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LARS LAMMANN: My name is Doctor Laamann, Lars Peter Laamann. I'm the chair of the history department at SOAS School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.

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Which has a focus which very much coincides with my own research interests, namely the history of Eastern Asia, history of China in particular during the Qing period.

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And my initial focus was on the mid-teen period. That's the 18th century, 17th century, 18th century. And because of this, I also started studying Manchu, which is the second language of the Qing

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Empire. But the majority of sources would be in Chinese. The Opium War is actually a misnomer. The first Opium War deserves the name.

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It's the first military encounter between the British Navy especially, or the East India Company, who were just on the border in 1840, and the Qing Empire.

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And again, it's not the Qing Navy who's opposing them, but the coastal defences of the Qing in the Pearl River area. And their main target, their main enemy would have been pirate fleets.

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And this puts us into a difficult spot if we look at the official documents, because of course, the British were doing something, the British private traders were doing something that was illegal

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under bilateral laws, under the agreements between the British East India Company and the Qing administration. Namely, they were introducing illegal substances into the Chinese market, namely opium,

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for recreational purposes. And that was forbidden since 1728. So this was something the British East India Company was aware of.

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But they-- not they, but the private traders, so the traders who worked for them, they decided to go against it. And then in the late 1830s, there came the point when

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the British East India Company was evicted from the trading area that was reserved for foreigners. The 13 factories, shísan hong, which are in the centre of Guangzhou, reserved for foreigners,

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where officials and representatives of the traders, you can call them guilds if you like, met in order to negotiate the prices. But because the British traders were

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known to introduce a forbidden substance, namely opium, into China, they were evicted from that area. They were pushed out into the-- further into the Pearl River Delta.

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And once they had the opportunity to engage with private traders on the Chinese side, and you can refer to them as Pirates, then there was nothing stopping them

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from introducing even more contraband opium into China. So for this reason, there were debates in China. There was one faction that very strongly advocated the complete suppression of opium.

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Another faction that indicated that once opium had been legalised, it could be taxed just like any other substance, like alcohol, for example, or tobacco.

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And this produced a discourse which is very well recorded. And the final months of this discourse resulted in something that could be referred to as a bipartisan struggle

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at the court in Beijing. And in the very end, the imperial court issues an edict which dispatched Lin Zexu as the Supreme superintendent over the eradication of the opium

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smuggling to Guangzhou, where he was supposed to impose the laws of the Qing Empire, which completely prohibited the introduction of opium. So that's the background, the immediate background, and then

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the cause of the first Sino-British war, that's how historians usually refer to it, was that ships containing opium were seized, taken to the Port of Guangzhou or slightly outside,

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and then their contents were emptied onto the land where they were blended with lime and then thrown into the river. In other words, the opium was completely destroyed.

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And opium is a very specific-- it's a very specific type of opium. Namely, it's a boiled down opium sap which produces a very thick black treacle.

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And this is known under the Malaysian name, the Malay name Chandu. And this Chandu could only be used for smoking. So this was very different from the medical opium that had been

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imported for many centuries. And there was no law that would have banned medicinal opium. That's very important to remember. But the British free traders, they knew this

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and they went against it by introducing this substance which was specifically developed to produce this highly addictive substance that could be traded. So this is the reason behind the war.

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Was the British government behind it? Actually, no. Because they were firstly not aware of it because there's no telegraph at this time.

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So news travels extremely slowly. And secondly, the people who found themselves in a very difficult situation were the free traders, who were not 100%--

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they were mostly after profit, not necessarily profit through opium. So it was not a case of them trying to get the Chinese population addicted, but they had realised that the profits

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that could be made were enormous. So they were also divided. But after some time, there were internal discussions where they decided to appeal to the British government,

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the British public. And at that point in time there was a move away from the state regulated trade, which the East India Company or the European East India companies that existed

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had been subject to. And from this time onwards, they said, we should be able to trade freely with China. And this free trade idea was being

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implanted into the minds of the British newspaper readers. Because the people who were very much in favour of this war, you can call them the pro-war faction, they began a misinformation campaign.

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I mean, this was fake news, as you would find it in the 20th century, 21st century. And the purpose was to topple the government of the time. And then you have these very detailed papers

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that are preserved in the British Parliament, but also in places like the Senate House Library at the University of London. British Library also has them.

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Our own library gets the aftermath of that. But we have these very intense discussions that you can also follow in the news media. And the end of the discussion, the end of the debate

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was a call for new elections, which take place. The pro-opium faction, they get to the top of the political pecking order. And from that time onwards, there

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is the traders in Guangzhou and the British government. They act in unison. There's one other element, that of sheer luck. Because why did the British win this very short war?

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Because they possessed a wonder weapon. They had the nemesis, which was the first steel clad or ironclad ship that operated on steam. It also had sails for the wind, was the first of I think

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four, or five, or six ships that were being commissioned. But it already existed, and it was far off somewhere near the East African coastline. Through a sequence of non-electronic communications,

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they managed to get the ship to turn around and to arrive in time for the big showdown in the Port of Guangzhou. The Qing had built up the traditional defences,

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where they set up barricades aflame in the middle of the river. That would have burnt down all the sails, and perhaps also the wooden hulls.

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But it didn't do anything to the nemesis, so the nemesis could steam through and shoot. And of course, they had the post-Napoleonic wars cannons and firepower on board.

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So this was a very unequal fight. But don't forget, it was sheer luck. Because without that, the British wouldn't have got anywhere and the Opium War

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would have been lost. And, well, history might have ended up in a very different direction. So this is a story that repeats itself.

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Then in Japan, when Matthew Perry arrives 10 years later, 12 years later, and he does exactly the same. He sends a steel clad of steamships into Japan. And he knows how effective that is.

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The Opium War is a consequence of the globalisation which was intensifying during that time. Globalisation had actually always existed. It's not a new phenomenon.

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My favourite example is always tobacco, which was introduced to the West in the late 15th century, early 16th century. And by 1580, so three generations

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afterwards, it's completely at home. It's planted everywhere in Africa, in India, in Southeast Asia, in Eastern Asia, it becomes a globalisation hit.

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With very conventional means of transport, no marketing was necessary, highly addictive. So opium feeds into this pattern. So it goes hand in hand with tobacco.

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So this is one way of looking at it. You look at it from a social history angle, maybe even an anthropological angle. But importantly, the consequence of the Opium War

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and the subsequent wars is very much that the relationship between China and the Western world is being constructed in a set of treaties. I've brought along a little book, which

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is called Treaties of the Empire of China and the Foreign Powers. So this is a-- well, it's a compendium which was produced before the end of the Qing period, 1877, which

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gives a long list of treaties. And these treaties are not necessarily the treaties that we learn in textbooks. Because of course, treaty of Nanjing, and Tianjin, Beijing,

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those we know about. But there were many, many, many other minor treaties which regulated, for example, the emigration of Chinese coolies, coolie labour.

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And so here we have something, which is referred to in the foreign office archives, but here we have a convention to regulate the engagement of Chinese immigrants

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by British and French subjects. So this is 1866. This is after the so-called Second Opium War. And then at the very end, there's an.

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Appendix which says, second, that "the law of the empire punishes by death those who, by fraud or by force, may kidnap Chinese subjects for the purpose of sending them abroad against their will."

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That means that this happened all the time. And this is one of the many realities that exist, namely that this is 1866, so this is just after the end of the Taiping wars

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and the Nanjing, the other war in the North, when China is facing a serious economic challenges. It's from this time onwards that you get the planting of opium in China.

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So it's a myth that opium was widely planted beforehand. It was desperate farmers. Exactly the same what happened in Lebanon after the Civil War-- during the Civil War, what happened in Afghanistan today.

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Farmers would not voluntarily plant opium rather than anything else, but it was the a highly profitable cash crop that was needed at that time. And therefore, you also get emigration.

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You also get a whole range of cooperation between Westerners and Chinese merchants. All of this needed to be regulated. And this is why the foreign office

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archives are so important. The legation files, the files that exist between China, the central government of China and the Western powers-- so that's not just Britain,

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but for the sake of the Foreign Office, that would be the British government rather than the colonial government. We have two separate ones.

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The colonial government deals with Hong Kong, the foreign office deals with the legations and the other places in the freeports. They're called treaty ports, treaty ports because

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of the Treaty of Nanjing and then later the Treaty of Tianjin. In these treaty ports, the Westerners, but especially the British, were subject to regulations

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that addressed every single aspect of their lives. And because of this, if we go into the archives, we can find disputes that range from the very banal, very essentially cases that would have

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been dealt with by a magistrate court in Britain. But in China we have a strange situation. Namely, the treaty ports are extraterritorial. That means they are outside the jurisdiction of the Qing

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administration. Otherwise, any foreigner, any British subject who was outside, was beyond the treaty ports, would have been subject to Qing law.

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And the Qing judges were the local magistrates. And depending on the relationship between the local authorities and the local British representatives, this relationship

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could be good or bad. So we know for example, from Tamsui in Taiwan that the relationship was very good and the community that you had was very much

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integrated into this Chinese city of Tamsui. But there were other areas where the relationship was very fraught. And of course, that comes to the so-called Boxer Rebellion

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in areas, in Shandong, for example, where you have lynchings that take place. by Chinese commoners against Christian converts, but also against anyone who was foreign.

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So this is an example where the British, but also the other foreign powers, I'm referring to them as powers because that is the term that was used at that time, they were trying to protect their nationals.

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And this took place, this could be exerted in places that were not formally under the control of the government, for example, in missionary stations. The sources that you find in the foreign office

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archives and especially the-- I think we looked at volume 288, if I remember correctly-- contain a blend of different types of information. You get a lot of correspondence.

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This correspondence deals directly with the treaties that were being issued, agreed on at the central level. Those you also get, but get them in a different place.

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So this is very much a, you need to look at different sets of archival collections and then puzzle them together. And once you have done this, you need

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to take the archival sources and match them up with other sources from the Western end. That also includes the Shanghai press, especially the North China Herald

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is a very important paper that is being used also by officials in order to advertise certain laws and certain regulations that apply to all the local inhabitants, if they're Westerners.

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And then, of course, you have the Chinese equivalent. And you have the equivalents in other European languages. The French, of course, because they have this big concession in Shanghai.

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But in order to get the complete picture, you would need to read different sections of these archives in the Foreign Office, preserved in the foreign office archives, together with other Western accounts,

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together with the Chinese accounts. Only then you can get the complete picture. Yes, I'm. I'm an old fashioned historian.

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So I pretend that digitization and computerization has never happened. So I usually start from the very beginning. So I work in chronological order,

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and I usually start at the very beginning of a sequence and then I go through it. So I do it twice. And of course I know that it's very advantageous

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to have to be able to do keyword search. And this is, of course, something that revolutionises the searching for material. How did historians do it before?

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Well, one was trial and error. You just went into different parts and when it looked as if there could be something to harvest, then you would spend a longer time on it.

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But this could also lead to many, many wasted days. So very much aware now that time comes at a premium, so keyword searches are very, very valuable. And then you have to make sure that you think tangentially.

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That you don't always only look for opium for example, but you also look at medicine. You look at different applications of opium. Then you look at certain social terms.

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You look at policing. And altogether, this will give a picture that becomes quite complete. The other way of searching is by identifying a certain event,

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and then by going through the correspondence and also the legally deposited material sequence by sequence. And you can actually see that they're often cross-referenced. And they would often say, as I have written to in my letter

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to so-and-so, and then you say, aha. Then you go into that part of the collection. And there is usually no interconnection, and sometimes not even keyword searches would get you there.

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So you still need a good portion of patience. So in other words, I would recommend to other researchers, especially to students, to allocate more time than they think it will take in order to find material.