← Empire: World History
Empire: World History
254. Victorian Narcos: Fire Monkeys, Iron Gunships, & Peasant Warfare (Ep 8)
00:52:47
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- [00:01]
William Dalrymple
If you want access to bonus episodes, reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community, discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast ad, free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to empire club@www.empirepoduk.com. so this is an advertisement for the wonderful Jaipur Literary Festival, the greatest literary festival in in the world. Teamwork Arts, their producers and my wonderful co director Namata Gokuli are in our 18th year of hosting a great celebration of books, ideas, music and art where we welcome brilliant speakers to the pink city of Jaipur. From Nobel Prize winners to Pulitzer to Booker awardees to Sahitia Academy awardees to the people that have won all the great literary prizes across the world and and we should also flag that we don't just host the festival in Jaipur, we have a whole variety of satellite festivals across the world, from Valladolid in Spain, Seattle, New York, Boulder and Houston in the United States. And in particular we have JLF London marking its 12th year at the British Library in 2025. A cross cultural voyage of literary narratives and inspirational speakers. So you should all come along. This year's dates are the 13th, 15th June, so be sure to book your spot once the ticket link goes live. Visit jlflitfest.org London for updates. That's jlflitfest.org London she's made up her mind to live pretty smart Learn to budget responsibly right from the start she spends a little less and puts more into savings Keeps her blood pressure low and credit score raises she's cutting it right out of her life she tracks her cash flow on a spreadsheet at night Boring money moves make kind of.
- [02:02]
Anita Arnan
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- [02:04]
William Dalrymple
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- [02:48]
Anita Arnan
Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnan and me, William Durample. Yes, and you join us in the midst of of our Victorian Narcos Opium War series. And thank you very much for all your kind comments about this. I'm really glad you're enjoying it as much as we are. Should I just remind you where we were at the last episode? So we left you with the nemesis, fabulously named ironclad, sort of suit of armour of a ship that's been sent by Palmerston. I think William described it like a stealth bomber last time, that is going to be used against the wooden ships of the Chinese. So the British invade China on the pretext of protecting free trade. That's what they're arguing. Actually, the plan has been entirely formulated by this duo, this dynamic or dire duo, Matheson and Jardine, who has managed to find himself a tiny corner of Palmerston's office and is whispering into his ear constantly that, you know what, if we actually go for this, we can get quite a lot out of this. Hong Kong, for example, this island that actually nobody very much cares about could be yours. It sits at the mouth of the Pearl River. And then, you know, we could attack Canton and we could get the ports and, you know, nothing could stop us. And then Beijing is just on the horizon. So all of this is being murmured into Palmerston's ear and he is being charmed by it, even though there are others saying this is not the right thing to do. So that is why the nemesis is chugging its way over to China. And you've got Charles Elliot, who we talked about in the last episode, who's this rather, I mean, sort of nervous and indecisive, but quite a decent man, I think, who is in charge of British trade in China. And he's trying to keep the peace as best he can and trying to stop lives being lost. And everything that poor old Charles Eliot has had to say is being either ignored or mocked. And when he offers to defuse the situation by buying up the opium of these traders who are otherwise reaching for guns, and it's all going to get very, very ugly, he will get into trouble for that as well, because it is a cheque that he's writing that he has no right to sign. $6 million worth of a check, which.
- [04:58]
William Dalrymple
As we discussed last time, is this extraordinary sum of money, Eliot sort of wildly says, oh, don't worry, I'll pay for it. And then the Brits find themselves with this enormous loss. They've promised the opium traders, particularly Jardine and Matheson, that they're going to reimburse their entire opium stocks, which is a considerable sum of money. It's an enormous bit of the British annual budget, $6 million at a lot of money. The British basically end up going to war to try and get that money back.
- [05:27]
Anita Arnan
Get it back. Can't pay, won't pay. First of all, I don't know what this is all about and, you know, actually, can we just put an end to all of this nonsense, because we need to be able to do this trade, because we need the money. We're paying too much to China for tea. We need to make some of it back. So let's just do something about it now. Take us to where the nemesis is and how the whole of British diplomacy, or a change in British diplomacy, is sailing with it.
- [05:52]
William Dalrymple
Before I actually talk about the events, I should talk about the wonderful book that I've been reading to learn about this. There's a lot of books on the Opium wars and opium in general. And we talked previously about Stephen Platt's wonderful book, Imperial Twilight, and we're going to get Stephen on in the next episode. And there's also Amitav Ghosh's extraordinary new book, Smoke and Ashes.
- [06:15]
Anita Arnan
Smoke and Ashes is fabulous.
- [06:16]
William Dalrymple
But the great book for the actual course of the first, particularly on the diplomacy and the fighting and the detail of different characters like Elliot and Commissioner Lin, is Julia Lovell's book, the Opium, Drugs, Dreams and the Making of China. What she's done in this book is to give the Chinese side as well as the English, because obviously the people like Jardine and Matheson are writing diaries that we can all read sitting in the records office. And particularly Jardine's archive is in the Cambridge University Library and anyone that wants to research it can just go there. But much less accessible is the Chines records. And Julia spent many decades of her life reading the Chinese records. And what you're going to hear over the next hour is very closely based on Julia's extraordinary new research. No other account goes into the detail or has the extraordinary depth of understanding of what's going on in China at this time and the Chinese sources. So I have hugely, hugely enjoyed this book and recommend it every bit as strongly as Stephen Platz and Amitav Ghosh's. So the story begins, as we said, with the nemesis. The course of the open war is very different from many other imperial wars, if you think of. I mean, I've written about the war in Afghanistan, which is taking place at exactly the same time. 1842, the year that the Opium War reaches its climax, is also the year that the troops of the first Afghan War are massacred on their journey back to India. The two things are happening side by side, and you could not imagine two battles which happen more differently. Because while the Afghan story is extraordinary story of triumph by the Afghan resistance, and these guys not only managed to drive the British out, but to massacre every last soldier that comes into the country, the course of the war In China is the exact opposite. There are virtually no British casualties sitting in their ironclad dreadnought, almost this nemesis, this stealth bomber, 184 by 29 foot iron steamer, specifically commissioned for the war in China and which arrives in time to fight it with ironsides accurate guns, a very shallow draft to allow it to go up the rivers and it has a massive psychological impact because whatever the Chinese do, they're constantly sending fire junks down to try and burn the British ships and you can't burn the nemesis. It's this incredibly unequal war and the British, who are very much up for a good imperial fight at this period of their history, longing for, in the Victorian way, for blood and glory, find themselves disgusted by the Opium War. Not just because it's morally questionable whether there's any need or right to go to war to sell drugs, that at the time is very consciously realized by many of the participants, but also the fact that the Chinese really have no protection against the British weaponry of this period. The Afghans have their long jezails sort of sniper rifles and they can sit at the top of their mountains with greater range than the British brand best muskets. And so the British are on the, on the back foot in Afghanistan. But it turns out that the Qing Chinese army is completely unprepared for, for war in the way that the trained sepoys of India are ready to fight and disciplined fighting force, and particularly the navy, because this is a naval campaign as much as anything. You have the nemesis, this fleet of British ships, they're sailing up a river, it's rather like, you know, remember Heart of Darkness when those dreadnoughts are sailing up African rivers and sort of shelling randomly African jungle. There's a bit of that in this war. It's just these terrible ships that the Chinese can't deal with in any way, wreaking destruction and occasionally gorging out troops into the countryside to commit massacres.
- [10:03]
Anita Arnan
So I mean we've talked about this and you know, China's inability to respond and it's partly it's the tech. You know, the Brits have got the tech with this ironclad ship, but it's also partly, you know, China's always sort of looked, it's had such a vast empire which is sort of contiguous and they haven't had to sail over water to get to their bits of their empire. You know, it's just a massive landmass. So naval concerns have not been their concerns for years and years. And so this is just Completely, you know, wrong footed them entirely. It just hasn't been a thing that they've been developing.
- [10:37]
William Dalrymple
It's a very good point you're making, Anita. They don't have a navy that's designed to fight other navies. What the navy's been doing is basically policing pirates. And so it's more like a coast guard. It's the Chinese equivalent of the coast guard that's there to stop the selling of opium. And then when the opium payments and the money begins to pour into China, this is one of the forces that is completely corrupted by the opium trade in that the captains of these coast guards just take bribes to let the, what are called the crabs, these very fast or ships that can dodge into creeks and pick up opium from Western ships on the islands, like off Hong Kong, and then dive down the different waterways and smuggle it into the center of China. And from the beginning, this starts off as a naval campaign. And we left you, I think on the last episode when in the first big conflict of the first Opium War, the British attack Zhaoshan island and there's this massacre of the ships followed by a massacre on land. And this continues. And the British continue to demand the money from the Chinese government that they're not willing to pay. War finally breaks out again and 1841, at the beginning of the year, we see this, the nemesis engaging with the Chinese fleet at the mouth of the Pearl River. And I'll read an account of what happens in that first conflict because it kind of sets the tone for everything that follows. So this line of Chinese war junks is blocking the nemesis at the mouth of the river. And then the nemesis brings its Congreve rockets into range. We were talking in our last bonus episode about Tibu Sultan. This is an Indian technology, the use of war rockets, which is adopted by the British and then put into action.
- [12:32]
Anita Arnan
When we're saying rockets, we're talking about sort of repurposed fireworks in a way. Are we or are we talking? Yeah, that's what it is, isn't it?
- [12:39]
William Dalrymple
Fireworks with fuses with added boom.
- [12:42]
Anita Arnan
Yeah.
- [12:44]
William Dalrymple
The nemesis has these Congreve rockets which are the British version of Tippu's rockets that Tippu has used in War in 1799 against the British. And a guy called Congreve brings them into the British army and they now are very popular as weapons in the navy. One of the British sailors called Captain Hill sets off these Congreve rockets into the line of war jugs blocking the British path into the Pearl River. And he describes one of the junks, it blew up with a terrific explosion, launching into eternity every soul on board and pouring forth its blaze like a mighty rush of fire from a volcano. The smoke and flame and the thunder of the explosion, with portions of dissevered bodies scattering as they fell, were enough to strike with awe the stoutest heart that looked on. And I think both sides are incredibly shocked by this. No one's expected. I think it's been a bit of a fluke that obviously one of these Congreve rockets has landed in the gunpowder of one of the war junks, but the whole thing has just gone up.
- [13:49]
Anita Arnan
The explosion is tremendous and I love that line, you know, sort of launching into eternity every soul on board and the number of souls that we're talking about, it's an hour and a half that they're facing off against each other and fighting. Then this huge explosion happens and The Chinese lose 280 people. 462 are wounded. So this is absolutely a bloodbath on the water for them. And the English, in comparison, they have 38 wounded and not one single death. Not one person dies on the English side. It's not even David and Goliath. It's like a steamroller just rolling over the Chinese efforts to defend their own territory.
- [14:26]
William Dalrymple
And in terms of ships, 11 war junks are destroyed, 173 Qing cannons are removed or spiked or captured, and the damage to the Nemesis is a little damage on her paddlebox. That's all that happens. So the Chinese discover at this point that there's almost nothing that they can do. Once you're in the Nemesis sailing up the river, they have no defenses against this. So the plan that Jardine has come up with is very simple. They're going to go back to Canton, which has been the foothold where the fact the British and the American and the French factories are all sitting on the riverbank. And as we know and as we discussed in earlier episodes, for 100 years these European factories have been sitting there doing business, initially buying tea, but more and more getting involved in the opium trade. The British and the French and the Americans have never been beyond the factories. They're not allowed into the city of Canton even. They're stuck in this tiny little sort of no man's land on the river. And what we see as their first plan of attack, laid down by William Jardine in Palmerston's War Office, is to capture Canton. So on 25 February, the British arrive at the outer defences on the river, and these are the forts upriver From Canton on the edge of the city. I mean, it's this sort of tragic and almost comic horror story. The Chinese, in order to try and scare off the Brits, arrange for the garrison, which is not as large as it should be, to go round and round the hill. But they have to change their clothes on each circuit so the Brits think there's more of them than there are, so they walk round and round with different coloured clothes on.
- [16:09]
Anita Arnan
In Home Alone, Macaulay Culkin does a similar thing with sort of cutouts in the window just to make it look like there are more people at home than just him. This doesn't work, but I mean, apart from the people changing their clothes, the Emperor does take this very seriously and is starting to mobilise troops because eventually there will be some 17,000 troops from seven different provinces who will converge on Canton. Because he knows as well this is a prize, this is a jewel. This is a port that has marshaled an enormous amount of trade, not just in opium, but in other things. And he can't afford to lose it. So, yeah, at the beginning it's almost comical in his lack of men and having to look like they're much more muscular and there are many more of them than there were. But you know, he's not taking it lightly. He knows what's at stake here and.
- [16:57]
William Dalrymple
He'S actually put down 3 million ounces of silver, which is a considerable fortune to fight this battle. Anyway, by 21 May, the nemesis is sitting off the factories. Now you may remember from the last episode that the British had withdrawn and all the other Americans, everyone else had withdrawn from the factories, leaving them empty and they had been looted and gutted by the people of Canton. So on 21 May, the nemesis arrives off the factories to this place where the British have been for 100 years. And they find utter silence. The factories have all been looted, there's no one around. And as they park their ships off these looted factories and as night comes, they suddenly realize that there is an attack being planned on them. The Chinese have got all these fireboats, these junks and rafts, and they're all stuffed with oil soaked cotton. So the first move that the Chinese have is to wait until the right time and the current is at its height and they let these flaming ships out on the British fleet, of course, not yet realising that the nemesis is made of metal.
- [18:07]
Anita Arnan
This is their answer to torpedoes, isn't it? I mean, it's just to get them as close as you can and let them blow up and take as much out as they can.
- [18:14]
William Dalrymple
Exactly that. And then at the same time, the Chinese have hidden among the ruins of the factories and Canton houses opposite all their artillery. So just as darkness comes and the fire ships begin to float towards the British fleet on the ebb tide, a whole load of artillery opens up from hidden positions. So it looks as if it's quite a serious defence that they've planned for this. And the British have walked into the trap. But of course, it all starts to go wrong. The fireboats drift in the wrong direction and don't get anywhere near where the British ships are parked. The British unload troops, which immediately put out the artillery. The first skirmish has taken place. The next day is Queen Victoria's birthday. So they begin with a high noon salute on 24 May. And then 2,300 British troops, most of whom are actually sepoys sent from British India, storm around Canton. And remember, this is a city they've never been allowed to enter in all the time that they've been trading there. And they tramp over the rice fields and the burial grounds on the outskirts of town, dragging these four enormous howitzers, field guns and powder guns, and lots of more concrete rockets onto the hill. Zushian, the Mountain of Transcendent Excellence, which overlooks Canton. And for the first time ever, the British look down onto Canton. They've never been able to see beyond the walls. You can't see over the walls when you. For 100 years, there's just been the same picture that all the Brits who were there take back of the walls of Canton. Now they get onto this hill and they're looking down and they prepare on the 27th of May to shell the city of Canton, which is full of people. It's a city of a million people. It's an enormous metropolis.
- [20:09]
Anita Arnan
40,000 Qing troops against three and a half thousand east India Company sepoys. So, you know, the numbers seem to be in favour of the Chinese, but not if the East India Company sepoys have howitzers at their command. So as soon as the howitzers start fighting, there is absolute disarray. You can just imagine it, this constant thud, thud, thud, bang, bang of the cannon. And one of the descriptions says the cannon did not fall silent for a single moment. That's from a Chinese source. When night fell, the fires burned as bright as day. Neither officials nor soldiers dared come out to help. All you could hear was the noise of burning and death.
- [20:50]
William Dalrymple
And the next morning, the infantry think it's their moment to Actually charge into the city and take the city in a full scale assault. And they're just revving up, getting ready for this, getting their tot of rum before running down the hill into the gates of Canton, when a single rather plump British officer is spotted blundering his way through the paddy fields, announces that the Chinese have backed down, they're going to pay a $6 million ransom, they're going to withdraw their troops from Canton. There's no need for the British to take this city by rape and plunder.
- [21:27]
Anita Arnan
Haven't they just blown it to smithereens though, with the sounds of.
- [21:30]
William Dalrymple
They've already killed many, many people by artillery, but there's not actually going to be bayonets in the city walls.
- [21:35]
Anita Arnan
So there's a really interesting story about the bloke blundering to give this message because couldn't he have got there a lot earlier? But he got lost.
- [21:42]
William Dalrymple
That's right.
- [21:43]
Anita Arnan
And they had a sleep in a paddy field. So he goes to sleep in a paddy field and I wonder whether if he would have got there just a tiny bit earlier, whether, you know, the bombardment might not have gone on as long as it did or life went on as long as it did. So what happens then?
- [21:57]
William Dalrymple
So then there's an example of what could have been if the Chinese had got their act together a bit more. Because on the next day the troops who'd been about to attack the city suddenly realized that they've got a free day off. And so the troops just run off into the countryside and swarm around the little hamlets and villages and the burial grounds with their blood up. These guys begin to get into mischief. They start opening the tombs, taking the bodies out, which obviously is a deeply offensive thing to do. And there are accusations that the Punjabis have been raping the local women and they call them black devils in the Chinese sources.
- [22:37]
Anita Arnan
But they also say things that it is a shame to even speak of because this is a society that's so utterly outraged and deeply ashamed of what happens. But that's what happens. I mean, you've talked about this before in Delhi as well. You know, when you have sort of troops who are thinking that they've got one day of fighting and putting their lives on the line and it suddenly disappears. Or they've taken a city and they still have their blood up. Roman soldiers would be allowed to go and vent themselves.
- [23:07]
William Dalrymple
Soldiers at all periods of history, tragically, yeah.
- [23:09]
Anita Arnan
So it's horrific.
- [23:10]
William Dalrymple
British troops are now basically taking a holiday, moving around people's villages, disturbing the dead, making mischief of themselves and just.
- [23:18]
Anita Arnan
Taking what they like. I mean, there's a lot of looting reported as well.
- [23:21]
William Dalrymple
Remember that there's a big difference between the Manchu Empire, which is Manchus from north of the wall, who are the government, and the local Chinese. And the local Chinese are not gonna take this ceasefire as a solid thing if the British are still molesting the women and disembodying the troops out of their tombs. So the local farmers line up in a sort of peasant militia, and armed with spears, shields and swords, they fall on the British troops who are not expecting any resistance. And so the day after the ceasefire, the British suffer a major peasant revolt in the villages outside Canton. These guys are, you know, wandering around paddy fields smoking their cheroots, having a nice time on their day off, when suddenly they find this enormous peasant militia armed with swords and shields and spears coming down on them with a vengeance.
- [24:18]
Anita Arnan
The British think, okay, these are men with spears and shields. What are they going to do? So they send a. A detachment out to go and get rid of them and just, you know, scare them back. Fire in the air a bit, they'll run away. But about after three miles of sort of pursuing them into the fields and trying to get them to go home or go away or kill them, there's a spectacular rainstorm that breaks out. It is a downpour that is so heavy, so torrential, it's like the sky is falling down. You can't see, even just meters in front of your face. And the guns are completely useless. So, you know, that advantage that British troops have is lost completely because you can't fire a gun. You're not quite as scary, you know, even if the people you're pursuing only have sticks and stones and shields. So what happens is, is that, you know, the paths are all washed out. They can't fire their guns, they don't know which way they're going because, as you quite rightly said, these are places they've never been before.
- [25:13]
William Dalrymple
And they're bogged down in the paddy fields.
- [25:15]
Anita Arnan
Well, the paddy fields just. It looks like water. If you've seen the paddy fields, it's just, you know, sort of a lake with things sticking out of it. There is no land. Everything seems to be, you know, covered with water. So that's when the peasants start jabbing back with a bit more success. They stop running away from these troops pursuing them and they start fighting back.
- [25:33]
William Dalrymple
And it's the Qing government who gets the British off the hook. They've signed this peace, so they suddenly turn up and tell the peasants to go back home and not to resist anymore. And this of course is hugely unpopular because the peasants have got the British troops on the run and they say since the peace is signed, you must let the foreigners go. But this of course is now in modern China, a major moment. It's been turned into a big visitor center and it's a major part of all school textbooks and it's called the Sanyuanli People's Anti British Struggle. You go there today and Julie MacFarlane says there's an enormous, very phallic monument to mark this reversal of the British troops. But again, it just shows that with a slightly different configuration, this war could have gone very differently, but it remains the Manchu imperial forces who are under armed against the British and the Chinese in the sense are actually the local Chinese barely take part in this war. So at this point the British carry on a little bit further up the river. They take a place called Zhen He. There are at this point 1,500 Chinese dead for only 16 British casualties. They then take another place further upriver called Ningbo, and at that point they decide to settle down for the winter and hope that the Qing will give in to their demands. And I think we should take a break there while the British are wintering in Ningbo. This episode is brought to you by Disney's Lilo and Stitch only in theaters this Memorial Day. A reimagining of Disney's animated classic Lilo and Stitch is the wildly funny and.
- [27:17]
Anita Arnan
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- [27:22]
William Dalrymple
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- [27:24]
Anita Arnan
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- [27:33]
William Dalrymple
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- [28:37]
Anita Arnan
Welcome back. So, just before the break, we had this sort of slightly now lionised version of a peasants revolt, where the peasants say, you know what? Actually, we had enough of your nonsense, Brits, we're going to fight you back. And they're quite successful, I mean, with the help of a huge downpour in pushing the British back. But it is their leadership, it is the Emperor himself who says no. Signed a bit of paper. You lot, stop that. Go home. We've got to do what we've said we're going to do and we're basically giving up. So this is a huge success for the British. But what do they do? Well, they sack Elliot immediately.
- [29:11]
William Dalrymple
So, you know, while we're on that, one of the people who rather disloyally does for Elliot is his own cousin, Lord Auckland. While Auckland is making his own mess in Afghanistan, he's pointing at his cousin Charles Eliot and saying that Elliot's making an even bigger mess in China. And it's his letters to Palmerston that actually result in Elliot getting sacked.
- [29:36]
Anita Arnan
Oh, really? He's being slagged off by his own family member. Oh, that's hilarious.
- [29:41]
William Dalrymple
And Emily Eden writes these very spiky notes about him, how hopeless he is and how slow and how dithery in her words. And so poor Charles Eliot. This is now the kind of the winter break they've got as far as Ningbo. The Chinese have hunkered down for the winter too. Everyone sort of realizes this is a break and there's going to be a. A pause in the fighting. During the Chinese winter, Eliot goes off for some fun to Macau, the Portuguese colony which has hotels and bars and today is famous for its casinos. And it's a place where, at this time, people go for a bit of a break. And he's only just arrived. He has a nightmare trip to Macau. I think his ship sinks or he ends up on an island, he's nearly captured by the Qing. Everything goes wrong and he finally gets to Macau, walks up the beach and is told he's been replaced by Sir Henry Pottinger, who's arriving in 48 hours from India.
- [30:32]
Anita Arnan
It's the equivalent getting a text message saying, don't come in tomorrow. But, I mean, you say it's Auckland who slagged him off and said, he's just made a hash of this, but it is actually Jardine and Matheson who really have done for Eliot, because they have not rested at all in slagging him off, slagging the way that he has been getting in the way he hasn't been muscular enough. They've been telling him for ages that Canton could have been taken. Why are we, you know, sort of kowtowing to these people? Well, we just take it, you know, we're much better off. So really, the opium smugglers have won this war on their own and they've also sacked a fairly decent man when they did it. And what still bothers me is that Palmerston just believes him.
- [31:16]
William Dalrymple
I think it's a close parallel to Elon Musk sitting in Trump's office, telling him what to do. Jardine, particularly, and Palmerston are sitting in the same room in the Foreign Office, drawing up these war plans. Poor old Elliot, who's got this very difficult balancing act and trying to get the Chinese to do what he wants and repay the money without slaughtering tens of thousands of innocent people. He is being slagged off. Jardine is now in London. He's not in Canton. He's come all the way home and he's got the ear of the Foreign Minister. And that's him. That's him finished. And he never gets another job.
- [31:49]
Anita Arnan
He never gets another job. And he always has to put up or deal with that feeling that his entire career has been reduced to ashes and everyone thinks he's a chump, even his own family. But Palmerston writes a really scathing note to him. Basically, you were useless from the moment you got there. You've done absolutely, absolute sod all that I wanted you to do. Everybody else who's done that job has done it better than you. I mean, it really is sort of like a horrible text saying, don't come in tomorrow. And there is one. I'll just conclude with one bit. You seem, Palmerston says, to have considered that my instructions were a waste of paper and you were at full liberty to deal with the interests of your country according to your own fancy. I mean, basically, it's not a good lad. You were shit. I cannot emphasize how shit you were at your job. And you will never work in this town again. It's just career ending, everything ending. And that's only only because he's listening to these drug dealers sitting in his office.
- [32:42]
William Dalrymple
And the letter ends very promptly. You will accordingly return home at your earliest convenience. Poor Elliot writes in his diary a line from Dryden, slack all thy sails, for thou art wrecked ashore. So poor old Elliot, who was not, I mean, relative to the Rest of them was not a bad guy, was trying to avoid bloodshed and do the decent thing. He's someone that spent his life fighting slavers in West Africa and has been sent into this thing, comprehensively outwitted at every stage by Jardine and Matheson, who have the Year of the Powerful. And instead he's replaced by this character, Henry Pottinger, who I know all about.
- [33:21]
Anita Arnan
You've written about him in relation to Afghanistan. So tell me about this Pottinger replacement. What does he like?
- [33:26]
William Dalrymple
So Pottinger is one of the earliest British spymasters of the Great Game and he's a very important figure in the whole story of the run up to the war in Afghanistan. There are two British intelligence centers, one on the west coast in Gujarat, which is run by Pottinger, and the other's in Ludhiana, run by a character called Wade. And at this point it looks as if Wade has won the battle and poor old Pottinger has been outflanked by his rival. And he's given, basically because Wade has got all the glory as it seems at this point. Pottinger is now given the chance, in a sense, to show his colours by replacing Elliot.
- [34:05]
Anita Arnan
He's capable and he's annoyed.
- [34:07]
William Dalrymple
He's annoyed and he's very bullish. He's a big man with sort of button chop, whiskers and is a much tougher, more blimpy character than Eliot, who's quite a sort of Christian and wants to save civilian lives. Pottinger has absolutely no worries at all about sacrificing hundreds of thousands of Chinese in order to get the money for the opium pack. As I say, he's got a name to prove because he's been outflanked by his rivals in the service and his former protege has now got a knighthood and he's longing to make his name by being tougher than Elliot. And on the Chinese side, there's also been a turnaround. Commissioner Lin, who, as we saw in the first episodes of this series, is the most capable and wonderful of all the Chinese civil servants who completely outflanks Eliot and gets all the opium surrendered to him, who hasn't put a foot wrong, he now takes the can for the loss of Canton and he's sacked.
- [35:05]
Anita Arnan
Is it just a very short line.
- [35:06]
William Dalrymple
Or is he again, it's a very short note.
- [35:08]
Anita Arnan
Oh, really?
- [35:08]
William Dalrymple
And in the way of royal dynasty dynasties, the emperor, rather than sending another Commissioner Lin, another man who spent his entire life passing exams and rising to the top of the service, and performing exemplary service for the Emperor. Instead, of course, it goes to the Emperor's nephew, who's a man called Yi Jing. And Yi Jing is the worst possible choice for this job. His only position prior to, prior to taking on the British army, who are halfway up the Yangtze river already, he's been director of the Imperial Gardens. And he's a noted calligrapher and a painter. Just what you need.
- [35:50]
Anita Arnan
Wow. My God, he sounds amazing for this job. He sounds so qualified. It's perfect. Does he do origami? That's useful.
- [35:59]
William Dalrymple
Okay, so Yi Jing, who I think has hardly left Beijing before, has never left the Imperial Gardens, which he loves gardening in, sent down to the lovely sort of riverside resort of Suzhou, and there he decides to spend the winter. And this is a lovely place with canals and it's got lots of brothels and gorgeous courtesans, and it's a place where the educated pleasure seekers of Beijing will go for their breaks. And he spends the winter rather while the troops are amassing rather than making war plans, he spends it dining, drinking, listening to operas, which is a very nice, very nice touch, and cultivating his rock garden and honing his poetry writing skills.
- [36:45]
Anita Arnan
So in effect, what you have is somebody who likes flower arranging against a really wily war horse who already has had a pretty intelligent time of it in Afghanistan and been robbed of his laurels. He feels he's definitely, definitely on the move to make his name. And no bastard's gonna take the credit this time. It's not a fair match, is it, William?
- [37:08]
William Dalrymple
It's not a fair match. And what makes things worse is that the Chinese officials are so afraid, in a sense, to tell the Emperor the reality that these troops have got different generations of weapons, that there's nothing the Chinese have that can take on these trained British troops. So they keep sort of sending, well, simply fantastic reports of what's going in. So Yi Jing doesn't realize everything's fine.
- [37:33]
Anita Arnan
We'Re doing really well here. Opera, it's all fine.
- [37:36]
William Dalrymple
And it's not just that Yijing is doing his flower arranging. He thinks there's no reason for concern because no one's told him that there'd been all these terrible defeats and the Chinese troops have crumpled. He thinks that he's absolutely on top of it. And then the final coup d' etat, as far as he's concerned, is when on 13 February, 700 Sichuanese Aborigines dressed out in tiger skin tunics turn up. And Yi Jing is a great follower of Oracles and astronomy. And he realizes that this is the hour of the tiger and the month of the tiger and the year of the tiger. And as far as he's concerned, everything couldn't be more auspicious for the attack. That this Aboriginal regiment arriving at the moment it has is a sign that the gods and the heavens are with them. And they're about to send the British off to their makers. They plan an assault on the foremost British town of Ningbo, which is as far as the nemesis has got up the river and the Chinese attack is being prepared. And again, there's this other sign that if only the Manchus had left a little bit more to the locals, there could have been a very sustained resistance. Because in Ningbo, where the British have spent the winter, they're feeling very much under assault by the locals. They can't leave the garrison initially. They've been putting their troops out into different little pickets around the place. And every time someone goes off for a pee behind lines, they're found next morning trussed up with a walnut in their mouth, sort of floating in a paddy field.
- [39:10]
Anita Arnan
Oh, okay, so hang on a minute. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Trussed up with a walnut in their mouth? Is that because they've been killed or just sort of tied up? I mean, that doesn't make sense to anybody.
- [39:19]
William Dalrymple
I will read you the description. This is from Wonderful Julia Lovell's description of what's going on in Ningbo. And she says that a captured private was found tied up in a bag. A large walnut with hair wound around it had been forced into his mouth, the sides of which were cut open to admit it. He was quite dead. The business was repugnant to the feelings of civilized nations. Commended one British lieutenant.
- [39:43]
Anita Arnan
You're right. What's interesting is if the peasants had had their way, they were actually pinning them down. They, you know, they have a fight back force. Everything feels a little bit. Well, I mean, not realistic. So. So you haven't got real reports getting back to Beijing. You've got a man who thinks, hey, what else do we need? Have you seen my latest flower arrangement? We don't need anything else. I've done this beautiful swan. It's a crane. It's absol. Bloody useless. And he also has people with him who are inexplicably odd as well. Can I tell one of the preparation stories which I love so much? So this is a commander who is facing the nemesis, okay? The nemesis which has caused untold damage and got as far as Ningbo So One commander purchases 19 monkeys. Now, why, you may ask, does he want 19 monkeys? Because he has this brilliant idea that he's going to strap fireworks to their bags and then set them lo Fly my monkeys. Fly. Like something out of, you know, wizard of Oz, fly my battle monkeys. And that they're going to crawl all over the British ships and then blow up. I mean, it's not a very lovely story for animals, but this is the calibre, this is the calibre of fight back that is coming from Imperial China. Whereas peasant China is doing a pretty, I mean, horrific but good job with walnuts and stabby things and the poor old monkeys.
- [41:03]
William Dalrymple
In the end, no one dares get close enough to throw the fire monkeys onto the British ships, particularly the nemesis, which is towering up above any of the Chinese junks, so that their keeper leaves the attack monkeys of Ningbo to starve slowly to death in his front lodge.
- [41:16]
Anita Arnan
In the end, I hate that, really.
- [41:18]
William Dalrymple
It's not a nice ending to the story, but anyway, there's a three pronged attack. Yijing has spent the whole winter planning this and there's meant to be a three pronged attack, not just on Ningbo, but on two other cities, Zhenghai and Zhaoshan. And the idea is that 36,000 men will hurdle themselves on the British troops and it'll be a great victory. Of course, everything goes wrong. And again, it's the British howitzers that see for the Manchu resistance. They're still fighting in close packs and they're just wiped out by the British shells. The British now got this horse artillery that can move very fast around the field. They've got explosive shells, they've got the latest logistics so they can work and ballistics so they can work out exactly where to plant the shells. And so when, when it does come to fighting in the city, the howitzer is set up and it just massacres the Manchu resistance. And again, there's these hideous descriptions of at least 3,000 Chinese soldiers just being massacred by a couple of guns. The effect was terrific, observed one campaign hardened officer. The enemy's rear, not aware of the miserable fate which was being dealt out to their comrades at the front, continued to press forwards in a mass so as to force fresh victims upon the mounds of the dead and the dying. By the time that the howitzer fell silent after only three rounds, there was a writhing, shrieking hecatomb, closely packed, fully 15 yards. So this one gun sitting in the street in Ningbo slaughters the Chinese troops outside the city, there's a last stand of the Qing Imperial Guard, who are dressed up in this fantastic, fantastic black and purple velvet. And these guys are very brave, but they are not fighting tactics that are going to win them against East India Company sepoys. So they just sit at the top of the hill, 500 elite Qing soldiers, and eventually the company, 1200 sepoys, surround them on all sides with their artillery and they just shoot them dead with the shells and finish them off with the bayonets. We sat by helpless, watching our comrades die, writes one of the diaries of one of the Chinese survivors. Even now, the thought of it tortures me. So Yi Jing has lost, but again dare tell his uncle, the Emperor, what's actually happened. So what he reports is that 500 British soldiers have been killed, including their chief, Palmerston. Palmerston is actually sitting in the War Office.
- [43:56]
Anita Arnan
Insane. This is insane, though. This is insane. Yeah, Palmerston's been killed. We got him. Okay, so now, I mean, and what happens to the civilian population? Dare I ask?
- [44:08]
William Dalrymple
So, as before, rape. Julia Lovell gives very, very detailed and very upsetting descriptions of a kind of mass rape that takes place after the attack on Ningbo. And then in response to the rape and the loss of the Imperial Guard, there's a mass suicide in the city of Ningbo. So the British walk into the city, city after this battle to find just heaps of bodies.
- [44:33]
Anita Arnan
Well, I mean, I've seen one of the accounts on this, and it is just awful. So if you are of a delicate disposition, maybe do something else for the next 30 seconds. But this is an account of what a British soldier saw. He says old men, women and children cutting each other's throats and drowning themselves by the dozen. And no one either attempting or apparently showing any inclination to save the poor wretches, nor in fact, regarding them with any more notice than they would a dead horse carried through the streets of London to the kennel. That's just horrendous. That's horrific. So, you know, the soldiers talk about wandering through this kind of almost like a ghost town. And it's the city, it's getting darker, so it is getting more and more spooky with these bodies that they're having to tread over. But in contrast to that, the soldiers also write about the fragrance of the flowers that are hanging over all these really beautifully applied, pointed to these civilian houses, you know, so it is. It smells pretty. If you look up, it looks beautiful. If you look down at your feet, it's just rivers of blood. And there's another one account I'll just read. It's. I mean these things are horrific. We entered an open court strewn with rich stuffs and covered with the clotted blood and upon the steps leading to the hall of ancestors there were two bodies of youthful Tartars, cold and stiff, much alike apparently brothers. Stepping over these bodies we met face to face three women seated, a mother and two daughters and. And at their feet lay two bodies of elderly men with their throats cut from ear to ear. The hardest heart of the oldest man who ever lived a life of rapine and slaughter could not have gazed on this scene of woe and been unmoved.
- [46:18]
William Dalrymple
There's a feeling of guilt in many of the British chicanes because they're aware that morally this is a very dubious war and then there's no resistance, there's no feeling that they've won a great victory against a well organized opponent. This has just been a slaughter followed by mass suicides of the people who they're meant to be trading with. And so there's two more cities which are captured in succession and similar horrors and eventually they advance on Nanjing, they capture Shanghai which is a relatively small city at this point. Shanghai's greatest days lie ahead of it and that doesn't move the, the Emperor to surrender. But when Nanjing comes under the guns of the nemesis is the moment that finally the penny drops and the Qing government capitulates. And finally on the 26th of August Pottinger is carried. Pottinger is a large chap, has to be said, and he's carried in a sedan chair to the Chinese camp where a surrender banquet has been organized rather improbably he's invited to this enormous feast.
- [47:25]
Anita Arnan
Yes, I can tell you what they ate. I mean, you know, it's gonna take a numerous patties of minced meat, pork arrowroot, vermicelli soup with meat in it, pig's ear soup and other strange dishes were served in succession and as a coup de grace, Keying, I don't know who Keying is, insisted upon Sir Henry opening his mouth while he with great dexterity shot into it several times, immense sugar plums. I shall never forget Sir Henry's face of determined resignation after he found remonstrances were of no avail. No. So yes, Pottinger has to, you know, leave a lot fatter. But I mean this is also, this is, this is. You can't imagine Elliot behaving like this, can you? You can't imagine even at this kind of moment of victory, basically Behaving like a member of the Bullingdon Club, which is what these guys are behaving like.
- [48:14]
William Dalrymple
The Qing perhaps hope that the British will have been stuffed to the point of insensibility. And then they start negotiating the treaty. But the demands are very clear. $21 million indemnity, the opening of five more ports to trade, including Canton, the British right of residence and the setting of tariffs. A very contemporary touch. And the Chinese just want to get the business finished as quickly as possible. The Imperial commissioners, Pottinger observes, declared their readiness to sign and seal the treaty at once, without further explanation. So this is the treaty that gives the British Hong Kong Kong. It's thanks to this that the whole subsequent history of Hong Kong takes off in the way that it does, which.
- [49:00]
Anita Arnan
The British aren't that bothered about at the time.
- [49:02]
William Dalrymple
At the time. They have no idea what they've got. Exactly.
- [49:05]
Anita Arnan
Oh, we'll take it. But I mean, you know, thanks. Thanks a lot. Yeah. You shouldn't have. I mean, it's kind of that kind of shrugging mentality. They don't realize what they've got. And I get it.
- [49:16]
William Dalrymple
So this is an odd war. At the same time, as we say this, you know, you've got the Afghans completely different, defeating the British in Kabul and in Hong Kong in the Opium War. It's a total defeat that leaves such a bad taste even in British mouths. And Eliot writes in his diary, this man has just been sacked, he's lost his career and he sort of lets out all the feelings of this hopeless war. He says, our visitations are so calamitous to the wretched and inhabitants. A war in which there was little room for military glory, the slaughter of an almost defenseless and helpless people, and a people which in large portion of the theater of war was friendly to the British nation. And that humiliation still rankles. And Julia Lovell opens her book with a wonderful story, which I think is where we should conclude with November 9, 2010, when David Cameron and his delegation arrives to try and patch up relations with China in the Great hall. The people at Tianmen Square. It's November and they're wearing Remembrance Day poppies. And the Chinese officials say they're not going to let them into the hall unless they remove their Remembrance Day poppies on the grounds that the flowers evoked such painful memories for the Chinese people. So this is not dead history for the Chinese. They remember this. And although this is no longer a part of history that the British choose to remember much about, one of the most shameful immoral and horrific wars of empire ever fought, but one which has considerable echoes and ripples into the present. Anyway, we're gonna leave it there. We've got the next Opium War and looking back on this whole debacle on the last episode. And next week we're gonna get the wonderful Stephen Platon, whose Imperial Twilight is, along with Julia Novel and Amitav Ghosh, the three great books that I've sort of enjoyed reading while doing this series. If you want to hear that final episode now, you can join the Empire Club. Sign up, get all our wonderful newsletters and all these other goodies straight to your inbox. If not, we'll see you next week. And it's goodbye from me, William Dalrymple.
- [51:33]
Anita Arnan
And goodbye from me, Anita Arlin.
- [51:45]
William Dalrymple
Hi.
- [51:46]
Anita Arnan
This is Katy Kaye from the writer. Rest is politics, us.
- [51:48]
William Dalrymple
And this is Anthony Scaramucci.
- [51:50]
Anita Arnan
I've spent over two decades reporting from Washington. Presidents, well, they come and go. The chaos that never changes. And I've been inside the eye of the storm, 11 wild days in Trump's White House. I have seen how the sausage gets made and who's holding the knife. Yeah, that's not a nice image. But on the Rest Is Politics, us.
- [52:08]
William Dalrymple
We break down the stories that are.
- [52:10]
Anita Arnan
Behind the headlines and we actually look at what they mean to America. America and the rest of the world as well. We're not just talking politics. We're talking about power. We've got both of us, access, experience, and just enough cynicism to know when something smells a little off and how to trace it back to the source. No spin, no filter, reporting the stories.
- [52:32]
William Dalrymple
You won't hear anywhere else.
- [52:34]
Anita Arnan
If you want smart analysis, global context and a front row seat to the world's loudest democracy, this is the show.
- [52:41]
William Dalrymple
It's from two people that have ringside.
- [52:43]
Anita Arnan
Seats, occasionally center stage in a country.
- [52:46]
William Dalrymple
Where court cases and campaign rallies share.
- [52:50]
Anita Arnan
The same parking lot. The rest is politics, us. New episodes every week.