sending opium to china--3/3/2026

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Today's selection-- from The Corporation That Changed the World by Nick Robins. Warren Hastings smuggles opium into China:

“The use of opium for medical purposes stretched back in China to the Sung Dynasty, but recreational drug-use really started in the coastal provinces during the seventeenth century. Opium was widely used worldwide: the Indians tended to eat it; Europeans mixed it with brandy and drank it as laudanum. But the Chinese smoked it, which created a far greater addictive potential and also spawned an elaborate sub-culture around the pipe. From its base at Macao, the Portuguese imported opium grown in the India's central Malwa region, and British traders joined the fray buying opium in south-east Asia. Qing concern at the spread of opium smoking led to a ban in 1729 on its sale and consumption, except for medicinal purposes. Punishments were severe. Sellers of opium were forced to wear a wooden collar for a month, and then banished to the frontier. Shopkeepers were to be punished 'in the same way as propagators of depraved doctrine — strangled after a few months'. The Company was then in one of its 'quiett' phases, and its traders in Canton respected the imperial decision. Access to the Chinese market was exceedingly precarious, and the Company's agents did not want to engage in any practices that might threaten their core business.

“It was the desperation of Warren Hastings that led to the first organised attempt by the Company to smuggle opium into China. Throughout the East, the opium of the Bihar region around Patna was famed for its excellence. After Plassey, the British had taken over the nawabi monopoly over opium production. When Robert Clive left India for the last time in 1767, an estimated 100,000 lb of Patna opium was being smuggled into China via Macao. Taking over as the first governor-general, Warren Hastings closed down the infamous 'Patna Gang' of executives who hogged the trade, viewing opium as a 'pernicious article of luxury, which ought not to be permitted but for the purpose of foreign commerce only'. The monopoly purchase of opium from the Bihari peasants was outsourced to a contractor — Stephen Sulivan, son of the Company chairman Laurence Sulivan and Hastings' patron. There Hastings may well have left it, but for the outbreak of war both on land against Mysore and at sea against the French and the Dutch who had joined the side of the patriots in the American War of Independence. By 1781, the smooth flow of trade with China and the East Indies had been broken; unsold opium lay in the Company's warehouses in Calcutta and unshipped tea piled up in Canton.

“To break the deadlock, Hastings hired two ships, the Betsy and the Nonsuch, to carry 3,460 chests of Company opium directly to Canton. Defending himself at his impeachment in London many years later, Hastings described his decision as driven by 'the critical situation of our affairs', arguing that his choice was 'whether I should take the chance of sending opium to China and the Eastern Islands on the Company's account, in order to furnish our Supracargoes at China with a supply of specie, or suffer the opium to remain one season in Calcutta and risque the detention of the Company's ships one year at Canton'. For his accuser, Edmund Burke, Hastings was clearly 'criminal in his attempt to introduce it clandestinely into China', adding that 'no profit could compensate for the probable risque to which their trade with China was thereby exposed or for the certain dishonour and consequent distrust which the East India Company must incur in the eyes of the Chinese government by being engaged in a low, clandestine traffic prohibited by the laws of the country'. The expedition was a shambles. First, the Betsy was captured by the Dutch south of Malacca. Then the Nonsuch made it through to Macao, but only after flying a French flag from Java to the Philippines and a Spanish ensign on to China. Once in Canton, the Hong merchants either refused to buy the opium or offered derisory prices. Eventually, the chests were sold at a loss, with the 'Supracargoes' begging Hastings that 'we could wish you would not in future pursue the same method of supplying us with funds except in the last necessity', bemoaning the 'trouble and perplexity of this ill-fated project'. The Directors in London agreed and admonished Hastings that it was 'beneath the Company to be engaged in such a clandestine trade; we positively forbid any more opium being sent on the Company's account'. But expanding production and export through private traders was perfectly fine, and during Hastings tenure the Company's revenue from opium sales doubled.

“Two years after the failure of Hastings' escapade with the opium trade, the Company's subservient position in China was firmly re-emphasised. In November 1784, a salute was fired from the Lady Hughes whilst docked in Canton, accidentally killing a Chinese boatman. Rather than risk an interruption to its trade, the Company handed over the gunner, who was then secretly strangled. This inability to be governed by its own set of laws would fester in the British memory for decades. In December 1833, after the Company's monopoly had been withdrawn and months before the dawn of free trade, the China Repository, published an article signed by a 'British Merchant' — most likely written by William Jardine: 'has not the Chinese commerce of Great Britain been purchased with the blood of the gunner of the Lady Hughes?', it thundered. 'Has not his immolation up to this day remained unavenged? There is a smell of blood still.'  Like the 'Black Hole' of Calcutta, this victim mentality would inspire and justify future retribution in the minds of British merchants and politicians.

Portrait of Warren Hastings (Calcutta, Past and Present; c. 1905)

“A deal needed to be done to reset the relationship on the basis of commercial equality. The Company's solution was to launch a trade mission under the banner of the British Crown, which it paid for to the tune of £78,000, a £7.4 million budget in today's prices. The 1792–4 embassy was led by Lord George Macartney, a former Governor of Madras, who sought a set of perfectly rational European Enlightenment goals: a treaty of commerce and friendship; a permanent British ambassador in Beijing; the opening up of Zhoushan, Ningbo and Tientsin to foreign commerce; the granting of an island base near Zhoushan as a trading base, which would be closer to the tea-growing and silk-producing regions; the establishment of a warehouse in Beijing (as the Russians had once enjoyed); and the abolition of arbitrary customs over and above those in the Emperor's decree. Overall, however, the message of the Company's chairman, Francis Baring, was one of caution: 'we are therefore of the opinion that the first and foremost object is neither to impair or injure our present situation.' In particular, he warned Macartney that 'you should be on your guard against one stipulation which perhaps will be demanded of you, which is the exclusion of the trade of Opium as being prohibited by the Laws of the Empire'. At the time of the embassy, 2,500 chests were being imported by private traders, covering around half the Company's commercial deficit.

“The mission was doomed. With his presents and entourage, Macartney was allowed to visit Beijing and the Manchu capital of Jehol, and attended an imperial audience. But there was never any hope of real negotiations. For the Chinese, Macartney was simply a 'tribute envoy'. Even before Macartney had set foot on Chinese soil, the imperial authorities had already written their letter of dismissal. Emperor Qianlong's edict to King George III started badly and got worse. For Qianlong, the motivation for Macartney's visit was clear: 'You,O King, live beyond the confines of many seas, nevertheless, impelled by your humble desire to partake of the benefits of our civilization, you have dispatched a mission respectfully bearing your memorial.’ Rejecting Macartney's terms as 'contrary to all usage of my dynasty', the Emperor stated categorically 'I set no value on objects strange or ingenious, and have no use for your country's manufactures'. In a final humiliation, the palace where Macartney was accommodated in Canton had been built with revenues from the Consoo fund, which, of course, had been financed by the Company's own trade.”

author:	Nick Robins
title:	The Corporation That Changed the World: How the East India Company Shaped the Modern Multinational
publisher:	Pluto Press
pages:	152-156