Beeching, Jack - The Chinese Opium Wars (partial)

[oyceter]

From 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.

Comments

[minnow1212.livejournal.com]

>meticulous consistency was never a Chinese virtue<

...talk about pompous.

[oyceter]

Argh, I know!

[yeloson.livejournal.com]

Honesty about imperialism was never a European virtue...

[oyceter]

I know, but I am still so frustrated! Particularly because the intro. to the book has some sentence on "a nation that oppresses others can never be free." Or something like that (I can't look it up now).

[yeloson.livejournal.com]

Hypocrisy and patronizing attitudes go hand in hand. :/

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

God, that sounds like The Raj, the supposed ultimate history of the British Raj that turned out to be a complete whitewash.

[oyceter]

Ugh!

[minim_calibre]

I think my brain exploded reading just what you quoted.

[oyceter]

It took so much self control to not chuck it across the train!

[juliansinger.livejournal.com]

WHEN was this published, and if it was published recently, BY WHOM, so I can write to them with the big Letter Of Anger? (Which won't do much but will make me feel better.)

*peers at Amazon*

Oh, 1977. Damn, and I had the righteous indignation goin', too.

[yeloson.livejournal.com]

If you really want to slap someone with the Letter of Anger, try this (http://yeloson.livejournal.com/307014.html), printed in 2004 by a company owned by Hasbro toys. It's bigoterrific!

[oyceter]

1977, yeah. But still! Waley's The Opium Wars Through Chinese Eyes was published in 1958, so it's not like he couldn't have used that!

[almeda.livejournal.com]

A fictional but interesting and well-researched version is Tai-Pan, by, I think, Clavell? I liked it, anyway. Of course, I was eleven, but that I at eleven made it through a brick of a book set in the Opium Wars at all probably says something about the book ...

[oyceter]

Oh, um, I might skip that... while I enjoyed Clavell's Shogun, I think it plays right into a whole bunch of Orientalist stereotypes.

[oursin.livejournal.com]

This sounds as though it might be more congenial, as it were: Deadly dreams : opium, imperialism and the "Arrow" War (1856-60) in China by J.Y. Wong, Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1998 (though I haven't read it myself)

[oyceter]

Oh, thank you for the info! I will have to look that one up.

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

Aargh. And my library copy just came in, too. There's a more recent book on the subject by Peter Ward Fay, but (a) it looks like it focuses on the first War; (b) Amazon reviewer mentions of extensive research in "Westerners' journals and private papers" makes me deeply suspicious; (c) the NYPL doesn't have it anyway.

The NYPL has the Waley I requested marked down as "lost," but they seem to have quietly ordered a replacement for me. My heart is full of love.

[oyceter]

Argh. I keep looking at the Amazon reviews for other books on the Opium Wars, and they all seem to be potentially frustrating. Oh well -- I will end up ILL-ing a few and reading some and seeing how much I feel like throwing them at things ;).

Yay libraries!

[oracne.livejournal.com]

Blerg. Well, you have saved me from attempting to read this. Thanks!

[oyceter]

*snort* I so want to throw this at something, still.

[oracne.livejournal.com]

Perhaps you can visualize it aflame.

[fmanalyst.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure if you've said, so I'll ask. Are you a student? If not, have you considered going to grad school? I say this because as I read your live journal I feel that I'm watching the development of an Asian Studies scholar. If you haven't considered that career path, I strongly advise you to. I think you'd do great.

[oyceter]

Hee! Thank you ^_^.

I actually majored in East Asian Studies for undergrad, so it's good that some semblence of that remains. I am starting school again part time, but in a completely different discipline (comp sci!), largely because it's really hard to be an EAS grad and get a job doing something that isn't purely academic. I'm still not sure if I want to do just academics, but I definitely enjoy keeping up with the discipline in my (copious, heh) spare time.

The one thing I really miss is access to the EAS libraries and the journals!