第42课 鸦片战争The First Opium War

42、The First Opium WarOpium is a for m of drug extracted from the opium poppy. If a person smoked it regularly and in quantity, he would soon become an opium addict, his spirit would be destroyed, and he would be reduced to a skeleton. To reap f abulous profits, Brit-ish capitalists made opium out of opium poppies planted in India, a British colony then, and sold opium in large quantities to China through the Br itish East India Company as a way of addressing the trade imbalance. In the forty years before the Opium War, Britain exported more than four hundred thousand trunks of opium to China while taking away about three to four hundred million US dollars. The outflow of silver dollars pushed up the price of silver, resulting in financial difficul-ties for the Qing government and adding heaven burden on the ordinary people. As many bureaucrats, landowners, and soldiers were addicted to opium, the ruling classes became even more decadent, and the nation’s fighting capacity was weakened enor-mously. Opium addiction was a major tragedy for the Chinese nation.Both powerful and knowledgeable individ-uals and the ordinary Chinese people strongly demanded a ban on opium. Lin Zexu, the Gov-ernor-General of Hu-Guang wrote to Emperor Daoguang, arguing that if drugs were allowed to spread unchecked, there would be no soldiers to fight against enemies and no soldiers’ pay and provisions in a couple of years. Emperor Dao-guang was also aware of the threat of a “weak army and scarce money.” In December 1838, Emperor Daoguang appointed Lin Zexu as Im-perial Commissioner and sent him to check and ban opium in Guangdong.After arrival in Guangzhou, with the as-sistance of Deng Tingzhen, the governor-general of Guangdong and Guangxi, Lin Zexu consolidated coastal defenses and punished opium smuggling. Meanwhile, for-e ign opium traffickers were notified that they had to hand over all opium in three days and promise not to bring opium into China in the future. Charles Elliot, British Chief Superintendent of Trade tried hard to sabotage this effort, instructing British merchants to refuse to hand over opium. Lin Zexu sent soldiers to besiege the British and forced them to hand over nearly twenty thousand trunks of opium, more than 1.15 million kilograms. Lin Zexu went in person to the beach in Humen, threw the trunks of opium into a big pond, and destroyed it all with bittern and lime. This demonstrated the determination and strong will of the Chinese people to ban opium and to fight against invaders.China’s just action of banning opium became an excuse for the British to launch a war against China. In June 1840, a fleet of forty-eight warships with four thousand soldiers was sent fromBritain and stationed itself in the sea near Guangdong, where the war started. Lin Zexu, the troops, and the ordinary people were well prepared, forcing the British invaders to move to attack Xiamen in Fujian. Deng Tingzhen, who was then the governor-general of Fujian and Zhejiang, was also prepared and defeated the British invaders. They moved to Zhejiang and captured Dinghai. They continued northward to Dagukou in Tianjin and forced the government of the Qing Dynasty at gunpoint into negotiation. The timid Emperor Daoguang had Lin Zexu and Deng Tingzhen dismissed from office and prosecuted. He dispatched Qi Shan as his special envoy to Guangzhou to negotiate with the invaders for a peaceful set-tlement. Upon arrival in Guangzhou inNovember 1840, Qi Shan withdrew the defense installation and dispersed the armed masses. He signed an agreement with the British invaders, promising to cede Hong Kong and paying an indemnity of six million dollars. Humiliated, Emperor Daoguang sent his nephew Yi Shan to preside over military affairs in Guangzhou and fight with the British invaders again.Yi Shan indulged himself in various pleasures and made merry day and night after his arrival in Guangzhou. He withdrew all the Qing troops, which were twenty times more than the British to the city area, leaving no coastal defense. In 1841, be-fore the arrival of Yi Shan in Guangzhou, the British attacked Humen once again. Guan Tianpei, naval commander of Guangdong, put up an indomitable resistance with his soldiers, but Qi Shan only sued for peace and refused to send reinforcements. Under the circumstances of no relief troops, Guan Tianpei kept up the defense and even fired gun s himself at the enemy. When the British soldiers entered the fort, he fought hardwith just a knife and died heroically, while Yi Shan loitered in the city after arr iving in Guangzhou and surrendered immediately with a white flag when the British fired guns at the city. British invaders burned, killed, and looted wherever they went in Guangzhou, while the Guangzhou people fought bravely against the invaders. On May 30, 1841, some British soldiers went to the northern suburbs of Guangzhou and were surrounded by hundreds of people in Sanyuanli where they had seized the Sifang fort. Viscount Hugh Gough, Field Marshal of the British troops made a sally. The Guangzhou residents fought and retreated, luring the enemy to Niulangang. At the sound of a gong, seven to eight thousand people who had remained hidden suddenly came out and fought with the enemy with knives, spears, and spades. It was pouring quite heavily at the time, and the gunpowder of the British got drenched and the guns and canons could not fire. The Guangzhou people rallied their strength and fought on even more bravely. Some British soldiers staggering along with difficulty in their high boots in the muddy field were captured, some were killed, and some knelt down to beg for mercy. The British army asked the local authority of Guangzhou for help. Yi Shan sent his men to dismiss the people. This Sanyuanli resistance struggle against the Br itish displayed the heroic spirit of the Chinese people.In the autumn of 1841, Xiamen was seized by the British troops and Dinghai was once again under attack. Ge Yunfei, the Dinghai zongbing (military governor) staged a heroic resistance against the invaders and was shot to death. Dinghai and Ningbo were captured one afterthe other. Farmers in Ningbo organized a Hei Shui Dang and killed many British soldiers. In 1842, the British pushed their way into Wusong, gateway to the mouth of the Yangtze River. Chen Huacheng, the Jiang- nan Military Governor, aged almost seventy at the time, remained at the fort. Although severely wounded, he fought bravely and eventually died. Thereafter, the British attacked Zhenjiang where they suffered heavy losses.In August 1842, the British warships came to Nanjing along the Yangtze River. Representa-tives of the two countries negotiated for peace in Nanjing. The British invaders forced the repre-sentative of the Qing government to sign the first unequal treaty of China—the Treaty of Nanjing. The main drift of the treaty was that Hong Kong was to be ceded to Britain, twenty-one million US dollars was to be paid as indemnity to the British, the five cities of Guangzhou (Canton), Xiamen (Amoy),Fuzhou (Foochow-fu), Ningbo (Ningpo), and Shanghai were to be opened as ports to the British for the purpose of carrying on their mercantile pursuits, and tariff of export and import customs on British merchants were to be discussed with the British. In the following year,。