ix the trade imbalance between China and Britain, the British introduced opium to the Chinese (Schirokauer, 114). Instead of balancing out the trade, this maneuver reversed the imbalance onto China’s side, which meant there was more silver leaving China than entering. To make matters worse, the influx of opium made a large portion of the Chinese population addicted to the drug. In 1836, Emperor Daoguang briefly considered legalizing opium, but decided the better option was to go against it (Schirokauer, 115). Emperor Daoguang hired Commissioner Lin Zexu to take responsibility in the anti-opium campaign, and it was under Lin that the conflict began.
Both Chinese and British believed that opium was a vice, and opium was illegal in Britain. This drug conflicted with both Confucian and Christian morals. Even Elliot, the British Superintendent of Trade and Commissioner Lin’s opponent, hated Opium and thought it was vile. So why did the British allow the opium trade to China? The reason was because they valued economic prosperity and free trade over their Christian values. A key difference between the Chinese and the British was that the Chinese government aligned with their Confucian values. In the book “The Opium War: Drugs, Dreams, and the Making of Modern China,” Julia Lovell expands on this idea. On page 91, Lovell writes, “the British made an error of judgement in assessing their first, influential encounter with high Qing diplomacy in 1793, allowing the ceremonial façade of the tribute system to obscure the pragmatic reality of Qing foreign pol...