253. Victorian Narcos: Drug Dealers Lead Britain to War (Ep 7)

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0:28Well, hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnhem. And me, William Durimple. So previously, if you're just joining us, and you know, if you've heard this before, it was a very odd story. Okay, so what you have is a situation in China where you have a man called Charles Elliott, who is in charge of trade with China, but really not really in charge at all, because the main trade that is going on is the opium trade. And the opium trade is run by these couple of Scottish ruffians called Jardine and Matheson, who pretty much laugh into their sleeves at anything Elliot has to say. He's a weak-chinned Elliot sitting in Macau, who just doesn't really like conflict, who's very conflict-averse.

1:08He's a good man. He's a nice man. He's been freeing slaves in West Africa. He's a nice man, and he's just not the kind of person to, you know, square up to Jardine and Matheson. And they have these gangs of brigands. They're fully tooled up. They don't really listen to him. They are the Pablo Escobar of 19th century China. But they're doing it from the British factory in Canton, which is supposedly British soil, although it isn't because the Chinese don't let Britain buy the soil that they've put their factory on. It still belongs to China. All the people working in there for the British, boiling their eggs and starching their collars, they're all Chinese.

1:47all the guards around it, they're Chinese as well. So it comes in the last episode to a head. Commissioner Lin, who's this one fine, upstanding Chinese Mandarin. Polite, efficient, hardworking. But made of sterner stuff than Eliot. In many ways like Eliot, sort of quite decent. But in ways unlike Eliot, you know, made of steel. Because he's been sent with this mandate to stop the opium trade. Opium is destroying China and, you know, they've had enough of it. so you know despite the fact it initially he says you know we can maybe legalize this and then maybe we can make the money we can grow the poppies ourselves that's all gets shot down and he goes let's just destroy the opium trade let's first of all let's destroy the buyers which is you know you give people a year to get clean and if they're still using you execute them it's pretty draconian stuff and then he goes after the suppliers and the suppliers are all in this British compound, which has cornered the trade.

2:45And we got to this point of impasse. It's sort of like high noon at the OK Corral, where he surrounded the Jardine and Matheson compound, as it pretty much is now, and said, you hand over all your opium, or we're going to hang these people right in front of your eyes. These are the Chinese that you've been doing business with. They've been getting very, very wealthy off the back of this trade. They're your friends. We will kill them. And then let's see what happens. And Lynn then sort of follows this up by writing directly to Queen Victoria saying, look, not your fault. And it's not you. You're an ignorant foreigner.

3:18It's not you. You don't know. It's them. But you know what? We're not having this. And consider this a warning. This is the end of that. We're drawing a line. And it all starts ratcheting up and ratcheting up until Elliot rides in to the rescue a decent man. But somehow manages to carry this off where he says, you know what? just hand in all of your opium okay all of it and the british crown will pay for it he hasn't asked anybody he has no idea how much this is all worth no waft of this has got to palmerston or anybody else and he said well you know we'll just buy it just stop it you know you'll make your profits just stop being silly stop being so silly now we're not going to have a fight we've got a gunship but we're not going to use it that's silly and so he offers this this deal And the reason we laughed so much is because the opportunists around, like the Americans, who've just pretty recently got independence from the British, are sort of very quickly rubbing off their American flags from their crates.

4:16This is British opium. This is British opium. Queen Victoria's buying. It is a bill of$10 million. In the early 19th century. Add four noughts. For any government, this is an, and especially if you consider that the opium trade is the furnace that is driving the machine of British India. This is all just catastrophic. So that's where we left it, William de Rumpur. Where are we picking up these reins from now? Charles Elliott has issued this IOU and now he has to bring it to the British government that they're going to have to pay for it. That is a conversation I would like to have heard, actually.

4:54Very much so, yes. And he writes a letter arguing that failing to pay up could trigger what he calls a commercial convulsion in the Indian trade. And the British view is that although it's morally dubious, the opium trade has been effectively allowed to exist by Chinese authorities forever, tolerated in reality, if not in law, because they never done anything about it. And therefore, this sudden and forceful seizure is seen as an unwarranted act. But ahead of the IOU goes William Jardine. Jardine and Matheson are always the troublemakers in this story. In 1839, William Jardine, realizing now that there's going to be an issue in the repayment because the figures are so much larger than anyone had anticipated,$10 million.

5:46And also that his opium is at the bottom of the sea, because, you know, let's not forget Commissioner Lin has just dumped it all into the ocean and written a nice poem apologizing to the water. It's not coming back. He's out of pocket. And William Jardine hasn't become as rich as he is without being an operator. And he realizes at this point what is needed is someone in London lobbying the government. And so in a very sort of modern twist, he actually gets on a boat, goes back to London from China, takes$20 ,000 with him because Matheson has advised him that what he really needs to do is now start creating propaganda, effectively, in the newspapers.

6:27Oh, cause a ruckus. Get the British people behind you. Get the Daily Mail of its day out and about. And so he takes$20 ,000 to London specifically to buy journalists who will get opinion pieces in the newspapers and get everybody working. And the guy who's writing most reciferously is an ex-East India Company hand who's another Scotsman, part of the same group of Scots near-do-wells. Scots cabal, man. And this is a guy called Hugh Hamilton Lindsay, who is one of the Lindsay family from Fife. Are they related, William? Tell us about it. Well, I hate to say so, yes. Bloody hell. And they're always getting caught up in situations with my family.

7:11For example, there was a James Lindsay who ended up in Tipu's prison with various ancestors of mine in another sort of tight corner. Anyway, Hugh Hamilton Lindsay is basically, at this point in the story, William Jardine's sort of PR man. his PR agent in London, and he starts writing all these opinion pieces in the Times and in other English newspapers, arguing that, and here's a quote, that a despotic and arbitrary government that had always been unjust and oppressive in their treatment of foreigners had deprived innocent Britons of their liberty, debarred them from food and water, threatened their lives, dearly will they pay for the insults and outrages offered to the British nation.

7:55So that's really throwing the kind of... I mean, it hits all the buttons, doesn't it? Absolutely, it does. A very modern tabloidy piece. And Jardine's paying for this. He's got a war chest, which he's paying like some sort of Tory donor, pulling out Brexit editorials just at the moment that it's needed, or founding some dodgy right-wing radio station or TV station to throw out this propaganda. it works because listening to all this and very much of the same temperament is this character Lord Palmerston he is the ultimate sort of British bulldog of the early 19th century he's one of those Anglo-Irish peers a Viscount so he's sort of very blue-blooded the Temple family is his family so they've got power and they've got influence and he begins his parliamentary career as a Tory MP in 1807.

8:50And he's held some really high offices as well. He's a very grand man. He's a man with a great sense of his own importance. And he has been junior Lord of the Admiralty. He served as Secretary of War. He's a big deal. He switches allegiances. Interestingly, I do know a bit about Palmerston because he just flips over to the Whigs in 1830. And as a reward, if you like, for flipping parties, he is made Foreign Secretary in 1839. So, you know, his Consendency is swift and considerable. He is a great defender of British, as he sees it, defender of British rights, defender of British interests. Any British citizen should be able to claim that, like a Roman citizen once had, that he could just step out.

9:31And therefore, he is exactly the right man for Jardine and Matheson to home in on. Soon enough, after being turned down on the first few requests, William Jardine is in his study, feeding him all this directly and advising him what to do. And what Jardine and Matheson want is they want a full-scale war. They want to send gunboats. They want to send a fleet to China. And they tell Palmerston that it'd be a very easy thing. They have this very dim view of the Chinese. They're saying that it will take absolutely nothing. It'll be over by Christmas. It'll be over by Christmas. There will be no effective response from the Chinese.

10:10And we can have the right to sell what we like, where we can open up all the ports. We can grab a few territories. We could get that island Hong Kong. And he's feeding all this Palmerston, who is absolutely already... Lapping it up. Lapping it up. Also in Jardine and Matheson's favour is the cabinet at this point. among the people there is our old enemy macaulay who we last met in the irish famine episode of the irish series if you remember macaulay's brother-in-law charles trevelyan was the man responsible for not sending aid to the starving irish and macaulay also is exactly the sort of person who loves beating up some natives as he sees it extending british influence and showing the power of the British.

10:55So Jardine and Matheson, who want a war, find they've got a cabinet who, in part at least, is very much on their side. And they feed this line to Palmerston and his fellow hawks that a little show of force, you don't even need to send a huge fleet, a little show of force will make the Chinese back down and that they will provide all the ports, all the facilities that we need. We can get opium legalized once and for all, get this trade going again, and recover the money. Otherwise, he says, where are you going to get this 10 million from? What are you going to do? We're still on the hook for 10 million.

11:34Yeah, yeah, yeah. Even for a government at the peak of British power, this is not a sum that's easy to just whip out of the budget. So, I mean, this has a phrase that we've all come to know now. And I wonder if the origins are from this conflict, which is gunship diplomacy, which is where you put your biggest cannons and your biggest guns around and then you say, you know what, let's talk now. This is absolutely Palmerston's modus vivendi. He is Mr. Gunship. You know, Jardine, a clever man, though, to sort of buy off editors and start getting this stuff seeded. And also, presumably, to give a wholly inaccurate account of, you know, sort of men starving to death in whatever the Chinese version of the black hole of Calcutta is.

12:15I mean, he will paint a picture, won't he, if they didn't get food, they didn't get water. You were saying chickens were coming regularly over the back. Chickens were coming in, pigs, everything was being let in the back quietly. They just didn't know how to cook it as well as their Chinese cooks. They had to pull up their own stockings. But we weren't in a starvation situation, but that is the imagery that he has come with. And that's what's inflamed the people. And then given already a hawkish Palmerston, his causus belli, or at least causus gunship diplomacy, whatever that is in Latin. Now, there are a few voices against this, because even in the early 19th century, even at the height of British imperialism, there are many people in Britain who regard the opium trade as an abomination.

13:01And among those arguing that the British have got no right at all to demand compensation is our old friend George Staunton. Do you remember George Staunton? I do remember George Staunton. The embassy story, the McCartney embassy. So this is young George Staunton who had been reciting, who had been trying to speak perfect Chinese at the age of 11. Yes, that's right. They took him on as a translator who may have over-egged his CV a little bit about just how much he knew. Now little George has grown up into big George Staunton and he's saying, no, this is not, I don't recognise this. And he's an MP.

13:34He's apparently the worst speaker in Parliament. He can't get these words out at all any better than he could do with the Chinese emperor. He's no better on the floor of the House. But he is regarded as the kind of the great Chinese expert. He's the only person in Parliament who's been to China. And he speaks Chinese. And by this stage, probably. Now he does. To work in the factory. Now he does. Yeah. He is very clear that the British have no right to ask for this compensation. Others who are arguing that the opium trade is an abomination, which the British cannot go to war to defend an illegal trade with a drug that poisons the people.

14:06There's also a whole group of people in Parliament and the Cabinet who point out the financial costs and the risks of the war. This is the largest empire in the world. Remember that at this point, the British are having a very uphill struggle in Afghanistan. It hasn't yet turned into the catastrophe it will do in 1842 when an entire British army is lost, retreating from Kabul. But it's already been clear that by the end of 1839 that it's going to be an expensive and difficult thing to hold. and it's not the moment to start sending more fleets to other ends of the world in more dubious missions.

14:42Then there's a whole group of people in parliament that point out that there's a perfectly peaceful resolution possible. We don't need to start sending war fleets to literally the other end of the world in order to negotiate with a people who many people in Europe regard as a model state which has kept the largest empire in the world for many, many centuries. Yeah, I mean, just pause there, just remind people just before you carry on, because there are two narratives about China. And we talked about this in the beginning of this series. The one which is, you know, comes out from the 1700s onwards, where the tastes for Chinese goods is chinoiserie.

15:17And you have, you know, people writing about Voltaire, writing about what civilised people these are, the absolute height of civilisation. They're really, you know, people we need to emulate. and then you've got the Jardine and Matheson version which becomes all pervasive that these guys are, you know, they're less than us. They're savages really. They don't know how to run their own country. They're all corrupt. They're all venal and it is the struggle of these two ideologies. So it is almost like newspeak, you know, we just forget all that you thought about the Chinese, everything that you've ever said about the Chinese Great Britain.

15:47I know you've liked them in the past but that's not what the imagery is. So it really is a very contemporary picture. This is a propaganda war that's going on. about China. And we should say that one of the people who's very active at this point in Parliament against a British intervention is William Gladstone, who we also met behaving very well uniquely with the Irish in a period when the British behaved very badly to the Irish and trampled on their rights. Gladstone was a voice of moderation. And here he is again, now in Parliament, and he makes these fantastic speeches. He says, I'm in dread of the judgments of God upon England for our national iniquity towards China.

16:28And he's very clear, the British are poisoning the Chinese people. This is an unjust war. There is absolutely no reason. But he's not in power. Palmerston is. Palmerston is in power. He's also a better speaker than George Staunton, to be fair. And people listen to Gladstone generally. People don't sort of nod off and go to the loo when he's speaking. But the wind is not behind him. It is behind Palmerston. Exactly. So egged on by Jardine and Matheson, particularly Jardine, who's now actually got got access, sort of Elon Musk-like, into the study of power, the equivalent of the Oval Office. And in August 1839, it goes to the cabinet.

17:03What are we actually going to do? Can we just repay these traders with our own money? And of course, the Prime Minister doesn't want to do that. He doesn't want to go to the people and tell them that he's paying$10 million for some illegal opium, that you can't sell that to the electorate. Can't sell it to anyone. It's at the bottom of the ocean. It's not going to be sold to anyone in particular. And Palmerston, He characteristically favours a forceful response to protect British interests. He says it's not about the opium, this is about British honour. But he plays that card. He says in the language of hawks at all periods of history that the Chinese need to be taught a lesson and they need to pay for the destroyed opium.

17:44And there's a little bit of disagreement in the cabinet, but Macaulay comes to Palmerston's aid. He's the young kid in the block. He's just his first time in the cabinet. He's just got in there and he immediately clings to Palmerston and encourages the war. And so the settlement, the compromise is that they will send a naval squadron, but it will be of limited size. So they're going to send a small squadron in order to obtain reparations from China for Commissioner Lin's bad treatment of Charles Elliott and other British subjects. That's how it's been framed. Yes. And also, there's a quote from Palmerston.

18:23The way Palmerston reads this is obviously through the filter of Charlie. He says, you know, talking about Commissioner Lin, he says, he refused to grant Eliot the power necessary to control the British subjects within the dominions of China. Just break that down for a second. like you know Elliot did have the power no one listened to him first of all and the second you know within the dominions of China he's saying a Chinese the Chinese authority have no right to say anything within their own dominion it is it's a real sea change in foreign policy and it is going to grate against a lot of people nevertheless the ships are on their way how many ships I mean what are we talking about what's sent out here the decision made is that because Once there's opposition in Parliament, they're not going to send a massive fleet, but they're going to send a small squadron.

19:10And among the vessels that are going to be sent is the world's very first all-iron war steamer, which is called the Nemesis. And no one's ever seen a ship like this before. This is the, what's the, I could call it today, a kind of stealth bomber or something. It's a completely new generation of warship. And remember that at this point, the Chinese have just got wooden junks. And so you've got this sort of sinister vessel that the Chinese call the devil ship, which they're putting into action. It's the latest technology. And the hope is, in the brief discussion that is given to this matter in Parliament, that sending a limited naval squadron will be enough to put enough pressure on, to get the money out of the Chinese and repay the British government for all the opium that's been taken.

19:59They also realized that they can call in troops from India. India. India's not that far away. I was just thinking, Elliot's family member, he's not far away. He can dispatch, and they've got lots of people in India. Exactly. So the order is sent to the government of India to support this squadron with East India Company forces. So we suddenly find lots of Sikhs, lots of Punjabis being added to this force. The manpower is Indian. The fleets are from England. And they make this decision in just three quarters of an hour. And they all pat each other on the back. Well, there's some really appalling things.

20:39They're sort of jokily talking to each other about this, clearly not taking this very seriously, or so convinced of the turning up of the Targaryen dragon at the gates, that everything's going to cave in just at the sight of the nemesis, They sort of are saying to each other, we have just made war on the master of one third of the whole human race. I mean, are we clever? So there is this nervousness. They've already seen that Afghanistan is putting up a much greater resistance than they had planned. And now they're taking on something far greater than Afghanistan, this enormous empire in China.

21:13And they've never made war on China before. They don't know what Chinese troops are going to be like. You know, it's like playing a football match with a team that you have no knowledge of. And this is one third of the human race, an empire the size of Europe. But the decision is made. And because they've given the whole day for discussing this, imagining that it might be such a contentious issue that they would be debating into the night. But it's over by about three in the afternoon. And Lord Broughton decides that it's a nice day. So he goes off for a two-hour horseback ride with Queen Victoria through Windsor Park to tell her the latest update on this small crisis.

21:52The rain comes and closes play on their ride, but the decision is made. Gladstone is furious when he hears this. In the next debate in Parliament, he states that a war more unjust in its origin, a war more calculated in its progress to cover this country with permanent disgrace. I do not know of and have never read of. Let's take a break. Join us after the break where we find out what happens when the nemesis reaches Chinese waters.

22:25Welcome back. Okay, so the nemesis, this ironclad gunship that people have never seen the like of before, the devil ship, is in Chinese water. What is going on on the Chinese side? At what point do they know that this is what the British Parliament has decided with the blessing, it would seem, of the Queen to just take off? And it's a declaration of war. They must have seen it as that. Or what do they think? It is a declaration of war. But they're not at all worried as they've seen it or certainly as Commissioner Lin sees it. Those guys in the factory weren't much to worry about. They've caved in over five days.

23:00They are barbarians from the other side of the world. We have no need of their manufacturers. they have need of us. And so Commissioner Lin thinks that we've got to be very nice to these foreigners. We've shown them their place. And then he writes a private dispatch to the emperor. And it's very interesting what he says. He basically says there's absolutely nothing to worry about. After I arrived in Canton, I investigated the feelings of the foreigners. On the outside, they seem intractable, but inside they are cowardly. If in future we fear them setting off border provocations, the ulcer of trouble they bring will grow day by day.

23:38They are in the minority, and we must not forget we are the majority. Though their ships are strong and their guns quick, they can be only victorious at sea. They cannot play their tricks in the port, and Guangdong, Canton, is well fortified. Although there have been some ups and downs so far, the situation as a whole is under control. And he writes that those that went on smuggling were courting destruction, and they could easily be destroyed by the fire rafts and the militia that he's hired from the local fishing populations. He's saying, we don't even need to send troops from the center, just the local militia will do.

24:17And then he writes another letter on the 1st September. He doubles down on his idea that the British are absolutely nothing to be feared. He He says, despite their guns, the foreign soldiers are not skilled at infantry engagements. And then he gives his reasoning. Their legs and feet, he says, are closely bound by tight trousers, which makes bending and stretching inconvenient. When they reach the shore, they are less powerless and their strength can easily be controlled. Well, see, until this point, I thought Lin was an intelligent man. But he sounds like an idiot. He just doesn't understand, does he, that actually, when it comes to naval prowess, the Brits have a reputation, quite rightfully.

24:57You know, they have India. There are mobilisable troops not very far from where you are. He's completely underestimated the situation. It's not that he's not clever. He is brought up in a system which is always regarded China as the centre of the world, the centre of civilisation, and that foreigners are barbarians who have got to be humoured but must not be allowed to get above themselves. and he has literally no conception of the power of mid-19th century Victorian weaponry. He doesn't realize that the wooden junks, the bows and arrows, the spears, and this is a very tragic story which is now unraveling because you have these characters who've behaved extremely honorably by their own lights.

25:44They've stopped gangsters. They've stopped a terrible poison which is eating into their society. And with tact, as they see it, and with good manners, they've made the foreigners behave themselves and won. I see that. But can I just also point out, this is a country then and a Chinese government with spectacularly bad intel. I mean, honestly, spectacularly bad. Because three times Lin gets news that there is a flotilla heading in his direction, that this is serious. And three times he just kind of wafts it off like, oh, don't worry about it. He keeps telling the emperor, don't worry about it. In fact, he keeps saying when they can almost see them on the horizon.

26:28It's like, it is not a rumor. They're actually coming. They are coming. They are nearly here. It's an opium smuggling flotilla. Don't worry about it. We'll deal with it with our burning rafts. We can make short shrift of this. He doesn't recognize it at all for what it is, which is tragic, you say, but also just sort of diplomatically daft. If you are that isolated, you don't see the problems on the horizon. I mean, you're right. Of course, you're right. But you've got to remember that the Manchus had a terrific military reputation. They just conquered great chunks of Western China. On land. Yes, but in their eyes, they were the supreme warriors of the world.