The Tragicomedy of Errors: China, British Imperialism, and the Opium Wars
British historian Julia Lovell finds something funny in the Opium Wars
Great Britain has many reasons to feel great about itself. Its empire was the largest in history and covered over a fifth of the world’s population. It had more colonies than any other European power. It came, it saw, it divided, and it conquered.
It raped and it reaped, it slaughtered millions of people, massacred entire populations, and caused civil wars with impunity. Racism was its state policy. It sucked the life out of its colonies and reduced them to what we now call “third-world” nations. It drew and redrew boundaries and created whole new countries randomly on a whim. Most conflicts in the world today can be traced back to British imperialism: the Kashmir issue, the Sino-Indian border dispute, Tibet, Palestine, Northern Ireland, Cyprus, Sudan — the list goes on.
Yes — Great Britain can be proud. It had the largest empire in the world. It had managed to keep its European competitors in check. There was no known threat to its global dominion. It seemed that Great Britain was destined to rule the world.
And then it all came tumbling down. Sometime in the past century, the Island Story crumbled to pieces — and the empire followed. Slowly but surely, the empire on which The Sun Never Sets went out like a cigar puff. Today, it finds itself with the geopolitical influence of a US missile base.
Once great, Great Britain is now America’s bitch — a tart of a nation that will obediently suck America’s coattails whenever ordered to do so. The relationship between the two is much like that between a dog and its master, or to use its official name, a “Special Relationship”.
Union jacks
Britain is a sunny place, but acceptance of its imperialist crimes is rather chilled. For example, to this day, Britain refuses to return treasures that it stole from its colonies such as the Kohinoor diamond, which adorns the British Crown jewels. British government officials today fondly think about the good old days of imperialism. Somewhere deep inside the British consciousness, there still lurks a desire to justify or deflect criticism from its imperialist crimes. The best techniques ever devised to do so is to imply that the colonies deserved their fate, that they brought it upon themselves — the Blame the Victim strategy.
This trick has proven remarkably effective in making British imperialism appear less barbaric than it really was. Hence, Julia Lovell, author of a new book on the first Opium war, quotes the typical anecdotal Indian novelist as saying that Indians have “generally been aware that (they’ve) been responsible for (their) own problems” , thus implying that this is the general prevalent opinion among Indians, when in reality it is no such thing. However, since India is decidedly pro-western (in terms of both its foreign policy and history textbooks) and presents no real threat to western dominance, such arguments against India are less common.
China, on the other hand, regardless of whether it is a threat or not, has been decided to be perceived as one by the western establishment and media. The phrase “(Chinese) self-loathing” can be found throughout Lovell’s book. In the typical Thomas Friedman style of judging an entire nation’s opinion on the first person one meets outside the airport, she quotes Beijing taxi drivers as saying that China “had it coming”.
The basic premise of this deflection strategy is simple enough: What’s the big deal if the west humiliated and destroyed China for a hundred years? China was already rotting from within. So what if Britain forced an illegal drug down its throat? The Economist simply calls it “free trade”.
The Tragicomedy in the Opium War
Here’s part of the book description from the back cover:
(The Opium War’s) brutality notwithstanding, the conflict was also threaded with tragicomedy: with Victorian hypocrisy, bureaucratic fumblings, military missteps, political opportunism and collaboration. Yet over the past 170 years, this strange tale of misunderstanding, incompetence and compromise has become the founding myth of modern Chinese nationalism: the start of China’s heroic struggle against a Western conspiracy to destroy the country with opium and gunboat diplomacy.
Yes — believe it or not, Lovell finds something funny in the tragedy. Tragicomedy has been aptly described as a mixture of emotions in which “seriousness stimulates laughter, and pain pleasure”. In other words, Schadenfreude in its purest form.
Of course it may be argued that a tragicomedy is simply a literary device, or even a pathway to finally accepting that “laughter is the only response left to man when he is faced with the tragic emptiness and meaninglessness of existence”. Very true, humor is indeed something that is the ultimate form of cynicism and anger towards the injustices of this world. But why stop there? Why not call every war a “tragicomedy”? After all, doesn’t every war have its share of “bureaucratic fumblings” and “military missteps”?
The usage of the term reflects the callous attitude towards the war, and British imperial crimes in general, by westerners (who never had to really face them) and by the British themselves. This indifferent attitude pervades the entire book.
It would be unthinkable for a British or western historian to use the epithet to describe, say, World War II or the Holocaust — events that elicit feelings of tragedy and loss in the west. Imagine the reaction if someone published a book calling the Holocaust a “tragicomedy”. In fact, just as a mental exercise in parallelism, the entire blurb above can be modified to produce an exact parallel describing the Holocaust, another tragic incident that Israel derives its (and its nuclear weapons’) legitimacy from:
(The Holocaust’s) brutality notwithstanding, the conflict was also threaded with tragicomedy: with Nazi hypocrisy, bureaucratic fumblings, military missteps, political opportunism and collaboration. Yet over the past 7o years, this strange tale of misunderstanding, incompetence and compromise has become the founding myth of modern Israeli nationalism: the start of Israel’s heroic struggle against an anti-Semitic conspiracy to destroy the Jews.
Defending the indefensible
Officially of course, British crimes cannot be denied or justified. Hence, any discussion about such issues appears with a disclaimer or clarification quietly tucked away in a corner. As Humphrey Appleby once famously remarked in Yes Prime Minister, a clarification is not to make oneself clear, it is to put oneself in the clear.
For example, The Economist’s review of Lovell’s book — one of the most imperialistic and sadistic pieces ever written in modern times — contains an afterthought as if doing a favor to China in acknowledging British crimes: “Westerners have good reason to be ashamed of their treatment of China in the 19th century”. This is quickly followed by a counter-statement lest the reader read too much into it: “Yet Ms Lovell contends that they administered only the final blows to an empire that was already on the brink.”
This concept should come as no surprise to regular readers of The Economist, an orientalist tabloid that enjoys reporting Chinese deaths in incidents that prove the government’s “wasteful spending”, such as its satirical reaction (“Whoops”) to the deaths of 40 Chinese people in the Wenzhou train crash. This disclaimer is issued by Lovell herself in her book and on promotional platforms: “The British national character is portrayed very negatively in Chinese textbooks, which is right and proper. The British are ashamed of our imperial past: the racism, massacres and involvement in the slave trade.”
In her book she argues that the Opium war is the “founding episode of modern Chinese nationalism” (the standard term used to describe Chinese patriotism). Lovell calls the Opium war a “useful episode” in Chinese history — and repeats the much ballyhooed assertion that it is used by the CCP to justify its rule. This “Opium war button” as she calls it, can apparently be pressed by the CCP at any time to “remind the Chinese people that the West has always been full of schemes to undermine China”.
Yet, how exactly this curious phenomenon occurs is not very clear. Perhaps proponents of this theory assume that a farmer whose land has been forcibly taken away is going to forgive the government because Britain once forced the Qing dynasty to import Opium. The two events are entirely unrelated. This would make a good story for The Onion though: CHINESE FARMER LOVES GOVERNMENT FOR DESTROYING HIS HOME BECAUSE BRITAIN HUMILIATED CHINA 150 YEARS AGO.
The CCP and the Chinese people: The right to rule
Western pundits interpret the relationship between the Chinese people and their government to suit their own purposes. They fluctuate between two interpretations, depending on their current argument:
- The government doesn’t really care about the people and will take policy decisions regardless of what the people want ( such as the Three Gorges Dam).
- The government deliberately stirs up nationalist passions and panders to them (such as in the case of the South China Sea disputes).
Western newspapers and academicians often change their colors according to the argument in question. The real justification for CCP rule — which is starkly different from India’s — is hardly ever discussed. For fanatics of democracy, winning an election is all the justification a government ever needs to rule a country.
Two tragedies don’t make a right
Few Britons have heard of the Opium war. Those that have are largely limited to historians and academics. Among them, the simple reality of the Opium wars — that they were a blatant act of aggression by a European power on a defenseless Asian empire — are absolutely sidelined. The only measurable aspect of its legacy is reduced to blind criticism of China and its “patriotic education”. The usage of the century of humiliation by China to “justify it’s own rule” is used as a smokescreen to deflect a balanced discussion about British atrocities. Julia Lovell, in this garrulous work that has been universally praised in the media, tries desperately to present this much-needed balanced view, and as those numerous praises would have us believe, largely succeeds.
Lovell accuses the Chinese government of imbalance: “The problem with these Chinese textbooks is not one of accuracy, per se, but of balance”, she says. “China’s education system spends far more time remembering the Opium Wars than the traumas of Communism, such as the man-made famine that killed tens of millions, and the crackdown of 1989. It offers a skewed sense of history.” But she then goes on to say that China “has tampered with the historical record”.
This is one of the many standard tactics among such historians, who precipitately jump to take refuge in false comparisons. Call it the Godwin’s law of Chinese historical analogies: As a discussion about Chinese history grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Mao’s policies or Tiananmen approaches one.
Any discussion about Chinese history must necessarily mention about how Chinese textbooks ignore the Cultural Revolution, the Great Leap Forward, and anything else one can think of. This tendency has now become ubiquitous, whether one is discussing the Nanjing massacre or the Opium wars, even when the issues in question have no relation with one another. The Opium wars have nothing to do with the “traumas of communism”, but they are still mentioned in one breath.
This tactic is a useful tool in shifting blame towards China in international disputes. Regardless of whatever the other party does and whatever sufferings China has endured, it is always wrong because it won’t tell its people about the Great Leap Forward. Any suggestion of western hegemony and attempts to weaken China are sidelined. All one needs to do is simply say that China is overly suspicious of the west since the CCP has kept the “humiliations alive” through its “patriotic education”.
One war, two perspectives: China and the West today
Lovell should’ve done herself a favor and stopped at the Opium War. What could have been a unique work about an important historical event is bastardized by recourse to two disgraceful tactics: 1) Selectively quoting the most extremist Chinese netizens’ reactions to prove a point, and 2) Relating the Opium Wars to every aspect of China’s foreign policy.
The first habit is readily explained: she writes regularly for The Economist. The second transgression however betrays an acute lack of understanding of modern geopolitics. Towards the end of the book, she ventures into territory clearly outside her milieu: foreign policy and diplomacy. She desperately tries to relate recent events to China’s patriotic education . She argues that “delusion and prejudice have bedevilled (China’s) relationship with the modern West.” In other words, whenever China refuses to bow down to American hegemony and obey its commands, it is because China is unduly suspicious of the west.
Hence it transpires that when:
- America and the west try to push through a skewed climate deal at Copenhagen that requires major developing nations to be treated on the same level as developed ones (as though the greenhouse gases that the west has been emitting since 1900 haven’t contributed to global warming at all),
- or when it hypocritically lectures China on human rights,
- or when it arrogantly pokes its nose in the South China Sea disputes,
- or when it continues to break promises and sell weapons to Taiwan in the name of a pretend promise to defend it,
- or when it goes about selling weapons all along China’s periphery and increases its military presence in the region to surround China from all sides…
China is wrong to feel victimized and targeted — it is simply its paranoia talking! How can the west do anything wrong when China treats everything the west does as suspicious? Perhaps it doesn’t know that the west has always had China’s best interests at heart.
She even manages to find parallels between the Copenhagen Climate Change conference and the Opium Wars. Lovell talks about that fateful day in December 2009 when Wen Jiabao allegedly snubbed world leaders and “insulted Obama”. She finds Wen’s absence from a meeting of world leaders
“…an ominous return to the style of pompous, sino-centric diplomacy that had so enraged men like William Napier and Harry Parkes in the run-up to the first and second Opium Wars, as the emperor’s officials refused to meet him in person, delegating instead the hopeless Hong merchants.”
Lovell fails to tell her readers that Wen Jiabao was not even informed of the meeting. Moreover, the fact that India, South Africa, and Brazil also vehemently opposed the West is completely omitted. Perhaps those countries too wanted revenge for their respective “humiliations”?
She also spends a few paragraphs gloating over the curious case of Akmal Shaikh, the British drug mule sentenced to death in China for drug trafficking. Like The Economist, she speculates whether the (irrelevant but useful) fact that he was caught in Xinjiang might have had an effect on Chinese citizens’ reactions to the issue.
She extensively quotes media reports saying that Shaikh’s family insisted that he was mentally ill, perhaps expecting a death convict’s family to openly come out and proclaim that he deserved to die. Presumably, she expects a drug smuggler to be given special treatment just because he is British. A simple open-and-shut case (with even his own lawyers admitting that the evidence was overwhelming) was converted into something political by western media. This in turn was excellent fodder for Lovell to chew on — that Akmal Shaikh was not given an independent medical examination and subsequently sentenced to death because of the “Opium War button”.
In all fairness however, Julia Lovell’s book is indeed more balanced than other western views about the Opium Wars and about European colonialism in general. The book represents an evolution in the study of the “useful episode” and the century that followed it — from blatant lopsidedness to a more nuanced (or less unnuanced) approach. However, China thinks that “the west has always been full of schemes to undermine China” largely because the west has indeed been full of schemes to undermine China. China might be paranoid about the west, but that is only because the west gives it a lot to be paranoid about.
China doth protest too much?
Centralizing the entire gamut of Chinese nationalism and foreign policy to a single point in Chinese history is a very attractive proposition. It is a useful trick to deflect criticism from the west’s own devious policies. Whenever China takes a decision that suits its national interest (as any country would) western governments and media simply press their own “Opium War buttons” and claim that China is being uncooperative because of its xenophobia. In the closing paragraphs of the book, Lovell brays,
“In 1839, the Qing court was too distracted by fears of social unrest to come up voluntarily with a pragmatic response to Western trade demands; Britain interpreted this political paralysis as inveterate xenophobia. In 2010, the situation did not look so very different…”
Portraying China as a pressure cooker about to burst, and current Chinese foreign policy as being driven by ancient history is the prefect solution. It demonizes China and sanctifies the west — portraying it as China’s benefactor that can do no harm. Any Chinese foreign policy decision can be attacked and any western action defended — all one has to do is simply hint that China is being uncooperative due to its own historical bias. Perhaps the Opium War was a useful episode after all.
Originally published at India’s China Blog in 2012. Also re-published at Hidden Harmonies.
