Treacherous Waters: The Coastal Opium Trade in 1830s Fujian
Treacherous Waters is the story of how a transnational coalition of maritime traders came together to operate one of the largest illicit drug markets in history. The importation of opium into China prior to 1832 occurred exclusively in the Pearl River Delta in Guangdong Province, where Fujianese and Cantonese ships would load up on the drug for delivery to other parts of the empire. But by 1839, the year the British launched an all-out attack on the Qing empire in what came to be known as the “Opium War,” there were nearly a dozen British ships permanently anchored in strategic bays along the Fujian coast, importing tens of thousands of chests of opium directly into Fujian and exporting jaw-dropping quantities of treasure. This module allows users to explore this dramatic explosion in the Fujianese opium trade, by focusing on the local story of Shenhu Bay in Jinjiang County, and the interactions between the Shi Lineage of Yakou Village and the Rees brothers of Jardine-Matheson and Dent & Co.
Module Layout
1. Start with the Instructions, which offers a short description of background information necessary to process the module, and goes on to provide detailed instructions for engaging with the two central paths of the module.
2. Path One is entitled "The Case Against Shi Hou: A Qing Document." This is a primary source from the Qing bureaucratic administration, describing the legal case against a man who the Fujian provincial government blamed for escorting British opium ships to his hometown of Yakou.
3. Path Two is entitled "The Jardine-Matheson Global Network." This is a recreation of the largest and most influential British opium-trading firm, divided up geographically and interspersed with images, videos, and primary source text from the Jardine-Matheson archive.
4. Conclusion. This is a collection of short essays by the author on how reading the Chinese and British sources together can offer a spatial history of profit and corruption on the Qing maritime frontier.
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Link: Jardine-Matheson Archives Catalog (holdings are at the Cambridge University Library)
Link: First Historical Archives in Beijing
