At the beginning of the 19th century, the British East India Company exported a large amount of opium grown in colonial India to China, which not only poisoned the physical and mental health of Chinese, but also led to a large amount of silver outflow, which seriously affected the monetary system of the Qing government and brought deep harm to China's economy, society and people.
According to statistics, from 1800 to 1818, the average annual amount of opium import was stable at about 4,000 boxes, while in 1831 it reached 20,000 boxes, which doubled at the end of the 1930s, and between 1808 and 1856, because of the opium trade, 384 million silver dollars flowed to Britain, and before that, because Chinese tea and porcelain were sold to Britain, between 1752 and 1800, 105 million silver dollars flowed into China.
From this, it can be seen that the trade deficit with serious arrears has caused the British to lose their conscience and use drugs to achieve trade balance, on the contrary, the Qing government has caused a rise in domestic silver prices because of a large outflow of silver, which has a serious negative impact on the domestic economy, and many officers and soldiers have seriously weakened the combat effectiveness of the army by smoking opium.
In the face of the anti-smoking movement within the Qing government, the British began to invade China militarily in 1840, triggering the First Opium War, and following the British invasion of China, there were many Indians, of which more than 200 Indians were "thrown away" in Taiwan by their masters, and their masters fled.
What's going on?
In 1840, the British brazenly launched the Opium War, and once attacked dinghai in Zhejiang, threatening the shipping of the Yangtze River, for this reason, the Qing government sent Qi Shan to Guangdong to negotiate with the British representative Yi Lu, who unilaterally threw out the so-called "nose piercing treaty" to demand the cession of the chinese island of Hong Kong and force Qi Shan to accept.
However, the British government wanted to fill the gap, believing that the "nose-piercing treaty" still could not satisfy their delusions, and sent Pu Ding cha to replace the righteous law, and after Pu Ding Cha arrived, the British navy began to go north again, from August 1841 to July 1842, British warships shuttled through the southeast coast of China, endlessly.
Before the Opium War, the British army used India as its logistics and supply base, on July 10, 1841, five British transport ships set off from Calcutta, India, to the Chinese battlefield, one of which was called Narbuda, on August 30, the transport ship arrived in Hong Kong, and in September, the Narbuda sailed from Hong Kong to Zhoushan, Zhejiang, preparing to join the battle.
In addition to military supplies, there were 274 passengers on this munitions ship, most of whom followed their British masters into China's territorial waters, and perhaps because of typhoons and other reasons, the munitions ship drifted to the port of Keelung in Taiwan (then called Chicken Coop), as a result, some officers of the British Army's Fifty-fifth Regiment on board, including the regimental commander Hamilton, escaped in small boats and the like, and the remaining 189 people were captured by the soldiers and villagers of Taiwan.
At that time, the top military and political chiefs of the Qing government in Taiwan were Yao Ying of Taiwan Bingbei Dao and The Chief Soldier of Taiwan Town, Dahong'a, of which Yao Ying was a native of Tongcheng, Anhui Province, and the famous "Tongcheng School" essayist Yao Nai was his uncle, and Yao Nai's famous article "The Record of DengtaiShan" written by Yao Nai is still a required reading in high school language textbooks.
However, Yao Ying promised to use the scriptures to make friends with Lin Zexu, Wei Yuan and other people with lofty ideals, realized the importance of coastal defense, and began to collect and study China's frontiers and world geography, authored "Zhi Xiaolu" and "Dong Rub Jiluo", and advocated learning Western "long skills", such as ship guns.
After the Opium War began, Yao Ying and Dahong'a followed the ban on smoking, and at the same time, began to strengthen coastal defense, "wounded water divisions, shoukou battalions, departments, and counties closely patrolled." It was precisely because they were always in a state of readiness that they were able to capture the British troops and their servant Indians on this British quartermaster ship in one fell swoop.
Coincidentally, in March 1842, another British quartermaster ship, the Annie, was on its way from Zhoushan, Zhejiang Province, to Macau, China, and once again ran aground at the port of Daan in Taiwan, and 57 people on board were disarmed again, including nearly 30 Indian artillery and sailors.
However, Yan Botao, the governor of Fujian and Zhejiang at the time, naively thought that if these British prisoners were released to the interior, they could be exchanged from the British army for Gulangyu Island in Xiamen, but Yao Ying had already seen through the British army's attempt and believed that the British "took Xiamen as their bag and used it as a throat to pass through Zhejiang and Guangdong." ”
With the strategic position of Gulangyu Island, the British want to use it as a choke point to threaten Zhejiang and Guangdong, so they absolutely refuse to make this exchange, not to mention that most of the 189 people captured are Indians who are regarded by the British as hard-working Indians, how can the lives of Indians be put in the eyes of the British?
In order to punish the invaders, Yao Ying took advantage of the fact that the Qing government had not yet reached a compromise with the British, and the daoguang emperor, and finally, with the approval of the Daoguang emperor, executed 159 prisoners in Taiwan.
Compared with the defeat on the southeast coast, the military and civilians of Taiwan defeated the British invaders and brought most of them to justice. (British) Lost a lot of money. ”
Soon, the Sino-British Treaty of Nanking was signed, and the Qing government compromised with the British army, while the British representative Pu Dingcha framed the Taiwanese military and civilians as not the soldiers, but the "merchants", and demanded that the Qing government "remove Yao Ying and Dahong'a" from the officials and put them to justice.
The Qing government was afraid of affecting the peace negotiations with the British, especially the Chincha minister Qi Ying and others, in order to "ensure the fulfillment of the peace treaty," "not to kill the Dao, (that is, Yao Ying, then Taiwan Bingbei Dao), zhen (that is, Dahong'a, then the general soldier of Taiwan town), our army had no foothold." And Yao Ying wrote to the imperial court to defend herself, exposing the lies of the British army, "If it is a merchant ship, why did you open a cannon to attack my fort?" Taking the captured British weapons and equipment as an example, it is proved that the two captured ships were not merchant ships, but warships.
Despite this, the successor governor of Fujian and Zhejiang, Yi Liang, sent people to arrest Yao Ying and Dahong'a and escort them to Beijing, but they were greeted and supported by the patriotic people in the capital around Changxindian, but Yao Ying and Dahong'a were still imprisoned by the Ministry of Punishment, and later, they were relegated to Sichuan.
Author: Our special invited author Shen Jiuchuan
References: "Opium War Archives", "Qing Dynasty Internal Strife and Opium War", etc