Opium War Research Articles

The Reasons and Influence of the Establishment of One Port Trade System in Guangzhou during Qing Dynasty

Guangzhou is located in the southern part of China, near the South China Sea, belongs to Guangdong Province. It serves as China's southern gateway to the world and was historically called "The Southern Treasure of the Emperor", playing a crucial role in China's maritime trade history. Throughout Chinese history, Guangzhou underwent several cycles of "closure" and "opening", policies that severely impacted trade. However, foreign merchants never ceased to request permission from the Chinese government to engage in trade. In 1757, Emperor Qianlong decreed Guangzhou as the only one official port for foreign trade. This edict led to the establishment of the one port trading system in Guangzhou, as the Qing government aimed to counter foreign influences and local uprisings while maintaining a self-sufficient small-scale agricultural economy. Western nations and their traders sought opportunities within this system, aspiring to expand trade to other regions of China, even the inland areas. The exclusive status of Guangzhou as China's only one trading port persisted until 1842, following the defeat of the Qing government in the Opium War against Britain, the Nanjing Treaty was signed. This treaty opened Guangzhou, Shanghai, Ningbo, Fuzhou, and Xiamen as trading ports, bringing an end to the one port trading system. The reasons and impacts of the establishment of this system have not been comprehensively analyzed to date. Therefore, this paper based on historical archives, analyzes both the direct and underlying reasons behind Emperor Qianlong's decision and elucidates the system's diverse impacts on various aspects of Qing-era China.

Аdvertisement of European multiculturalism and its impact on interfaith relations in Ukraine

The article proposes a study of state-church and inter-religious relations in Ukraine during the period of independence in the context of political processes in modern Europe. The modern vectors of state policy in the sphere of religion and freedom of conscience are revealed. The insult in interfaith relations is largely caused by the ill-conceived and inconsistent policy of the government in this area. It has been established that the current political situation in Ukraine indicates a deep crisis in relations in many spheres of social life. Russia's open aggression caused a new wave of aggravation of national self-identification and the church vector in Ukraine. The purpose of the article is to highlight the problem of the political and spiritual influence of Europe on modern Orthodoxy in Ukraine, which is in a state of division into different jurisdictions. It has been proven that the unification of the divided branches of Ukrainian Orthodoxy will contribute to the consolidation of Ukrainian society, especially in conditions of open war. The formation of the United Church should take place on the basis of a constructive dialogue between the authorities, denominations and society.
 The research shows that the branches of the divided Ukrainian Orthodoxy are under the active political influence of the geopolitical confrontation of the European scale. Advertising and promotion of multiculturalism and polytheism, which are characteristic of the countries of Western Europe, require corresponding freedom of religion and the presence of a multi-religious component in Ukraine, which openly demonstrates the chosen vector of European integration.
 On the other hand, it was established that the status of the United Independent Church affects issues of national security, international recognition, geopolitical influence, consolidation of Ukrainian society, unification of self-identification of Ukrainian citizens and is an important conflict-causing factor. Therefore, the issue of establishing the United Independent Ukrainian Church remains topical today.

A Study on the Inspiration of the Tao Te Ching on Chinese Cultural Self-Confidence

“The Tao Te Ching” is the core representative work of Taoist thought, which has had a profound influence on Chinese culture. In the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, Taoist thought, Confucianism, and Legalism jointly formed a great ideological trend of contention. Since Dong Zhongshu proposed the idea of “abolishing the hundred schools of thought and only respecting Confucianism” in the Han Dynasty, Confucianism has become the mainstream cultural ideology, and Taoist thought exists only as a supplementary tributary ideology. The great collision of Eastern and Western cultures brought about by the Opium War has caused widespread doubts about Chinese mainstream culture represented by Confucian culture. In the face of the fact that the West is ahead, Chinese people have fallen into unprecedented confusion about their own culture. In 2014, Chinese leaders proposed the concept of Chinese cultural self-confidence, and pointed out that the three sources of Chinese cultural self-confidence are excellent traditional Chinese culture, revolutionary culture, and advanced socialist culture. This article argues that the concept proposed by the Chinese government is not comprehensive for building Chinese cultural self-confidence. Revolutionary culture and advanced socialist culture are the summary of China’s own special experience. Other countries do not have similar environments, and traditional culture is dominated by Confucianism. Confucianism cannot even be fully convinced within China. In the era of globalization, if China wants to gain some value recognition in the world to establish confidence, it must propose a doctrine with global value. I believe that the ideas and philosophies contained in the “Tao Te Ching” can effectively communicate between China and the world, help China gain worldwide recognition, and have great significance for enhancing Chinese cultural self-confidence.

Continuity and Change in Italian Foreign Policy under Fascism: A Reexamination of the Corfu Crisis of 1923

Though not resulting in the outbreak of open war, the Corfu Crisis of 1923 saw Benito Mussolini’s first violent foreign policy venture which exposed the League of Nations’ inability to deter would be aggressor states and presaged future acts of aggression including a similar challenge over Ethiopia just twelve years later. Based on archival research and other primary sources and addressing the issue of continuity and change in Italian foreign policy, this article argues that Mussolini’s bid to seize Corfu in 1923 was not an impulsive act but a crude premeditated attempt to carry out a long-term goal that had deep roots in Italy’s prefascist past. 1

Research and Analysis of Modern Consulate Complexes --Taking Yantai Hill in Fuzhou City as an Example

Since the First Opium War, foreign forces have flooded into China, building a great variety of public buildings across China, and importing Western culture. As one of the representatives of the recent Western culture, the consulate building plays an important role in history. As the political, economic, and cultural center of Fujian Province, Fujian was introduced to many Western cultures as one of the five port cities after the signing of the Treaty of Nanjing. Foreigners set up all kinds of buildings and municipal facilities here, such as consulate buildings, customs, foreign firms, churches, hospitals, workshops, clubs, etc. Western architectural techniques and forms have collided and fused with the traditional architectural culture of Fuzhou, together constituting a diverse modern architectural history of Fuzhou. Taking the modern consulate building complex in Yantai Mountain of Fuzhou City as an example, through field research and literature arrangement and induction, we analyze the buildings of modern consulates, understand the historical evolution of consulate buildings in Fuzhou, the architectural form and the existing situation, excavate their characteristics and summarize them, to provide basic information for the study of modern architectural history in Fuzhou. The article concluded that the Western consulate architecture is characterized by the central axis symmetry, the characteristics of each country are obvious, while retaining part of the local characteristics, to achieve the fusion of Chinese and foreign.

Institutional mosaic of financial institutions in the late Qing China and synthesis of organizational forms: from piaohao and qianzhuang to the central bank

Objective: to determine the peculiarities of forming the banking system in late imperial China in terms of the interaction between traditional Chinese banking institutions, imported institutional forms, and state reform strategies. Methods: qualitative methods (comparative analysis, generalization), historical and genetic method.Results: based on a wide array of historical data, the history of the Chinese banking system development during the Qin dynasty decline is demonstrated. By the time of the Chinese economy “forced opening” by Western powers during the Opium Wars, China had its own quasi-banking institutions based on the established clan networks of trade organizations that covered the credit needs of the traditional economy. The local development of modern industries in China required modern approaches to the organization of banking activities. The lacuna was filled by foreign banks, which actually monopolized modern banking in China, and later by state-owned banks. It is shown that by the end of the Qing period all three participants of the banking industry – traditional banks, foreign banks and state banks – covered the needs of the Chinese economy. It is concluded that the banking industry of the late imperial period was a mosaic institutional fabric, combining both traditional and westernized elements and embedding clan ties traditional for China.Scientific novelty: the article is the first attempt in Russia to comprehensively examine the evolution of the banking system of late Qing China.Practical significance: the main conclusions of the article can be used in scientific and pedagogical activities in the study of economic history of traditional China, and may enrich the concepts of institutional economics concerning the limits and possibilities of institutional transformations.

Puns Upon a Time

This article argues that Amitav Ghosh’s Sea of Poppies combats monologic discourse by channeling what Mikhail Bakhtin calls the dialogic imagination. The first instalment in the Ibis trilogy, which explores the events leading up to and following the first opium war, the novel follows the overlapping trajectories of six characters who undergo significant transformations as they cross the Indian Ocean aboard the eponymous ship. While much scholarship on the novel has discussed how barriers of caste, race, gender, and class crumble aboard the Ibis, this essay contributes to a growing corpus that attends to the novel’s imbrication between language and politics. This essay contends that it is through its linguistic inventiveness, specifically its multilingual wordplay, that the novel undermines the grand monologic narratives of history. Insisting on the narrative’s inventiveness allows this essay to discuss how it provides access to the past otherwise than the mold of academic history.

Notes from the Editors, December 2023

buy this issueThis month, the editors discuss the U.S. threat of a "new Opium War against China" found in the pages of the Air Force's Journal of Indo-Pacific Affairs. In addition, MR affirms its solidarity with the Palestinian people in their struggle against genocide.

From Hai Yao, Yang Yao to Xi Yao: Sinification of Material Medical from the West

In ancient China, Daoist philosophers developed the concepts of qi (energy), Wu Xing (five elements), and yin (feminine, dark, negative) and yang (masculine, bright, positive) opposite forces between 200 and 600 BCE. Based on these philosophies, Zhen Jiu (acupuncture), Ben Cao (materia medica), and the practice of Qi Gong (energy optimization movements) evolved as the three interrelated therapeutic regimens of Chinese medicine (Note 1). Since the time of Zhang Qian, who discovered China’s western regions in the 1st century BCE, Hai Yao (the exotic elements of materia medica from the maritime Silk Road countries), had been transmitted from the ancient land and maritime routes of the Silk Road to China in the past two millennia (Note 2). Since the late 17th century, the English East India Company, later called the British East India Company, introduced Yang Yao (opium) to the Manchu Qing Empire to balance a growing trade deficit for tea export from China to the British Empire. After the First Opium War ended in 1842, enterprising expatriate chemists and druggists in the treaty ports imported Xi Yao (modern medicines from the Western world) for sale to the merchant navy and the local market. From the second half of the 19th century onwards, both Hai Yao and Xi Yao have become a fully integrated part of modern China’s armamentarium for the Chinese medicine and Western hospitals and retail pharmacy sectors. This paper articulates the journey of adoption of exotic elements of materia medica from the ancient land and sea routes of the Silk Road, including the western regions and the rest of the world in the past two millennia. Opium traders, ship surgeons, medical and pharmaceutical missionaries, enterprising traders, and policymakers together transformed Ben Cao into Xi Yao during the late Manchu Qing dynasty and the early Nationalist Era.

도광․함풍 연간에 조선 사신들이 만났던 청나라 문인들 -『한객시존』의 자료를 중심으로-

Dao Guang(道光, 1821～1850) and Xian Feng(咸豐, 1851～1861) Period of the Qing Dynasty was a time when they faced internal and external conditions. During this period, evidential learning still held a leading position in the Qing Dynasty, but some writers began with a sense of crisis and promoted a useful learning for running a country, which drew support from the court and a favorable response from literature. On the other hand, Song School of Poetry had the greatest influence in literature at the time, and Song School of Poetry’s influence grew even greater with the addition of Tongchengpai writers with similar poetic tendencies.
 In this paper, the connections, exchanges, and tendencies of Qing writers who directly interacted with Joseon envoys during this period were examined based on changes in the Qing Dynasty’s academic style and literature. It is noteworthy that many of the writers who exchanged with Joseon envoys during this period were from Jinsa, so they had a high level of literature. In addition, it is presumed that many writers had a Suffering consciousness of friendship as they directly or indirectly participated in the Opium War or Taiping Heavenly Kingdom War.
 In terms of literary trends, it can be divided into Song School of Poetry and Tongchengpai , and in this paper, Zhang mu (1805-1849), who was a historian and had a very close relationship with the key figures of Song Si-pa, examined his academic trends, characteristics of poetry, and exchanges with Koreans. As for the Tongchengpai faction, the characteristics of poetry creation and friendship with Joseon writers were examined, focusing on the Zhu qi (朱琦, 1801～1861). Their academic trends and poetry style are thought to have had a certain influence on Joseon’s writers.

HISTORICAL OVERVIEW OF THE PROCESS OF PREVENTING AND COMBATING THE USE AND ABUSE OF DRUGS BASED ON THE INTERNATIONAL OPIUM CONVENTION AND ITS BACKGROUND

The present scientific work offered primary attention to the unfolding of historical facts, which contributed decisively to the construction and applicability of public policies aimed at effectively combating the use and abuse of illicit drugs, starting with the Opium Wars, in the first half of the nineteenth century, between China and Great Britain, with its main development being the holding of the first international event, the International Opium Convention, held at the beginning of the twentieth century, which sought to find a universal solution to the problem that already bothered and caused concern to the authorities of the time. With the participation and signing of the Treaty by important international powers, such as the United States of America, China, France, the United Kingdom, among others, in a total of thirteen nations, the first effort was born towards effectively combating the spread of illicit drugs in the world. From the aforementioned Convention, a Legal Framework was constructed and, subsequently, fully adopted or adapted to the legislation of each signatory and member country of this conference, as in the case of Brazil. The developments arising from these international events contributed in a rich, positive and correct way to the construction of this brief and simple scientific research instrument.

The Cooperative Translation Activities of China and the West and Their Influence in the Late Ming and Early Qing Dynasties

In the eyes of many scholars, there have been three pivotal periods in the history of Chinese translation, which are: the translation of Buddhist scriptures from the Eastern Han Dynasty to the Tang and Song Dynasties, the translation of scientific and technological books from the late Ming and early Qing Dynasties, and the translation of Western works from the Opium War (1840-1842) to the May Fourth Period (1915-1921). As the second climax in the history of Chinese translation, the Sci-tech translation activities in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties held a pivotal position in the history of Chinese translation, greatly promoting the dissemination of scientific and technological knowledge in China and enabling Chinese people to gain a deeper understanding of Western culture for the first time. This article summarizes and analyzes the influence of the Sci-tech translation activities in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties.

19세기 영국의 중국차 인식과 차 시장의 변화

This study aims to examine the perception of Chinese tea in Britain in and around the 19th century and its effect on the tea market. The findings are summarized as follows: First, in the 19th century, an error of judgment by the Chinese tea producers and immoral British tea merchants brought about the import of adulterated tea into Britain. In the wake of the abolition of the monopoly of the British East India Company, there was a widespread negative view of Chinese tea and China itself due to the lack of quarantine facilities and the outbreak of the Opium War. Second, to eradicate the import of adulterated tea, the British government introduced a new custom quarantine system, along with amendments. Scientific research and publications, and the advertising of tea by merchants, helped to improve consumer awareness regarding food safety and establish good tea standards. Third, after the discovery of tea trees in Assam in India, the tea industry in India and Sri Lanka grew and saw better productivity due to the invention of the tea rolling machine and tea drier. Advertisements promoting pureness gained the widespread trust of consumers, and the tea industry in both these countries surpassed China in the 1880s and led the global tea trade.

Changes in the Treatment of Chinese Americans

The COVID-19 epidemic is spreading worldwide, especially in the United States. Since the large-scale outbreak of the epidemic in the United States in March 2020, Asian Americans have also faced the secondary threat of "racism" and "Asian hatred" due to the COVID-19 virus. They have become the targets of persistent harassment and attacks by diehard Asian haters. Discriminatory words and deeds against Asian Americans have also spread in American society like the covid-19 virus and become an event sweeping across the United States. The rising anti-Asian incidents in the United States not only focused the attention of American society, but also attracted the worlds attention. At the same time, it is not difficult to recall the anti-Asian situation in the United States at the end of the 19th century. The Opium War broke out in China in 1840. Therefore, many Chinese citizens chose to make a living in the more developed United States. At first, Asian workers were welcomed by industrialists because of their low wages and hard-working characteristics. They were regarded as "exceptional cultures from a distant land". However, with the increasing number of Asian Americans during the gold rush, American citizens and officials gradually changed their attitudes towards Asian Americans. Finally, in 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act was established to restrict Asians from entering their territory. This article will analyze the changes in Americans' attitudes towards Asian Americans at the end of the 19th century to explore the reasons behind them, and take this opportunity to hopefully shed some light on how we should face racism today during the pandemic.

청조(淸朝)의 제국 통치와 신해혁명, 그리고 중국의 통일적 다민족국가론

For all an era of domination under the Manchu immigrants Qing history is recognized as a part of Chinese history with a scheme of “unitary multi-national state.” Beyond the traditional Hanhwa idea, which refers to Sinicization of non-Han groups, this involves a new idea of historical formation of the ‘Chinese Nation’ out of historical unifying process of Han and non- Han ethnic groups including Manchus. The Qing fashioned its national identity as a ruling group through a unique organization called the Palgi (Eight Flags) system, and assumed the leadership of broad nomad area from Manchuria to Central Asia. The Qing also constructed a governance system in China where majority of population was Han Chinese based on the traditional Chinese culture. However, the problem of the Palgi system became salient through the Opium War and the Taiping rebellion, and the Qing Dynasty formed a virtual Manch-Han coalition government for its modernization push through the Yangwu and the Bianfa movements. Yet, the coalition regime collapsed by the revolution of 1911. The new republic promoted the “Five Nation Republic” scheme, which included various non- Chinese groups within the Qing Empire as its citizens. This was not because the Han and non-Han ethnic groups had a common identity as the “Chinese people,” but because they wanted to form the territory of the new Republic following the broad areas of Qing Empire. The problem is that the scheme accepts those non-Han ethnic groups on the Sinicization premise which supposes full cultural enlightenment of Chinese authenticity, and denies the political recognition that they got under the Qing Empire. This means that the framework of China’s “unitary multi-national state” needs close review process.

A Dialogue between Confucius and Christ: The Development and Influence of Chinese Jesuits in Kiang-nan (Jiangnan) during the Late Qing Period (1842–1912)

Abstract When the Jesuits returned to China during and soon after the Opium War (1839–42), one of their first tasks was to establish a novitiate in Shanghai and begin preparing Chinese novices for formation in the Society. This essay focuses on the role of these Chinese Jesuits and their associates, in particular Huang Bolu (黃伯祿, also known as Pierre, Petrus, or Peter Hoang), who wrote several influential texts on scientific, legal, economic, and political topics in both Chinese and French. Although deeply committed to the church, Huang also tried in subtle ways to reform or redirect certain practices of the Jesuits in China, in particular, the reliance on the French Religious Protectorate. In doing so, he drew together the worlds of global Catholicism and late imperial Chinese literati. The works and experiences of Huang, Chinese Jesuits, and other Chinese Catholics within the orbit of the Jesuits allow us to hear the voice of indigenous Catholicism while also demonstrating the complicated interaction between spirituality, identity, empire, nationality, and the supranational church. This article is part of the special issue of the Journal of Jesuit Studies, “Jesuits in Modern Far East,” guest edited by Steven Pieragastini.

世變、歷史與記憶———湯貽汾《如此江山圖》與鴉片戰争時期詩詞中的鎮江之戰

LANGUAGE NOTE | Document text in Chinese; abstract also in English.
 道光二十二年（1842），英軍發動揚子江戰役，攻陷鎮江，隨後直抵江寧，迫使清廷簽下不平等的《南京條約》。戰前，黄爵滋以嚴禁鴉片名重當時；戰後，黄爵滋以失察銀庫遭到彈劾。名畫家湯貽汾爲其作《如此江山圖》，描繪戰後焦山風景，陳方海題記拈出圖中隱寄“風景不殊”的感慨，或與鎮江之戰有著緊密的關聯。本文以《如此江山圖》爲開展，試圖透過圖畫題詠及當代時人詩詞中對鎮江之戰的描寫，探究士人如何憑藉圖畫、詩、詞的不同特質，互文參照，形成共同的歷史記憶。除了從題詠中探掘圖畫的創作旨趣，亦從中發掘題詠者有意識地自圖畫延伸出的畫外之意；在“詩史”義理精神的闡發下，建構對陳化成以及兩江總督牛鑑、副督統海齡的褒貶形象；並藉由抒寫鎮江興亡與效仿蘇、辛體的詞作，管窺詞體創作中對“京口三山”一脈相承的書寫傳統。
 In the 22nd year of the Daoguang reign (1842), the British Armed Forces waged the Battle of Yangzi River, captured Zhenjiang, and reached Jiangning, compelling the Qing court to sign the Treaty of Nanjing, the first unequal treaty between China and foreign powers. Before the First Opium War, Huang Juezi was known for his strict policy of prohibiting opium. After the war, Huang was impeached for mismanaging the state treasury. He then commissioned renowned painter Tang Yifen to create Painting of a Declining Country, a work closely linked to the Battle of Zhenjiang, and Tang also embedded his lamentation over the perished landscape in this work. Treating this painting as the point of departure and by reference to the descriptions of the Battle of Zhenjiang in poetry, this article seeks to investigate how scholars documented the war with paintings and poems that in turn shaped the collective memories of this piece of history. Inspired by the poets’ profound reflection on the significance of historic events, this article tries to review scholars’ accolades for patriotic military officers and examine the praise and censure of the contentious figure Hailing. This article also aims to take a glimpse of the literary tradition of depicting the “Three Mountains of Jingkou” in Ci poetry through the lens of the Ci works that emulated the styles of Su Shi and Xin Qiji to chronicle the rise and fall of Zhenjiang.

Polyphonic Poetics: Reading Yang Shaoping’s Pidgin Bamboo Branch Lyrics

Pidgin English appeared in China along the Pearl River Delta as a contact language composed of a mixture of English, Cantonese, Portuguese, Hindi, and Malay as early as the eighteenth century. It spread to the Yangzi River delta in the mid-nineteenth century when an increasing number of Cantonese merchants and workers traveled to other treaty ports after the First Opium War. Focusing on a series of poems called Pidgin Bamboo Branch Lyrics (Bieqin zhuzhici) published in the newspaper Shen Bao in 1873, this paper explores how pidgin was appropriated in Chinese poetry and altered the literary soundscape in late Qing China. I argue that these pidgin English terms created a heteroglot poetic space wherein Sinographs and European words, literary language and local tongues, and classical images and contemporary anecdotes intertwine to generate diverse and contradictory meanings. Through an innovative collocation of the graphic, literal, and phonetic features of Chinese characters, the pidgin words and expressions in these poems produce a multilayered structure of meanings with various possibilities for interpretation. Moreover, unlike traditional bamboo branch lyrics in which non-Chinese words are incorporated to domesticate strangeness and consolidate the imperial order of center and periphery, these poems have an inverse effect: their use of pidgin English instead alienates the native, the conventional, and the familiar landscape/soundscape. This poetry made of language crossings depicts modernity as an uncanny sonic experience and makes foreignness appear not in a faraway land but in one’s own poetic language and everyday life.

Race in the Culture Wars

Like culture war, race has many meanings. It can refer to objective essence, or characteristics that are inherited through genes, blood, or mystical spirits. Conversely, race is conceptualized as a historically changing social construction, a concept whose references and attributes vary according to present needs. In this article, I employ both conceptualizations through two illustrative examples. The first is race and racism in the US, where culture wars are fundamentally racialized. The second is the Troubles, a thirty-year period of violence (1960–1998) in Northern Ireland, a culture war turned into open war, where variants of race and racism were a determining factor. In the latter example, culture war turned into civil war, while, in the former example, extremists hope for the same. In the concluding sections, I identify the steps in a process that turned culture war into civil war, as it has great relevance to the American case.

THE ANALYSIS AND RESOLUTION OF NORTH NATUNA SEA CONFLICT IN THE FUTURE

The North Natuna Sea (NNS) conflict among some countries has been an important case in Indonesia. Related to the North Natuna Sea conflict, it will discuss Indonesia's future conditions faced with the interests of China itself. The NNS conflict is a prolonged conflict because it is faced with security conditions for China itself, also related to the future of the country which is related to economic conditions and territory for China. From the results of predictive analysis both in exploration, projection, and forecasting, the results obtained are Scenario I: China's hegemony in prioritizing its interests has not changed by continuing to carry its nine dashed line, Scenario II: China's hegemony began to reduce its military power in the NNS so that tensions were reduced and Scenario III: Entering social power, which in this case is the concept of cooperation and the presence of ASEAN in bridging conflicts that occur so as to create security stability in the NNS. The results of the analysis stated that, the system-change scenario is faced with a concept that is favorable for countries in conflict in the NNS, especially Indonesia. If faced with an open war, of course this will have a negative impact on the safety of the nation and world peace, then cooperation is the right choice to avoid prolonged conflict. However, a more definite mechanism is needed to regulate the concept of Indonesia - China Cooperation in managing the NNS which certainly does not necessarily interfere with the nation's sovereignty.