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In response to the unfolding crisis the Chinese Emperor ordered a campaign to be launched in 1838, with the goal of wiping out opium consumption throughout the nation. Although this campaign was only partially successful, the British bitterly complained that it effected their 'business.' The British, of course, responded with increased efforts in their smuggling operations.
The whole thing came to a head in December 1839, when the Chinese Emperor set up a High Commissioner, for which he selected the respected administrator Lin Zexu, whom he backed with military force and the mandate to get the smugglers off the island of Lintin, inside Canton Bay. Lintin had become the smugglers favorite transshipping point after an earlier crackdown on opium smuggling in 1821. Under Lin's pressure the smugglers pulled back to the outer edges of the bay, where they redeployed on a barren island. Lin Zexu also demanded that the smugglers hand over their stockpiles and sign an agreement to smuggle no more, under penalty of death. He even appealed to Queen Victoria.
Lin Zexu had miscalculated the British response. In fact he had totally underestimated the importance of the dope trade (smuggling operation) to the British Empire. It wasn't difficult, therefore, with the appropriate cunning, to turn Lin Zexu's demand into a pretext for war.
Captain Charles Elliot, who was stationed in China, requested the British merchants to comply and hand over their opium stocks as Lin Zexu had demanded. He promised that the British government would reimburse them, fully. So it was that Lin Zexu confiscated and destroyed 20,263 chests of raw opium that year, some 2.5 million pounds in total, which may be the biggest drug bust in history. The entire lot of it was dumped into the sea or burned.
Captain Elliot had his reasons for ordering the compliance, which was not in China's favor, nor to help Lin Zexu to succeed. He got busy and used the few British forces he had on hand to create 'incidents' with the Chinese that would redouble his support back in England for a plan of war.
The plan worked. Under the mandate of a narrowly won vote in parliament, the British navy sent a fleet of 20 warships, and transport ships, to China, with a military force of 4,000 troops (Scottish, Irish, and Indian). The fleet arrived at the shores of China in June 1840 to the total surprise of the Chinese.
It is said that of all the people who approved that war, Queen Victoria, understood the 'necessity' for it better than anyone. The confiscated property of the smugglers was not significant in the larger context, nor was the humiliation the British suffered at the hands of Lin Zexu. Queen Victoria understood that the war had to be fought to protect and advance British free-trade. She understood that without its 'free-trade' platform the Empire would be bankrupt within a year. Even Churchill admitted essentially the same thing, more than a hundred years later, in response to Franklin Delanor Roosevelt's complaint about the Empire's exploitative "trade agreements.... It is because of them that the people of India and Africa, of all the colonial Near East and Far East, are still as backward as they are." Roosevelt's son, Elliot, quotes Churchill's angry response: "The trade that has made England great shall continue..."*(The New Federalist Aug. 28, 1996 - also see Elliot Roosevelt, As He Saw It, New York: Duell Sloan and Pearce, 1946)
The Opium War against China must be seen in this context. Actually, the British attack of China can hardly be called a war. The technologically superior fleet quickly destroyed China's barely existing defenses and then bombed its cities to hell, unless ransom was paid. The Chinese military technology was antiquated, compared to the British technology. The Opium War, so-called, was therefore not a war in the standard sense. It was a brutal takeover in which a modern military force wantonly destroyed civilian centers and murdered their helpless populations. It was of the kind of indefensible rampage and slaughter that the Mongols had unleashed in previous times.
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