After the Daoguang Emperor tasked Commissioner Lin Zexu with suppressing the opium trade bedeviling China in 1839, Lin initially tried diplomacy.
As British traders were growing the drug in India and then smuggling it into China, he hoped an appeal to their country’s sense of honor might be salutary. Before the outbreak of the First Opium War, he wrote to Queen Victoria, explaining the harm that was being caused by the “barbarian merchants”, and inquiring “where is your conscience?”
As no reply was forthcoming, Lin destroyed 20,000 chests containing 1,150,000 kg of opium in Humen, Guangdong, whereupon Britain invaded China in support of its drug traffickers. As the world’s greatest military power, it had little difficulty in overcoming a country that was weak, introverted, and technologically handicapped. The peace terms it subsequently…
