A Year: Day to Day Men: 3rd of June
Firmness of Purpose
On June 3, 1839, Governor-General Lin Tse-hsu destroyed 1.2 million kilograms of opium confiscated from British merchants.
Lin Tse-hsu, or Lin Zexu, was a Chinese scholar and official of the Qing Dynasty of China. In 1811, he obtained the position of a jinshi with a degree in Literature in the imperial examination, and in the same year gained admission to the Hanlin Academy founded by Emperor Xuanzong. He rose rapidly through the various grades of provincial service, opposed the opening of China to foreigners, and became Governor-General of the provinces of Hunan and Hubei in 1937.
In March 1839, Lin arrived in Guangdong Province to take measures that would eliminate the opium trade. He was a formidable bureaucrat known for his competence and high moral standards, with an imperial commission from the Daoguang Emperor to halt the illegal importation of opium by the British. Upon arrival, he made changes within a matter of months. He arrested more than 1,700 Chinese opium dealers and confiscated over 70,000 opium pipes. He initially attempted to get foreign companies to forfeit their opium stores in exchange for tea, but this ultimately failed.
Lin resorted to using force in the western merchants’ enclave. A month and a half later, the merchants gave up nearly 1.2 million kilograms (2.6 million pounds) of opium. Beginning on the 3rd of June, 1839, five hundred workers labored for 23 days to destroy it, mixing the opium with lime and salt and throwing it into the sea outside of Humen Town on the Pearl River Delta. Lin composed an elegy apologizing to the gods of the sea for polluting their realm.
In 1839, Lin also wrote an extraordinary memorial to Queen Victoria in the form of an open letter published in Canton, urging her to end the opium trade. He argued that China was providing Britain with valuable commodities such as tea, porcelain, spices and silk, with Britain sending only “poison” in return. Lin appears to have been unaware that opium was not banned in the Middle East, Europe and the Americas, and was commonly used for its medicinal rather than recreational effects. The letter to the Queen never reached her.
Neither Lin nor the Daoguang Emperor appreciated the depth or changed nature of the problem. They did not see the change in international trade structures, the commitment of the British government to protecting the interests of private traders, and the peril to British traders who would surrender their opium.
Open hostilities between China and Britain started in 1839 in what later would be called the the First Opium War. The immediate effect was that both sides banned all trade. A series of military and naval engagements were fought between the United Kingdom and the Qing Dynasty of China over conflicting viewpoints on diplomatic relations, trade, and the administration of justice in China, ending in the 1842 Treaty of Nanking.