Second Opium War

They were doing it right then.

It was the Second Opium War.

And he said, you better be nice to me because if you're not, the British will come.

So the whole opening of Japan, it's often phrased in polite terms, that Commodore Perry opened Japan.

Right.

And after the Second Opium War, they lost their cash cow.

And you can, you know, watch where before opium became legal, they owned 85% of the emerging steel infrastructure in the Far East, you know, steamship lines and railways.

And after they lost their cash cow, you can see where, oh gosh, they start losing that control.

As this latest retrospective of Melvin Bragg's stunning collection of In Our Time points out, Tzu-Zi managed to balance the extremely conservative Confucian traditions with a determination to wield power that enabled her to become the most outstanding political figure of the 19th century in China.

Unsurprisingly, Xi faced numerous enemies and challenges, ascending to power at the tail end of the devastating Taiping Rebellion, regarded by some as the bloodiest civil war in history, and the Second Opium War, which drove home the message to the Chinese population that their country was becoming the focus of intense imperialist competition between the European great powers, the United States and Japan.

To understand China today means appreciating the weight of its 19th century history, and to understand that means grasping the role of the Empress Dowager Cixi.

In Our Time provides the perfect nuanced introduction.

And the other armies, which is called the Bannermans, which is also a very superior and important military communities that the Qing court used to rely on, were, again, I mean, no longer capable of fighting against these Taipings.

So the Qing had no choice but to decentralize its military powers, I mean, to local general regional leaders.

You also then have the Second Opium War, which ends in 1860 with the burning of the Summer Palace by British troops in revenge for the killing of hostages kept by the Chinese.

Again, another very traumatic turning point.

Instead, the aftermath of the First Opium War saw rampant Western imperialism target China and its valuable new trading ports.

Consequently, having failed to persuade the government to renegotiate the Treaty of Nanking, the Second Opium War between Britain and China began in 1856.

And China, already under pressure from internal rebellions, faced another attack.

This became the Second Opium War.

It lasted from 1856 to 1860, and it pushed China even deeper into the foreign-controlled world order.

More ports were opened.

A tributary system is different from, like, a modern imperial system.

But whatever control or stability that China exerted on, uh, the broader region that allowed this very stable hundreds of years of peace, or at least isolation between Japan, Korea, and China to persist, that was pretty demolished by the First Opium War from, uh, 1839 to 1842, the Taiping Rebellion from 1850 to 1864, and then the truly massive thing, the Second Opium War, 1856 to 1860.

This was much more invasive.

Uh, the British decided they really were gonna teach the Chinese a lesson, and this was basically after they'd just come from crushing the first War of Indian Independence.

So I just don't really believe in European empire outside of the British, you know, the British Empire, and I got a delightful confirmation of that from this, uh, other great game book.

Uh, the French decided...

So the big thing, big claim in the Second Opium War is it wasn't just the British burning down the Summer Palace and, and crushing, uh, Beijing this way.

The French came along with us, so it was really-

The same year Zaichun was born, the British launched their wholly unwanted sequel to the original Opium War.

Like any good blockbuster, the Second Opium War was bigger, crazier, and above all else, a cynical attempt to make its creators as much money as humanly possible.

As the Taiping Rebellion continued to pull China apart, the British sent diplomats to negotiate a brutally one-sided peace.

In retaliation, the emperor had them all arrested.

But while the British had very much been at fault in 1860, in 1900, Cixi had to shoulder at least some of the blame.

The Boxer Rebellion ended in 1901 with an alliance victory and mass execution of suspected rebels.

The treaty then forced on China was so humiliating it made even the ending to the Second Opium War look like mere fetish play in comparison.

Crippled by a gigantic indemnity, Beijing was pushed toward bankruptcy.

In the 1850s, the Duke of Brabant was an enthusiastic supporter of his father's quest to acquire an overseas colony.

An opportunity appeared to present itself in 1859, when a joint Anglo-French military force prepared to go to war with China, seeking further liberalization of the opium trade and greater access to Chinese ports, in what became known as the Second Opium War.

King Leopold I hoped that by sending a small Belgian force alongside the British and the French, he might also be able to obtain access to Chinese markets.

Though Napoleon III was open to the idea of a Belgian contingent of around 1,500 men, the Belgian parliament refused to finance the expedition.

So, um, g- oolong tea trade started to grow.

But oolong tea became the star product, um, in the United States after the Opium War, um, during another two wars actually, the Taiping Rebelling in China and the Second Opium War.

So after the Opium War, China was defeated.

Well, this was a, um, like a well-known, um, part of world history, and China opened more ports to foreign countries.

Well, um, the, the Taiping Rebellion lasted for more than 10 years, from 1850 to 1864.

During this period, another international war took place in China.

That's the Second Opium War from 1856 to 1860 between the British-French joint forces and the Qing government.

Well, Canton, the port city, was captured by British and French joint forces, while the tea trade couldn't go on as, uh, uh, normally, as usual in Canton.