255. Victorian Narcos: From Opium To Fentanyl (Ep 9)

Summary

Empire Podcast Episode 255: Victorian Narcos: From Opium To Fentanyl

Release Date: May 14, 2025
Hosts: William Dalrymple and Anita Anand
Guest: Stephen Platt, author of Imperial Twilight: Dismantling the Myths of the Opium War

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Introduction to the Opium Wars

In this episode, Hosts William Dalrymple and Anita Anand delve deep into the intricate narratives surrounding the Opium Wars, their profound impact on China, and the legacy that continues to influence modern global issues like the fentanyl crisis.

Stephen Platt joins the conversation as a guest to shed light on his extensive research and insights from his acclaimed book Imperial Twilight. Platt provides a comprehensive examination of the First and Second Opium Wars, emphasizing the moral dilemmas faced by the British Empire and the devastating consequences for China.

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Moral Conflicts and the First Opium War

The discussion begins with the horrifying realities of the First Opium War, highlighting the stark technological disparities between the British and the Qing Dynasty.

William Dalrymple [02:24]: "In the first Opium War, each engagement is really a slaughter and a massacre."

Stephen Platt confirms the moral agony experienced by British soldiers:

Stephen Platt [02:52]: "British naval officers were begging not to attack any more cities in China. They wrote how this is murder."

The ethical conflict is further illustrated by the grim aftermath of battles, where entire populations were decimated even before British gunfire commenced.

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Treaty of Nanjing and Its Aftermath

The imposition of the Treaty of Nanjing in 1842 marked the beginning of China's "Unequal Treaties" era, fundamentally altering the nation's sovereignty and economic landscape.

Stephen Platt [05:54]: "This was China's first war with a Western power. They lost completely. The British dictated the terms at gunpoint."

Key concessions included:

• Hong Kong Colony: Acquired by the British and remained under their control until 1997.
• Opening of Five Treaty Ports: Cities like Shanghai became hubs for British trade, disrupting the traditional monopoly of Canton.

Platt underscores the treaty’s long-term economic burdens on China:

Stephen Platt [07:30]: "It's going to set a pattern for a series of wars... until you have a Chinese government where most of its revenue is going to paying off loans."

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The Second Opium War and Legalization of Opium

Fifteen years after the First Opium War, the Second Opium War erupted under seemingly trivial pretenses but was primarily driven by British and French desires to expand their economic gains.

Stephen Platt [25:23]: "The grounds of the second Opium War are just absurd. It was sparked by the insult of a Qing official taking down the British flag."

The culmination of this conflict led to the Convention of Peking and the Treaty of Tientsin, which further eroded Chinese sovereignty and formally legalized opium, exacerbating addiction and economic instability.

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Economic Exploitation and Social Impact

The opium trade had far-reaching consequences, fostering economic dependency and societal decay within China. Platt elucidates how opium became integral to government revenues, perpetuating a cycle of addiction and financial instability.

Stephen Platt [35:20]: "By the early decades of the 20th century, between 3 and 10% of Chinese population... was using opium."

Anita Anand draws parallels between historical opium exploitation and the modern fentanyl crisis, highlighting the recurring theme of economic imperatives overshadowing ethical considerations.

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The Taiping Rebellion and Continued Strife

Following the economic devastation of the Opium Wars, the Taiping Rebellion emerged as one of history’s deadliest conflicts, further destabilizing China and paving the way for the second war.

Stephen Platt [16:43]: "The Taiping Rebellion is going to emerge by the beginning of the 1850s... leading to the largest civil war in human history."

The rebellion underscored the deep-seated unrest and the dire consequences of imperial interference in China's internal affairs.

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Legacy of the Opium Wars in Modern China

The hosts explore how the Opium Wars are ingrained in Chinese national consciousness as a period of national humiliation, shaping contemporary policies and attitudes towards the West.

Stephen Platt [37:58]: "Never forget national humiliation... it's a binding force."

William Dalrymple connects this historical trauma to current geopolitical tensions, illustrating how past grievances continue to influence China's interactions on the global stage.

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Parallels to the Modern Fentanyl Crisis

Drawing a direct line from the opium trade to today’s fentanyl epidemic, Platt emphasizes the cyclical nature of drug exploitation tied to economic and political motivations.

Stephen Platt [42:06]: "The justification for all the tariffs that he's instituting right now are the emergency caused by fentanyl."

Anita Anand and Platt discuss how modern narratives around drug crises mirror those of the past, attributing blame to external forces and perpetuating cycles of addiction and economic manipulation.

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Conclusion and Reflections

As the episode wraps up, the hosts and Platt reflect on the enduring impact of the Opium Wars and the recurring patterns of exploitation and resistance. They highlight the importance of understanding historical contexts to navigate and address present-day global challenges.

Anita Anand introduces the upcoming focus on the Yalta Conference, setting the stage for exploring post-World War II geopolitical reshaping and its parallels with imperial-era conflicts.

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Key Takeaways:

• Moral Dilemmas: The Opium Wars exposed deep ethical conflicts within the British Empire, highlighting the brutality of imperialistic pursuits.
• Economic Exploitation: The treaties imposed on China facilitated economic dominance by Western powers, leading to long-term financial and social instability.
• Historical Legacies: The narrative of national humiliation from the Opium Wars continues to influence modern Chinese policies and international relations.
• Recurring Patterns: The exploitation seen in the opium trade finds echoes in contemporary issues like the fentanyl crisis, emphasizing the persistent nature of power-driven economic manipulations.

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Notable Quotes:

• William Dalrymple [02:24]: "In the first Opium War, each engagement is really a slaughter and a massacre."
• Stephen Platt [05:54]: "This was China's first war with a Western power. They lost completely. The British dictated the terms at gunpoint."
• Stephen Platt [37:58]: "Never forget national humiliation... it's a binding force."
• Stephen Platt [42:06]: "The justification for all the tariffs that he's instituting right now are the emergency caused by fentanyl."

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This summary aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the key discussions and insights from Empire Podcast Episode 255, ensuring a coherent and engaging narrative for those who haven't listened to the episode.

Transcript

[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 [e-mail].

[Anita Anand]

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[Stephen Platt]

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[Anita Anand]

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[Stephen Platt]

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[William Dalrymple]

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[Stephen Platt]

From the start she spends a little less and puts more into savings Keeps her blood pressure low, credit score raises she's cutting it right out of her life she tracks her cash more on.

[William Dalrymple]

A spreadsheet at night Boring money moves.

[Stephen Platt]

Make kind of lame songs but they sound pretty sweet to your wallet PNC.

[William Dalrymple]

Bank brilliantly boring since 1865.

[Anita Anand]

Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Anand and me, William Dermpol. Quite excited about this episode. We've been fangirling and fanboying about him, but the author of Imperial Twilight Dismantling the Myths of the Opium War, Stephen Plaid. We've been talking about you a lot during this series and about your wonderful book. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak to us. Really appreciate it.

[Stephen Platt]

Thanks so much for having me here.

[Anita Anand]

And Stephen's got a new book that's coming up very soon, May 13th.

[William Dalrymple]

Tell us quickly about that. Everyone is your fan on this program now.

[Stephen Platt]

So it's a World War II book about a U.S. marine who, embedded with the Chinese Communist army, learned their tactics of guerrilla warfare and then imported them into the US Marines.

[William Dalrymple]

Ah. So like Julia, you've moved forward in time from the Opium Wars.

[Stephen Platt]

Yeah, there's so much to dig through in China's history.

[Anita Anand]

Everything is connected though, William, as we know. So look, just remind everybody where we were last and where we are now.

[William Dalrymple]

We in the last episode had the kind of sickening story of the first Opium War. But the horror is that the British weaponry, and particularly the British ships and the British guns, are so far in advance of what the Qing have that each of these engagements in the first Opium War is really a slaughter and a massacre. The British are disgusted with themselves even as they fight this war. Was that something you found in the diaries, Stephen? When you were reading this.

[Stephen Platt]

Absolutely. I mean, there were communications from British naval officers to their commanders, basically begging not to have to attack any more cities in China. Know, writing how this is murder, There is no honor to be won in continuing this war. And it's something that. It was enormously controversial to the British public as well. There really. There was no glory to be won here.

[William Dalrymple]

And one of the things that emerges in your narrative is that quite often when the British enter the city, they find that everyone has themselves committed suicide, that a lot of the troops, before they've even engaged, they're hanging themselves or hanging the citizenry, that there's a kind of massive pile of corpses. Even before the British opened fire, it.

[Stephen Platt]

Opens up the divisions between the Manchu government and the Han Chinese population of China. And there are incidents where you have military officers locking the fort in order to prevent their soldiers from running away when the British come. And so they're just blasted to smithereens by the British naval cannons. Not for the First Opium War, but the Second Opium War. We have photographic evidence of this and just the dead bodies strewn about, as.

[Anita Anand]

Well as the letters that you've got. You know, you've got British newspapers that, you know, have signed on a lot for the cause of going to this war, thanks to Jardine and his lobbying and his buying of journalists. But you do have the Times, which had always been a strong supporter of this kind of, let's flex abroad, saying that this is a dishonorable war. The paper calls it a dishonorable war. So there's a tidal shift, at least going on somewhat in the press. But it's too late, really, because the deed is done.

[William Dalrymple]

The quote from the Times continues. We should be ashamed of ourselves and our principles if we allowed its intrinsic brilliancy to obscure its true character, to render us forgetful of its most questionable origin.

[Stephen Platt]

Up to this point, China had always been viewed as a friendly empire to the British. They were frustrated about their trade there, but there had never been any grounds for hostility of any kind. And. And the idea that this empire that they traded with, that gave them all of their tea to gladden the breakfast tables of the British public, that we should somehow be forcing them to accept a drug trade that they don't want was widely viewed as shameful. I mean, the only way that this war could be pushed through Parliament was by arguing that it had nothing to do with opium at all. And it was simply that these poor British merchants who had gone to China to pursue their trade were in danger of being executed by this Russian rabid Confucian official, Lin Zixu. So for those who supported the war, it was a war of honor. It was a war of opening trade. It was a war of making China treat the British as equals. But most people knew that this was really about opium.

[Anita Anand]

Can we talk about the Treaty of Nanjing? Because that's where we've sort of come to in this. I mean, the Treaty signed on August 29, 1842, and this is the first time we get to know this term. China's unequal treaties. Now, talk us through what is in this treaty. What do the Chinese have to swallow, and what do people think about it?

[Stephen Platt]

As you said, this is the first of what are going to be called the unequal treaties. This is the opening of a new era for China that's going to go on through the rest of the 19th century. This was China's first war with a Western power. They lost completely. And the British essentially were able to dictate the terms of the treaty at gunpoint. Among the terms for the British, they got Hong Kong. And this was the taking of Hong Kong as a colony. And it's going to be in British hands until 1997 when they finally give it back to China. Ironically, at the time, Lord Palmerston wanted nothing to do with Hong Kong. He was just sort of this watery island with barely any houses on it. Who could possibly find any profit there? So they got Hong Kong as an outright colony. They got the opening of five ports in China to British trade. These were called treaty ports, and they were cities where the British could reside. They could have warehouses, they could have their investments. They could go about their business. They could trade with any Chinese merchants they wanted to. And this really was the opening of trade that all of the merchants had wanted and that the British had wanted, going all the way back to the.

[William Dalrymple]

1760S, more than Lord Macartney would have dreamt of in his disastrous expedition.

[Stephen Platt]

Yes, poor Macartney. Yeah, sort of like supplicating himself and hoping for some kind of imperial favor. Well, the British gunships win that for England in 1842. So they get the treaty ports, they get the Hong Kong colony, they get an indemnity, a war indemnity to pay for the opium. And most ignominiously, and I guess this is sort of the case with war indemnities. China has to pay the cost of Britain having had to go to war to avenge its honor. So the victims have to pay for the war.

[William Dalrymple]

Is this a catastrophic amount for the Chinese treasury?

[Stephen Platt]

It's a very large amount. It is not yet a catastrophic amount. And the thing about this treaty, the Treaty of Nanjing, is. Is not catastrophic in its own right, but it's going to set a pattern for a series of wars through the 19th century where the indemnities get bigger and bigger and bigger until you have, at the end of the 19th century, a Chinese government where most of its revenue is going to paying off loans in order to cover these indemnities to Britain or the United States or Japan.

[William Dalrymple]

And is there anything at the Treaty of Nanjing that the British don't get? Do the Chinese hold the line on any articles that the British want?

[Stephen Platt]

This is one of the most significant things about the Treaty of Nanjing that here it is concluding the Opium War, at least a war that was very much understood in England as being about opium. And any historian looking at it can see that it was about opium. The one thing that this treaty does not do is legalize opium. And it's not that the British government wasn't interested in doing that. And they sort of, you know, tested out the idea, but mainly it just would have been too crass.

[Anita Anand]

That would be too crass. Sorry. In the treaty that gives 21 million silver dollars in reparation to drug smugglers. That is not crass. I mean, it sort of beggars belief, really, doesn't it?

[Stephen Platt]

It does. But if you go back to how the war was justified in the uk, that if the government was insisting all along that this has nothing to do with the drug trade, if they then went around and legalized the drug trade, then all of the critics could say, yes. See, this is what we've been saying all along. I should say also that William Jardine, leading opium merchant who had the ear of the government. He was back home at this point.

[William Dalrymple]

We'd be comparing him to a sort of Elon Musk figure. He's sitting in Palmerston's office, whispering in his house. He hasn't brought his son along, nor has he forced Palmerston to ride his car. But it's more or less a similar sort of situation, isn't it?

[Stephen Platt]

Yeah, the coziness here. I mean, Jardine brings back the coastal maps that the smugglers have drawn up up the Chinese coast for sailing their smuggling ships and gives those to the British government to use in the war because they don't have naval charts.

[William Dalrymple]

So you and I share a character. Henry Pottinger, who is the understudy, much against his will, to Alexander Burns in the first Afghan War. He runs the intelligence bureau in Gujarat. And he has a rival called Wade who runs the intelligence bureau in Ludhiana. They're like the two listening stations that the East India Company has on the edge of the Sikh and the Afghan empires. And Pottinger's permanently frustrated vis a vis the Afghans because it's Wade and Burns who get the glory, such as it is, of the conquest of Afghanistan. But Pottinger comes in and he's the guy that does the negotiation of the Treaty of Nanjin. Elliot gets sort of sent back in disgrace. We never dealt with what happened to poor Elliot.

[Anita Anand]

Well, I'll tell you what happened to Elliot. He promised $21 million worth of reparations on behalf of the British government. With that, asking them first, you know, in the treaty you said it would have been unseemly for them to legalize the drug trade. There are some really interesting things that happen. I mean, you know, the Emperor as well. I mean, it's kind of a sad plaintiff crisis. It is true I cannot prevent the introduction of this flowing poison, gain seeking and corrupt men will for profit and sensuality to defeat my wishes. But nothing will induce me to derive a revenue from the vice and misery of my people. There may well be a reluctance for Britain to declare itself a huge narco economy. But also he doesn't want to do it either, because why would you want to do that to your people? He put a line in the sand. Commissioner Lyn was there to enforce it. He doesn't want to then say. Actually I said drugs were terrible and they were wiping out our country. Now I think they're fine. So there is a bit of a face save on both sides here by not legalising drugs.

[Stephen Platt]

Absolutely. And I should say that the last thing that Jardine wanted was the legalization of the opium drug.

[Anita Anand]

And he makes more money if it's illegal, right?

[Stephen Platt]

Yeah. They've invested so much in their Fast Clippers for the Coast. They've invested so much in developing personal relationships with the Chinese criminal guilds that buy and distribute the opium. Why would they want to give all of that up for a legalized trade that anyone who wanted to could get into?

[Anita Anand]

And also, if you legalize it, the Chinese can grow it. And, you know, you don't want them to grow it. You want to import it, then you can fix the prices, you can fix the market. I mean, if you sort of legalize it, then they have a stake in it. And it's all. It's all hideously clever.

[William Dalrymple]

So it's not just that it's crass it's that Jardine hasn't pushed for it. I hadn't got that.

[Stephen Platt]

That's a crucial perspective also in terms of the legalization. I mean, one of the wonderful things about Lin Zixu, you know, this impeccable moralist, there's that statue of him in New York City, Chinatown with a plaque. This is Pioneer of the War on Drugs. He's the uncorruptible official who stood up to the opium trade. His first advice to the Dao Guang Emperor about opium, which was in 1833, he said, well, if the real problem is that all the silver is leaving the country through illegal smuggling trade, the best solution for that is that the Chinese should grow a lot more opium themselves, and then they can buy it from each other and we won't involve foreigners and so we can keep our wealth within the country. So obviously he changes that tune by the time of the Opium War.

[William Dalrymple]

STEPHEN in the immediate aftermath of the Treaty of Nanjing, there seems to be some suggestion from the government in India that they will no longer have as much to do with opium. In June 1840, Lord Broughton writes to the Governor General, Lord Auckland, saying that the government should consider restricting the cultivation of opium. After the monstrous outcry that has been raised against your wicked wish to poison a third of the whole human race merely to fill your own coffers, that's quite a matter. Yeah, that's the government that started this war writing to the Governor General in Calcutta. How does that not happen, though? Because what we instead see is the opium traders like Jardine and Matheson successfully establishing their fortunes, consolidating their riches, and then further pressure on the Chinese to grant more concessions as the century continues.

[Stephen Platt]

I mean, the bottom line is that for all of the obvious moral arguments to be made about how insidious the drug trade is, you know, the British government has come to rely heavily on, on the income from the tea trade, which is made possible by the liquidity provided by the opium trade. Opium makes the tea trade possible. It balances out the trade. And the tax that the British government is taking on the tea brought back to England is huge.

[William Dalrymple]

The tariffs, to use the word at the moment.

[Stephen Platt]

Back before the Opium War, the British government had a 100% tariff on all of the tea coming back from China. And there were estimates that that was enough to float the entire Royal Navy worldwide. So the Indian government could not give up on the revenue from this trade. It was just simply too profitable. But what's going to happen after the Opium War is that the Trade continues to expand and grow. There's going to be a second Opium War we could talk about, which actually will end with the legalization.

[William Dalrymple]

Move us from that letter of Lord Broughton, what looks like the British government realizing that it's completely unacceptable what's going on and trying to pressure the Indian government to cut back on opium to the run up only nine years later to another Opium War.

[Stephen Platt]

Well, one of the effects of the Treaty of Nanjing and how it opens up other ports for British trade in China and the other foreigners are all going to get the same benefits the Americans are going to, and the French are going to pile right on in and get access to the same ports. The key treaty port is going to be Shanghai, which is right where the Yangtze river meets the ocean. And all of that tea and silk and everything that the foreigners had been buying was being produced largely along the Yangtze River. It's much, much cheaper just to float it in a barge or a boat down to Shanghai to trade there. The whole reason that it was being carried overland down to Canton was because of an imperial decree that all the foreign trade had to go on there. So after the Treaty of Nanjing, after the Opium War, when Canton no longer has a monopoly, a huge amount of the foreign trade shifts up to Shanghai. This is going to cause, along with other factors, an economic collapse in South China. There's going to be hundreds of thousands of people out of work who had had menial labor somehow tied into the.

[Anita Anand]

Tea trade getting it to Canton before that whole supply line is just wiped out overnight.

[Stephen Platt]

Yeah, people who carried boxes, people who pulled the ropes that pulled boats up river. So the immediate period after the Opium War is going to be a time of dramatic economic dec in South China, partly because of the Opium War itself, partly because of the movement of foreign trade, partly because of internal factors in the Qing Dynasty. But it's out of that economic malaise in South China that the Taiping Rebellion is going to emerge by the beginning of the 1850s. And this is going to be the largest civil war in human history. There's going to be 20 to 30 million people dead. And it starts in South China, charges up to the center, and then goes down and takes over the city of Nanjing where the Treaty of Nanjing was signed. That's going to be the Taiping capital.

[William Dalrymple]

And how far, Steven, do you think it can be blamed on the way that the government's been humiliated and showed up by their failure in the first Opium War?

[Stephen Platt]

That's a really good question. I can tell you who did think that it could be blamed on the British, which was the British government. And ultimately, I mean, this is looking much further ahead. The British are going to remain neutral in the war between the Taiping and the Qing all the way up until about 1862. And when they break with neutrality and take the side of the Qing Dynasty, it's partly going to be based on a rationalization that this is their fault and that Britain had weakened the Qing government with the Opium War. And therefore they need to make up for that. The Marxist analysis of the Taiping Rebellion, the literal Marxist analysis, because Karl Marx was a reporter at the time and he reported on the Taiping Rebellion, and his view was that the Taiping Rebellion was entirely Britain's fault. And as he wrote about it, he said, basically, Britain cracked open this ancient sealed empire of China. And he said, you know, as when you crack open a sarcophagus and the mummy inside is exposed to the elements for the first time, and it starts to decompose. He says, you know, the natural outcome of this is the breakdown of society in China.

[Anita Anand]

And when we're talking about the Typing rebellion as if everyone knows what it is, can you just give us sort of the thumbnail sketch of the Taiping Rebellion, causes of. And how long did it last?

[Stephen Platt]

Sure. The thumbnail sketch is that it begins with a Hakka man, this is a Chinese minority in South China who reads a Christian pamphlet that's been translated into Chinese, has an epiphany that he's the son of God and the younger brother of Jesus Christ, and leads a massive rebellion that begins from a religious sect and just sort of sweeps up a huge amount of the population. And this rebellion, it's going to go on until 1864. It finally ends. It starts in the 1850s. So it's going to lead to just a grueling civil war between the Qing Dynasty, which is still based in Beijing, and the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, as they call it, which is based in Nanjing.

[William Dalrymple]

And while all this is going on in China, just to give the wider picture to pull back the camera a little, the French, who've also got concessions in China now and have got treaty ports and factories outside of Canton, they're also realizing that this is an extremely valuable part of the world to do business. They're realizing that opium is an important part of the trading pattern, and they're beginning to intervene in Indochina. In 1847, they turn up in Dangan, allegedly to free Catholic missionaries. And this is the beginnings of the opening up of Southeast Asia to French colonialism Absolutely.

[Stephen Platt]

So, I mean, the reason to have the Taiping Rebellion there is because that's going to provide the context within which the second Opium War happens, which is that starting around in the late 1850s and going until 1860, the British, in alliance with the French together, go to war against the Qing right in the middle of the Taiping Rebellion.

[Anita Anand]

So already weakened state.

[Stephen Platt]

Yeah. The Qing is just tottering.

[Anita Anand]

So while China is being shredded in all sorts of different ways, can we just have a look at the fortunes of one Jardine and one Matheson? And let's throw in a Hugh Hamilton Lindsay, who also made an appearance. They're doing very well, thank you. So while China is being absolutely eviscerated from all these complicated things that are happening, they've all got themselves elected to Parliament, they're doing very well. They're very respectable, very wealthy man. And you've got Gigi Boy, who we also talked about is pouring his money. The Parsi, who was like the middleman in between, who is facilitating all this opium trade. He is unfathomably wealthy. Off the back of that, he's doing some good things. I mean, Parsi charities are his thing. So, you know, he's funding famine relief, so schools, hospitals, public works. And by that, you know, sort of washes off that kind of smell of burning opium and becomes again, thoroughly respectable.

[William Dalrymple]

So these guys, the first Indian to become a British knight.

[Anita Anand]

Exactly. Forgot about that. He does become a British knight. So you've got, you know, these people who basically started a war for the right to sell drugs to a country that didn't want them, have got to the pinnacle of respectability, wealth and status in their fields.

[William Dalrymple]

And Matheson, just again, to spell it out very simply, is now the second largest landowner in the entire United Kingdom. He's bought half of Scotland.

[Anita Anand]

God, when you're talking about these poor porters and everybody else and the whole of South China collapsing, because now Shanghai is the port and on the other side you've got these reprobates who are suddenly like rockets, taking off into the firmament.

[Stephen Platt]

This is one of the wonderful ironies of the opium trade, that it's this salacious trade and trafficking and drugs and whatnot, but the individuals who are at the top of it are all viewed in their respective homes as being these extremely honorable, generous philanthropists. You have, like in Bombay, founding hospitals and schools and things like that. You have Thomas Handison Perkins in Massachusetts, who's helping to found the Massachusetts General Hospital and the Perkins School for the Blind. And these people who make fantastic amounts of money in the opium trade, view themselves as being these sort of gentlemanly benefactors. William Jardine writing in a letter to a correspondent that the opium trade is the most gentlemanly speculation I know of.

[Anita Anand]

Oh, please. Really?

[Stephen Platt]

And the same is true in China.

[Anita Anand]

The Chinese are involved in the trade, are insisting it's a decent way of earning a living.

[Stephen Platt]

But the opium kingpins in Fujian province are also viewed as sort of like pillars of the local society, where they are. And. And there are instances where there's more loyalty to them than to the imperial government.

[Anita Anand]

But there must be. I mean, you've gone through source material like nobody else has. Okay. Is there ever a scintilla of regret in any of these people, the sort of narco kingpins that actually what we'd done was not a good thing that we done at all, ever? Or did they think, don't care, don't care, don't think about it, don't care.

[Stephen Platt]

None comes to mind. Certainly not from Jardine and Matheson. And I should say, in contrast to Jejibhoi in Bombay or Thomas Anderson Perkins in Massachusetts, to my knowledge, Jardine and Matheson did not engage in philanthropy.

[Anita Anand]

They did not share nothing. Well, there we are. That's on brand now.

[Stephen Platt]

That's in bondage.

[William Dalrymple]

Land by land.

[Stephen Platt]

Nothing comes to mind of them in late life, on their deathbed, looking back and saying, I would be happier to go and meet my God if I had done a little better in my life.

[Anita Anand]

That's right. If I hadn't sort of got an entire continent hooked on opium and also destroyed an economy. Look, we're going to take a break here. Join us after the break where we plunge into the second Opium War. Hi, this is Katty K. From the Rest Is Politics. Us.

[Stephen Platt]

And this is Anthony Scaramucci.

[Anita Anand]

I've spent over two decades reporting from Washington. Presidents, well, they come and go. The chaos that never changes.

[Stephen Platt]

And I've been inside the eye of the storm. Eleven wild days in Trump's White House. I have seen how the sausage gets made and who's holding the knife.

[Anita Anand]

Yeah, that's not a nice image. But on the Rest Is Politics. Us. We break down the stories that are behind the headlines and we actually look at what they mean to America and the rest of the world as well.

[Stephen Platt]

We're not just talking politics, we're talking about power.

[Anita Anand]

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.

[Stephen Platt]

No spin, no filter. Reporting the stories you won't hear anywhere else.

[Anita Anand]

If you want smart analysis, global context, and a front row seat to the world's loudest democracy, this is the show.

[Stephen Platt]

It's from two people that have ringside seats, occasionally center stage, in a country where court cases and campaign rallies share the same parking lot.

[Anita Anand]

The rest is politics. US New episodes every week.

[William Dalrymple]

So we ended the last half with Jardine and Matheson becoming the second largest landowners in the United Kingdom, assholes that they are.

[Anita Anand]

Can I just say, but you might.

[William Dalrymple]

Have thought that having defeated China once and extracted the treaty ports that they were after, that the British were now going to leave China alone in terms of sort of gunships and warfare and just continue to make money from the ports they've opened up. But within 15 years, a second war is declared. And this time it's not just Britain, but it's Britain and France together. Tell us about the arrow and how that kicks it off.

[Stephen Platt]

If the grounds of the first Opium War were ignominious, the grounds of the second Opium War are just absurd. The reason for the war is because the British merchants in China were not getting as rich as they had hoped from the opening of the five treaty ports, from the Treaty of Nanjing. And also the Cantonese didn't want to let them into the city. Canton was supposed to be open, but the Cantonese hated them. The basic pretext for the war is that there was a Chinese smuggling vessel with a Chinese captain and a Chinese crew that had paid for the right to fly the Union Jack because that would make it immune to being searched by Chinese forces. I should say, like one of the other terms of the Treaty of Nanjing was extraterritoriality, that the British were only subject to British law when they were in China. So this was a Chinese smuggling ship, Chinese captain, Chinese crew, flying the British flag to protect itself. It was boarded by Qing agents. They arrested the captain and crew, and in the course of arresting them, somebody took down the British flag. The taking down of the British flag was taken as a sufficient insult to start another war.

[Anita Anand]

That was it. That's all it was.

[Stephen Platt]

That was it. But it was the insult of a Qing official taking down the British flag that had been flying on the boat.

[Anita Anand]

Are we to suppose then that they were just looking for an excuse to cement the destruction? It could have been anything. It could have been that. It could have been looking at a chicken funny in the marketplace. I mean, it could have been anything, really.

[Stephen Platt]

Exactly. And it's going to go through the same sort of explosion of controversy back in England. How can we be fighting a war on the basis of a this? In the case of the Second Opium War, there's going to be a point where they dissolve Parliament and hold new elections to try to disenfranchise the lawmakers who opposed this war. But it goes forward. So Britain and France, as allies, they go and they invade Canton and they go up to the north. It's an extended back and forth, but it's all going to end in 1860 with the British and French forces invading Beijing, driving the Emperor into hiding, into Manchuria, where he's going to die the following year, never coming back to his throne. And then the Emperor's Summer palace, which was, you know, about 800 acres of beautiful grounds and priceless buildings. The French are going to loot it and then the British are going to burn it to the ground.

[William Dalrymple]

Tell us about this, because this is sometimes sort of held to be almost the kind of burning of the library of Alexander. It's a massive war crime against an incredibly beautiful work of art.

[Stephen Platt]

Absolutely. I mean, Victor Hugo described the British and French as these bandits rampaging in China and destroying one of the great wonders of the world. The site of the Summer palace is a major nationalist site right now in China. If you go there, there are signs saying the Summer palace was the delight of the Chinese people until the imperialist British and French came and destroyed it in the Second Opium War. The reality of the Imperial Summer palace was that it was the Imperial Summer Palace. This is where the Emperor lived with his family and his concubines and all their servants and things like that. And ordinary Chinese people could not go in there.

[Anita Anand]

I'm with the ordinary Chinese people. I want to know what it looked like, where I wouldn't have been able.

[William Dalrymple]

To visit, like the Forbidden City. Courtyard after courtyard of wooden houses.

[Stephen Platt]

No, the Forbidden City was cold and uncomfortable and sterile. The Imperial Summer palace was pictured as like a massively expansive, beautiful park with water features and forests and little mountains that had been recreated, and all kinds of different pagoda buildings. There were European style buildings, actually as a symbol of imperialism in China. I mean, the only parts of the Summer palace that remain are these marble buildings that were built by Jesuit missionaries who served at the Qing court. And because they were made out of marble, they survived. So the ruins are still there for all the tourists to go and see and take their pictures with. But it's a sort of wonderful circularity because these buildings signify first of all that foreigners used to come in order to serve China, and then they came as the oppressors and conquerors.

[William Dalrymple]

Would it have looked a bit like Johol or Chengde or any of the other summer palaces, that kind of thing? Gorgeous lakes, woods.

[Stephen Platt]

Yeah. They tried to recreate scenery from other parts of the empire. It was really a world of its own. And the Xianfeng emperor, who was the emperor at the time, he had grown up there, and he almost never left it. He hated being in the Forbidden City. This was sort of his luxurious world that was just for him.

[William Dalrymple]

And the guy responsible for burning it down is what, the grandson of the Lord Elgin who strips the Parthenon of the Parthenon Marples. It's the same family.

[Stephen Platt]

Such a glorious family. Yes. Yeah. So the son of the man who took the Parthenon marbles, he's the one who burns down the Summer Palace.

[William Dalrymple]

I used to go dancing with that family. I remember the Bruce.

[Anita Anand]

You did?

[William Dalrymple]

Well, I grew up in Scotland.

[Anita Anand]

Can I just say? Of course you did. You know, in America, Stephen, you have these sort of boards which say, you know, three days without any kind of incident, no death. We don't get through one of these poems. I'm longing for one pod without a mention of William's family or disreputable connections with other families.

[William Dalrymple]

I'm not related to this lot, but I used to dance with them. I remember I used to do Scottish reels with Georgina Bruce.

[Stephen Platt]

It's like zero generations without imperial atrocity.

[Anita Anand]

It's not even generation, Stephen. It's every Bloomin podcast.

[Stephen Platt]

Okay, I can defend Elgin for a moment, though.

[Anita Anand]

Go on, then. Have a good.

[William Dalrymple]

On behalf of my old dancing partners, please put up the counter argument.

[Anita Anand]

Try.

[Stephen Platt]

In his defense. And nobody wanted to hear this. When he got back to England, he was an absolute pariah. But the burning of the Summer palace was ostensibly a reaction to the Qing having kidnapped and killed a group of diplomatic interpreters. So according to Elgin at the time, he said that his officers wanted to burn Beijing to the ground, so they.

[Anita Anand]

Restrained themselves and just did the Summer Palace. Okay.

[Stephen Platt]

Contra to the sign that's at the Summer palace today, saying this was the delight of the Chinese people, Elgin claimed that he destroyed the Summer palace because that was the only way to punish the Emperor of China without harming the people.

[Anita Anand]

Oh. I mean, you know, there's a point in there somewhere, I guess. How many of the diplomats were killed?

[Stephen Platt]

It was a small handful and a couple of their guards from India.

[Anita Anand]

Right.

[William Dalrymple]

But tell us, Stephen, the treaty that follows it. So just as we had the treaty at the end of the first open War giving over Hong Kong. What is the Convention of Peking and the Treaty of Tientsin? What is given over in this next slicing up of Chinese rights?

[Stephen Platt]

Essentially more treaty ports. And this was sort of the vision of the British in their war. Well, we haven't gotten rich yet. Now we can get some ports farther up north, we can get some ports up the Yangtze River. So the main terms of that were opening China further to British trade. And sort of quietly on the side, Lord Elgin signs a convention that legalizes opium. So it's the second Opium Opium War that finally legalizes opium.

[Anita Anand]

So how is it suddenly a good idea to legalise opium? I thought everybody was a guin it. Everybody on every side was saying, we'll make more money if it remains illegal. Certainly Jardine and Matheson, who seem to have the ear of anybody who's important, have wanted it to remain illegal. The Emperor wanted it to remain illegal. What is the pro here of suddenly legalising it?

[Stephen Platt]

All this is quite a ways after the first Opium War. And the first Opium War really was about opium. And that's the main thing that restrained, I think, the British government from just asking that this product be legalized because they needed this to be trafficked in China. With the second Opium War, the legalization, it's not the central reason for fighting the war. It almost comes as an afterthought because it's sort of de facto legal by this time. And this really just formalizes a constantly.

[Anita Anand]

Growing trade, legalizing opium. Does it lead to more addiction or less addiction?

[Stephen Platt]

It absolutely leads to more addiction that there is more opium being trafficked, there's going to be more opium grown in China, the trade is going to keep growing and growing. The British are eventually just going to get shut out of the trade and it's going to be primarily in the hands of natives from India and China.

[William Dalrymple]

So in a sense, Jardine and Matheson were right that it was better to keep it.

[Stephen Platt]

By the 1870s, Jardine and Matheson have to pull out of the opium trade because there isn't any profit to be made in it anymore.

[William Dalrymple]

How interesting, because the Chinese are growing it quicker and just doing deals with the parsis.

[Stephen Platt]

Absolutely. And by the time you get to the 20th century, most of the opium is being grown in China. This is the thing about the Opium War, that in the original Opium War, at that time, opium was still a very expensive luxury product in China. It was not widely used in the sense of peasants smoking opium and falling asleep on the ground. It was used by people who had the money to buy it, which is a much smaller part of the population. By the time you get to the 20th century, you know, 80 or 90% of the opium being used in China is being grown in China. And it's so cheap that it does spread through the entire society.

[Anita Anand]

I mean, it's crisis after crisis after crisis, and then humiliation. What are people saying at the time about, you know, what lessons they are learning from this entire experience?

[Stephen Platt]

Julia Lovell writes about this in her book on the Opium War, that this war was not called the Opium War in Chinese until nationalist historians in the 1920s picked it up as sort of the foundation of national humiliation, etc. During the Qing Dynasty, this was just considered sort of a border skirmish. It had nothing to compare to the war against the Taiping or the wars in Central Asia. But as far as what the legalization means for the government is that when it's legalized, the Chinese government establishes this very lucrative transit tax on opium shipments within China, which the Qing government comes to rely on. And after the Qing government is overthrown in 1912, the republican government comes to rely heavily on this. And actually, all the way through World War II, the KMT is relying heavily on opium revenue to help fund its military. The Communists, who are the ones who are eventually going to eradicate it during World War II, when they're at Yenan, they too are using these opium transit taxes to help fund their military. It becomes really sort of fundamental to government revenue within China until it's finally suppressed in the 1950s.

[William Dalrymple]

And this seems to be a story that's repeating itself over and over again in the course of this series that everyone says it's a bad thing, it should stop. But the economic imperative, whether it's the East India Company needing to produce it to pay their bills in India, whether it's the Chinese transit taxes at the time, the kmt, everyone benefits except the poor consumer. And the figures are that by the early decades of the 20th century, between 3 and 10% of Chinese population, as many as 50 million people, are using opium. So it's benefiting the government, but the people are massively addicted.

[Anita Anand]

Massively addicted, generationally impoverished.

[William Dalrymple]

The figure is 200 million people.

[Anita Anand]

200 million. Okay, so at what point does China start referring to this as they do now, to the hundred years of humiliation? I mean, at what point does that word, humiliation start coming in the Chinese.

[Stephen Platt]

Vocabulary in the 20th century? It does. So Chiang Kai Shek, at the top of his diary entries, writes, never forget national humiliation. Never forget national humiliation. It's Central to the Nationalists, I mean, one of the major projects of 20th century China was trying to unify the Chinese people and make them think of themselves as a nation. And the idea of the humiliation of China at the hands of imperial powers in the 19th century is going to be foundational to that. When you think about this, the idea of humiliation, that's not a domestic issue. You are humiliated in the eyes of someone else, you are humiliated in the eyes of other countries. And so in teaching the people of China to care about China as their family and their home, and that that entity has been humiliated in the eyes of the British and the French and the Americans and the Japanese, it's a binding force. Because if you go back to the Opium War at the time, nobody's paying attention to what the imperial government wants. Nobody really sees this as a shame because they're not invested in whether the imperial government succeeds or not.

[Anita Anand]

Yeah. I mean, they're just aliens. They're somewhere else. They're in cities we can't visit and palaces that we don't get to see.

[Stephen Platt]

Yeah, the people are subjects of the Emperor. They are not citizens. You know, his power does not come from them.

[Anita Anand]

So when the Communists start talking about humiliation and saying, this is what happens, I mean, to what level is it? I don't want to say indoctrinated. Well, maybe indoctrinated. I mean, are history books rewritten? Our school children drilled in this? I mean, at what point does this start becoming something that we can understand in the psyche of maybe China today? When the Chinese talk about never again, this is what they're referring to. At what point does that start to becoming inculcated in Chinese thinking?

[Stephen Platt]

Well, in terms of the Communists in China who came to power in 1949, it's really during the Korean War, in the early 1950s, that the Communists go all in on suppressing opium within China. And when they do, the campaign, it's cast as a patriotic campaign. So this is in the midst of the war in Korea, which was in China. It was described as the war to aid Korea and resist America. And the anti opium campaigns were cast as help Korea resist America, suppress opium. And they cast opium as the way that foreigners had oppressed the Chinese. And it's really in that view where you look back and you see, aha. China was never colonized per se, by the British. The British took ports, it was sort of semi colonial, but most of China was under the control of the Qing Empire. And then. And then the Republican government. So it wasn't directly colonized the way that India had been. But if you look at it through the lens of opium, you can come out with a view that the Chinese were absolutely enslaved by British opium and sort of made weak and kept under the thumb of the imperialists.

[Anita Anand]

You said, you know, actually, China was never colonized in all this humiliation. It wasn't colonized the way India was colonized. It was an economic invasion, if you like. Why wasn't it colonised? What was it about China that meant that actually the British didn't want to colonise it, the French didn't want to colonize it.

[Stephen Platt]

The tipping point really came during the Taiping Rebellion, right after the Second Opium War. So in 1860, the British had just fought two opium wars against the Qing government. They had destabilized it. Members of government realized that they had done a great deal to destabilize the government of China. China. They thought that, in fact, China might collapse. Here's where India comes back into the picture that this is just after the mutiny in India, and this is just after the British government has sort of taken control over India from the East India Company. And at this point in time, the very last thing that anyone in the British government wants to do is to colonize China. But they are concerned that if China collapses, like if the Qing Dynasty collapses and China sinks into anarchy, that the French will colonize China to the exclusion of British trade. And so, therefore, in order to prevent the possibility of France invading China and colonizing it, the British now take on what they see as a vested interest in keeping the Qing dynasty alive.

[Anita Anand]

So they're propping up the emperor that they sort of almost destroyed. That's so interesting.

[William Dalrymple]

How far is it in the language today of Xi Jinping? How far are they still talking about the century of humiliation? How far is it driving China in its reaction to the West? I mean, this week, Trump tried to impose tariffs. China trying to resist and realizing that it may also be a moment of opportunity. How does this play into all that?

[Stephen Platt]

Well, this comes up when you talk about trade issues with China, things like fentanyl, drug issues. I mean, China's position on that is we suffered the oath, Opium War. We are the last government that is ever going to be supportive of a drug trade. We are the most anti drug government there is on earth. But at the same time, I think the Chinese government has a little bit of the attitude that the British did prior to the Opium War, which is that people would appeal to the British government saying we should stop this trade. And the British government would Say, well, it's not our job to enforce China's laws for it.

[Anita Anand]

It.

[Stephen Platt]

And if the Chinese didn't buy this, then none of the British would be selling it to them.

[Anita Anand]

Just to be clear, the Chinese are making a large amount of fentanyl. I mean it's a sort of like it's, I mean there's a symmetry to this. I just wanted to clarify completely, you know, the Chinese manufacture fentanyl. Fentanyl is the blight of American lives. And what you're saying is the Chinese are saying it's not us, Governor. I mean we're just making the stuff. It's up to them if they want to buy it. Which is an incredibly mimics what Jardine, Matheson et al were saying about opium. We're not making them take it.

[Stephen Platt]

I mean to essentially throw up your hands and say that the United States is unable to police the fentanyl trade, we're unable to prevent our population from using this drug, therefore it's the fault of everybody else. That's what Trump is doing at the moment. The justification for all the tariffs that he's instituting right now are the emergency caused by fentanyl. So in a certain way he's invoking a kind of victimhood that America is the victim of foreigners who are allowing fentanyl into our country.

[Anita Anand]

Bloody hell. It's all just so similar. Nothing changes. It's all. We just go through it again and again and again.

[Stephen Platt]

I don't think the current moment will end with the PLA navy invading California to protect, you know, Chinese fentanyl dealers. So it's not going to go to that far of a parallel.

[William Dalrymple]

But you can say that the areas of America where fentanyl ran most rampant is MAGA central, isn't it? It is the poor blue collar, declining areas of America and this sense that the Chinese had of a people's being humiliated and having lost their place in the world, these are the people who are turning to opium. Is that too simplistic or not?

[Stephen Platt]

I mean the drug trade feeds on misery and those who profit from it are the ones who profit from the misery of us others. That's really the bottom line and that's the consistent thread through all of this.

[William Dalrymple]

In Amitav Ghosh's wonderful book Smoke and Ashes, he draws another parallel between the Chinese soul searching after the humiliations of the Opium War and the rise of MAGA and Trump. He talks about the way that the sense of a people's loss of their place in the world, the way that the Chinese feel that after their twin defeats in the two Opium wars, is similar to the sense of America losing its power, which has in some ways the engine behind the rise of Trump. This idea that you need to make America great again because it's in decline, it's no longer this central power as it was in the 20th century. And in both areas, we have these opioid crises taking root in the areas which are most humiliated, which are poorest. Is that a parallel you would endorse?

[Stephen Platt]

Absolutely. In both cases, the opioid crisis represents a lack of control over one's own population, the inability to enforce laws, the inability to suppress an illegal traffic within your country. And in both cases, there's sort of a turning outward to blame that on outsiders. You know, it can't be our fault. It must be the fault of the others who are forcing this on us. And there's that nostalgia there. I mean, for trumpets, the US Is still unquestionably central in the world. But he likes to sort of pretend that we've been weakened and we've fallen from where we were in the past. I think today, the way that the Opium War gets used by the Chinese government, really, about the year 2000 or so, Chinese diplomats backed off from using the century of humiliation as the centerpiece of how China presented itself to the world, largely because they were becoming powerful enough by them that the threat of a military powerhouse with a chip on its shoulder because of past insults and humiliations was something that seemed dangerous to the world. So instead, they talked about China's peaceful rise and how we're all going to get along together.

[Anita Anand]

Stephen, it has been such a pleasure to have you. Thank you so much for coming on. Stephen R. Platt, I cannot, cannot, cannot praise his book highly enough. Imperial Twilight is the one that we're all raving about. There is a new book which I can't wait to get my grubby little hands on, and that is the untold story of a renegade Marine. It's called the Raider, and it is out on May 13th. So we're recording that just before that.

[William Dalrymple]

And we have a new series to tell you about.

[Anita Anand]

Well, yes, I mean, we take turns in scratching our itches, if I can put it that way. So.

[William Dalrymple]

But so many elegantly put.

[Anita Anand]

Thank you. I'm a woman. I'm a woman of elegant words. But the thing is, a lot of the things that we've talked about in. In this episode, particularly about how China sees itself, there are three major countries which, referring to their dispossession or Their past are reinventing themselves and their spheres of influence stroke territorial gains. So China is, is one right now. You know, it's talking about sort of territorial gains. It's alarming the world with some of its naval movements right now, right here and now you've got Russia on the move. I mean, Ukraine, just one part of its growing sphere of influence. And of course, you've got America saying, you know what, we'll turn Gaza into a Mediterranean casino. We'll take the Panama Canal. We'll take Canada while we're at it, and Greenland, you can jump on board as well. So. So what I wanted to do was look at the last time somebody took a Sharpie to a map of the world and started drawing bigger circles around their countries. And the thing that came to mind was Yalta, the Yalta Conference after World War II. So I want to take us back to that moment when the war, war is about to be won. The defeat of the Nazis is guaranteed, but the peace is uncertain. And these three giants come together at Yalta. So you've got the Russians, you've got the British, and you've got the Americans, and they are looking at a world map like it's a game of risk and they're deciding who gets what. So that's what I wanted to look at and maybe look at some of the parallels. It's an interesting. Fascinating to me. So that'll be our next thing. That's what we're going to be doing next.

[William Dalrymple]

Thank you very much. Well, that's all for us this time. Goodbye from me, William Dalrymple.

[Anita Anand]

And it's goodbye from me, Anita Arnan. Before you go, can we tell you about something really exciting?

[William Dalrymple]

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[Anita Anand]

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[William Dalrymple]

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[Anita Anand]

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