Document 4
…The Chinese had long been opposed to the opium trade. The drug had been introduced
into China by Dutch traders during the seventeenth century. As early as 1729, there were
imperial decrees forbidding the sale and smoking of this “destructive and ensnaring vice.” In
1796, Jiaqing, the new emperor, placed a complete ban on its importation, but he was a weak
administrator and soon pirates and opium merchants were bribing officials to look the other
way. By 1816, the [British] East India Company had imported 3,000 chests of opium from its
poppy fields in the north Indian state of Punjab. By 1820, this had risen to 5,000 and by 1825
to almost 10,000.
As more and more Chinese became addicts, and silver flowed out of the economy to
British coffers, the Chinese government moved toward confrontation. The emperor
Daoguang, who came to the throne in 1821 was a reformer, and, supported by his advisor Lin
Zexu (1785–1850), the emperor banned opium in 1836 and ordered the decapitation of
“foreign barbarians” who concealed and traded the drug.…
Source: Perry M. Rogers, ed., Aspects of World Civilization: Problems and Sources in History, Volume II, Prentice Hall
(adapted)
According to Perry Rogers, what was one reason the Chinese were unsuccessful in halting the opium
trade?
