Lin Zexu

Chinese scholar and government official

• Born: August 30, 1785
• Birthplace: Houguan, Fujian, China
• Died: November 22, 1850
• Place of death: Chaozhou, Guangdong, China

A respected scholar-official serving the Manchu Qing Dynasty, Lin led China’s effort to eradicate the sale of opium by foreigners at Canton. The campaign succeeded but led to the first Opium War and the ignominious Treaty of Nanjing.

Early Life

Lin Zexu (lihn zay-chew) was the second child born to Lin Binri, a poor scholar. His father, hoping to emulate earlier family members by entering the government bureaucracy through the civil service exam system, could not rise beyond the initial xiucai (cultivated talent) degree and at the age of forty-one gave up his quest for the provincial level juren (recommended man) degree to run a private school to support his growing family (ultimately three sons and eight daughters). The young Lin Zexu grew up in a loving but impoverished family environment. His education began at home under his father’s tutelage, and he entered school at the age of four. During his youth, he helped sell his mother’s embroidery to make ends meet. A bright student, he entered the local academy at the age of nine and won the xiucai degree when fourteen. In an oral test to choose the best of the exam entrants, he bested a rival candidate many years his senior.

At the age of twenty, he passed the juren exams, which entitled him to go to Beijing to take the capital tests, but he could not afford to do so. Instead, he entered the local yamen(government office) as a clerk-scribe. When a New Year’s greeting he wrote caught the attention of Zhang Shicheng, the Fujian (Fukien) provincial governor, Lin was summoned to neighboring Fuzhou (Foochow) to serve for three years on Zhang’s staff.

Seven years after achieving juren status, Lin finally went to Beijing to take the highest-level exams. He attained jinshi (presented scholar) rank and entered the Hanlin Academy. His nine-year stay in Beijing gained for him considerable experience in handling the myriad governmental concerns brought to the attention of the six ministries at the top of the Qing bureaucracy. He also made valuable, lifelong contacts within the power structure, connections important for career advancement.

In 1819, Lin was sent to Yunnan in the southwest to be head examiner in the provincial exams. This was a stepping-stone to his first major appointment as intendant of the administrative circuit (dao) in the Hangzhou (Hangchow) area. In 1822, Lin went to Beijing and had an audience with the newly enthroned Daoguang emperor. The emperor praised Lin’s work in the Hangzhou region and permitted Lin to return there. In succession, he was given posts in Jiangsu (intendant) and Zhejiang (salt monopoly controller) Provinces.

In 1823, Lin became surveillance commissioner of Jiangsu. By cleaning up a backlog of judicial cases with great impartiality and reforming the penal system, he earned the epithet “Lin as Clear as the Heavens.” The following year, his mother died, requiring a return to his hometown for a custom-dictated three years of mourning. This period was interrupted twice, first to help in flood relief in Jiangsu along the Yellow River, and then to work in the salt monopoly administration. After a visit to Beijing in 1827, he was assigned to Xi’an (Sian) in Shanxi; there he became familiar with military affairs as a result of a nearby Muslim rebellion being quashed by the Qing military.

While Lin was serving as financial commissioner in Nanjing, his father died en route to joining him. This again necessitated a three-year absence from government service for official mourning in his native village. In 1830, Lin was back in the capital, awaiting a new assignment. During this stay, Lin renewed and made friendships with middle-echelon bureaucrats, men on the periphery of power yet close enough to the real problems to be concerned about the dynasty’s ossifying rule. Lin was part of a coterie (often meeting socially as the Xuannan Poetry Society) of younger degree-holders, inspired by their study of “modern text” (jinwen) Confucian writings to seek practical solutions to problems of governing. When Lin received his next set of assignments, he left the capital, invigorated with ideas shared by a nascent group of intellectual-administrators devoted to practical statecraft.

In the next twenty months, Lin was given five different assignments: provincial administration commissioner, in turn, of Hubei (Hupei), Hunan, and Nanjing (Chiangning), followed by that of water conservancy director-general in Shangdong (Shantung) and Henan (Honan), and, in 1832, governor of Jiangxi (Kiangsu). He stayed in the latter post for five years. His tenure in Jiangxi under his friend Governor-General Taoshu added to his reputation. A new problem he encountered was the outflow of local silver used to pay for opium distributed into the hinterland from foreign sources at Canton (Guangzhou).

Life’s Work

At the age of fifty-two, Lin was appointed governor-general of Hubei and Hunan. Increasingly, much of his time came to be concentrated on a matter that was by this time a major local and national concern—opium control. Trade between the Western powers and China, begun during the eighteenth century, originally was in China’s favor, because European and American demand for tea leaves, raw silk, rhubarb, chinaware, and lacquer items far exceeded Chinese interest in Western woolens, tin, lead, furs, and linen. The anticommercial Manchu rulers only begrudgingly tolerated this trade, despite its profitability, and confined it to the southern port of Canton, where foreigners could not easily press on the dynasty their demands for diplomatic recognition.

The import of tea to England was lucrative to the Crown as a result of a 100 percent excise duty, but, because it could not be paid for only by the sale of Indian cotton to the Chinese, Britain had to bring in silver bullion from Mexico and Peru to pay its bills. A triangular trade among England, India, and China operated through the “Canton system” whereby foreign ships, stopping first at the Portuguese enclave Macao, would proceed with Chinese permission to Canton and sell their cargoes at a waterfront warehouse enclave through the cohong (gonghong) trade guild run by Chinese merchants supervised by the hoppo (customs official).

The British and the other foreigners tolerated this inconvenient system because it was lucrative. The trade imbalance in China’s favor began to change with the export by the East India Company of opium from Bengal to Canton, starting during the 1770’s. Opium was originally used for its reputed medicinal and aphrodisiac qualities, and, even though the Chinese repeatedly had outlawed its use, it became a popular drug, inhaled by pipe. The East India Company, to protect itself legally, consigned the opium transport and sale to private traders not bound by the intricacies of the formalistic Canton system. In 1834, the company’s China trade monopoly was ended by the British parliament’s response to domestic demands for free trade. The resulting free-for-all among opium dealers dramatically increased sales to the Chinese, and by the late 1830’s anywhere from two to ten million Chinese had become addicted. In addition, the outflow of Chinese silver and the worsening exchange ratio between silver and Chinese copper coins (a problem Lin had confronted earlier) created economic havoc.

In China, a debate raged between those wanting to legalize the opium trade in order to control it and those favoring an end to it. The Daoguang emperor sided with the officials who opposed legalization, and Governor-General Deng Tingzhen cracked down on the Canton opium trade between 1836 and 1838. He was successful in dealing with the Chinese end of the problem but had difficulty with the foreign merchants. After the East India Company’s monopoly ended, the Chinese, preferring to deal with a formal middleman rather than a host of competing foreign interests, asked the British to designate someone to be taipan(head merchant). The British, wanting official Chinese diplomatic recognition, sent, in 1833, Lord William John Napier, assisted militarily by Captain Charles Elliot.

In one stroke the British put a government official in a position formerly occupied by the East India Company, thus making trade, originally a private arrangement between the company and the cohong merchants, the official concern of the Crown. Increasingly, questions of commercial interests and national honor coalesced as the British, using commerce as a wedge, continued to attempt to persuade the Chinese to recognize their representative on a government-to-government basis.

Deng’s antiopium campaign was successful. To preclude Deng from carrying out his threat to end all trade, the foreigners eventually reluctantly cooperated in the opium-suppression efforts. Smuggling by illegal profiteers, however, continued in the waters surrounding Canton. In Beijing pressure increased for the complete eradication of opium. Lin, successful in curbing opium use in his jurisdiction, was among the hard-liners. The emperor consulted with him personally and was impressed by his opium-elimination measures in Hubei and Hunan. On December 31, 1838, Lin was appointed imperial commissioner to eradicate the opium trade.

Lin arrived in Canton on March 10, 1839. The foreign community took his arrival calmly, viewing his subsequent crackdown on Chinese opium sellers and users as a continuation of the government’s toughened policy. Lin’s tack in dealing with the foreigners was to try to establish jurisdiction by getting them to accept Chinese legal rights and to convince them of the immorality of their actions. With imperial permission, he drafted two letters addressed to Queen Victoria, appealing to her moral propriety and common sense. Pointing out that opium smoking was a crime in England, he asked why her government promoted its use in his land and urged her to control her subjects’ actions. These letters were widely circulated, for effect, among the foreign residents. A ship captain agreed to take a copy to England, but the foreign office refused to accept it.

On March 18, Lin ordered the surrender, through the cohong merchants, of all opium in the foreigners’ possession and required all to sign a bond pledging, on penalty of death, no longer to engage in this trade. A token 1,036 chests were turned in. Dissatisfied, Lin attempted to coerce Lancelot Dent, a major opium supplier, to surrender himself to Chinese authority. Dent refused, and Elliot, fearing the worst, left Macao for Canton, arriving on the day before Lin enacted a total trade embargo and ordered all Chinese help out of the foreigners’ compound, thus imposing a siege on the 350 foreigners trapped there. The standoff ended after six weeks on Elliot’s promise to have the foreigners turn over all of their opium to Lin. This was readily done, because there no longer was a market and Elliot promised reimbursement. The forfeited 21,306 chests were emptied into a huge pit, and the opium was dissolved in seawater and lime, ending up in the ocean. Lin was victorious; however, by making his demands of Elliot, he now was dealing directly with a representative of the British government.

On May 24, all the British evacuated Canton for Macao. News of their confinement had infuriated the British public, and foreign secretary Lord Palmerston was bombarded with traders’ petitions to be compensated for their losses. The British refugees thought they were secure in Portuguese Macao. The killing of a Chinese peasant on July 12 by some drunken British sailors at Kowloon, however, led to Lin’s demand that the perpetrators be turned over to Chinese jurisdiction. This was refused. Lin had supplies to Macao cut off and ordered troops to surround it. The Portuguese evicted the British, who now sailed for Hong Kong. They were prevented from landing to replenish supplies. Elliot then ordered his ships to fire on some Chinese junks after being refused water and food.

By the fall of 1839 some British traders, aware that Americans were taking over their lucrative business in Canton, broke ranks with Elliot and decided to sign Lin’s bond. On November 3, as some British traders were preparing to give in, a naval skirmish occurred at Xuanpi. Losing several ships, the Chinese retreated. On December 6, Lin ordered the end of all trade with the British. Unaware of this last event and responding to earlier provocations, the British parliament, after an acrimonious debate between Tories opposing a war to support opium smugglers and prowar politicians prodded by a strong China lobby with vested interests, voted by a narrow margin to retaliate.

A large British expeditionary force under Elliot’s uncle arrived in Chinese waters in June, 1840. Anticipating this reaction, Lin fortified the Canton area. Coastal batteries at the Bogue were augmented with foreign-purchased guns, war-junks surrounded Canton waters, and chain blockades were put across the Pearl River. Peasant militia were mobilized in Guangdong (Kwangtung) Province. Martial arts fighters and Daoist magicians were also mustered. Lin wrote to the emperor that the large British warships were incapable of sailing up the Pearl River, adding that foreign soldiers, inept at fighting with swords and fists, could easily be routed.

Lin patiently waited for the British attack, but the fleet under Elliot’s command, after blockading Canton, proceeded northward to deliver written ultimatums from Henry John Temple, Viscount Palmerston, directly to the court. After being refused at several ports, which were then blockaded, the British arrived in late August at the Peiho River near the Taku forts, protecting the approach to Beijing. The court was shocked that the local problem of Canton was now brought to its doorstep. Palmerston’s letter of demands, putting most of the blame on Elliot’s personal nemesis, Lin, was accepted. The emperor now saw Lin as a convenient scapegoat. On July 1, 1841, Lin was ordered into exile in remote Ili in Central Asia.

Lin’s dismissal was merely an interlude in what became known as the Opium War. Diplomatic efforts to prevent further military action failed, and Elliot’s military campaigns in the Canton delta eventually gave the British the upper hand. Sir Henry Pottinger, commanding a punitive naval force sent from India and England, followed up in 1841 with attacks on major Chinese ports. The Chinese reluctantly agreed on August 29, 1842, to the Treaty of Nanjing, requiring the payments of a war indemnity and reparations for seized opium, the opening of five coastal cities to trade and diplomatic residence, the abolishment of the cohong monopoly, and the ceding of Hong Kong.

Though in official disgrace, Lin was still a faithful servant to the dynasty. On his way to exile he was asked to fight a break in the Yellow River dykes at Kaifeng. While banished in Ili, he directed irrigation projects that reclaimed much land for farming. In 1845, he was recalled to service as acting governor-general of Shanxi (Shansi) and Gansu (Kansu), followed by posts in Shanxi and Yunnan. His final task was imperial commissioner to fight the Taiping rebels in the Guangxi (Kwangsi) region. He died on November 22, 1850, en route to this last assignment.

Significance

Lin Zexu was a victim of two cultures; his Confucian upbringing and fidelity to the Qing required him to deal with the opium problem in an administrative and moralistic way that was outdated in the face of British might and the Western concept of foreign relations that denied China its self-assumed superiority. The Opium War, and Lin’s role in it, marked a watershed in Chinese history. The “Middle Kingdom” would never recover from the burden of the “unequal treaties” begun at Nanjing, and the Western powers were not appeased by this first of many concessions to be extracted over the ensuing century. This happened despite Lin, not because of him.

Chinese Marxist historians use the Opium War as the beginning event in the history of modern China, the story of a collapsing feudal system ravished by foreign imperialism. Irrespective of ideology, Chinese everywhere respect Lin as a patriot who stood up to foreign aggression and the venal opium trade that symbolized it. His loyalty, though, was misplaced. It would take nationalism and revolution in the twentieth century to replace Lin’s form of parochial dynastic allegiance before the Chinese would be able to reclaim their destiny for themselves.

Bibliography

Chang, Hsin-pao. Commissioner Lin and the Opium War. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1964. The most thorough study of the events leading to the Opium War are examined in the context of Lin’s role in them. Uses Chinese and Western sources to give a well-rounded account, analyzing, from respective perspectives, the positions of the English and the Chinese. A portrait of Lin faces the title page. Includes copious notes, a glossary, and a bibliography.

Compilation Group for the “History of Modern China” Series. The Opium War. Beijing: Foreign Language Press, 1976. A booklet based on research by history professors at the University of Futan and Shanghai Teachers’ University depicting Lin as one of “the capitulationists of the landlord class” who appeased Western imperialists in the Opium War; useful for understanding the Chinese Marxist historiographical approach.

Fairbank, John K., ed. Late Ch’ing, 1800-1911, Part 1. Vol. 10 in The Cambridge History of China. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1978. Includes “The Canton Trade and the Opium War” by Frederic Wakeman, Jr., concisely narrating and analyzing the events before and after the war, including Lin’s participation.

Liu, Lydia H. The Clash of Empires: The Invention of China in Modern World Making. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004. A history of nineteenth century conflicts between the British Empire and the Qing Dynasty. Views the conflicts from the perspective of international law, modern warfare, and comparative grammar. The appendix features Lin’s letters to Queen Victoria.

Mandancy, Joyce A. The Troublesome Legacy of Commissioner Lin: The Opium Trade and Opium Suppression in Fujian Province, 1820’s to 1920’s. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003. Describes Lin’s efforts to end the opium trade and how he became a symbol of Chinese nationalism, elite activism, and opium reform during a 1908 opium suppression campaign.

Teng, Ssu-yü, and John K. Fairbank. China’s Response to the West: A Documentary Survey, 1839-1923. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1965. Lin’s famous 1839 letter to Queen Victoria admonishing the British for their moral double standard in opium dealing and a short 1842 letter to a friend concerning the military superiority of the West are given in translation.

Waley, Arthur. The Opium War Through Chinese Eyes. New York: Macmillan, 1958. Uses Chinese documentary sources, Lin’s diaries, and other writings to present the Opium War from a Chinese point of view.