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Beeching, Jack - The Chinese Opium Wars (partial)
Sun, Jan. 28th, 2007 07:41 pmFrom research (aka, brief glances at Amazon.com), this seems to be the authority on the Chinese Opium Wars. For those of you unfamiliar with the Opium Wars, they were a series of skirmishes from approx. 1830-1860 (with a break in the middle), in which the Chinese government opposed the import of opium and the British goverment and the East India Company did not. The Chinese lost, and lost, and lost, and ceded territory and rights and power.
I am not rational about this subject. Despite dozing off through most of Chinese history back in Taiwan, I remember these two wars, because they were held up as the great shameful event of Chinese history, of the beginning of the end. The treaties signed with the British, the French, the Russian and the Americans were called the Unfair Treaties in the history books, and there's still a sense of horror at how much had to be conceded at gunpoint.
I wanted to learn more about it from Beeching's book, but alas, I am not going to, because if I read one more page from the thing, I am going to throw it at a wall, library book be damned. The only reason I haven't thrown it yet was because I was reading it on the train and didn't want to get thrown off.
Beeching starts out rather innocuously. He seems to want to present a very readable narrative, so he goes into personal details and makes it read like a thriller instead of a history textbook. And then I realized that nearly all the people he introduces by name are the British, and that they are the ones getting personal background filled in. Up to page 77, I have been introduced to about 10 British players, all of whom apparently disagree with the morality of addicting a nation to drugs in order to balance a trade deficit, none of whom actually act up. They are presented sympathetically, pawns not in control of the situation. The Chinese thus far are referred to as "the Chinese" or "the Manchus" (depending on which group it is). There are brief references to the emperors, but never a small writeup of their personalities or quirks, like there are for the British. Only Commissioner Lin so far has gotten anything of any length.
Unsurprisingly, so far, the book is entirely focused on the British and how they react to the Chinese edicts against opium. There is this smarmy tone underlying the book that this is the Chinese government's fault, that they were too hidebound and isolationist and were really getting what they asked for. Beeching never out and out says this, but he constantly focuses on the Chinese bureaucracy's ineptness and arrogance, shows scene after scene in which the British are rejected.
There are choice sentences like "The usual oriental comedy was played out" and "meticulous consistency was never a Chinese virtue" and "To make play with the pompous formalities of Chinese official phraseology, or with comic mistranslations, became later a commonplace way of scoring points off China, especially in Parliamentary debate."
Despite the last sentence, Beeching frequently mocks mistranslations and makes it seem as though misunderstandings arise not because of willful obstinacy, but because the British were really innocent and could not figure out what those pompous Chinese people were asking for.
To put this in context, a lot of writing on the "opening of China" tends to lay the blame on the Chinese government, to show the Westerners of being well-meaning people who only want to bring in free trade, that it was China's fault for somehow for not being foresighted, not wanting British goods and creating a trade deficit because the British wanted so much tea. To this I would like to say: Yes, let's blame the rape victims as well!
I am not writing this up anymore, lest I attempt to strangle something.
I am not rational about this subject. Despite dozing off through most of Chinese history back in Taiwan, I remember these two wars, because they were held up as the great shameful event of Chinese history, of the beginning of the end. The treaties signed with the British, the French, the Russian and the Americans were called the Unfair Treaties in the history books, and there's still a sense of horror at how much had to be conceded at gunpoint.
I wanted to learn more about it from Beeching's book, but alas, I am not going to, because if I read one more page from the thing, I am going to throw it at a wall, library book be damned. The only reason I haven't thrown it yet was because I was reading it on the train and didn't want to get thrown off.
Beeching starts out rather innocuously. He seems to want to present a very readable narrative, so he goes into personal details and makes it read like a thriller instead of a history textbook. And then I realized that nearly all the people he introduces by name are the British, and that they are the ones getting personal background filled in. Up to page 77, I have been introduced to about 10 British players, all of whom apparently disagree with the morality of addicting a nation to drugs in order to balance a trade deficit, none of whom actually act up. They are presented sympathetically, pawns not in control of the situation. The Chinese thus far are referred to as "the Chinese" or "the Manchus" (depending on which group it is). There are brief references to the emperors, but never a small writeup of their personalities or quirks, like there are for the British. Only Commissioner Lin so far has gotten anything of any length.
Unsurprisingly, so far, the book is entirely focused on the British and how they react to the Chinese edicts against opium. There is this smarmy tone underlying the book that this is the Chinese government's fault, that they were too hidebound and isolationist and were really getting what they asked for. Beeching never out and out says this, but he constantly focuses on the Chinese bureaucracy's ineptness and arrogance, shows scene after scene in which the British are rejected.
There are choice sentences like "The usual oriental comedy was played out" and "meticulous consistency was never a Chinese virtue" and "To make play with the pompous formalities of Chinese official phraseology, or with comic mistranslations, became later a commonplace way of scoring points off China, especially in Parliamentary debate."
Despite the last sentence, Beeching frequently mocks mistranslations and makes it seem as though misunderstandings arise not because of willful obstinacy, but because the British were really innocent and could not figure out what those pompous Chinese people were asking for.
To put this in context, a lot of writing on the "opening of China" tends to lay the blame on the Chinese government, to show the Westerners of being well-meaning people who only want to bring in free trade, that it was China's fault for somehow for not being foresighted, not wanting British goods and creating a trade deficit because the British wanted so much tea. To this I would like to say: Yes, let's blame the rape victims as well!
I am not writing this up anymore, lest I attempt to strangle something.
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