[...]... this The book does indeed begin with opium This is because opium leads directly to the book's subject, which isI draw upon the original prefacewesterners in China in the early decades of the nineteenth century and the war, the Opium War, that they brought on The war is the centerpiece, And at the time I wrote, in the late sixties and early seventies, I intended (save for a few generalizations) nothing... Bridge, the breaking out in 1801 of the so-called "Gin War" (it began when Pitt tried to stop the importation into England of grain spirits from the great Chinese dependency on the Mississippi and ended when twenty-five junks of war caught Nelson's numerically superior squadron off the Goodwin Sands and destroyed it), the consequent cession to the Chinese of the Isle of Wight and a strip of the mainland... Shirley Marneus most of all The book is very much better for the skillful editing of Gwen Duffey of the University of North Carolina Press I owe the index to Carol B Pearson, the Chinese characters (which translate "opium war" ) to Mingshui Hung of Brooklyn College, the typing and retyping to Joy Hansen and her colleagues in the Humanities Division secretarial pool, the maps to Pat Lee and hers Years ago... the springs were poisoned, and when three war junks suspected of directing it refused to move off, Elliot sent a cutter and two other craft and almost blew them, much larger though they were, out of the water Was this the beginning of the war, the Opium War? In those days, formality and habit required at the start of a war a declaration to that effect, a declaration accompanied by the withdrawal of ambassadors... hundred in the shade and terrible dry storms drive the dust so high into the air you may look the sun full in the face without flinching, it is hard to imagine anyone doing anything at Ghazipur save wait for the rains of the summer monsoon to sweep up from the Bay of Bengal But in fact there is activity here even at this time of the year For Ghazipur is one of the few places in the world where opium. .. pounds sterling Elliot had persuaded the merchants involved (Lin, no fool, had a pretty good idea who they were and how much of the stuff they had) to send for the chests Naturally, they were not in the river, but in receiving ships (floating warehouses) out in the gulf or up the coast, or in the opium clippers that had brought them from Calcutta Getting word to these vessels had taken time There was... with China Nevertheless it may be worth observing how odd, how unexpected, that process and those relations have been For suppose the Chinese had been the openers instead of the opened Suppose the sighting of Land's End by an expedition sent from China early in the sixteenth century Suppose mandarins in silk gowns demanding audience of James I, merchant junks discharging teas and loading wool and tin at... inspection and weighing it is poured into large rectangular stone vats standing side by side in a warehouse The smell is the smell of new-mown hay, but the look is the look of tar Later, in the dry weather before the rains come and in the dry weather after, the drug is taken out of the vats a little at a time and carried to an open space near the high brick wall There it is spread in shallow wooden trays set... notwas the fact that she had been brought to London at all, and by Englishmen How could there be, on the island of Hongkong in the summer of 1846, Englishmen in a position to buy a junk and fit her out? How could there be an English governor to pay her a courtesy call and a union jack to do it under? For at the beginning of the nineteenth century the English were scarcely to be found east of Calcutta There... Peking, a few dozen Catholic missionaries scattered furtively about the interior, a few hundred Portuguese roosting idle and neglected on the tiny peninsula of Macao, and a handful of merchants carrying on a limited trade at Canton made up the sum of the western presence in the immense Chinese Empire And the sum was not significantly inflated during the first third of the century By 1846, however, things . Document Page iii The Opium War 1840–1842 Barbarians in the Celestial Empire in the Early Part of the Nineteenth Century and the War by Which They Forced Her Gates Ajar by Peter Ward Fay unc11.gif . Data Fay, Peter Ward, 1924- The Opium War, 1840–1842: barbarians in the Celestial Empire in the early part of the nineteenth century and the war by which they forced her gates ajar = [Ya. the book's subject, which isI draw upon the original prefacewesterners in China in the early decades of the nineteenth century and the war, the Opium War, that they brought on. The war