The Anti-Opium Crusade

Abstract

Although opium was clearly the issue in the trade wars between China and Britain, at the root of the wars themselves was a conflict of Eastern and Western cultural practices. For centuries the adequate natural resources of China had meant that overseas trade was largely unnecessary, but was tolerated by the ambivalent Chinese as a means of keeping foreigners or ‘barbarians’ as they called them, under control. Any infringement of restrictions, which they set in order to preserve their culture from foreign and, by implication, detrimental influence would lead to suspension of foreign trade and a boycott of their goods. This action would therefore only harm the ‘barbarians’. However, to the British merchants international trade was considered a mutually beneficial practice to all parties concerned and not granted as a favour by one to another. The rules of western trading practice were behind them and were frequently evoked to legitimate their trade in opium which they believed it to be an honest, commercial and exportable commodity. But this attempt to justify their flagrant disregard for Chinese-Sino culture was regarded as immoral not only by the Chinese themselves but by the religiously-inspired founders of a Victorian movement who successfully campaigned for an end to the opium trade with China.