At the end of the 17th century, Queen Elizabeth I of England granted the British East India Company a royal license to trade in India.
At the end of the 18th century, China's demand for opium was extremely large, and the East India Company gained exclusive rights to the opium trade in Bengal, but the originally smooth opium trade was affected by China's consistent attitude of banning the opium trade, which hindered the gold rush of European merchants in Asia.
On the last day of 1838, the Daoguang Emperor appointed Lin Zexu as a minister of Chincha and went to Guangzhou to ban smoking.
In June 1840, under the pretext that Lin Zexuhumen sold cigarettes and confiscated a large amount of opium and caused economic losses, the British government sent Rear Admiral George Yilu, with LinkedIn 47 warships and 4,000 troops, to the mouth of the Pearl River in Guangdong, to blockade Haikou, and the Opium War began.
This period of history is a watershed, so that China has become a semi-colonial and semi-feudal society, forced to get involved in world trade, but also allowed Britain and other capitalist countries to accelerate the process of global capital trade. It is a head-on confrontation between capitalism and feudalism, as well as a frontal struggle between interests and human nature. I have always regarded opium as the "fuse" and "culprit" of war, but after reading the book "The Big Banker", I found that the merchants who manipulated the opium trade had more unshirkable responsibility. Professor of History at Providence College, Richard M. J. Grace's book The Great Banker tells the story of the growth and business history of British merchants William Jardine and James Maddison, giving us a glimpse of the opium war from the perspective of merchant trade.
On February 24, 1784, William Jardine, who was born on a poorer farm in southern Scotland, relied on his brother's financial support to complete his higher education at the University of Edinburgh, from serving as an assistant to the surgeon on a merchant ship of the British East India Company to a surgeon on a merchant ship, William Jardine encountered pirates, and was accustomed to life and death, although physically and mentally exhausted, but fortunately learned the knowledge of Oriental trade, and then decisively abandoned medicine and business, and opened his own trade path in Eastern countries.
William Jardine
On November 17, 1796, James Maddison was born in the Maddison family in northern Scotland, and the solid family background allowed Maddison to receive a good education from an early age, and then under the influence of the Scottish Enlightenment, Maddison was very interested in Adam Smith's economic theory and the applied science of James Watt. Unlike Jardine, Madison allowed his mind to transfer from the Faculty of Letters to the Medical School, but even so, his study at the University of Edinburgh did not exceed two years, and the 17-year-old Maddison chose to drop out of school and switch to a trading house.
James Madison
Although Madison was a dozen years younger than Jardine, he came to India earlier than Jardine to engage in the commodity trade. In April 1820, Jardine and Maddishn met for the first time, when the two belonged to different companies, but both wanted to make a high profit in the opium market in Asia. In 1827, Jardine invited Maddison to become a partner of The Maniac Bank, and the two officially began the road of cooperation. In the years that followed, the two worked together to end the British East India Company's monopoly, gain their share of the Chinese market, and crush other rival companies, becoming the leader of private enterprises in guangzhou's Yiguan district. On June 30, 1832, Jardine and Ma Dichen renamed the company Jardine Matheson & Co. and continued to trade in tea, silk, opium and other commodities, in addition to expanding the banking, insurance and shipping trade business.
The former site of Jardine Matheson & Co
However, in the eyes of Jardine and Ma Dichen, opium is still their greatest opportunity, and the two who are unwilling to give up the opium trade finally witness the opium war they have led with their own hands.
On January 8, 1839, Lin Zexu left the Beijing Division and went to Guangzhou. On January 23, 1839, William Jardine's farewell dinner was held in the Yiguan District of Guangzhou, jardine had to return to England to treat his physical ailments, and Madison would remain in Guangzhou, and the two "should cooperate inside and outside" to continue their trade activities.
On March 10, 1938, after arriving in Guangzhou, Lin Zexu launched a non-stop anti-smoking campaign, not only began to arrest locals related to opium smuggling, but also set his sights on foreign opium merchants, and confiscated a total of 20,283 boxes of opium stocks. Afterwards, although Lin Zexu obtained the signatures of all foreign merchants promising not to sell opium again, Ma Dichen and others were not ready to give up the opium trade, and at this time Ma Dichen had set his sights on the future, setting his sights on Hong Kong and Macao, not far from Guangzhou, and also wrote to Jardine, mentioning that "it is only a matter of time before he goes to war with China."
In September 1839, Jardine, who was far away in England, finally met with the British Foreign Secretary Palmerston, proposing that military action must be taken against China to ensure the smooth flow of trade, and after that, Jardine even formulated a specific plan, claiming that the British Expeditionary Force did not have to rush to bomb China's coastal cities, but occupied Chinese territory so that British merchants could live safely and ensure that trade was unhindered, and then discussed the issue of compensation caused by the destruction of opium.
In February 1840, Palmerston issued a directive to Lord Oakland, the Governor of India, to prepare 16 warships, armed with 500 guns and 4,000 soldiers. In April of the same year, the House of Commons began a three-day debate in which the Conservatives and the Whigs had heated discussions about waging war, and in the end, the Whigs won the debate by a narrow margin of 9 votes. Then, on 18 May, the British frigate HMS Crocodile set sail from Singapore to Canton Bay to the northeast, followed by the main force of the British Expeditionary Force towards Canton, China.
Signing of the Treaty of Nanking
For Jardine and Ma Dichen, they were merchants who only valued compensation and trade issues. They have long exploited the loopholes in the qing dynasty's laws, colluded with opium smugglers, and gradually used opium to erode the people of the Chinese imperial court, which eventually led to Lin Zexu taking tough measures, which also became an excuse for them to "shout and cheer" for the war between the two countries. The two of them, one hostage in Guangzhou and one as a government adviser in Britain, provided invaluable assistance and intelligence for Britain to wage war.
In the face of this history that makes him unable to calm down, in addition to indignation, he has more reflections, Jardine and Maddishn are the products of that era, they were influenced by capitalist trade, and finally also affected the development and changes of Sino-British trade. Today, fortunately, everything has passed, and what we must do is not to forget history and continue to move forward on the road to a prosperous and strong motherland.