Name: Imperial Twilight
ISBN: 9780345803023

Stephen R. Platt

Describes how nineteenth-century British efforts to open China to trade set in motion the fall of the Qing dynasty and started a war that allowed for the rise of nationalism and communism in the twentieth century.

The Opium War and the End of China's Last Golden Age

Imperial Twilight

Vivian

Imperial Twilight is a candid, thorough and excellent analysis of the before and aftermath of the first Opium War (1839-1942). I love history books like this one that provide a panorama & objective view from both sides (Chinese and British in this case), as well as an in-depth analysis from both broader (social, economical, political) and individual perspectives. 

Alas, it turns out what I always thought about the Opium War (what most people thought) was wrong. 


  "Only after the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1912 did historians in China begin to call this war 'the Opium War' in Chinese, and only in the 1920s would republican propagandists finally transform it into its current incarnation as the bedrock of Chinese nationalism—the war in which the British forced opium down China’s throat, the shattering start to China’s century of victimhood, the fuel of vengeance for building a new Chinese future in the face of Western imperialism, Year Zero of the modern age. "
 

The Opium War weaved the collective national shame against drugs that to this day still dominates the extremely harsh views of Chinese society against drug dealers and addicts.

Lin Zexu, established as a national hero in history as the voice of morality that stood up against the imperial drug dealers of Great Britain, was anything but in the China of his own time. 


  "To many-including the Daoguang emperor-he was a disgrace to the empire whose high-handed dealings with the British had provoked a destructive and unnecessary coastal war. The righteousness of his cause aside, that view was not without its merits; if he had handled affairs at Canton differently, especially if he had been more welcoming of Charles Elliot’s willingness to cooperate, he might have been able to do permanent damage to the opium trade without giving Britain grounds for a war of reprisal. If he had been even slightly more flexible, China might have been far better off. "


The Opium War was long considered destined to happen, at one point or another; however this was simply a hindsight logic that gained popularity only near the end of the war. The motion for war against China was extremely contentious in its day - which passed the House of Commons by a meager margin of 5 votes. Throughout the entire chain events, countless miscommunications, misinformation, misjudgment of the situations led to the eventual declaration of war, an arbitrary and unexpected outcome that deviated from centuries of peaceful and respectful precedent. It was an anomaly, not the norm.

And yet, it did happen. And "
  it marked a watershed in the Western discovery that one could get what one wanted from China through violence."


When one reads history, one tends to consider it as facts. Alas, what a great sorrow that they are often the products of randomness. We could have easily been looking back on very different lessons from this era.

Imperial Twilight The Opium War and the End of China's Last Golden Age

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