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I previously read “Imperial Twilight” which examines the historical context that led up to the Opium Wars. Given it was recommended to me on HN, I’ll pass on t

I previously read “Imperial Twilight” which examines the historical context that led up to the Opium Wars. Given it was recommended to me on HN, I’ll pass on the recommendation in kind for anyone wishing to learn more about some of the context surrounding this. Really a quite different world with respect to power balances and, as has been noted in this thread, a cornerstone of the Chinese worldview.

clairity 6y ago
the interesting tidbit from the article related to this: "The lopsided British victory in the first Opium War (1839-42) inaugurated what is known today in China as the ‘century of humiliation’.... Only with the rise and victory of the Communist Party in 1949, the nationalist lore goes, could the original shame of military defeat and colonialism be redeemed." so in effect, british imperialism, through a coerced opium trade, pushed china from capitalism to communism.
- keiferski 6y ago
  You’re missing the Chinese Civil War, which started in the 20s and didn’t conclude until after WW2.
  - clairity 6y ago
    no, that's part of the cascade of events.
    - keiferski 6y ago
      This seems like an opportune time to quote Billions (from the episode two weeks ago): "...and he did, because you did, because his parents, and your parents, because America, because England, because ancient Rome, because primordial ooze."
      - mrcorona 6y ago
        Is this quote about the foreign criminal activity in China?
        TheGallopedHigh 6y ago
        No it’s about where does one draw the line to events that led to the present situation.
        alextheparrot 6y ago
        It is just a reductio ad absurdum of the posts it was responding to, wherein anything can be ascribed as a "cascade of events" with no clear place to to pick the root. While you can model the world like this, one of the issues is often determining the "first mover", as it is hard to reasonable assert that the complexities of our world are primarily caused by primordial ooze. To continue the reduction, someone could come and say "Because a molten earth" after "Because primordial ooze" and there isn't necessarily grounds to refute that if the "Because primordial ooze" point was accepted.
- gumby 6y ago
  > so in effect, british imperialism, through a coerced opium trade, pushed china from capitalism to communism. That's too crude an analysis. The Qing dynasty was hidebound and in long decline, the feudal system was breaking down, and the communists were only one faction fighting in the civil war. During WWII the nationalists were provided training, support and materiel by the US; the communists received the same from the Soviets. The Opium War was merely one in a chain of events, and far from the most proximal.
  - clairity 6y ago
    yes, but the opium wars sowed mistrust and discord, souring chinese folks on euro-centric westernism, and capitalism was held up as the shining beacon of westernism for the last century or two. that prior systems were crumbling and other factions fueling the fight is (co-)incidental. for instance, the US spent most of the 20th century vilifying communism/socialism, going to war, invading other countries, and undermining independent states through all manner of subterfuge. do you really think it's that far-fetched that those experiences pushed china away from the kind of budding capitalism described in the article? certainly open to debate, but not summary dismissal.
    - keiferski 6y ago
      Your thesis really doesn't hold up to history. The Nationalists were winning the Chinese Civil War until WW2 put the conflict on hold. Had Chiang Kai-shek made a few different decisions, there would be no communist China.
      - clairity 6y ago
        no, chiang kai-skek wouldn't have even been in the position to make a series of mistakes had the people not been mistrustful of the british and looking for an alternative.
        keiferski 6y ago
        I’m not really sure what argument you’re trying to make. Obviously the British had an impact on Chinese history at the time. How that directly leads to communism is again, unclear and contingent on a number of other factors, many of which could have easily been very different. I don’t see how one can argue for a direct link.
- arminiusreturns 6y ago
  Lets not forget they straight up supported Mao against the nationalist and American friendly Chiang Kai-Shek.
  - boomboomsubban 6y ago
    When? The UK supported Kai-Shek through WWII, when they agreed not to intervene.
    - arminiusreturns 6y ago
      Agreeing to not intervene is a long way away from supporting CKS, and not to mention Mao didn't realize rise to power till post-WWII. So to answer your question when, I think in 49 after Mao really solidified power and began to be recognized by other nations. I tried to remember what book I read this in but can't at the moment, but more or less the British were not the most happy about the balance of power status of the pacific after the pacific war (especially after losing naval balance of power in the Atlantic also), so while America was supplying and financing CKS, the British (post-WWII) started at first quietly supporting Mao and then later being one of the first governments to officially recognize and then supply Mao. At least partly a planned Asian type of strategy of tension with Stalin in the northern regions of Mongolia, etc. (they had planned to perhaps let the KMT have a sliver of the south) The reason the British hated CKS and KMT was because they were the heirs of Sun Yat-sen's anti-colonialist movement that sought modern economic development and because of pragmatic or what others might call Machiavellian strategic reasons for not wanting the US to completely dominate the pacific and Asia (which an American friendly nationalist would have made more likely). Interestingly enough, I view the Korean war (police action) as just an extension of this (Cambridge5/6) but I'll leave that for some other time and/or place.
      - boomboomsubban 6y ago
        So they supported Mao after the civil war had ended, largely by recognizing their existence, while still going to war with them over Korea. Not really fair to say they supported him against Kai-Shek, nor to say it was some grand anti-American strategy. Their primary concern in the region was Hong Kong.
- joyj2nd 6y ago
  "through a coerced opium trade," You forgot to mention WHY the opium trade happened. China was exporting tea, silk and porcelain like there is no tomorrow and at the same time had accumulated the majority of the world silver reserves since they did not want to buy anything, therefore chocking the world economy. Then the British said, wait, we have something that you want to buy!
  - clairity 6y ago
    well yes, but the british, like any astute drug dealer, pushed the product on the buyer. it wasn't like the chinese had huge latent demand that wasn't being fulfilled. it was largely induced to loosen the stockpiles.
    - solidsnack9000 6y ago
      There was, in fact, huge demand. The delivery of British opium to China required a lot of help from Chinese merchants. Opium was legal in China and had been brought in from abroad for several hundred years by that point. Importation was banned in the 1700s after the Portuguese got into the business; but excluding foreigners did not actually exclude foreign opium, since Chinese merchants would bring it in and pass it off as Chinese-sourced opium.
      - clairity 6y ago
        none of those assertions provides any relevant rationale for huge pre-existing demand prior to the british desire to extract riches in exchange for drugs.
        solidsnack9000 6y ago
        Demand for opium was on the upswing in China before the British entered the trade. The British did not have a power to manufacture demand in China and in fact could not place personnel in China. British opium was smuggled into China by Chinese merchants.
- nickik 6y ago
  They were not meaningfully capitalist in the first place. An Communist don't just 'take over' a huge amount of things, happened to get to that point. To draw a straight line between these two things is just reading history knowing the result and then declaring it deterministic. Any potentially history of China would have run into their own weakness eventually, no matter what Britain did, modern ideas would invade the country, no matter what Britain did Japan was rising already, no matter what Britain did, WW2 would have happened anyway. There is no alternative history where China remains idyllic pre-modern empire in the modern world. And the 100 year timeline doesn't really add up, after the Communist Party took over they were not exactly powerful and absolutely destroyed the country without outside influence for while, only when they eventually embraced modern capitalistic principles did they truly emerge from their weakness.
- solidsnack9000 6y ago
  Pushed it from merchantilism to...
  - clairity 6y ago
    the article (competently) argues that china had a fairly global, capitalistic economic system in the late 1800s/early 1900s as exemplified by tea and it's influence on rural trade.
    - solidsnack9000 6y ago
      The protectionist model of trade -- the Canton system -- and similar restrictions dramatically limit private property rights. They put trade at the service of the nation, not at the service of private self-interest; and that is not capitalist.
      - boomboomsubban 6y ago
        The Canton System was abolished in 1842.
        solidsnack9000 6y ago
        The root comment was arguing that British imperialism and the opium wars led China to go from "capitalism to communism" but it's not reasonable to describe the system before British imperialism as "capitalism". https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23302410 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23302410 The end of the Canton System after the first Opium War doesn't have any bearing on what the economics were like in the time that preceded it.
        boomboomsubban 6y ago
        >it's not reasonable to describe the system before British imperialism as "capitalism". That root comment is sharing an interesting tidbit from the article, which is about the Chinese economy during the "Century of Humiliation."
- mrcorona 6y ago
  >so in effect, british imperialism, through a coerced opium trade, pushed china from capitalism to communism. I agree with this sentiment. China in a vacuum would be more open than it ended up. Having to deal with bad-faith/dangerous neighbors would make you a more controlling parent as well.
- ertian 6y ago
  Keep in mind, this is the rhetoric of the CCP, and used to legitimize their continuing rule even after they've dropped all but the barest facade of actual communism. In the modern Chinese imagination, the Opium Wars loom large as a devastating humiliation to the entire Chinese civilization; but as I understand it, to the Empire itself it was mostly seen as an annoyance--and to many of it's subjects, it was a welcome blow to the 'foreign' Qing dynasty (who were Manchu, not Han). Both Opium Wars combined only led to a few thousand casualties; compare that to, say, the Taiping Rebellion, which was a contemporary event (1850s and 60s) and led to somewhere between 10 and 30 million dead overall, per Wikipedia. At some points, whole provinces were controlled by the Taiping. Compared to that, the Opium Wars just looked like an annoyance by some foreign pirates. It was only later, when it became clear how technologically behind China really was, and when nationalism surged after the fall of the Empire, that the Opium Wars began to seem hugely important. And after the Communists took over in 1949, they vastly inflated the significance in retrospect in order to drive the narrative that the CCP had rescued China. My wife is from China and came up through their educational system. She barely remembered the Taiping Rebellion, and had no idea what it had been about or how many people had died as a result. But she knew _individual artworks_ that had been stolen by the invaders from the Summer Palace. That's a bit crazy.
  - clairity 6y ago
    yes, appreciate the added detail, but even if it were solely propaganda, enough of the populace latched onto the idea that the opium wars were humiliating to sway history away from western ideals. the fascinating part is the butterfly effect[0] in action. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect
  - blackrock 6y ago
    This is a false historical perspective. You’re either purposely spreading a lie, or you’re being historically ignorant. And realize that this is the running excuse given by Western nations, in order to delegitimize China, and to cover up the Western nations’ own historical moral failings. After all, why bother to admit that you f‘ed up, when you can easily blame someone else? Easy, just blame China for their own stupidity and inferiority in losing the Opium Wars to the superior white people. After the Opium War 1, China was effectively a puppet government under the British. But, after the Opium War 2, it was completely a puppet government, under all the western countries (including the United States). Why? Because the Chinese authorities were under house arrest. The western countries stationed their military outside the imperial palace. Did you even know about this? The westerners, as kind as they were, gave the Chinese authorities a democratic choice. 1) Enforce our edicts and pay our ransom, or 2) We will kill all of you on the spot. Hah! So what choice do you really have? The sole purpose of the Western nations were to drug the Chinese population, in order to extract maximum profit. The Taiping Rebellion was the result of foreign control of China. The Chinese peasants were sick of being treated as human scum by the foreign white powers. Imagine black African slavery in the United States, but this time, the Chinese slaves actually revolted, in their attempt to throw out the white people. So in America, the whites enslaved the blacks for labor. While in China, the whites enslaved the Chinese, as drug addicts, in order to extract maximum profit from them. And not surprisingly, this bit of historical perspective is not taught or even discussed in any western textbook. Ahh.. let’s just brush our [westerners] bad behavior of the past, under the rugs. It happened a long time ago, let’s just forget about it, ok?
ngold 6y ago
All china had to do was buy top of the line warships from Britain in exchange for tea. But there doesn't seem to an intelligence service worth it's salt in the imperial palace at the time. Didn't china learn to get it's navy together after the largest pirate empire in the history of the world forced it to capitulate? So the woman that ran it could retire.

clairity 6y ago

the interesting tidbit from the article related to this: "The lopsided British victory in the first Opium War (1839-42) inaugurated what is known today in China as the ‘century of humiliation’.... Only with the rise and victory of the Communist Party in 1949, the nationalist lore goes, could the original shame of military defeat and colonialism be redeemed." so in effect, british imperialism, through a coerced opium trade, pushed china from capitalism to communism.

keiferski 6y ago
You’re missing the Chinese Civil War, which started in the 20s and didn’t conclude until after WW2.
- clairity 6y ago
  no, that's part of the cascade of events.
  - keiferski 6y ago
    This seems like an opportune time to quote Billions (from the episode two weeks ago): "...and he did, because you did, because his parents, and your parents, because America, because England, because ancient Rome, because primordial ooze."
    - mrcorona 6y ago
      Is this quote about the foreign criminal activity in China?
      - TheGallopedHigh 6y ago
        No it’s about where does one draw the line to events that led to the present situation.
      - alextheparrot 6y ago
        It is just a reductio ad absurdum of the posts it was responding to, wherein anything can be ascribed as a "cascade of events" with no clear place to to pick the root. While you can model the world like this, one of the issues is often determining the "first mover", as it is hard to reasonable assert that the complexities of our world are primarily caused by primordial ooze. To continue the reduction, someone could come and say "Because a molten earth" after "Because primordial ooze" and there isn't necessarily grounds to refute that if the "Because primordial ooze" point was accepted.
gumby 6y ago
> so in effect, british imperialism, through a coerced opium trade, pushed china from capitalism to communism. That's too crude an analysis. The Qing dynasty was hidebound and in long decline, the feudal system was breaking down, and the communists were only one faction fighting in the civil war. During WWII the nationalists were provided training, support and materiel by the US; the communists received the same from the Soviets. The Opium War was merely one in a chain of events, and far from the most proximal.
- clairity 6y ago
  yes, but the opium wars sowed mistrust and discord, souring chinese folks on euro-centric westernism, and capitalism was held up as the shining beacon of westernism for the last century or two. that prior systems were crumbling and other factions fueling the fight is (co-)incidental. for instance, the US spent most of the 20th century vilifying communism/socialism, going to war, invading other countries, and undermining independent states through all manner of subterfuge. do you really think it's that far-fetched that those experiences pushed china away from the kind of budding capitalism described in the article? certainly open to debate, but not summary dismissal.
  - keiferski 6y ago
    Your thesis really doesn't hold up to history. The Nationalists were winning the Chinese Civil War until WW2 put the conflict on hold. Had Chiang Kai-shek made a few different decisions, there would be no communist China.
    - clairity 6y ago
      no, chiang kai-skek wouldn't have even been in the position to make a series of mistakes had the people not been mistrustful of the british and looking for an alternative.
      - keiferski 6y ago
        I’m not really sure what argument you’re trying to make. Obviously the British had an impact on Chinese history at the time. How that directly leads to communism is again, unclear and contingent on a number of other factors, many of which could have easily been very different. I don’t see how one can argue for a direct link.
arminiusreturns 6y ago
Lets not forget they straight up supported Mao against the nationalist and American friendly Chiang Kai-Shek.
- boomboomsubban 6y ago
  When? The UK supported Kai-Shek through WWII, when they agreed not to intervene.
  - arminiusreturns 6y ago
    Agreeing to not intervene is a long way away from supporting CKS, and not to mention Mao didn't realize rise to power till post-WWII. So to answer your question when, I think in 49 after Mao really solidified power and began to be recognized by other nations. I tried to remember what book I read this in but can't at the moment, but more or less the British were not the most happy about the balance of power status of the pacific after the pacific war (especially after losing naval balance of power in the Atlantic also), so while America was supplying and financing CKS, the British (post-WWII) started at first quietly supporting Mao and then later being one of the first governments to officially recognize and then supply Mao. At least partly a planned Asian type of strategy of tension with Stalin in the northern regions of Mongolia, etc. (they had planned to perhaps let the KMT have a sliver of the south) The reason the British hated CKS and KMT was because they were the heirs of Sun Yat-sen's anti-colonialist movement that sought modern economic development and because of pragmatic or what others might call Machiavellian strategic reasons for not wanting the US to completely dominate the pacific and Asia (which an American friendly nationalist would have made more likely). Interestingly enough, I view the Korean war (police action) as just an extension of this (Cambridge5/6) but I'll leave that for some other time and/or place.
    - boomboomsubban 6y ago
      So they supported Mao after the civil war had ended, largely by recognizing their existence, while still going to war with them over Korea. Not really fair to say they supported him against Kai-Shek, nor to say it was some grand anti-American strategy. Their primary concern in the region was Hong Kong.
joyj2nd 6y ago
"through a coerced opium trade," You forgot to mention WHY the opium trade happened. China was exporting tea, silk and porcelain like there is no tomorrow and at the same time had accumulated the majority of the world silver reserves since they did not want to buy anything, therefore chocking the world economy. Then the British said, wait, we have something that you want to buy!
- clairity 6y ago
  well yes, but the british, like any astute drug dealer, pushed the product on the buyer. it wasn't like the chinese had huge latent demand that wasn't being fulfilled. it was largely induced to loosen the stockpiles.
  - solidsnack9000 6y ago
    There was, in fact, huge demand. The delivery of British opium to China required a lot of help from Chinese merchants. Opium was legal in China and had been brought in from abroad for several hundred years by that point. Importation was banned in the 1700s after the Portuguese got into the business; but excluding foreigners did not actually exclude foreign opium, since Chinese merchants would bring it in and pass it off as Chinese-sourced opium.
    - clairity 6y ago
      none of those assertions provides any relevant rationale for huge pre-existing demand prior to the british desire to extract riches in exchange for drugs.
      - solidsnack9000 6y ago
        Demand for opium was on the upswing in China before the British entered the trade. The British did not have a power to manufacture demand in China and in fact could not place personnel in China. British opium was smuggled into China by Chinese merchants.
nickik 6y ago
They were not meaningfully capitalist in the first place. An Communist don't just 'take over' a huge amount of things, happened to get to that point. To draw a straight line between these two things is just reading history knowing the result and then declaring it deterministic. Any potentially history of China would have run into their own weakness eventually, no matter what Britain did, modern ideas would invade the country, no matter what Britain did Japan was rising already, no matter what Britain did, WW2 would have happened anyway. There is no alternative history where China remains idyllic pre-modern empire in the modern world. And the 100 year timeline doesn't really add up, after the Communist Party took over they were not exactly powerful and absolutely destroyed the country without outside influence for while, only when they eventually embraced modern capitalistic principles did they truly emerge from their weakness.
solidsnack9000 6y ago
Pushed it from merchantilism to...
- clairity 6y ago
  the article (competently) argues that china had a fairly global, capitalistic economic system in the late 1800s/early 1900s as exemplified by tea and it's influence on rural trade.
  - solidsnack9000 6y ago
    The protectionist model of trade -- the Canton system -- and similar restrictions dramatically limit private property rights. They put trade at the service of the nation, not at the service of private self-interest; and that is not capitalist.
    - boomboomsubban 6y ago
      The Canton System was abolished in 1842.
      - solidsnack9000 6y ago
        The root comment was arguing that British imperialism and the opium wars led China to go from "capitalism to communism" but it's not reasonable to describe the system before British imperialism as "capitalism". https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23302410 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23302410 The end of the Canton System after the first Opium War doesn't have any bearing on what the economics were like in the time that preceded it.
        boomboomsubban 6y ago
        >it's not reasonable to describe the system before British imperialism as "capitalism". That root comment is sharing an interesting tidbit from the article, which is about the Chinese economy during the "Century of Humiliation."
mrcorona 6y ago
>so in effect, british imperialism, through a coerced opium trade, pushed china from capitalism to communism. I agree with this sentiment. China in a vacuum would be more open than it ended up. Having to deal with bad-faith/dangerous neighbors would make you a more controlling parent as well.
ertian 6y ago
Keep in mind, this is the rhetoric of the CCP, and used to legitimize their continuing rule even after they've dropped all but the barest facade of actual communism. In the modern Chinese imagination, the Opium Wars loom large as a devastating humiliation to the entire Chinese civilization; but as I understand it, to the Empire itself it was mostly seen as an annoyance--and to many of it's subjects, it was a welcome blow to the 'foreign' Qing dynasty (who were Manchu, not Han). Both Opium Wars combined only led to a few thousand casualties; compare that to, say, the Taiping Rebellion, which was a contemporary event (1850s and 60s) and led to somewhere between 10 and 30 million dead overall, per Wikipedia. At some points, whole provinces were controlled by the Taiping. Compared to that, the Opium Wars just looked like an annoyance by some foreign pirates. It was only later, when it became clear how technologically behind China really was, and when nationalism surged after the fall of the Empire, that the Opium Wars began to seem hugely important. And after the Communists took over in 1949, they vastly inflated the significance in retrospect in order to drive the narrative that the CCP had rescued China. My wife is from China and came up through their educational system. She barely remembered the Taiping Rebellion, and had no idea what it had been about or how many people had died as a result. But she knew _individual artworks_ that had been stolen by the invaders from the Summer Palace. That's a bit crazy.
- clairity 6y ago
  yes, appreciate the added detail, but even if it were solely propaganda, enough of the populace latched onto the idea that the opium wars were humiliating to sway history away from western ideals. the fascinating part is the butterfly effect[0] in action. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect
- blackrock 6y ago
  This is a false historical perspective. You’re either purposely spreading a lie, or you’re being historically ignorant. And realize that this is the running excuse given by Western nations, in order to delegitimize China, and to cover up the Western nations’ own historical moral failings. After all, why bother to admit that you f‘ed up, when you can easily blame someone else? Easy, just blame China for their own stupidity and inferiority in losing the Opium Wars to the superior white people. After the Opium War 1, China was effectively a puppet government under the British. But, after the Opium War 2, it was completely a puppet government, under all the western countries (including the United States). Why? Because the Chinese authorities were under house arrest. The western countries stationed their military outside the imperial palace. Did you even know about this? The westerners, as kind as they were, gave the Chinese authorities a democratic choice. 1) Enforce our edicts and pay our ransom, or 2) We will kill all of you on the spot. Hah! So what choice do you really have? The sole purpose of the Western nations were to drug the Chinese population, in order to extract maximum profit. The Taiping Rebellion was the result of foreign control of China. The Chinese peasants were sick of being treated as human scum by the foreign white powers. Imagine black African slavery in the United States, but this time, the Chinese slaves actually revolted, in their attempt to throw out the white people. So in America, the whites enslaved the blacks for labor. While in China, the whites enslaved the Chinese, as drug addicts, in order to extract maximum profit from them. And not surprisingly, this bit of historical perspective is not taught or even discussed in any western textbook. Ahh.. let’s just brush our [westerners] bad behavior of the past, under the rugs. It happened a long time ago, let’s just forget about it, ok?

ngold 6y ago

All china had to do was buy top of the line warships from Britain in exchange for tea. But there doesn't seem to an intelligence service worth it's salt in the imperial palace at the time. Didn't china learn to get it's navy together after the largest pirate empire in the history of the world forced it to capitulate? So the woman that ran it could retire.