FREE ESSAY ON THE OPIUM WAR

THE OPIUM WAR

The Opium War, generally taken as the opening event of China's modern history, has cynical
Chinese patriots and ashamed devoted Westerners for more than a century. In mainland
China it is used today not only as indication of firmly established Western immorality,
but precisely as proof of the Marxist-Leninist principle that free-enterprise capitalism
leads to hostile "imperialism" which allies with conservative "feudalism" to the expense
of the common people everywhere. The modern Chinese sense of complaint over the war is
reinforced by the obvious facts that opium smoking was harmful and that Commissioner
Lin's effort to repress the opium trade was the instantaneous event for battle.
It would be hard to invent a more unmistakable and intelligible, black and white, story
of Chinese victimization than the data of history seem to represent. In contrast, the
wrongs suffered by the American colonists, who led them to rebel against British
oppression, sink into lack of importance. Indeed, the question is inescapable: why was
the Chinese reaction to the opium evil not more powerful?
The inquiring philosopher finds the Opium War less starkly black and white. He may have
concluded that the Anglo-Chinese armed conflict would have occurred, whether there was
opium trade or not. The Western powers would have aggressed against China even if Britain
had not, and that Chinese patriot today would have a sense of complaint even if
Sino-Westerners relations had avoided warfare. These suppositions ensue from the
fundamental fact that Chinese civilization had developed its own unique ways, distinct
from Western ways, but that by 1840 it had lost the power to sustain itself vis-a-vis the
expanding west. The rule of a million or so Manchus over some 300 million Chinese was a
symptom of the institutional distinctiveness of the Chinese Empire. Which made it behave
quite differently from a modern nation-state. The China of today, where a late-maturing
patriotism now views the past with a substantial was feeling of humiliation.
The Japanese Restoration was as briskly accomplished as the supporters of the Imperial
cause had elaborately prepared it for. The forces, which finally drive the Emperor ahead
into the situation of an active ruler, were of random scale of power and of different
origin, intellectual idealistic, political, and military, some at work for particular
centuries and others the conclusion of the two decades instantaneously preceding the
event. Of the methods adopted to guarantee the success of this movement, some were the
inclination of men of high essence who were loyally and unselfishly dutiful to the
national ideal, while others were surely those of jealous and rash samurai, bent on
retaliation or development of their own fortunes.
Among the true promoters of the progress for the Emperor's reparation there were two very
distinct views of its meaning. To the Conservatives it was a return to great age, to the
Radicals a renewal. As time went on and the exigencies of change began to exercise their
intrinsic force, it became evident that the more cautious directors of the movement could
no longer craze it upon the pattern of great age. To set up in the middle of the
nineteenth century for the government, was an unattainable task, and finally the views of
the more radical reformers prevailed. At once it came clear that nothing short of a
complete "renovation" of the Government of Japan would meet the changed state of affairs
of the times. The way was opened for the beginning of those exceptional reforms at which
the world, frequently uneducated of their true importance, has never ceased to amaze.