Queen Victoria ascended to the throne of the British Empire in 1837. Shortly after, she was at war with China in the First Opium War (1839-1842). Here, Sam Kelly explains the background to the war, the war itself, and the curious drug-taking habits of the Queen and mid-nineteenth century Britain.
Lin Zexu and the destruction of opium.
Who is the most notorious drug kingpin of all time? Most people would say Pablo Escobar, or perhaps El Chapo. But they would be wrong. More than a hundred years before these men were born, there was a powerful woman who controlled a drug empire so vast and so unimaginably lucrative that it made Escobar and El Chapo look like low-level street dealers. Unlike modern drug lords, she didn’t have to live in a remote jungle compound surrounded by thugs toting machine guns because no one was coming after her. She didn’t have to conceal her ill-gotten gains from the tax collectors because the proceeds from her drug operation were funding the entire country. And she didn’t have to worry about being gunned down in the street or locked away in prison because every single person who was empowered to punish drug crimes was already on her payroll. Her name was Queen Victoria and she was running the British Empire.
Her meteoric rise as a drug lord began innocently enough. It happened because British people loved drinking tea. The average London household was spending 5% of its annual income on Chinese tea, which was not a problem as long as Britain could trade something to China in exchange for all the tea. Unfortunately, Britain didn’t have much that the Chinese wanted. China saw British manufactured goods as inferior and unnecessary. Having nothing to trade, Britain was forced to pay for tea with the currency of the realm, which was silver. Britain was almost literally pouring silver into China’s imperial treasury and racking up massive trade deficits in the process. China was getting rich, and Britain grew resentful. The British Empire was determined to find something, anything, that Chinese people craved.
They found opium. It ticked off all the boxes. It grew natively in India, which the British Empire controlled. It was an amazingly effective painkiller, which meant the Chinese were willing to pay outrageously high prices for it. And most importantly, it was obscenely addictive. People who used opium got hooked almost immediately, which allowed Britain to increase the price as demand grew.
Thanks to opium, the trade imbalance was reversed almost overnight. China was forced to return all of the silver the British had spent on tea, plus a great deal more. Now it was China, not Britain, that was racking up ruinous trade deficits. And millions of Chinese citizens were being transformed into hopeless opium addicts.
China Fights Back
China tried to put a stop to it. It declared opium illegal and banned it throughout the country. However, the British Empire wasn’t ready to give up its lucrative drug operation. If they could not sell opium legally, they would hire drug mules and third parties, pay off corrupt officials, or just plain smuggle it in, whatever it took to keep the money coming in. They even offered free samples of opium to Chinese citizens in a craven attempt to get as many people addicted as possible. From their point of view, it wasn’t personal; it was business, and business was extremely good. Opium sales were now responsible for some 15% - 20% of the British Empire’s annual revenue.
The Chinese Emperor was determined to wipe out the opium scourge by any means necessary. His viceroy, a man named Lin Zexu, wrote a letter to Queen Victoria, explaining what she was doing was immoral. Opium was illegal in England and punished with the utmost strictness and severity, yet she was flooding China with opium and deliberately getting people hooked. The Queen never saw the letter and when she did not respond to his letter, Lin Wexu decided it was time to take aggressive action. He seized a massive shipment of British opium and ordered his soldiers to trample it under their feet and then dump it into the South China Sea. This time, the Queen responded.
Something you need to understand: Queen Victoria was only 18 years old when she ascended to the throne in 1837. She was new in the job – and under the impression that, as queen, she could do whatever she wanted. So when the Chinese government dumped 2.5 million pounds of British opium into the sea, she reacted like any all-powerful young imperial leader would. She declared war on China in 1839.
It is known as the First Opium War (1839-1842). There was a Second Opium War a few years later (1856-60). British forces laid waste to the Chinese army and slaughtered tens of thousands of Chinese citizens. The Emperor had no choice but to capitulate and sign a one-sided peace treaty that surrendered Hong Kong to the British, opened additional ports for British opium to flood into the country, and granted British citizens who were living in China immunity to Chinese laws. It was an unprecedented blow to the nation’s sovereignty. The esteemed empire of China had been defeated and humbled by a young ruler. China was now perceived as weak by the rest of world, making it ripe for invasion and subjugation by Western powers, Russia, and Japan. And so began China’s tragic “century of humiliation.”
Queen Victoria Was a Drug User
But why? Why did Queen Victoria choose to bring ruin and shame upon one of the world’s most ancient civilizations simply to preserve her illegal drug smuggling operation? Partly it was due to being given too much power at too young of an age. And partly it was due to the nationalistic impulse to regard British wealth and happiness as more important than the lives of Asian peoples halfway around the world. But it certainly didn’t help matters that she was on drugs. Yes, that is correct. Her Majesty the Queen was not only selling drugs, she was using them.
She used opium every day. Unlike the Chinese citizens who became addicted, she did not smoke it in a pipe. In Britain, the more fashionable way to ingest opium was to drink it in the form of laudanum, comprised of 90% alcohol and 10% opium. Laudanum was available over the counter without a prescription. Doctors recommended it to mothers for their teething children. Queen Victoria drank a glass every night to help her sleep.
Her other drug of choice was cocaine. It was not illegal at the time. Cocaine was brand new on the scene and regarded as a wonder drug. European explorers had witnessed indigenous peoples living on the slopes of the Andes Mountains, who chewed coca leaves regularly and had amazing stamina and were strong and hardy, despite being physically small. European scientists reached the conclusion the same active ingredient from coca leaves would have even greater salutary effects on Europeans who, in their not-so-scientific and racist opinion, were inherently healthier, stronger and more intelligent than their South American counterparts.
Queen Victoria was a particular fan of cocaine chewing gum. It came highly recommended for soothing aches and pains from tooth and gum disease, plus it supplied the chewer with boundless amounts of energy, and for reasons that were unexplainable at the time, it tremendously boosted one’s feeling of self-confidence – just the ticket for a young inexperienced Queen who desired to project a strong assertive image. It was extremely popular with British elites. In fact, Victoria is reported to have shared cocaine chewing gum with a young Winston Churchill. Back in those days, no one knew about the downside of cocaine use. Doctors and scientists genuinely believed it was good for you.
Which brings me to the final twist in this story: Because she believed cocaine was good for you, Queen Victoria refused to sell it to the Chinese. She was happy to sell them all of the opium in the world, despite its devastating effects, but they could not touch her cocaine.
What do you think of Queen Victoria and the First Opium War? Let us know below.
References
Stephen R. Platt, Imperial Twilight: The Opium War and the End of China’s Last Golden Age. Knopf 2018.
Tom de Castella, “100 Years of the War on Drugs,” BBC News Magazine, January 24, 2012, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/mobile/magazine-16681673
Matt Schiavenza, “How Humiliation Drove Modern Chinese History,” The Atlantic, October 25, 2013, https://www.theatlantic.com/china/archive/2013/10/how-humiliation-drove-modern-chinese-history/280878/
Ellen Castelow, “Opium in Victorian Britain,” Historic UK, https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/Opium-in-Victorian-Britain/
“Did This Beloved Queen of Britain Use Drugs,” Smithsonian Magazine, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/videos/category/history/did-this-beloved-queen-of-britain-use-drugs/
“The Opium War and Foreign Encroachment,” Asia for Educators, Columbia University, http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/special/china_1750_opium.htm
