454 Part VI: European Empires in Asia
came into bloom in January; the seed pod was lanced, and the milky substance
was collected in April and May. During the intense dry heat of May the mois-
ture content was reduced to 30 percent; then the resulting product—opium—
was formed into three-pound balls or “cakes,” wrapped in sheets made from the
poppy petals, and dried. In October and November the cakes were packed inside
mango-wood crates, 40 cakes in two layers, about 120 pounds total. These crates
were loaded onto boats and shipped down the Ganges to Calcutta.
In Calcutta, opium was the property of the Government of India’s Board
of Customs, Salt, and Opium. No one else could deal in opium in India. The
Government of India (still at that time the East India Company) auctioned off
the opium to private merchants who carried it to China. The profit, after pay-
ing costs of production and transport, went to the Government of India, but
the East India Company, by selling to private shippers at Calcutta, wiped its
hands of the delicate problem that all opium entering China was illegal.
In China, as we have already seen, there was only one way to trade, which
was to come as a tributary nation, perform the nine prostrations before the
emperor, the “kowtow,” and present tribute. Only then, as an act of benevolent
good will, would the emperor grant the barbarian the right to engage in a little
trade. Most nations were willing to play this game for the sake of the treasures
that China produced; Siamese, Nepalese, Inner Asians, Russians, Portuguese,
Dutch would all kowtow to trade—but not the English. When George Macart-
ney, England’s first emissary to China, arrived in Beijing in 1792, he was deter-
mined to be received as an emissary from an equal, sovereign nation. He would
drop to one knee to honor another great monarch but would kowtow to the
Son of Heaven only if some mandarin would kowtow to a picture of George
III. The Chinese refused this sign of equality but allowed trade anyway, enroll-
ing England as a tributary state, whether they wanted it or not, after having
received Macartney’s ship with an honor barge carrying inscriptions reading
“envoy bearing tribute.”
In Canton the barbarians could engage in trade only under extremely con-
trolled conditions. The Chinese government assigned Chinese merchant
houses, called “hongs,” to handle all foreign trade, which was organized into a
guild called the cohong. The chief official was known by the foreigners as the
“Hoppo,” the superintendent of customs whose job was to determine import
duties and who performed these duties by exacting as much as he possibly
could from the foreigners. Fifteen acres of riverbank were assigned to all West-
ern nations for their “factories,” which were long narrow buildings that served
as warehouses, living quarters, servants’ rooms, and cookhouses. Foreign mer-
chants were not allowed to leave these 15 acres to go into the city, still less to
take an outing in the countryside. They might do a little rowing on the river
just off their quarters, but that was all. Anything they needed from the China
beyond their 15 acres had to be managed by the hong. They hired Chinese
“compradors” to manage their day-to-day operations. Every year, from April
to October, the entire European establishment moved down to the Portuguese