ciency and fragility of the Chinese government,
as he perceptively observed that China’s ship of state had fallen into
serious disrepair. “She may, perhaps, not sink outright; she may drift
some time as a wreck, and will then be dashed to pieces on the shores;
but she can never be rebuilt on the bottom.”^2
The problems of the China trade might have remained a minor irri-
tant to the expanding British Empire in the early nineteenth century,
but frustrations increased dramatically on both sides in the next few
decades because of one additional factor: opium. From 1800 to 1810
China accumulated about twenty-six million ounces of silver through its
trade with western (mostly British) merchants, because the British pub-
lic became a nation of tea drinkers, while the Chinese remained largely
indifferent to British products. British merchants found the answer to
this economic problem in the growth and sale of the addictive drug
opium. They began to grow opium on British-controlled plantations in
India and to ship the drug to China in order to pay for the ever-increas-
ing British imports of tea, silk, and porcelain.
Opium, produced from the poppy plant, had long been known in
China as a pain reliever and treatment for diarrhea, but opium addiction
had not been a serious social problem. In the eighteenth century, it was
discovered that by vaporizing the sap from the opium poppy and inhal-
ing the vapors through a long-stemmed pipe, the drug could be effi ciently
introduced into the blood stream, producing a strong sense of eupho-
ria. This kind of opium smoking relieved boredom along with physical
and mental pain. It was also highly addictive, and withdrawal produced
chills, trembling, severe cramps, and nausea. As British traders discov-
ered this magical solution to their balance-of-payments problem with
China, opium addiction spread rapidly through a Chinese population
that had little understanding of the poisonous dangers of the drug.^3
The economic effects of the growing drug trade were just as bad
as the social effects. By the mid-1820s, China’s trade surplus with the
West had disappeared. Between 1831 and 1833, ten million ounces of
silver fl owed out of China, as Britain paid for its tea, silk, and porce-
lain imports with opium profi ts. By 1836, British merchants sold about
$18 million worth of opium in China and bought $17 million worth
of tea. The Qing court became aware of the opium problem as early as