Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2brh9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T08:07:27.724Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Reform, Nationalism and Internationalism: The Opium Suppression Movement in China and the Anglo-American Influence, 1900–1908

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Thomas D. Reins
Affiliation:
California State University, Fullerton

Extract

Of the late Ch'ing reforms, perhaps none is more surprising than the opium suppression movement. Beginning in late 1906, it had by the end of 1908 succeeded in markedly curtailing the cultivation and consumption of opium at home and in obtaining formal assurance from the British to terminate gradually opium imports. These startling achievement are further magnified when we consider the setting within which they occurred.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1991

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

The author extends a special thanks to Professors Jackson K. Putnam and Michael P. Onorato of California State University, Fullerton, and Professor Arthur L. Rosenbaum of Claremont-McKenna College for their critical comments on earlier drafts of this article, which is dedicated to the memory of Professor Cameron Stewart.

1 Chinese officials succeeded in negotiating a treaty with the United States that forbade a major Western nation from importing opium into the Middle Kingdom. Article II of the Sino-American Commercial Relations and Judicial Procedure Treaty, signed at Peking on November 17, 1880, stipulated, among other things, that ‘The Governments of China and of the United States mutually agree and undertake that Chinese subjects shall not be permitted to import opium into any parts of the United States; and citizens of the United States shall not be permitted to import opium into any of the open ports of China….’ Significantly, the Americans agree that the ‘benefits of the favored nation clause in existing treaties shall not be claimed by citizens or subjects of either power against the provisions of this article.’ See Bevins, Charles I. (comp.), Treaties and Other International Agreements of the United States of America. 1776–1949 (6 vols, Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1971), 6:689. The appropriate legislation was passed by the United States Congress on 02 23, 1887.Google Scholar See Statutes at Large, 24th, Chapter 210, p. 409, which provided that opium traffickers found guilty in an American court would be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor. Added to the opium provisions of the 1880 treaty was Article 16 of the Sino-American Commercial Treaty of October 8, 1903, which bound both nations to end morphia trafficking.Google Scholar See MacMurray, John V. A. (comp. and ed.), Treaties and Agreements With and Concerning China, 1894–1919 (2 vols, New York: Howard Fertig, 1973), 1:431.Google Scholar

2 The full text of the edict can be found in Great Britain, Foreign Office, China, No. 1 (1908), Correspondence Respecting the Opium Question in China (London, 1908), pp. 23.Google Scholar See also T'ing-yi, Kuo (comp.), ‘China-tai chung-kuo shih-shih jih-chih (Ch'ing-chi)’ [hereafter SSJC] (Chronology of modern China, late Ch'ing period, Taipei, 1963; 2 vols), 2:1259; and ‘Ta-Ch'ing li-ch'ao shih-ly: Kuang-hsu’ [hereafter CSL: KH] (Veritable records of successive reigns of the Ch'ing dynasty, Kuang-hsu reign; Taipei, 1964), ch. 8, 5155. J. C. S. Hall concludes that the Nationalist government did make considerable progress in bringing opium under control by the eve of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937.Google Scholar See his The Yunnan Provincial Faction, 1927–1937 (Canberra: Australian National University, 1976), pp. 99142.Google Scholar

3 Ballou, Morse Hosea, The Trade and Administration of China, 3rd rev. edn (New York: Russell & Russell, c. 1908, 1967), Appendix F, SSJC, 2:1264;Google Scholar and Yu, En-teh (comp.), ‘Chung-kuo chin-yen fa-ling pien-ch'ien shih’ [hereafter CKCY] (History of the changes in Chinese anti-opium laws, Shanghai, 1934), pp. 231–3.Google Scholar

4 Mary, C. Wright (ed.), China in Revolution: The First Phase, 1900–1913 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968), p. 14.Google Scholar

5 China, No. 1 (1908), p. 2; CSL:KH, ch. 8, 5155.Google Scholar

6 Morse, Trade and Administration, p. 491.Google Scholar

7 Ibid.

8 Tan, Chester C., The Boxer Catastrophe (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1967), pp. 215–36.Google Scholar

9 Report of the International Opium Commission, Shanghai, China, February 1 to February 26. 1909 [hereafter RIOCS] (2 vols, Shanghai: North-China Daily News and Herald Ltd, 1909), 2:53.Google Scholar

10 Great Britain, Foreign Office, China, No. 2 (1908), Despatch From His Majesty's Minister in China Forwarding a General Report By Mr. Leech Respecting the Opium Question in China (London, 1908), pp. 56.Google Scholar

11 SSJC, 2:1168; American Journal of International Law, 3 (1909), Supplement, 263–4; CKCY, p. 137;Google Scholar and MacMurray, , Treaties 1:351. The treaty stipulated, however, that Britain would not initiate the provisions until all treaty powers agreed to limit their morphine commerce to China to medical needs.Google Scholar

12 SSJC, 2:1187; American Journal of International Law, 255; CKCY, pp. 137–8;Google Scholar and MacMurray, , Treaties, I:431. America agreed to limit its morphine commerce to China to medical needs regardless of the action taken by other treaty powers.Google Scholar

13 American Journal of International Law, 260–1.Google Scholar

14 Ibid., 267–8; and SSJC, 2:1215.

15 RIOCS, 2:66. Unfortunately, illicit morphine trafficking resulted; see RIOCS, 2:67–70.Google Scholar

16 Rhoads, Edward, China's Republican Revolution: The Case of Kwangtung, 1895–1913 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975), p. 95. Yu En-teh disagrees, arguing that government official, newspapers, students and the general public considered opium a danger to social health and a drain on national strength. As he views it, most Chinese favored a strong anti-opium course of action before the edict of 1906. Thus Chang Chih-tung's ‘Exhortation to Study’ is cited as evidence of anti-opium opinion within the government, but Yu fails to note that Chang also favored utilizing opium revenue to modernize China. See CKCY, pp. 115–16, 242–3. Still, anti-opium sentiment survived popular and official apathy in the late 19th century. One example of it, a poem posted on the streets of Canton in the mid-1870s, can be found in China Review 4.2 (1875–1876), 137. And one early 1890s tract called for harsh punishment for growers, distributors and users of the drug;Google Scholar see ‘Yang Ho-t'ang yi-chi’ (A posthumous collection of Yang Ho-t'ang's essays), in Ya-p'ien chan'cheng (The Opium War), ed. by Chung-kuo, shih-hsueh hui (6 vols, Shanghai: Shen-chou kuo-kuang-she, 1954), I:583–6. For a link between the 1905 boycott and anti-opium sentiments, see ‘The Rising Spirit of China,’ Outlook, October 7, 1905, pp. 315–16.Google Scholar

17 Ssu-yu, Teng and John, K. Fairbank (eds), China's Response to the West: A Documentary Survey, 1839–1923 (New York: Atheneum, c. 1954), pp. 169–70.Google Scholar Also see Cameron, Meribeth E., ‘The Public Career of Chang Chih-tung,’ Pacific Historical Review 7 (09 1938), p. 192.Google Scholar

18 Teng and Fairbank, China's Response, p. 204.Google Scholar

19 Chang, Chung-li and Spector, Stanley (eds), Guide to the Memorials of Seven Leading Officials of Nineteenth-Century China (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1955), pp. 213, 215, 231.Google Scholar

20 Ibid., pp. 245, 277, 285, 311, 327, 329, 334–6; and Chinese Times (Tientsin), September 3, 1887, p. 724 and December 3, 1887, p. 947.

21 Ibid., p. 302. Also see Hosea Ballou Morse, The International Relations of the Chinese Empire (3 vols, reprint, Taipei: Ch'eng-wen, n.d.), 2:376. John Russell Young, American Minister in Peking during the early 1880s, concluded: ‘I cannot doubt the sincerity of the Chinese authorities, especially of Li Hung-chang, in their desire to suppress opium.’ See US Government, Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States [hereafter FRUS], 1883 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1884), p. 127. But in a letter to the head of a British anti-opium society, Li perpetuated the hoary Chinese drug position that made nearly all Westerners suspicious: ‘Opium is a subject in the discussion of which England and China can never meet on common ground. China views the whole question from moral standpoint; England from a fiscal. England would sustain a source of revenue in India, while China contends for the lives and prosperity of her people. The ruling motive with China is to repress opium by heavy taxation everywhere, whereas with England the manifest object is to make opium cheaper, and thus increase and stimulate the demand in China.’ Whatever China's ‘ruling motive’ might have been, not even the most ardent opponent of the India-China opium trade ignored the positive fiscal effects China experienced. See ibid., p. 128. The emphasis is Li's.

22 Chang and Spector, Guide, pp. 155, 166, 173–4.Google Scholar

23 Paul, A., Cohen, , Between Tradition and Modernity: Wang T'ao and Reform in Late Ch'ing China (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974), pp. 66, 83, 203. This solution to the opium problem had many advocates, which is why the British were ever cautious of Chinese intentions when Peking spoke of opium reform.Google ScholarSee Yu Tsan, ‘Hsu-shang lun’ (On China's Sorrowful Commercial Situation), in Yang, Sung (ed.), ‘Chung-kuo chin-tai shih tzu-liao hsuan-chi (Selected Historical Materials of Modern Chinese History) (Peking, 1954), pp. 282–3, 285.Google Scholar

24 SSJC, 2:1238; T'ang's recollection of his role in early Anglo-Chinese opium discussions can be found in Shao-yi, T'ang, ‘Speech to the Board of British Anti-Opium Societies, London, February 12, 1909,’ Friend of China [hereafter FOC], 26 (04 1909), n.p.; the speech is located between pp. 38 and 39.Google Scholar Also see China, No. 1 (1908), pp. 1–2; and Great Britain, Foreign Office, Further Correspondence Relating to Tibet, No. III (London, 1905), pp. 67, 82.Google Scholar Margaret Lim believes that T'ang overstated the British position when he claimed the Finance Secretary of India (Sir Edward Baker) suggested the India could forgo opium revenue. See her ‘Britain and the Termination of the India-China Opium Trade, 1905–1913’ (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of London, 1969), pp. 6979, 107. Hampden C. DuBose, a leading missionary in China, held that the anti-opium edict was a near carbon copy of a foreign memorial almost 1,400 missionaries had forwarded to the Throne on August 21, 1906;Google Scholar see North China Herald [hereafter NCH], August 30, 1907, pp. 499501.Google Scholar Also consult SirHosie, Alexander, On the Trail of the Opium Poppy: A Narrative of Travel in the Chief Opium Producing Provinces of China (2 vols; London: George Philip & Son, Ltd, 1914), 2:191–2.Google Scholar

25 Beattie, Hilary J., ‘Protestant Missions and Opium in China, 1858–1895,’ Harvard University Papers on China, 22A (05 1969), pp. 112–25;Google Scholar CKCY, p. 122; Owen, David Edward, British Opium Policy in China and India (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1934), pp. 329–33;Google Scholar and Rowntree, Joshua, The Imperial Drug Trade (London: Methuen & Co., Ltd, 1905), pp. 242–52. A good example of Western anti-opium agitation can be found in the work of the London-based Society for the Suppression of the Opium Trade, which dates back to the 1870s. In the United States, Josiah Strong, President of the League for Social Services in New York City, rallied anti-opium advocates. He prevailed upon 32 missionary boards, 30 university presidents and numerous presidents of local chambers of commerce to sign a letter to President William McKinley, calling on him to have America ‘assist in bringing an end to the opium traffic’ in China. See FOC, 21 (July 1901), 42–3.Google Scholar

26 United States, War Department, Bureau of Insular Affairs, Report of the Philippine Opium Investigation Committee [hereafter Philippine Report] (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1905). Also see CKCY, p. 122.Google Scholar

27 CKCY, p. 122; and Morse, Trade and Administration, p. 370.Google Scholar

28 Lowes, Peter D., The Genesis of International Narcotics Control (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1966), pp. 19.Google Scholar

29 Johnson, Bruce D., ‘Righteousness Before Revenue: The Forgotten Moral Crusade Against the Indo-Chinese Opium Trade,’ Journal of Drug Issues 5 (Fall 1975), 304–19;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and NCH, July 13, 1906, p. 116; September 7, 1906, pp. 72–3; and September 28, 1906, p. 787. For a more detailed account of the moral opposition, see Lodwick, Kathleen L., ‘Chinese, Missionary, and Intellectual Efforts to end the L'se of Opium in China, 1890–1916,’ (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Arizona, 1976), pp. 36102.Google Scholar

30 Beattie, ‘Protestant Missions and Opium in China,’ pp. 107–8;Google Scholar also see Rowntree, The Imperial Drug Trade, p. 188;Google Scholar and Brown, J. B., ‘Politics of the Poppy: The Society for the Suppression of the Opium Trade, 1874–1916,’ Journal of Contemporary History 8 (07, 1973), 102.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

31 Chester Holcombe, The Real Chinese Question (New York: Dodd Mead & Co., 1900), pp. 149, 284–5. The economic consequences of Britain's heretofore heavyhanded policy toward China were not lost on the Liberal government that came to power in early 1906. According to the new Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, ‘it is becoming increasingly apparent that foreign trade in China cannot prosper in the face of Chinese ill-will.’ F.O. 371/35, Grey to Jordan, 31 August 1906, as quoted in Lim, ‘Britain and the Termination of the India–China Opium Trade,’ p. 99, and Brown, ibid.

32 Great Britain, Parliament, Hansard's Parliamentary Debates (Commons), 4th series, 158 (1906), 516.Google Scholar

33 Ibid., 495–9. The Royal Commission on Opium concluded that ‘at the present time [1894] there is nothing in the attitude of the British Government that can fairly be described as forcing opium on the Chinese.’ China need only ‘move first if it wishes to sacrifice the revenue which it derives and to annul the Treaty provisions legalizing import on the ground that such an import is injurious to China.’ Great Britain, Royal Commission on Opium (7 vols, London, 1894–1895), 6, 1:52, 95. For a critique of the Royal Commission, see Rowntree, The Imperial Drug Trade, pp. 121–38, 177–89.

34 Parliamentary Debates (1906), 498, 514.Google Scholar

35 Morse, Trade and Administration, pp. 486–91.Google Scholar

36 Philippine Report. The locations investigated were Japan, Formosa, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Saigon, Burma, Java, Singapore, and the Philippine Islands.Google Scholar

37 Ibid., pp. 3, 11–18. Members of the Committee were Major Edward C. Carter, chairman, an army doctor and the Philippine Commissioner of Public Health; The Episcopal Bishop of the Philippines, Right Rev. Charles H. Brent (who would preside over the 1909 Shanghai Opium Commission); Dr Jose Albert of Manila; and Carl J. Arnell, Secretary. Also see Kenton J. Clymer, ‘Religion and American Imperialism: Methodist Missionaries in the Philippine Islands, 1899–1913,’ Pacific Historical Review 49 (February 1980), 45–7.

38 Philippine Report, p. 19.Google Scholar

39 Ibid., pp. 52–3.

40 Ibid., pp. 53–5. It should be noted that the alternative measures for regulating opium often ran parallel to those debated before the Ch'ing Court in the 1830s and 1840s. The Nanking government would also be discussing the problem along these lines.

41 Ibid., p. 53.

42 Ibid., pp. 21–8. For a more detailed account of the Japanese handling of the opium problem in Taiwan, see ibid., pp. 201–11, 221–8.

43 DuBose, Hampton, President of the Anti-Opium League, actually believed that the United States and Japan were on the verge of forming an anti-opium alliance in the Pacific;Google Scholar see NCH, May 18, 1906, p. 379. Also see Lo, Hui-min (ed.), The Correspondence of G. E. Morrison (2 vols, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), 1:382. An official Japanese position can be found in K. Midzuno, ‘Japan's Crusade on The Use of Opium in Formosa,’ North American Review, February 1909, pp. 274–9.Google Scholar

44 NCH, April 14, 1905, pp. 88–9, 104–6; April 20, 1905, 133–9; April 28, 1905, pp. 193–5, 211–12; May 5, 1905, pp. 243–4; May 12, 1905, p. 295; and May 26, 1905, pp. 374–5, 402–3.Google Scholar

45 See Reins, Thomas D., ‘China and the International Politics of Opium, 1900–1937: The Impact of Reform, Revenue, and the Unequal Treaties’ (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Claremont Graduate School, 1981), chs 3–7.Google Scholar

46 Morse, Trade and Administration, p. 370;Google Scholar and Hsiao, Liang-lin, China's Foreign Trade Statistics, 1864–1949 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974), pp. 52–3, who lists the legal import figures.Google Scholar Also see Chung-p'ing, Yen et al. (comp.), ‘Chung-kuo chin-tai ching-chi-shih t'ung-chi tz'u-liao hsuan-k'an (Selected satistical materials of Chinese modern economic history) (Peking, 1955), pp. 74–6.Google Scholar

47 Spence, Jonathan, ‘Opium Smoking in Ch'ing China,’ in Frederic, Wakeman Jr, and Carolyn, Grant (eds), Conflict and Control in Late Imperial China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975, p. 174;Google ScholarHsiao, China's Foreign Trade Statistics, pp. 52–3; and Morse, Trade and Administration, pp. 369–70. Figures vary on the percentage of China's population estimated to be opium smokers. Spence's calculations suggest roughly 3·75% for the late 1870s. E. T. Williams of the American Legation in Peking put the number at less than 1% for the early 1900s; see FRUS, 1906, part 1, p. 356. Cecil Clementi Smith calculated 2% or less for the early 1900s; see NCH, June 27, 1908. And according to one study done in 1930, when the opium problem was no greater than before 1906, 3.85% of China's population regularly used the drug;Google Scholar see Hsieh-chun, Hsu, ‘Chung-kuo ya-p'ien t'ung-chi ti yen-chiu (A statistical study of Chinese opium), She-hui k'o-hsueh yen-chiu (Social Science Studies) 1:1 (03 1935), 39.Google Scholar

48 RIOCS, 2:57. One estimate states that roughly 14 per cent of China's arable land was devoted to poppy cultivation. See Yen Chung-ping, ‘Chung-kuo chin-tai chung-chi shih t'ing-chi tz'u-liao Hsuan-k'an,’ p. 359.Google ScholarHedke's, Charles H. study of Szechuan provides a picture of the opium business during the late Ch'ing. See his ‘Reluctant Revolutionaries: Szechuan and the Ch'ing Collapse, 1898–1911’ (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 1968), pp. 1516, 28, 32–4.Google Scholar In Shensi, the cultivation of opium was so prominent that the province was labelled ‘The India of China.’ See Ts'ui-jung, Liu, Trade on the Han River and Its Impact on Economic Development, c. 1800–1911 (Nanking, Taiwan: The Institute of Economics, Academia Sinica, 1980), pp. 190, 181.Google Scholar

49 China, No. 1 (1908), p. 33.Google Scholar

50 Spence, ‘Opium Smoking in Ch'ing China,’ pp. 151–4; and Morse, Trade and Administration, pp. 371–2, 374–5.Google Scholar

51 Spence, ‘Opium Smoking in Ch'ing China,’ p. 152. The dollar referred to is Mexican.Google Scholar

52 RIOCS, 2:52, 61–2.Google Scholar

53 Mayers, William Frederick, Treaties Between the Empire of China and Foreign Powers (reprint; Taipei: Ch'eng-wen, 1966), p. 28;Google Scholar SSJC, 1:783; and Morse, , International Relations of the Chinese Empire, 2:375–81. The quote is from Mayers, Treaties, p. 28. The 110 taels duty and likin on opium remained in force until 1911.Google Scholar

54 Wright, Stanley F., Hart and the Chinese Customs (Belfast: Wm. Mullan & Son, 1950), pp. 774–9.Google Scholar

55 Ibid., pp. 778–9; Morse, International Relations of the Chinese Empire, 2:407–8; and Edkins, Chinese Currency, pp. iv–v. India went on the gold standard in the late 1890s.

56 Parliamentary Debates (1906), 513; and Spence, ‘Opium Smoking in Ch'ing China,’ pp.s 167–71. In the summer of 1906, G. E. Morrison, a respected and influential Australian journalist, commented: ‘…the Chinese are much embarrassed by the challenge given them; they have no desire to restrict at the present time their opium revenue.’Google Scholar See Lo, , The Correspondence of G. E. Morrison, 1:382. A cautiously hopeful view from America can be found in Nation, 10 18, 1906, pp. 820–1.Google Scholar

57 I-shan, HsiaoCh'ing-tai t'ung-shih (A general history of the Ch'ing period) (5 vols, rev. edn, Taipei, 1962), 4:1534–6.Google Scholar Also see RIOCS, 2:21; and Great Britain, Foreign Office, China No. 1 (1900), Further Correspondence Respecting the Affairs of China (London, 1900), pp. 281–3.Google Scholar

58 Parliamentary Debates (1906), 499; and RIOCS, 2:190, 361. Also see Lim, ‘Britain and the Termination of the India–China Opium Trade,’ pp. 79–83. By 1905, in other words, the central government of British India and Ch'ing China derived about six to seven per cent of their revenues from opium. Valentine Chirol, a newspperman and close personal friend of G. E. Morrison, argued that Britain should wait and see what progress China made against the opium trade at home before London committed itself to any reform. The Indian taxpayer just could not afford to take risky unilateral action ‘in order to relieve our own consciences.’Google Scholar See Lo, , The Correspondence of G. E. Morrison, 1:395.Google Scholar

59 FRUS, 1906, part 1 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1909), pp. 357–9.Google ScholarAnd Cameron, Meribeth E., The Reform Movement in China, 1898–1912 (reprint; New York: Octagon Books, 1963), pp. 139–40. Cameron believes that the Ch'ing Court was earnest in its attempt to eliminate opium before the issuance of the September 1906 edict.Google Scholar

60 FRUS, 1906, part I, p. 356; MacKinnon, Stephen R., ‘The Peiyang Army, Yuan Shih-k'ai, and the Origins of Modern Chinese Warlordism,’ Journal of Asian Studies 32 (05, 1973), 405–23; China, No. 1 (1908), p. 2; and NCH, September 14, 1906, p. 642.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

61 FRUS, 1906, part 1, p. 356; Wright, Hart and the Chinese Customs, pp. 843–4; China No. 1 (1908), pp. 2, 32;Google Scholar and Edkins, J., The Revenue and Taxation of the Chinese Empire (Shanghai: Presbyterian Press, 1903), p. 163.Google Scholar Also see Chinese Times (Tientsin), 11 20, 1886, p. 35; January 15, 1887, p. 169; and December 3, 1887, p. 947.Google Scholar

62 Ibid., and South China Morning Post, January 12, 1905, p. 5.

63 Ibid.; Lim, ‘Britain and the Termination of the India–China Opium Trade,’ pp. 91–7; and H. S. Brunnert and V. V. Hagelstrom, Present Day Political Organization of China (reprint; Taipei: Ch'eng Wen, 1971), pp. 194–5.

64 Cameron, Reform Movement in China, pp. 137–9;Google Scholar also see FRUS, 1907, part 1 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1910), pp. 149, 152, 161; and T'ang Shao-yi, ‘Speech to the Board of British Anti-Opium Societies.’ n.p.Google Scholar

65 Morse, Trade and Administration, p. 486; CKCY, pp. 261–3; and FRUS, 1906, part 1, pp. 366–9; China No. 1 (1908), pp. 4–8.Google Scholar

66 Morse, Trade and Administration, pp. 487–8. Special allowances were made for confirmed addicts over sixty years of age.Google Scholar

67 Ibid., pp. 488–9.

68 Ibid., pp. 489–90. The ‘Jesus Opium’ was similar in function to the methodone treatment used today, and like methodone, it was habit forming. See Beattie, ‘Protestant Missions and Opium in China,’ p. 121. Also see Samuel Merwin, Drugging a Nation (New York: Fleming H. Revell Col, 1908), pp. 99–100, who indicates that officials seriously searched for a cure to opium addiction; also NCH, May 24, 1907, pp. 473–4; FOC, 25 (April 1907), 40; and Akira Iriye, ‘Public Opium and Foreign Policy: The Case of Late Ch'ing China,’ in Albert Feuerwerker, Rhoads Murphy Mary C. Wright (eds), Approaches to Modern Chinese History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), pp. 231–6 regarding the ban on politics for anti-opium organizations.

69 Morse, Trade and Administration, pp. 490–1.Google Scholar

70 Ibid., p. 491. Persian opium usually came via India. Ibid., p. 381.

71 RIOCS, 2:73–8.Google Scholar

72 Quoted in Forges, Roger V. Des, Hsi-liang and the Chinese National Revolution (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973), p. 95.Google Scholar Also See China. No. 1 (1908), pp. 40–1; China, No. 2 (1908), p. 11;Google ScholarGreat Britain, Foreign Office, China. No. I (1909), Despatch From His Majesty's Minister in China Forwarding a General Report by Sir Alexander Hosie Respecting the Opium Question in China (London, 1909), pp. 1415;Google ScholarGreat Britain, Foreign Office, China, No. 3 (1909), Despatches From His Majesty's Minister at Peking. Forwarding Reports Respecting the Opium Question in China (London, 1909), pp. 21–2, and RIOCS, 2:91.Google Scholar

73 FRUS, 1906, part 1, p. 366; Fitch, George, ‘Progress of Moral Reform in China During 1907,’ Chinese Recorder 39 (01, 1908), 910;Google Scholar and Lim, ‘Britain and the Termination of the India–China Opium Trade,’ p. 115.Google Scholar

74 As cited in RIOCS, 2:107, 78.

75 Ibid.,

76 Rhoads, China's Republican Revolution, pp. 96, 124–5, 162.Google Scholar

77 FRUS, 1906, part 1, p. 366.Google Scholar

78 RIOCS, 2:73–8; also see Merwin, Drugging a Nation, pp. 114–18, 132–46;Google Scholar and Lo, , The Correspondence of G. E. Morrison, 1:408–10, 428.Google Scholar

79 Ibid., Lo, The Correspondence of G. E. Morrison, I:405; China, No. 1 (1908), pp. 39–43; China, No. 2 (1908), p. 10; China, No. 1 (1909), pp. 4–5, 13–14; and China, No. 3 (1909), pp. 18–20. Also see Ernest Henry Wilson, A Naturalist in Western China; 2 vols (New York: Doubleday, Page and Co., 1913), 2:79–81; and S. A. M. Adshead, Province and Politics in Late Imperial China: Viceregal Government in Szechwan 1898–1911 (London: Curzon Press, 1984), pp. 79–80.

80 Kennedy, Thomas L., ‘Mausers and the Opium Trade: The Hupeh Arsenal, 1895–1911’, in Joshua, A. FogelWilliam, T. Rowe (eds), Perspectives on a Changing China: Essays in Honor of Professor C. Martin Wilbur on the Occasion of His Retirement (Boulder: Westview Press, 1979), pp. 121, 133.Google Scholar

81 Cameron, Reform Movement in China, p. 139;Google ScholarGarrett, Shirley, Social Reformers in Urban China: The Chinese Y.M.C.A., 1895–1926 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970), pp. 76–8;CrossRefGoogle ScholarHoward, L. Boorman (ed.), Biographical Dictionary of Republican China (4 vols, New York: Columbia University Press, 1970), 3:233–4; NCH, November 23, 1906, p. 438; and China. No. 2 (1908), p. 7.Google Scholar

82 NCH, June 7, 1907, pp. 557–8.Google Scholar

83 RIOCS, 2:73–7; NCH, December 14, 1906, p. 629; Merwin, Drugging a Nation, pp. 82–3; and China, No. 2 (1908), p. 3.Google Scholar

84 China, No. 1 (1908). p. 31.Google Scholar

85 Ibid., pp. 34–41.

86 China. No. 2 (1908), pp. 2–3, 7–11.Google Scholar

87 China, No. 1 (1909), pp. 116.Google Scholar

88 China, No. 1 (1908), pp. 24; NCH, May 10, 1907, p. 313 and May 17, 1907, pp. 397–9; Lim, ‘Britain and the Termination of the India-China Opium Trade,’ pp. 105–8;Google Scholar and The Progress of the Anti-Opium Movement Among the Chinese,’ Chinese Recorder 39 (03, 1908), 143–55.Google Scholar

89 CKCY, pp. 116–17;Google ScholarMorse, , International Relations of the Chinese Empire, 3:486; and NCH, 06 7, 1907, pp. 557–8. One missionary who had travelled the hinterland of China remarked that the populace felt the British ‘brought opium to destroy the Chinese. …The Masses know nothing about India, or the exportation of opium from that country to China. They believe it comes from England, and that Englishmen bring it from there to sell for gain, without regard to the morality of the question at all.’ Quoted in Rowntree, The Imperial Drug Trade, p. 188. Another observer reported ‘encouraging news’ from all parts of China in the struggle against opium. See FOC, 25 (October 1907), 78–9. Less sanguine assessments can also be found in FOC,25 (June 1907), 48; and 25 (October 1908), 167. The ‘patriotic character’ quote is taken from NCH, June 7, 1907, p. 557. For a more recent discussion of Chinese public opinion at this time, consult Iriye, ‘Public Opinion and Foreign Policy’, pp. 223–31.Google Scholar

90 China. No. 1 (1908), pp. 910; SSJC, 2:1264; FRUS, 1907, part 1, pp. 140–1; and Cameron, Reform Movement in China, pp. 144–5.Google Scholar

91 FRUS, 1907, part 1, p. 148.Google Scholar

92 As quoted in Adams, Leonard P. II, ‘China: The Historical Setting of Asia's Profitable Plague,’ in McCoy, Alfred W., The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia (New York: Harper Colophon Books, 1972), p. 365.Google Scholar

93 China, No. 1 (1908), pp. 14–17, 22–3, 29–30, 45–8; FRUS, 1908 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1912), pp. 7684; and Hosie, On the Trail of the Opium Poppy, 2:204–10.Google Scholar

94 Ibid., and Owen, British Opium Policy in China and India, pp. 336–7.

95 FRUS, 1907, part 1, p. 142.Google Scholar

96 Rockhill to the Secretary of State, in ibid., pp. 140–1.

97 China. No. 1 (1908), p. 11.Google Scholar

98 Ibid., p. 14.

99 Ibid., p. 18.

100 Ibid., pp. 44–5.

101 Ibid., p. 20.

102 Ibid., p. 30; and NCH, October 25, 1907, p. 203.

103 NCH, June 14, 1907, p. 648.Google Scholar

104 FRUS, 1907, part 1, p. 161.Google Scholar

105 NCH, November 8, 1907, pp. 349–50; January 10, 1908, p. 70–1; and January 17 1908, p. 133.Google Scholar

106 Ibid., March 6, 1908, pp. 529–30; March 13, 1908, p. 617.

107 Ibid., July 7, 1907, pp. 557–8; July 5, 1907, pp. 11–12; January 17, 1908, p. 134; January 24, 1908, p. 192; and March 13, 1908, p. 617. For details regulating the Huang-pu River conservancy see Prince Ch'ing to E. H. Conger in FRUS, 1904 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1905), p. 189; and FRUS, 1905 (Washington, D. C.: Government Printing Office, 1906), pp. 118–19.

108 NCH, March 27, 1908, pp. 738–50.Google Scholar

109 Ibid., April 24, 1908, p. 214; October, 1908, p. 85.

110 China. No. 1 (1908), p. 44.Google Scholar

111 RIOCS, 2:66–70; Morse, Trade and Administration, pp. 379–80; and Edkins, Chinese Currency, pp. v., 148–51.Google Scholar

112 Ibid., and Lo, The Correspondence of G. E. Morrison, 1:428.

113 China, No. 1 (1909), pp. 16–18; FRUS, 1907, part 1, pp. 140–2, 160–1; FRUS, 1908, pp. 103–4;Google Scholarand FRUS, 1909 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1914), p. 96. 1908, pp. 103–4;Google Scholar and FRUS, 1909 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1914), p. 96.Google Scholar

114 FRUS, 1908, p. 84.Google Scholar

115 Pivar, David J., ‘The Military, Prostitution, and Colonial Peoples: India and the Philippines, 1885–1917,’ Journal of Sex Research 17 (08, 1981), 265–6;CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMedHolcombe, , The Real Chinese Question, pp. 149, 284–5;Google Scholar and Great Britain, Foreign Office, Papers Relating to the Opium Trade in China, 1842–1856 (London, 1857), pp. 43, 45.Google Scholar

116 Reins, ‘China and the International Politics of Opium,’ Ch. 3.Google Scholar

117 Irick, Robert L., Ch'ing Policy Toward the Coolie Trade, 1847–1878 (Taipei: Chinese Materials Center, 1982), p. xiv.Google Scholar