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Opium and the limits of empire: The opium problem in the Chinese interior, 1729--1850

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Content Opium and the Limits of Empire:
The Opium Problem in the Chinese Interior, 1729-1850
Copyright 2001
by
David Anthony Bello
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
in Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(HISTORY)
May 2001
David Bello
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UMI Number: 3 0 2 7 6 9 4
Copyright 2001 by
Beilo, David Anthony
All rights reserved.
___ ®
UMI
UMI Microform 3027694
Copyright 2001 by ProQuest Information and Learning Company.
All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against
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UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY PARK
LOS ANGELES. CALIFORNIA 90007
This dissertation, w ritten by
ft $ //c
under the direction of h.j.A. Dissertation
Committee, and approved by all its members,
has been presented to and accepted by The
Graduate School, in partial fulfillm ent of re
quirements for the degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPH Y
Dean o f Graduate Studies
DISSERTATION COMMITTEE
Chairperson
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ii
Acknowledgments
A doctoral program is a collective enterprise from start to finish, but it is only
on an acknowledgments page that one attempts to delineate its true dimensions. On
the right side of the Pacific I must first thank my advisors, Professors John E. Wills
Jr., Charlotte Furth and Bettine Birge for their prodigal support, encouragement, and
toleration over the years. Professor Benjamin Elman has also been unnecessarily
generous with his time and expertise as has Professor Timothy Brook.
On the other side of the Pacific I have become especially indebted to
Professors Angela Leung, Chuang Chi-fa, Lin En-Shean, Chu Yun-Peng and Lin
Man-houng in Taiwan as well as to the staffs of Academia Sinica's Sun Yat-Sen
Institute for Social Sciences and Philosophy, and of the National Palace Museum.
Across the straits in Beijing I have received equally invaluable assistance from my
advisors at the Institute of Qing History, Professors Dai Yi and Li Sheng. I am
particularly beholden to Dr. Zhu Shuyuan for her guidance, which I sought on an
almost daily basis, as I am to all her colleagues and staff at First Historical Archives
of China.
In addition to generous funding from the University of Southern California,
grants from the following programs have helped make this dissertation possible: the
American Council of Learned Societies Graduate Program of the National Program
for Advanced Study and Research in the People's Republic of China, the Institute of
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iii
International Education Fulbright-Hays Scholarly Exchange Program, and a National
Resource Fellowship.
Professors Lin Hsiu-ling and Wu Qing, have been of equally material
assistance, providing me with food, shelter and advice on how to avoid major
diplomatic incidents while resident overseas.
My time in the Beijing archives was served along with Grant Alger, Xia
Hongtu and Michael Chang, all of whom proved staunch companions, especially in
bureaucracy's darkest moments. Michael's influence persisted upon our return to the
Southern California and was augmented by contributions from Bruce Rusk and Hu
Ming-hui, all three of whom suffered uncomplainingly as draft after draft of this
dissertation was inflicted on them. I'm also grateful to my classmate Paul Van Dyke
for letting me peer into comers of the more obscure archives of European maritime
history through his eyes.
I would have remained impervious to all the intellectual influences alluded to
above without the long, hard civilizing efforts of my immediate family, but in the end
history will record that Jeanette Barbieri has had the most radical effect upon me in
all ways, times and places.
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Contents
Acknowledgements ii
Abstract vii
Note on Conventions x
Chapter 1. British Prohibition in India in Comparative Perspective 1
Introduction 1
The British Roots of the Opium Problem 15
Company Rule in India 22
Patna vs. Patna 25
Patna vs. Malwa 29
Chapter Conclusions 36
Chapter 2. Regional Administrative Structures: The Junxian, Beg and Native Chieftain
Systems Overview 38
The Administration of the Core 41
Conclusions on Core Administration 52
The Administration of Xinjiang 53
The Establishment of the Administration (1759-1830) 53
The Transformation of the Administration (post-1830) 62
Conclusions on Xinjiang Administration 68
The Administration of the Southwest 70
The Native Chieftain System 70
Conclusions on the Administration of the Southwest 88
Chapter Conclusions 90
Chapter 3. The Opium Problem in the Han Core & the Formation of Central
Government Policy 93
Introduction 93
Opium Policy during the Yongzheng Reign (1723-1735) and the Qianlong
Reign (1736-1795) 95
Opium Policy in the Jiaqing Reign (1796-1820) 108
Opium Policy in the Daoguang Reign; First Phase (1821-1836) 120
Opium Policy in the Daoguang Reign; Second Phase (1836-1841) 138
Chapter Conclusions 159
Chapter 4. The Opium Problem in Xinjiang 163
Overview of the Opium Problem in Xinjiang 163
Opium Prohibition Comes to Xinjiang 167
Recommendations from the Eastern March 172
Recommendations from the Northern March 17 5
Recommendations from the Southern March 184
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Recommendations from the Marches: Conclusions 189
Trafficking and Consumption in Xinjiang 190
T rans-border T raffic 191
Internal Traffic 206
Local Cultivation in Xinj iang 214
Official Corruption 220
Chapter Conclusions 232
Chapter 5. The Opium Problem in Southwest China 237
Overview of the Opium Problem in Southwestern China 237
Opium Prohibition Comes to the Southwest 244
First Phase of Prohibition in the Southwest (1831-1836) 256
Yunnan 256
Guizhou 264
Sichuan 269
First Phase Conclusions 271
Interim Phase of Prohibition in the Southwest (1836-1838) 272
Yunnan 273
Guizhou 277
Sichuan 279
Prohibition under the New Regulations (1839-1842) 281
Guizhou 283
Yunnan 285
Yunnan-Sichuan Trans-provincial Opium Traffic 287
Chapter Conclusions 298
Chapter 6. Conclusion: Opium and Qing Expansionism 303
Bibliography 327
Appendix A
Appendix B
Appendix C
Appendix D
Appendix E
Appendix F
Appendix G
A 338
B 340
C 341
D 342
E 343
F 345
G 347
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Glossary 350
Abbreviations 358
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vii
Abstract:
This dissertation examines the Qing opium problem in a comparative regional
context. The smuggling trade pursued by Britain on the eastern seacoast of China
during the early nineteenth century has become the symbol of China's century-long
descent into political and social chaos. Opium, however, was not simply a Sino-
British problem geographically confined to southeastern China, but an empire-wide
crisis that spread among an ethnically diverse populace and created regionally and
culturally distinct problems of control for the Qing state.
Chapter one examines the futile attempt by the British to prohibit the
production and export of opium by the so-called “native states,” which lay outside
the direct administrative control of the East India Company during the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries. This failure was due to weaknesses in the British system of
local control in the face of India’s spatial and ethnic diversity.
Chapter two examines broadly analogous structures of local control in Qing
China. It provides overviews of the three most important administrative structures,
thejunxian system of China proper, the beg system of the northwestern border
territory of Xinjiang, and the native chieftain system spread across the three
southwestern Chinese provinces of Guizhou, Sichuan and Yunnan. The latter two
systems were direct responses by the dynasty to the ethno-geographic diversity of
their larger empire, which extended far beyond the boundaries of Han China itself.
The junxian system was the fundamental structure of provincial organization in this
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Han core, also known as “China proper.” Within this system, the baojia security
apparatus is the aspect most relevant to the question of opium prohibition, which was
implemented through these three mediating structures, themselves products of ethno-
geographic diversity in their corresponding jurisdictions. This overview reveals that
there were large areas of western China that remained largely or entirely
unincorporated by the central imperial administration and, consequently, the opium
traffic was as quick to flow into these administrative areas as it was in India
Chapter three is mainly intended to provide a chronology of central
government prohibition policy formation over the span of the dynasty. This provides
a central government context in which to understand the implementation of these
prohibitions at the local level and the significance of their variations. This chapter
also employs the experience of select junxian provinces as the paradigm for local
implementation envisioned by the court. Having established these regions of the Han
core as the norm in practice, it is then possible to see how prohibition differed
significantly in Xinjiang and southwest China. A main point of this significance is
that while the junxian areas by no means effectively controlled the opium problem,
they were able to avoid some of its most virulent manifestations, such as local
cultivation, primarily due to the fact that the junxian system provided a more stable
basis of local control.
Chapters four and five describe regional histories of the opium prohibitions in
Xinjiang and southwestern China, respectively. The Xinjiang chapter not only shows
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how weaknesses in its beg system of local administration failed to prevent collusion
between Han merchant-traffickers, Central and South Asian opium smugglers and
East Turkestani locals who often acted as intermediaries, but also shows that
northwestern China experienced an opium problem similar to that of the
paradigmatic southeast coast, previously considered exceptional. The southwestern
chapter reveals the existence of a cycle of opium production, distribution and
consumption that was entirely indigenous and heavily dependent on collusion
between indigenous minority producers and Han traffickers and consumers who were
pouring into the region as settlers. This system, which began to export opium to
other parts of China, arose in large measure because of the gaps in local control
produced by the native chieftain system and by areas within provinces, “wild zones,”
that were totally outside any structure of imperial administration direct or otherwise.
Chapter six draws conclusions from comparisons between both the
prohibition experiences of British India and Qing China and those of regional
subdivisions within China itself. The former comparison concludes that an excessive
emphasis on stabilization and protection of revenue by both imperial states
guaranteed the failure of opium prohibition. The latter comparison concludes that
eighteenth-century Qing expansionism and its consequent administrative instability
proved to be fertile ground for the opium trade, which, by the time prohibition began
in earnest in 1839, was no longer simply a problem of Sino-Western relations, but a
domestic problem with its own dynamics and trajectory of development.
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X
Note on Conventions
Chinese terms are rendered according to the Hanyu pinyin system. For non-
Chinese names for which I know only the Chinese transliteration I have followed the
convention of James Millward's book, Beyond the Pass and rendered these names
into pinyin linked by hyphens. Where possible, I have adopted the spellings of
Xinjiang place names and personal names employed by Joseph Fletcher in the
Cambridge History o f China, volume 10.
I have tried to provide sufficiently full citations of archival materials to
enable the reader to trace documentary references with a minimum of fuss.
Adherence to this principle has occasionally necessitated rather elaborate formats,
such as those employed for routine memorials from the Grand Secretariat archive's
Office of Scrutiny o f the Board of Punishments (abbreviated as "Neige weijin"). In
this particular case two distinct types of memorials, those drafted by the center's
Board of Punishments and by the provincial administrations respectively, are stored
together in the same boxes by the First Flistorical Archives of China, and there is no
practical means of distinguishing between them except sorting through the
memorials in the boxes one by one. I have consequently added the distinction
"board" or "provincial" to each "Neige weijin" citation to aid in the identification of
the proper document. All such additions to documentary citations have been made to
facilitate references where appropriate. Dates for documentary citations following
the traditional dynastic format have been provided for similar reasons.
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C hapter 1.
British Prohibition in India in Comparative Perspective
I. Introduction
The opium smuggling trade pursued by Britain on the eastern seacoast of
China during the early nineteenth century has become the symbol of China's century-
long descent into political and social chaos. In the standard historical narratives of
both China and Euro-America, opium is the primary medium through which imperial
China encountered the modem economic, social and political institutions of the
West. Consequently, opium and the Western powers' advent on the Chinese coast
have become almost inextricably linked. Opium, however, was not simply a Sino-
British problem geographically confined to southeastern China. It was, rather, an
empire-wide crisis that spread among an ethnically diverse populace and created
regionally and culturally distinct problems of control for the Qing state.
Ethno-geographic diversity and its ability to limit state power is one of the
most notable aspects of the historical experience of the Qing empire, itself a product
of an intricate interaction of Manchu, Han and Mongol, to list only the main actors.
The major challenge to the imperial social and political order that led to that order's
great crisis and near collapse in the mid-nineteenth century have been generally
discussed with a focus on conflicts between Chinese and Westerners centered on the
empire's east coast and in its capital Beijing. In terms of the opium problem this
simplistic reduction of complex relations between people to binary reifications of
Britain versus China, West versus East and Modernity versus Tradition has caused
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Euro-American historians to treat the problem primarily as one of foreign relations
between the dynamic nation state of imperial Britain and the stagnant feudal state of
imperial China. Opium's production, distribution, consumption and criminalization
are seen, when seen at all, as of secondary interest at best.1
This is true even of revisionist works that have been genuinely concerned
with giving the opium problem a more significant place in the narrative, such as
'James Polachek's The Inner Opium War, (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1992) provides
a recent negative example for the significance of a serious engagement with the comprehensive history
of prohibition for the larger narrative of the Opium War period. Polachek's focus is on court politics
and their effects on coastal economic, military and diplomatic policies, which he abbreivates as the
"court politics of foreign policy," between 1835 and 1850 (1-3). Specifically he holds a particular
group of literati, the Spring Purification Circle, whose membership included such prominent officials
as Lin Zexu and Huang Jiezi, responsible for the disasterous failure of prohibition and the Opium war
that ensued. Polachek portrays members of this circle as intrasigent, moralizing ideologues whose
ethical, hence irrational, opposition to the drug legalization policy of the putatively more practical
realist faction led by Ruan Yuan was a ploy intended to consolidate their power at court (123-135).
Even the most cursory overview o f documents concerning with prohibition operations by the Qing in
the 1830's and before problematizes many o f Polachek’ s arguments, particularly that legalizers were
more "realistic" than prohibitionists. To take only one example, Polachek, in an attempt to show the
irrationality of the prohibitionist's policies, questions why they singled out Guangdong as the center of
their search and seizure operations when a place like Suzhou in Jiangsu had an estimated addict
population of fourty percent (127). Even if this figure is correct, and it was based on a single piece of
anecdotal infonnation that would have been very difficult even in the 1830's for the court to verify, it
is meaningless in light of both the government's overall policy goals and of the history of Qing
prohibition since 1729. The overwhelming bulk of the evidence available to the court up to the date of
Lin's appointment as Imperial Commissioner on Jan. 31, 1838 pointed to Guangdong and its
provincial capital of Guangzhou as the center of both the opium trade and of the silver drain. A
considerable amount of this evidence predates the factional struggles of 1836 and this fact negates the
possiblity that Spring Purification Circle members somehow manipulated the court, which was
predisposed to focus on Guangdong, into selecting the province as the primary prohibition site. There
are hundreds of documents attesting to this fact while I have found only fourteen pertaining to Jiangsu
for the same period. In light o f the official record upon which everyone at the center relied it would
have been irrational to focus prohibition efforts anywhere else but Guangzhou. An aquaintance with
the specifics of provincial prohibition as it appeared to the court across a number of provinces over
decades precludes the line of argument that arises from the view that the opium traffic was of
secondary importance in comparison to more significant "political factors," pursued by Polachek in
this instance. For further evidence for the independent role of the Daoguang Emperor in determining
the Qing government's prohibition policies, see Yang Wei, "Lun Daoguang Di zai jinyan yundong
zhong de diwei yu zuoyong" (On the position and role of the Daoguang Emperor in the opium
prohibition movement), Fujian luntan 1 (1983): 90-94; and Li Yongqing, Youguan jinyan yundong de
jidian xin renshi" (A few points o f new understanding concerning the opium prohibition movement),
Lishi dangan 3 (1986): 79-86.
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Hsin-pao Chang's Commissioner Lin and the Opium War, the standard work on the
Sino-British relations leading up to the first Opium War (1840-1842). Chang, whose
book was intended to place "special emphasis on the opium traffic as an immediate
cause of the war because it has not received adequate attention," still found the
Opium War to be at bottom an inevitable clash between an "agricultural, Confucian
[and] stagnant" culture and an "industrial capitalistic [and] progressive" one. Opium
itself was ultimately irrelevant to this relationship since Chang opined that "[h]ad
there been an effective alternative to opium, say molasses or rice, the conflict might
have been called the Molasses War or the Rice War."
Scholars in the PRC, in contrast, see the opium problem as the primary cause
of a war that started by imperialist powers to force the trade on China.3
Consequently, there has been far more work done both on the Qing state's attempts to
control opium, much of which concerns the existence and nature of the "strict
prohibitionist" and "lax prohibitionist" cliques (yanjinpai chijin pai ).4 Considerably
2 Hsin-pao Chang, Commissioner Lin and the Opium War, (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press,
1964; reprint, New York: Norton, 1970), pp. x, 15.
■ ’For a representative statement of this thesis, based mainly on western sources and reprinted as
recently as 1992, see Ding Mingnan et ah, "Waiguo zibenzhuyi kaishi qinru Zhongguo shiqi" (The
initial period of foreign capitalism's invasion of China), chap. 1 in Diguozhuyi qin Hua shi (A history
o f imperialist invasion of China), 6th ed., vol. 1, (Beijing: Renmin Chubanshe, 1992). For a more
recent and nuanced version see, Lin Dunkui and Kong Xiangji, "Yapian Zhanzheng qianqi tongzhi
jieji neibu douzheng tanxi" (Analytical inquiry into the struggle within the ruling class during the early
stages of the Opium War), Jindai shiyanjiu 3 (1986): 1-19.
4 One of the most important articles in the considerable scholarship devoted to issues of prohibition is
Wu Yixiong, "Guanyu 1838 nian jinyan zhenglun de zai tantao" (A Re-examination o f the prohibition
debate of 1838), Fujian luntai 6 (1985): 59-64. The Chinese scholarship on the opium problem in
particular and on the war in general is enormous. An indispensable handbook to the field of Opium
War studies in and outside the PRC is Xiao Zhizhi, ed., Yapian Zhanzhengyu Lin Zexuyanjiu beilan
(A comprehensive reference to research concerning the Opium War and Lin Zexu) (Wuhan: Hubei
Renmin Chubanshe, 1995).
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less work has been done on regional studies or on ways center and locality interacted
to condition prohibition policy and its implementation.5 Despite its more active
engagement with the opium problem itself, this scholarship shares many of the
assumptions of its Euro-American counterpart in that the primary focus remains
Sino-Western diplomatic relations and materials related to opium are generally
employed to elucidate the nature of these relations for the ultimate purpose of
charting China's path to political and economic modernity. Consequently,
conclusions drawn regarding the nature of the Qing state are remarkably similar to
those reached in the West as well and have tended to portray the regime as corrupt,
incompetent and backward as opposed to the historically advanced, if morally
depraved, British. Recently, in the wake of successful economic reform in the
People's Republic, this narrative has taken on a particular nationalist tone that, while
continuing to decry the drug trade, seeks to rehabilitate many of the Qing officials as
attempting conscientiously, if futilely, to stop it.6
5 There are some notable exceptions to the general neglect of regional studies in the scholarly
literature. One article outstanding for its attempt to integrate local sites of prohibition operations with
central policy decisions is Xiao Zhizhi, "Lun 1838-1840 nian de fan yapian douzheng" (Concerning
the anti-opium struggle, 1838-1840), Wuhan Daxue Xuebao 3 (1990): 60-66. There are also a few
regional studies, most of which do not generally explore the opium problem prior to 1839 and are
based on only part o f the documentary record currently available. Some o f the more significant among
them include: Zou Lihong, "Jindai Xinjiang jin yapian shulun" (Overview of opium prohibition in
Xinjiang during the modern period), Xinjiang Shifandaxue Xuebao 2 (1986): 37-43; Yang Xingmao,
"Yapian ru Gan ji qi liudu shi shi jilue" (An outline of opium's entry into Gansu and the historical facts
about this flowing poison), Lanzhou xuekan 4 (1994): 45-48; Wang Gesheng, "Qingdai Dongbei
zhong yingsu zhi yapian shulun" (Overview of poppy cultivation and opium production in the
Northeast during the Qing dynasty), Beifang wenwu 43:3 (1995): 124-128; Qin Heping, "Qingdai
Daoguang nianjian Yunnan de jinyan w entiji jinyan shibai zhengjie de fenxi" (The opium problem in
Yunnan during the Qing Daoguang period and an analysis o f the crux of the failure of the opium
prohibitions), Zhongguo Bianjian Shidi Yanjiu 4 (1996): 57-63. Qin's article is particularly valuable
for its insight as well as for some of the sources it employs.
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Concerned as they both are with establishing a teleology of the modern
Chinese nation, neither Chinese nor Euro-American narratives, whatever their
specific differences, are much concerned with what the larger record of the empire's
historical experience with opium prohibition reveals about the Qing state itself. It is
precisely the general absence of questions generated from what Mark Elliot has
called "history from a 'Qing' perspective" in favor of those more characteristic of
modernization theory as well as other traditional narratives that accounts both for the
similarities between these two narratives and for a persistent gap in the literature in
and outside China on the opium problem itself.7
A Qing-centered perspective on the opium problem must expand beyond the
coast to include the empire's western territories in its scope. The Manchu rulers of
the last "Chinese" dynasty were deeply concerned about threats to their authority in
the western provinces of Yunnan, Sichuan, Guizhou and what would later become
the territory of Xinjiang. The ethno-geographic reorientation of the opium problem
away from the traditional narrative of a Sino-British diplomatic and military conflict
on China's eastern seacoast to a new account of attempts by the central government
to implement opium prohibition over its vast territorial expanse through a series of
6See, for example, Ma Weiping, "Qing Daoguang 1838 nian jinyan yuanyin bianxi" (Critical analysis
of the reasons for the Qing Daoguang Emperor's 1838 opium prohibition), Zhongshan Daxue
yanjiusheng xuekan 1 (1990): 75-80.
7 Mark Elliot, "Bannennan and Townsman: Ethnic Tension in Nineteenth-Century Jiangnan," Late
Imperial China 11 (June 1990): 39. James Millward has also called attention to a trend towards
"Qing-centered history," which takes into account the dynasty's concern with ethnic distinction and its
consequent effect on dynastic institutions and the territories over which they presided; Beyond the
Pass: Commerce, Ethnicity and the Qing Empire in Xinjiang, 1759-1864, (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 1998), pp. 13-15.
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local adminstrative structures designed to control specific segements of an extremely
varigated population that inhabited the empire's land-locked northwestern and
southwestern frontiers creates a wider historical perspective from which to view
Qing history.
The significance of the spatial exent of the opium problem was first
thoroughly explored by Lin Man-houng's pioneering, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation
"A Study of the Spread of Opium Smoking in Late Qing Society— A Supply-side
Analysis (1773-1906)." This work, which constitutes the most serious and sustained
book-length engagement with the opium problem itself in the literature, is primarily
concerned with the economics and expansion of the opium trade as it existed
throughout the empire, with a particular emphasis on the two provinces of Yunnan
and Sichuan, both of which would become the center of the Chinese opium
production industry of the latter half of the nineteenth century. Lin's focus is, hence,
economic rather than political, although she by no means seperates the two entirely.
Perhaps the single most significant effect of Lin's work on the general narrative is her
demonstration of the sheer expanse of the opium problem throughout the empire. In
effect she achieved a fundamental reorientation of the opium problem that must form
the basis for all subsequent studies. The extent of the traffic in China traced by Lin
makes it impossible to continue to treat the opium problem as purely one of Sino-
o
Western diplomacy.
8 Lin Man-houng, "Qingmo shehui liuxing xishi yapian yanjiu-gongjimian zhi fenxi, 1773-1906" (A
study of the spread of opium smoking in Late Qing society-a supply-side analysis, 1773-1906),
(Ph.D. diss., Taiwan Normal University, 1985).
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Lin's study, however, was more of an overview of the imperial traffic and its
economic dynamics. While she gathered some materials on regional aspects of the
opium problem from across the empire, these were intended more to demonstrate the
trans-imperial nature of the trade rather than to thoroughly trace a history of the
opium problem as it manifested itself in one or more regions despite the particular
attention paid to Yunnan. Consequently the dynamic relationship between central
prohibition policy formation and its regional implementation through a variety of
local administrative control structures does not occupy a central place in her
dissertation. This also precluded an extended inquiry into issues of ethinc diversity
related to the traffic. Finally, source limitations that now no longer obtain also
affected her study, which ignored the Xinjiang problem almost completely and was
unable to make use of many crucial documents related to other regions held in the
First Historical Archives in Beijing, especially those concerning Jiaqing-era
prohibition and search and confiscation statistics. These archival materials, which
number in the hundreds, substantially augment, and in some cases alter, Lin's initial
analysis of the opium problem as it existed throughout the empire during the Jiaqing
and Daoguang periods.
A more intense examination of the opium problem in key western regions
therefore becomes both crucial and possible. Spatial shifting of the opium problem
reveals, for example, that the drug flowed from the empire's western interior to the
coast as well as vice versa. Opium from both Xinjiang and the southwest headed
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8
eastward into the lucrative markets of China proper. It also went north from Yunnan
into the more commercialized regions of Sichuan to points further north and east.
These facts alone effect a fundamental ethnic reorientation of the opium problem in
the sense that Euro-American traffickers were completely absent from these western
regions, where opium was produced, distributed and consumed without any direct
participation of those involved in the coastal trade. The facts further imply,
especially in the case of border areas such as Xinjiang and Yunnan, that those active
in the western traffic were not exclusively Han. Official reports from these regions
confirm that other imperial subjects, the East Turkestanis of southern Xinjiang, as
well as Inner and South Asians from the Khanate of Kokand, Kashmir, Badakshan,
India and the Tsarist empire were also involved in the Xinjiang opium trade. In the
southwest indigenous peoples, particularly the Yi, the Dai and the Miao, were
instrumental for the traffic's persistence in the region. These groups remained
beyond imperial control for various reasons, most of which pertain in one way or
another to the nature of Qing local administration.
The ethno-geographic diversity of western China during the Qing necessitated
a correspondingly varigated system of local administration there that was intended to
mesh with the pre-existing structures of indigenous peoples in order to ultimately
facilitate their full incorporation into the empire. The pattern and efficacy of Qing
local control was a major factor in determining the success or failure of a variety of
legislation, including opium prohibition, in all areas of the empire, but they were
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9
particularly complex in its western regions because the Han-style bureaucratic
control structures of China proper, such as the baojia system, were generally not
operative, or operative only for Han residents in the west.
The indigenous peoples were controlled through their own administrations
such as the beg system in Xinjiang and the native chieftain system in the southwest,
both of which acted as intermediaries between indigenous peoples and regular Qing
administrators. In some areas of the imperial domain, particularly in Yunnan, there
appear to have been indigenous groups existing outside of any dynastic control
structures whatsoever. This left large areas of certain provinces and territories
largely or completely immune to direct surveillance and control by regular dynastic
officials and facilitated the spread of various forms of opium offenses, especially
cultivation. A number of regional opium problems that could not be entirely solved
by central government measures drafted primarily to stop coastal smuggling
consequently developed, persisted and ultimately culminated in a regional, domestic
system of production in the southwest that surpassed that of its Indian predecessor.
Although this development was certainly driven by the coastal smuggling traffic,
especially in its initial stages, it became entirely independent of it.
While the Euro-American dominated coastal traffic was certainly the initial
impetus behind the large-scale consumption of the drug in China proper, that same
traffic was neither the only dimension of the opium problem with which the dynasty
had to contend nor did it always constitute the ultimate source of every regional
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10
opium problem within the empire. Moreover, even when the spread of the drug
could be traced back to the coast, agency did not always lie in the illicit efforts of
traffickers or the ravenous appetite of consumers, but sometimes in the regular
functions of the state's penal apparatus. Thus, for example, the earliest official
opium offense on record in Xinjiang, which occurred in 1808, was actually
committed by two men from Guangdong sent to the territory as part of the regular
system of penal exile, one of whom had brought opium with him from the coast.
The significance of an altered and expanded perspective on the opium
problem is not limited to issues of Qing history, but also has implications for an
understanding of the role of the opium trade in the wider realm of world history.
Until quite recently there has been little expansion beyond the fundamental
contribution of David Edward Owen's 1934 work British Opium Policy in China and
India to historical understanding of the China traffic in a broader context
encompassing both Britain and India. While Owen contended that Europeans were
instrumental in organizing the drug industry that brought so much harm to China, he
sometimes portrays this commerce as an aberration o f individual traders rather than a
deliberate policy of empire.9 In a long overdue re-examination of the fundamental
issues concerning the the relationship between opium Britain, India and China, Carl
A. Trocki has identified drug trades in general, and the opium trade in particular, as
the "crucial component" of British imperialism rather than as an "aberration."1 0
9 David Edward Owen, British Opium Policy in China and India, (New Haven CT: Yale University
Press, 1934; reprint, Hamden, CT: Arehon Books, 1968), pp. 18, 214.
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11
This argument merits closer examination because it connects regional opium
problems together in a manner that not only helps to explain the persistence of the
trade and its world-historical significance but that also provides a framework for a
fruitful comparative analysis of how the opium problem was handled both by British
India and Qing China, both of which unsuccessfully sought to prohibit the drug.1 1
Unlike virtually all other Western authors on the subject, Trocki argues that
opium itself was of decisive significance and uniquely qualified to effect the
transformation of the socio-economies of its producers and consumers. This was due
to several effects directly arising from the nature of the opium trade itself. The
ability of opium to provide consistent, large quantities of revenue for the imperial
enterprize, coupled with its engendering of a critical mass of capitalists who profited
from the trade and who provided vital support for the imperial lobby throughout the
1 7
nineteenth century was one important factor. The larger effect of both these
functions laid the foundation for the global capitalist structure through its
development of both European imperial capital and its attendant international
merchant class and of indigneous capitalist groups in South and Southeast Asia as
1 0 Carl A. Trocki, Opium, Empire and the Global Political Economy, a Study o f the Asian Opium
Trade, 1750-1950, (London: Routledge, 1999), p. 7,
1 1 Opium was legal in Britain itself during the Daoguang-era prohibition in China and no significant
control over its popular and extensive use in patent medicines, candy and even suppositories was
exerted until 1868 when authority to dispense it was technically restricted to licensed professionals. It
was, however, never strictly outlawed during the nineteenth century. It is interesting to note that the
British attached the greatest stigma to opium smoking, which does not seem to have been particularly
extensive despite popular contemporary lurid tales of Victorian opium dens. For an extensive account,
see Virginia Berridge and Griffith Edwards, Opium and the People, Opiate Use in Nineteenth-Century
E ngland, (London: Allen Lane/St. Martin's Press, 1981).
1 2 Trocki, Opium, Empire and the Global Political Economy, p. 10.
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12
well as China. This occurred mainly because the drug traffic obliterated traditionalist
obstacles to the market while simultaneously creating a class of consumers, as well
as a market structure, for the newly commodified drug (10-11).
Citing the work of Sidney Mintz on sugar, Trocki observes that drug trades,
such as those of coffee, sugar and tobacco, "drastically transformed European
society" by becoming the "first true commodities." The sustained and increasing
mass demand for these commodities arose from their addictive qualities, which were
the true prerequisite of capitalist market development in its formative stages. The
fact that all such addictive consumables, which Trocki terms "drug foods," came
from beyond Europe provided the impetus for imperialist expansion, which in turn
could only be financed through the development of markets for mass consumption.
Soon basic elements of capitalist growth, economies of scale, comparative advantage
and division of labor came together to produce free traders who sought to remove
"protectionist" barriers to their drug products, over which they sought their own
monopolies (27-29).
The addictive properties of these consumables were also crucial in that they
"made workers work," both in the sense of enhancing their endurance and of
incitement to continue to purchase drug foods (31). The structure of mass
consumption that arose in consequence necessitated a correspondingly immense
structure of mass production to meet it and also created a commensurate political
structure through which to tap the resultant wealth. In the view of Trocki sugar,
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tobacco and tea had become such true commodites in Britain through the West
Indian sugar plantations, North American tobacco plantations and the tea trade of the
East India Company in China. In the latter case, however, the Chinese were not yet
incorporated into the British system of transoceanic production and consumption as
the slaves of the new world or the laborers of the old were; nor could they be drawn
in by either of sugar or tea, both of which were produced by China's economic
autarky. Indeed, the Chinese were the ones who enjoyed a monopoly on one of the
most important British addictive consumables, tea. A new commodity attractive to
China was required in order to gain full control of tea and shift its monopoly profits
to Britain (31-32).
It is not necessary to fully subscribe to Trocki1 s theory regarding the
connections between addictive consumables, imperialism and capitalism, which have
been only briefly outlined here, in order to explore the theory's ramifications for
select aspects of the Qing opium problem as it relates most directly to Britain and
India. For my purposes, linking the three together at the conceptual level is the idea
of the addictive consumable as a true commodity. This concept helps explain why
opium, as opposed to cotton or molasses or rice, became an ideal, indeed the only,
solution for the British in China, and in India.
The concept also explains why the production, distribution and consumption
of addictive consumables was of such enormous interest to the early modern state,
which was in constant search of substantial, regular revenue to fund consolidation
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14
and expansion. Some consumables, such as tea and opium, were of such
significance in this regard that they further evolved into strategic commodities
controlled by government monopoly, an infallible sign of considerable and abiding
state interest.1 3 Of course, addictive consumables were also capable of generating
immense profits for private individuals as well as substantial state revenue, and the
inevitable results of these dual and often antagonistic capacities were varying degrees
of state prohibition.
State motives for the prohibition of addictive commodities were hardly
uniform and could range from a desire to shield subjects from the harmful effects of
consumption to an attempt to preserve the state's own exclusive control over the
product. Indeed, the state has not even been consistently in favor of prohibition itself
as demonstrated by the colonial Spanish government in Peru, which successfully
fought Catholic clerical prohibitionists throughout the sixteenth century to protect the
coca production upon which the colony's indigenous labor force in the silver mines
depended for financial incentive and stamina.1 4 Even in this unusual example, as in
the case of opium in both British India and Qing China, state concern for revenue
1 3 For the role of tea as a strategic commodity, which arose comparatively early in China, see Paul J.
Smith, Taxing Heaven’ s Storehouse: Horses, Bureaucrats and the Destruction o f the Sichuan Tea
Industry, 1074-1224, (Cambridge MA: Harvard Council on East Asian Studies, 1991).
1 4 Joseph A. Gagliano, Coca Prohibition in Peru, (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1994), pp. 13-
91. The Spainish soon discovered that indigenous peoples in Peru valued coca more than gold or
silver and could be induced to mine these metals for the colonial government in exchange for coca
(pp. 22-23). Catholic priests objected to coca consumption in part because of inhumane conditions on
the coca plantations, but primarily because consumption was connected with indigenous belief systems
that were retarding their conversion efforts (pp. 47-49). While some moderate labor reforms were
enacted, prohibition failed because the Spainish Crown recognized coca's vital role in sustaining silver
mine production (pp. 57-59).
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15
was the ultimate determinate of state prohibition policy in particular and of the state's
relationship to the production, distribution and consumption of the addictive
consumable in general.
At the level of actual historical events, the most important aspect of the
specifics of the relations between Britain, India and China, again for my purposes, is
former's own abortive attempt to control the "native" production of opium by actors
in regions outside the reach of British administration. Ironically, the issue of local
control was decisive for both the British and the Qing empires, neither of which was
able to control the drug trade to its satisfaction. This mutual failure, from which
only Britain was able to profit, can be attributed in large measure to the nature of
opium as both a true and strategic commodity rather than the dynamic modernity of
the British nation state in rational, inevitable triumph over the muddled
traditionalism of the Qing regime.
II. The British Roots of the Opium Problem
Sir George Staunton, a former chairman of the East India Company's supreme
executive body in Guangzhou known as the Select Committee, frankly explained the
reaons for the importance of the tea trade to the House of Commons in terms that
confirm Trocki's explanation of the importance of the commodification of drug foods
for British imperialism
the British intercourse with China is the source from whence this
Country is supplied with tea, an article in such universal use as to be
nearly equivalent to a necessary of life, and through consumption of
which a greater Revenue of between Three and Four Millions sterling
is annually raised with greater facility and certainty and with less
pressure on the people than in the case of any other tax . .. this trade
moreover employs . . . British Shipping, is the medium of the Export
of Manufactures and Production of Great Britain and the British
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Possessions in India .. . [and affords] a certain convenient channel for
remittance to Europe.1 5
A pamphleteer of the early nineteenth century, in terms remarkably similar to those
of Staunton concerning tea, explained the significance of the commodification of
opium for British imperialism in Asia:
The opium trade has enabled India to increase ten-fold her
consumption of British manufacture; contributed directly to support
the vast fabric of British dominion in the East, to defray the expenses
of His Majesty's establishment in India, and by the operation of
exchanges and remittances in teas, to pour an abundant revenue into
the British Exchequer and benefit the nation to an extent of six
million pounds sterling yearly without impoverishing India.1 6
In order to better understand the link between tea, opium, and the Sino-
British traffic in these two commodified drug foods it is necessary to provide some
background regarding the East India Company's China trade.
The general conditions of the East India Company's China trade are well
17
known and have been described many times in detail. Only a brief overview of
these conditions is hence necessary. The East India Company was founded in 1600
and existed about 260 years. Until 1833 the Company maintained a monopoly on
1 5 "Resoultions by Sir George Staunton," in Irish University, China 111 Miscellaneous Papers 1809-
1840, Irish University Press area studies series, British Parliamentary Papers: China (London: House
of Commons, 1840. Reprint, Irish University Press, 1977), p. 1.
1 6 Michael Greenberg, British Trade and the Opening o f China 1800-42, (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1951), pp. 7, 106-107.
1 7 For an overview of the literature, see P.J. Marshall, "Bibliographic Essay," in Bengal: The British
Bridgehead, Eastern India, 1740-1828, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 183-
188. For works specifically concerned with the East India Company's China trade with particular
emphasis on its opium operations, see Greenberg, British Trade', Owen, British Opium Policy.
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British trade with China, primarily to ensure a stable source of tea revenue for both
the British government and the Company Raj. This emphasis on stability, rather than
profitability accounts in large measure for the relatively harmonious relations
between the Company and its Chinese counterparts, the group of Chinese merchants,
known as the "Foreign Emporiums" (yanghang), exclusively licensed by the Qing
government to trade with and control foreign traders whose activities were restricted
to a sand flat along the Guangzhou waterfront.1 8 This so-called "Canton System,"
which operated in its fully developed form from 1760-1834, functioned to regulate
relations between maritime Euro-American traders and local Qing officialdom not
only in the strictly commercial sphere but also by negotiating, controlling smuggling
and generally restraining the excesses of the foreign community.1 9
The system also necessitated considerable adaptation on the part of the
Company, whose standard factory system required the control of large local areas to
90 »
establish and support these trade emporia. This type of totalizing organization was
an important element in the development of a commodity, which was a product
intended for mass production and consumption for purposes of capital development.
Britain's and the "Hon'able Company's" mutual addiction to tea and empire initially
ensured compliance with Chinese regulations and provided the stimulus for
iS These emporiums were also known as the "Thirteen Emporiums" (Shisan Hang) and as the "State
Emporiums" (gonghang), the latter term being generally confined to the period 1760-1771.
l9Fairbank, Trade and Diplomacy on the China Coast, 2 vols. (Cambridge MA: Harvard University
Press, 1953; reprint, 2 vols. in 1, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1969), pp. 48-53.
2 0 K.N. Chaudhuri, The English East India Company, (New York: A.M. Kelly, 1965), pp. 53-54.
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adaptation. It is significant, however, that the free-trading opium traffickers, whose
activities would result in the end of the Company's monopoly in 1833, considered
both the Canton system and the East India Company to be obstacles to "free trade,"
by which they seem to have meant control of a commodity mass market by a few
individuals for their private benefit who simultaneously sought to socialize as many
of their operating costs as possible.2 1 In this sense, as in many others, their goals
were incompatible with those of the British government, whose first Superintendant
of Trade in Guangzhou John Francis Davis, appointed after the reduction of
Company authority in 1833, reported that "it is more difficult to deal with our own
» 99
countrymen at Canton than with the Chinese government."
The Company's monopoly, however, was more apparent than real as a group
of private traders, whose vessels were licensed by the Company in its Indian realm,
was indispensable for the maintenance of the East Asian branch of the British global
trade network. The private merchants involved in this "country trade" sold high value
items, mainly cotton and opium, to China and got low value goods, such as sugar, in
exchange. This created an annual surplus of about 1,000,000 pounds sterling to the
credit of the private traders, who lent it to the Company in China to purchase tea.
2lIn 1831 a "Petition of British Subjects in China" was sent to Parliament. The petitioners, all of
whom were British merchants, frankly stated that neither the East India Company nor they as
"individuals pursuing their separate interests" could place British trade in China on "a firm and
equitable footing." Consequently, they proposed the appointment of a Crown representative at
Guangzhou to "remove the impression among Chinese authorities that foreigners in China have
forfeited the protection of their own sovereign;" China III, p. 4. In this manner free traders sought to
resolve the internal contradictions of their own ideology by shifting the costs o f doing business in
China to the public purse for the enrichment of their own private ones.
1 2 China III, p. 240.
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These transactions allowed the Company Raj to remit its Indian revenue back to
Britain in the form of tea, a solidly developed true commodity in contrast to almost
anything else obtainable in the east. This system of indirect drug-dealing also
permitted the Company to operate in ostensible compliance with Chinese law, which
had banned opium in 1729 and prevented the Yanghang merchants from dealing in it.
The Company, with the stability and regularity of the tea trade always uppermost in
its considerations, feared any public connection with opium smuggling would disrupt
its vital commercial activities and this was its motive for employing the country
traders to transport Company opium to China for sale.2 3 Thus, the Company's
hypocritical desire for profit engendered the coastal smuggling trade run by private
merchants who would ultimately overthrow both the Canton system and the
Company monopoly and foment a war between Great Britain and the Great Qing in
the process all in order to expand and secure their markets.2 4
Had the concern of British trade remained confined to tea, there would have
been little incentive to disrupt the system of commercial relations that had long been
stabilized by the early nineteenth century. During the 1828 trading season in
23 Greenberg, British Trade, p. 11; Frederick Wakeman Jr., "The Canton Trade and the Opium War,"
in The Cambridge History o f China, Volume 10, Late Ch'ing, 1800-1911, Part 1, ed. John K. Fairbank
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), p. 172. In later years private traders would merely
ship receipts, obtained from the Company at Guangzhou in exchange for their opium profits, back to
India or Britain and cash them. This method was preferred above all others because of its stability and
assured rate of profit; Greenberg, British Trade, p. 12.
2 4 The political history of Sino-British relations that led to the war has been told many times and in
considerable detail. The standard work in English remains Hsin-pao Chang, Commissioner Lin,
Jardine, whose Chinese nickname was "Iron-headed Old Rat," almost literally planned the war for
British Prime Minister Palmerston as well as framed terms of peace (193-195).
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Guangzhou, for example, the total sales by the Company and private traders
amounted to $20,364,600, of which $9,123,131 was in cotton and other goods. This
almost completely balanced the Company's $8,479,285 in tea purchases for the
season. In other words, neither Britain nor China was experiencing an unfavorable
balance of trade in terms of cotton for tea. The imbalance appeared only when
opium entered the picture as the remaining $11,243,469 came from Chinese drug
purchases. The legitimate trade itself was more than sufficient to pay for all tea
purchases even after nine years of declining cotton sales in China.2 5
The radical shift in the Sino-British balance of trade in favor of the British is
indicative of the economic difference between a true commodity such as opium and a
conventional one like cotton. The country trade, as a nascent capitalist enterprise,
was inevitably drawn to the former's more attractive profit potential. Unlike states,
private merchants were initially more concerned with quantity rather than stability of
profit and by 1830 the opium trade at Guangzhou was probably the single most
valuable commodity commerce of the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, there was
hardly a complete mental gulf between private merchants and the governments of the
Company Raj and Britain. Major opium traffickers like William Jardine and James
Matheson began to appreciate the value of a stable market only after their
machinations resulted in a "ruinous competition" between themselves and a horde of
2 5 Greenberg, British Trade, p. 13.
2 6 Wakeman, "The Canton Trade," p. 172.
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21
free-trading traffickers who infested Guangzhou in the wake of the demise of the
97
Company's monopoly. The Company Raj itself had good reason to desire stability
over unstable profit as its extensive opium monopoly in its Indian territories alone
accounted for fully one-seventh of the state's revenues for the entire nineteenth
century. Britain itself derived about ten million pounds sterling per annum from the
trade, approximately one-sixth of its total annual revenue. This amount represented
about half the total revenue from British India without any of the attendant military
or administrative costs. Such lucre was as attractive to British merchants and
o
officials as opium was to addicts.
While it was British merchants who were the immediate driving force behind
the nineteenth century opium trade their government, despite much breast-beating
over the "pernicious article of luxury," were ultimately responsible for the
establishment and maintenance of the trade, which it continued well into the
twentieth century, long after the British traffickers had been replaced by "native"
29
ones.
27 In yet another moment of conflict between free trade ideology and external conditions, Matheson
wrote soon after 1833 that "[W]e are sighing almost for a return o f the Company's monopoly in
preference to the trouble and endless turmoil of free trade;" quoted in Jack Beeching The Chinse
Opium Wars, (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1975), p. 42. The "ruinous competition"
engendered by the elimination of the Company's exclusive rights soon created calls for "fair trade"
rather than "free trade" that appeared little different from the days of Company monopoly; Greenberg,
British Trade, p. 188.
28 Greenberg, British Trade, pp. 104-105; Tan Chung, China and the Brave New World, (Durham NC:
Carolina Academic Press, 1978), p. 94. Trocki, citing Timothy Leary, has rightly called attention to
other dimensions of addiction in drug trades besides those directly linked to physical ingestion;
Trocki, Opium, Empire and the Global Political Economy, p. 12.
2 9 The quote is from Edmund Burke's account of the trial of Warren Hastings, India's first governor-
general and father of its opium monopoly. The quote continued to the effect that opium "ought not to
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The nativization of the opium traffic was of immense significance for all
peoples involved. The most important dimension of this process for the present
analysis occurred relatively early on in India itself, where competition between
Company-produced Patna, or Bengal, opium and the cheaper Malwa variety, grown
in western India outside the Company's sphere of influence centered in Bengal,
ensued as a result of the successful commodification of the drug food opium by the
country traders. During this competition, it became clear that the Company Raj itself
did not possess a degree of local control sufficient to dictate the terms of opium
production and sale and the government was forced to compromise with the native
producers in the western subcontinent. The ultimate result of this compromise would
be an enormous increase in the production of both varieties of opium, a radical
reduction in its asking price and a commensurate increase in Chinese consumption by
the 1830's that would ultimately force the Chinese government to enact the harshest
set of prohibition regulations in its history.
III. Company Rule in India
Company rule did not really begin to extend beyond the three Presidencies of
Calcutta, Madras and Bombay until the last years of the eighteenth century and its
be permitted but for the purposes of foreign commerce;" cited in Owen, British Opium Policy, p. 48.
This neatly sums up the actual practice of the British government until it "voluntarily" gave up the
opium trade for good during Japan's occupation of much of its East Asian colonial possessions during
World War II. Both Owen and Trocki provide ample evidence of the British govenment's addiction to
the power generated by opium; its only dilemma being whether to draw a high percentage o f profit
from a small provision of opium or a lower per unit profit form a larger produce; Owen, British Opium
Policy, pp. 281-282; Trocki, Opium, Empire and the Global Political Economy, p. 161.
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23
hold was particularly weak in western India/0 Even in the Company's core territories
in Bengal there were periodic revolts as well as continuous conflicts on its
o i
frontiers. While the Company's initial interests in India had been purely
commercial, these soon became inextricably linked to political and especially
military considerations as it began to compete for power with other nascent Indian
■ t
states/
The residency system appeared and developed, if erratically, as a British
response to this competition. Throughout most of the latter half of the eighteenth
century, individual residents were posted by the Company to act as its commercial
representatives in various independent Indian states. Towards the end of this period,
they began to be transformed into ambassadors from the three Presendencies, Bengal
foremost among them, to Indian courts. By the early nineteenth century the
Governor-Generals of India began to assert direct control over residencies in order to
forge them into a structure of indirect rule. This development, however, was not very
systematic and indirect rule through residencies was increasingly substituted for
direct annexation o f native states between 1840 and 1857. The 1857 Indian Mutiny
3 0 For a discussion of the weakness of British presence in western India in the context of the Malwa
opium problem, see Arnar Farooqui, Smuggling as Subversion, Colonialism, Indian Merchants and
the Politics o f Opium, (Hew Delhi: New Age Internationa] Publishers, 1998), p. 15.
jlMarshall, the British Bridgehead, pp. 95-97.
3 2 C.A. Bayly, "The Crisis of the Indian State, 1780-1820," chapter 3 in Indian Society and the
Making o f the British Empire, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).
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24
revealed the dangerously provocative nature of annexation and forced a restoration of
33
indirect rule in a more organized form.
The geographic and economic foundation of Company rule in India was
Bengal, which was expected to finance both the trade of all other Company
settlements throughout Asia as well as its own political and military operations on
the subcontinent. This dual burden ensured that the finances of British Bengal would
be in a state of almost continuous crisis throughout most of the era of Company
rule.3 4 This situation produced an obsession with the stabilization and protection of
revenue, a "priority inescapable at any period in the Company's rule," both to pay
3 S
Company troops and maintain Company trade.
By the early nineteenth century the answer to this revenue problem appeared
to be the opium monopoly, which had been established in 1772 by Bengal Governor-
General Warren Hastings. Private cultivation was explicitly outlawed in 1799.3 6
Declines in the Madras textile market, the crash of the Indigo market in the Delhi-
Agra region and the suspension of raw cotton purchases by the Company in Central
India in the wake of the abolition of its China trade monopoly in 1834 all contributed
to an increasing dependence on opium sales to China as a major and reliable source
Michael H. Fisher, Indirect Rule in India, Residents and the Residency System 1764-1858, (Delhi:
Oxford University Press, 1991), pp. 32, 432-434.
3 4 Marshall, British Bridgehead, p. 84.
3 5 Ibid., p. 116.
3 6 For a concise chronological overview of the British opium monopoly, see J.F. Richards, "The Indian
Empire and Peasant Production of Opium in the Nineteenth Century, Modern Asian Studies, 15, no. 1
(1981): 59-82.
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25
of state revenue.3 7 As in Qing China, British opium policy in India became largely
driven by concerns over revenue.
These concerns were central to the Company government's active defense of
its opium monopoly, which it sought to restrict to circumscribed regions within
Bengal. The Company's sustained attempts to prevent the production and sale of
Patna opium by the native state of Awadh (Oudh) and of Malwa opium by Sindia
demonstrate the importance of opium to the Company regime. The general failure of
these attempts to protect its opium monopoly also reveal that indirect rule via the
residency system was not yet an effective instrument for the exertion of British
power into the semi-independent native states, whose very existence challenged the
Company's monopoly as a number of them were heavily dependent on the drug trade
3 8
for their own revenues.
IV. Patna vs Patna
Before the emergence of the Malwa problem beyond its sovereign territory,
British India itself had actually experienced a Patna opium smuggling problem
during the late eighteenth century, a fact which the standard accounts of the Indian
traffic have not explored in sufficient detail. The process and resolution of the
3 7 For regional economic decline, see Bayly, Indian Society, p. 124. Tan Chung charts the rising
significance of revenue derived from the opium monopoly in Bengal: 5.2% of the total Bengali
revenues in 1792; 7% in 1812; 10% in 1822 and 20% in 1842; "The British-China-India Trade
Triangle (1771-1840)," The Indian Economic and Social History Review, 21 (-1974): 422-423.
3 8 Benoy Chowdhury, Growth o f Commercial Agriculture in Bengal, 1757-1900, (Calcutta: Indian
Studies Past & Present, 1964), pp. 14-15.
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26
problem was remarkably similar to that of the later Malwa problem and is worth a
closer examination.
The establishment of the Company's monopoly in its eastern Indian territories
of Bengal and Bihar was instrumental in removing an early competitor, the Dutch,
TO
during the 1770's. This process of market consolidation also created a domestic
demand in India to which external producers soon responded. In addition to illicit
cultivation and smuggling within the Company territory of Bihar, the Company's
legitimate domestic rivals in the opium industry, which included both Indian and
British individuals, contracted with peasants or their landlords under the protection
of various native states beyond Company authority.4 0 Indeed, illicit cultivators were
believed to conceal the Bengal and Bihar provenance of their contraband opium by
labeling it as the legal, if equally unwelcome, imports from bordering native states,
especially Awadh to the northwest.4 1 The effect of both types of opium production
was, however, the same; it was deleterious to the Company's opium monopoly.4 2
3 9 Om Prakash, "Opium Monopoly in India and Indonesia in the Eighteenth Century," The Indian
Economic and Social History Review, 24, no. 1 (1987): 76-77.
4 0 Chowdhury, Commercial Agriculture in Bengal, pp. 10-11; Prakash, "Opium Monopoly," pp. 71-
72.
4 1 H.R.C. Wright, "James Augustus Grant and the Gorakhpur Opium, 1789-1796," Journal o f the
Royal Asiatic Society (April 1960): 6. Illicit cultivation was identified within a few miles of the
Company's main production center of Patna.
4 2 Wright notes the official objection to even the legitimate Awadh opium imports as "diminishing the
exchangeable value of the Company's opium" by "enlarging the sphere of competition both in the
home and foreign markets;" "Gorakhpur Opium," 7.
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From early on the Company's opium monopoly was characterized by an
abhorrence of competition from any source and for good reason. The experience
with Awadh opium showed that the drug monopoly of overseas exports could not co
exist with a domestic policy of free-market opium with Indian neighbors. It also
shows that the most economically advanced European state was still hostile, near the
beginning of the nineteeth century, to many of the practices familiar to modem
people as putatively constitutive of a free market.
In the last decade of the eighteenth century Awadh's Gorakhpur district was
expanding its exports to both China and Malaya. The increase in both the quantity
and quality of Gorakhpur opium stimulated further anxiety. Fears peaked around
1794 when the Bengal Board of Trade's inspector of opium expressed concern over
any further decline for Bengal opium in the Chinese and Malay markets in the
following terms:
[0]ne of these two things must happen, either these people will be
weaned from the habit of using this drug, or, which is most likely, the
high price offered by them for good opium will encourage some of the
other countries of Hindoostan to cultivate the poppy for the purpose of
supplying them with it.... Should it take place, the monopoly of this
valuable article would be totally and irrecoverably lost to these
provinces.4 3
Further inquiry revealed the the stimulus for the Gorakhpur competition
ultimately lay with the "speculations of Europeans" having "no support or
4 3 Quoted in W right, "Gorakhpur Opium," 8.
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countenance" from the Indian government4 4 Thus, at the end of the eighteenth
century the Company itself faced a challenge by European opium smugglers, many of
whom were its own ungovemorable subjects. The problem and range of options
considered by the Company were remarkably similar to those confronted by the Qing
government in the 1830's. Prohibition of Awadh opium was discussed in 1791, but
was prevented by the terms of a previously existing commercial treaty with the state.
This proposal was subsequently refined by the Board of Trade's solution into a
scheme to either convince the Nawab of Awadh to conduct his own prohibition
campaign or accede to a prohibitively expensive tax by the Company Raj on opium
imported from Awadh. By 1796 it was imperative for the Company's monopoly that
"some form of restriction be put upon the increase in manufacture of opium in
Awadh."4 5
Another option proposed was the conclusion of a new trade agreement with
the Nawab of Awadh to purchase the native state's output for the Company.4 6 Here is
where the decisive difference lay between the position of the Qing and that of the
Company Raj, for the latter's opium problem was primarily economic and exportable;
hence, more susceptible negotiation. Once the Qing firmly abandoned legalization in
1838, such negotiations were no longer open to it. Of course, of at least equal
importance is the fact that the dynasty could not redirect the energy of its
4 4 Ibid., 9.
4 5 Ibid.," 7, 10, 11.
4 6 Ibid., 9.
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entrepreneurial class of opium producers and traffickers to points outside its borders
and beyond its political and ethical responsibilities.
In the end the Nawab agreed to prohibit the production of opium in his
domain possibly because the Company threated to levy a prohibitively expensive tax
on the Awadh product. The wish to avoid antagonizing a powerful neighbor was
also, no doubt, a factor in the Nawab's final decision. James Augustus Grant, who
had been instrumental in the establishment of Awadh's opium monopoly and who
had hoped to sell his right to produce Awadh opium to some Calcutta merchants, was
less easily handled, but he was ultimately driven from the trade.4 7 It is suggestive
that the "region of monopoly opium production remained consistent after the
4 o
annexation of Oudh [Awadh]" in 1856. This denouement foreshadows the growing
interest of native Indians outside Company territory in the lucrative opium trade and
these would soon mount another challenge to the Company monopoly that would not
so easily be beaten off.
V. Patna vs Malwa
The development of the competition between these two types of opium and
its effects on both the drug traffic and on Sino-British relations has been told in a
number of works, including Farooqui's study of Malwa production itself in India.4 9
4 7 Ibid., 11-16.
4 8 Richards," Peasant Production of Opium," 69.
4 9 Owen, "The Monopoly Under the Company," chapter 4 in British Opium Policy, Greenberg, British
Trade, pp. 124-136; Trocki, Opium, Empire and the Global Political Economy, pp. 77-87; Farooqui,
Smuggling as Subversion.
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As in the case of Awadh opium above, however, there have been no comparative
treatments of the Company's response to Malwa and analogous atttempts by the Qing
court to bring its own domestic opium under control. While the Company, unlike the
Qing, did not perceive consumption and trafficking per se as problems to be
eradicated, it did try to discourage Malwa cultivation in particular by a group of
indigenous producers outside the strictures of the Company's monopoly and the
imperial state's authority. In this sense the problem was similar to that of the
previous issue of Awadh opium with a very significant exception. Indigenous
merchants of native states were directly interested in the much more lucrative traffic
and this precluded the redeployment of the prohibition strategy that had worked
previously in Awadh. Contrary to the orientalist assumptions of Company
authorities regarding the crucial contribution of European entrepreneurs to
commerical success, it was the absence of European participants that proved one of
the most decisive factors to Malwa's expansion.5 0
5 0 These assumptions with regards to the Awadh opium trade were expressed with notable candor by
the British Resident at Lucknow: "[Pjrior to the exertions of Mr. Grant the quantity of opium
manufactured in Awadh was small, because there was no export for it owing to a want of enterprise in
the breast [sic] of the Nabob's native subjects, and for the same reason I believe that it would diminish
immediately that European industry ceased to give encouragement to the manufacture. That industry,
protected against competitions of equal enterprise, is sufficient to pay the duties which this
government receives and to operate on the Company's monopoly" (Wright, "Gorakhpur Opium," 10-
11). This equivocal, self-serving attitude towards "enterprise," which was simultaneously a mark of
European racial superiority and a threat to the very distinctive European industry for which it
constituted a prerequisite, is characteristic of the fundamental contradiction within the ideology of
both the Company and the British Raj. Both sought to exploit the fruits of enterprise without paying
the price in authority demanded by entrepreneurs. In the end it was the "native" enterprise of both
China and India that proved its superiority by driving European merchants out of the trade, but by this
time imperialist ideology had shifted to stigmatize the opium trade as the provenance of racially
inferior Asians and Jews; Trocki, Opium, "In the Hands of Jews and Armenians," chapter 6 in Empire
and the Global Political Economy,.
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As noted by Farooqui, almost as soon as the Awadh opium problem had been
solved, competition from the Malwa trade arose in western India, centered in a region
of the same name in present-day Madhya Pradesh. Malwa, which was considered
superior to Patna due to a special ageing process, had been produced possibly as far
back as the 1770's and seems to have arisen in order to meet the demand of Dutch
and Portuguese merchants who were not content with the drug quotas assigned them
under the Company's monopoly system.5 1 By 1803 the Company Raj had become
aware of Malwa's threat to its Bengal monopoly and it was later estimated by the
British that around 700 chests of Malwa per year were finding their way into China
via Macao. As with Awadh opium , prohibition was the government's preferred
response. In 1805 the Company prohibited cultivation in its territories in the
Bombay presidency and the export of opium through the port of Bombay to China.
As Qing rulers would seek to do within their own domains via prohibition
legislation, the govenor-general, Lord Wellesley, implemented the Bombay policy
with the goal of the "ultimate annihilation" of Malwa in mind (14-15). Again, as in
the Qing situation, the state's conception of its power to assert local control exceeded
its actual grasp. The Malwa-producing areas of western India lay well beyond the
Company's sphere of control and "from the moment of the inception of its Malwa
opium policy, the Company was confronted with the dilemma of not being a major
territorial power in western and central India (15)."
5 1 Farooqui, Smuggling and Subversion, p. 14. For Malwa's superiority, see p. 72.
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The problem of territorial control was directly related to the Company's
opium problem. This would also prove true in the Qing case. The dismal results of
both these attempts reveals that British India and Qing China each lacked local
control structures sufficient to enforce their respective prohibition policies, which
differed considerably in degree. Another difference of particular significance lay in
each's response to this common limitation on local control. The British empire
ultimately compromised with its renegades; the Qing confronted them.
By the time the Company became paramount in western India in the wake of
the Napoleonic Wars around 1817, regional Malwa cultivation was well-developed.
It was at this time that observers noted that the competition between Malwa and
Patna became "critical (16)." With a major consolidation of British power in western
India after the successful conclusion of the Third Anglo-Maratha War in 1818, the
Bombay presidency sought to intensify its prohibition operations in an attempt to
intercept Malwa as it was transported through various small native states in Gujarat
to the sea. The prohibitions included any Company opium intended for sale through
the ports of western India as well. Agreements were duly concluded with a number of
these states to prevent the transit of opium through their territories. In a chain of
reasoning not dissimilar to the Qing rationale for focussing prohibition on
distribution rather than on consumption or production the British hoped that
cultivation would automatically stop if the overseas egress of the drug could be
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prevented. Crucial states, such as Sind, however, remained outside the agreements
and the flow of Malwa continued (17-18).
Prohibition having failed, the Company exercised an option that the Qing had
once briefly considered but ultimately rejected. The Company decided to to enter the
Malwa opium market and buy up the competition. This policy was a rapid and
dismal failure, in part because of the Company's inexperience in dealing with the
commodity on the free market. This attempt by the Company to comer the market,
thus operating within the monopolistic environment to which it was accustomed, was
refined in 1823 when the Company sought to contract directly and exclusively with
Malwa producing native states for their opium crops. This attempt to duplicate the
monopoly conditions obtaining in the eastern territories of British India was
ultimately undermined by indigenous business interests who would have been shut
out by a Company monopoly (18-20).
Significantly for this comparative analysis, the main areas of this indigenous
resistance were those areas of Malwa, especially the region controlled by the Sindia
family, under a form of indirect British rule not entirely unlike the beg or native
chieftan systems employed by the Qing empire. Sindia, and its neighbor state of
Holkar, were the major regional powers in Malwa and were centrally concerned with
stabilizing their rule through a regularization of revenue. Opium was a crucial
dimension of their programs as it functioned as a form of remittance in the regionally
important tobacco trade with Gujarat. The Company's entry into the regional
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economy and its attempt to establish an opium monopoly was directly opposed to the
interests of these native states (38,42). Sindia, unlike many local native states with
minor opium interests, remained unwilling to sign a prohibition agreement with the
Company. This resistance, combined with problems of enforcing prohibition in
signatory states effectively terminated the largely ineffective British prohibition
efforts by 1827 (94-103).
The Company could only defend its opium revenues by an expansion of their
own production. Indeed, the success of Malwa revealed that the Chinese market was
larger than previously thought by the Company and this helped to encourage its new
policy of expansion. The stimulus of Malwa competition, of both the Chinese
market and Patna production, was the most important factor in the tripling of of
Chinese opium imports from 10,000 chests per year in the 1820's to 30,000 per year
by the mid-1830's.3 3 This massive increase provoked the Qing government to sterner
prohibition measures that ultimately resulted in the Opium War.
The stimulating effect of Malwa, however, would not have been permitted to
occur had the Company been able to extend the Company opium monopoly to the
Malwa fields of western India. That it failed to do so is fundamentally due to the
Company's comparatively recent arrival on the scene:
The British were, comparatively speaking, late-comers to western and
central India— as builders of an extensive formal empire. The lack of
an administrative machinery which would exclusively serve the East
3 2 Owen, British OpiumPpolicy, pp. 105-106.
5 3 Ibid., p. 110.
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India Company's interests in the crucial period of expansion of the
trade in Malwa opium, made the opium restrictions inoperative for all
practical purposes. What is more, colonialism does not function in a
geographical vacuum: 'Princely rule was suffered to exist by the
Brisith in areas where difficult topography . . . and remoteness from
the heartland of imperial power made the setting up of a direct
administration hazardous and costly.' Given the contradictions
between British colonial rule and indigenous enterprise backed to
some extent by Indian rulers, contradictions which were played out
during the 1820s and 1830s against the backdrop of the trade in
Malwa opium, the lack of, or delay in, setting up a proper
administrative machinery meant that opium regulations could not
always be translated into action. The acquiescence of Indian rulers
was essential, but had not been forthcoming.5 4
As the following chapters will show, the nature of Qing administrative
structure, especially in Xinjiang and southwest China, undermined prohibition in a
similar way if not for precisely the same reasons as in India.5 5 The main problem in
the Qing domains was not connected to imperialism in its nineteenth-century
European manifestation. It was, however, connected with the underdevelopment of
central government administrative structures in regions that had only begun to be
incorporated into the Qing empire relatively recently in terms of the extraordinary
extent and continuity of Chinese history. The employment of structures of indirect
rule like the beg, native chieftan and especially the frontier residency systems were
5 4 Farooqui, Smuggling and Subversion, p. 144.
5 5 An extended discussion of the differences between Qing expansionism and European imperialism is
not possible within the context of this study. A few observations, however, can briefly be made. The
terminology' of imperialism needs to be refined to account for the differences between an empire
seeking to incorporate a recently-encountered territory into a global market, or to exploit it solely for
purposes of primitive accumulation, and one seeking to expand into an area with which it has had
centuries of political, economic and biological interaction and in which it perceives a temporary
vacuum of authority, real or imagined. Much of the Qing expansion into western China can be
characterized in these latter tenns while British imperialsim in India can hardly make these claims.
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the Qing equivalent of the British system of residents in Indian native states. From
this perspective what is most significant for a study of the opium problem connecting
both the British and Qing empires is the similarity of their problems of territorial
control rather than the overt differences in culture, technology or ideology.
Prohibition failed in both British India and Qing China for reasons that have
nothing to do with the latter's being less modern, or "western" than the former. It is
simply that British India was in a position to profit from its failure and thereby avoid
the otherwise serious consequences. Like its free trader compatriots, the Company
Raj shifted the costs of its muddled greed onto China in the form of a grossly
expanded opium production. Consequently, China found itself, perhaps for the first
time in its history, to be a consumer (supplicant) rather than a producer (suzerain)
with no means to reshift the human and economic cost of its addictions.
VI. Chapter Conclusions
The Qing response to the opium traffic exposed fundamental weaknesses in
the dynastic structure of local control, but administrative weakness in the face of the
mass production, distribution and consumption of a drug food was not unique to the
Qing, as demonstrated by the British prohibition record in India. One common
administrative weakness undoubtedly arose from the various apparatuses of indirect
rule employed by both Britain and the Qing in their respective domains. These were,
however, by no means the only causes nor were they all problematic in precisely the
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same way, as implied by the ethno-geographic divesity that necessitated the
imposition of an array of structures of indirect rule in the first place.
Consequently, before examining the specifics of the regional opium problems
of both Xinjiang and the southwestern provinces of Yunnan, Guizhou and Sichuan, it
is necessary to understand the nature of their unique administrative structures and
how these structures contributed to the rise of regionally distinct opium problems
which hindered and ultimately outlasted the intensified prohibition efforts of the
1830's.
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Chapter 2.
Regional Administrative Structures: The Junxian, Beg and Native
Chieftain Systems
I. Overview
The empire's multifarious administrative structures were direct products of
Chinese historical development in general and Qing historical development in
particular. The organization of territory into "prefectures" (originally
"commanderies") and "districts" ( jun and xian) was essentially coterminous with the
establishment of the dynastic system itself and was the basis for the administration of
the eighteen provinces of the Han core during the Qing dynasty. Imperial expansion,
however, caused a number of additions to the standard junxian system, most notably
the imposition of the native chieftain (tusi) system on the indigenous peoples of the
southwest, developed in the Yuan and Ming dynasties, and of the beg (boke) and
jasak systems, both modified by the Qing from pre-existing indigenous political
structures of the Uighurs and Mongols, respectively. All these additions were
intended to act as intermediaries between the indigenous peoples of newly conquered
territories, who could not be readily put under the junxian system without great cost,
and the imperial center.1
'The experience of Taiwan is most instructive in this respect. Ostensibly a prefecture of Fujian when
first occupied by the Qing in 1683, most of this strategically important island remained a frontier zone
inhabited only by "wild" indigenous peoples. High administrative costs, which could not be paid for
locally, limited the island's incorporation to a relatively small area centered on the prefectural capital
of Tainan. The overall effect of the island's unique spatial and ethnic conditions, which created much
unrest, was to put a severe limitation on the dynasty's ability to fully incorporate the island into the
junxian system; John Robert Shepherd, "Ch'ing Administration of the Han," chapter 7 in Statecraft
and Political Economy on the Taiwan Frontier, 1600-1800, (Stanford: Stanford University Press,
1993). The imposition of alternative adminstrative systems at Qing disposal was apparently even
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An additional administrative layer, composed of Qing civil and military
residencies, whose senior officials were generally termed ambans, existed in many
frontier areas of the empire's Inner Asian territories.2 Due to their frequent location
in isolated border regions, such residencies were often closely linked with structures
of military administration such as the Manchu banner garrisons and the Han Green
Standards, both of which also permeated the empire. In jursidictions of residencies,
however, military personnel often performed duties that would normally be left to the
civil "police" of the magistrates yamen in areas of the Han core under junxian
authority. This situation arose primarily as a result of Qing expansionism into Inner
Asia and a shortage both of Han residents and, more importantly, of qualified civil
administrators to serve in such areas.
In general as a result of the Manchu conquests both of China proper and of
adjacent territories in Inner Asia, the Qing imperial center cannot be characterized as
a purely Han construct, including as it did such such major Manchu institutional
innovations as the Court of Territorial Affairs (Lifan Yuan), which was the key link
between the regular central bureaucracy that supervised the Han core and the
intermediary administrations of various Inner Asian border territories.3 A hybrid
more problematic. The throne actually rejected a suggestion by a Fujian official to organize the
troublesome indigenes into native chieftainships on the grounds that there was no pre-existing body of
hereditary chieftains from which to organize such a structure (p. 272).
T o r a recent overview, see Nicola Di Cosmo, "Qing Colonial Administration in Inner Asia," The
International History Review, 20 (June, 1998): 287-309.
T o r recent studies of the Lifan Yuan, see Zhao Yuntian, Qingdai zhili bianchui de shuniu— Lifan Yuan
(Axis of Qing frontier rule-the Court of Territorial Affairs) (Urumqi: Xinjiang Renmin Chubanshe,
1995); Chia Ning, "The Lifanyuan and the Inner Asian Rituals in the Early Qing (1644-1795)," Late
Imperial China 14 (June 1993): 60-91. The term "Lifan Yuan" is more traditionally and misleadingly
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system of administration resulted that often split sub-provincial units into a number
of differing systems that can only be described as "Qing" in style, an amalgamation
of Manchu, Mongol and Han institutional practices.
As the underlying intent of all imperial administrative structures was to
maintain local control by the Qing center in a regionally and ethnically appropriate
fashion, it was inevitable that they would also have an impact on the enforcement of
imperial law such as the opium prohibitions. Moreover, the empire's spatio-
ethnographic diversity, of which which these various political structures were the
administrative effects, was also bound to have an effect on the way in which the
opium problem manifested itself as it spread to different regions of the empire. In its
attempt to enforce prohibition the court encountered a number of obstacles created by
this diversity, which it attempted to eliminate via the actions of its local
administrative apparatuses, each of which was presumed able to implement the
prohibitions after suitably modifying them to local conditions. The determining
importance of the empire's ethno-geographic diversity and its attendant
administrative structures makes an examination of the provinical and territorial
administration of select areas essential for an understanding both of the regional
development of the opium problem and of its overall development throughout Qing
domains.
translated as the "Court of Colonial Affairs." I have selected the term "territory" to designate those
parts of the Qing empire outside the eighteen provinces of China proper where non-Han peoples
predominated. The central government, with varying degrees of success generally sought to close
these territories to large-scale Han colonial settlement.
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The following account will attempt to establish regional administrative
contexts for three main geographical divisions, the provinces of the Han core,
excluding the southwest, Xinjiang, and the southwest. The Han core administration
will be examined primarily in terms of the baojia security system; that of Xinjiang in
terms of the beg system and that of the southwest in terms of the native chieftain
system. The junxian apparatus, as the imperial administrative template, penetrated
every region to a greater or lesser degree and its effects on all the other systems will
be duly noted. Once the regional administrative contexts have emerged, they will
then form the general background for more specific evaluations of the opium
problem in each of the three regions.
Ha: The administration of the core
The baojia system of public registration was a resource available to
administrators in the areas organized under the junxian system of regular
administration that prevailed in the Han-dominated provinces of China proper, which
was divided into an ascending hierarchy of districts, prefectures and provinces that
were staffed directly by imperial bureaucrats, the vast majority of whom were also of
Han ethnicity.4 These officials had a wide array of duties, including tax collection,
public works and welfare, security and adjudication. Ideally, there was no need for a
system of indirect imperial rule in junxian areas comparable to the beg system of
Xinjiang or the native chieftain system of southwestern China. In practice, however,
4Wen Zhun-tian, Zhongguo baojia zhidu (China's baojia system) (Shanghai: Shangwu Yinshuguan,
1935), p. 204.
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several administrative systems often overlapped within a single province when large
populations of Han and non-Han peoples lived in close proximity. Regardless of the
necessity for this kind of administrative overlap, the junxian system was the center's
preferred form of territorial incorporation, especially in certain areas of the
southwest, in northern Xinjiang and in Taiwan where particularly acute
administrative vaccuums were perceived.
Despite the elaborate organization and considerable extent of the junxian
system, direct official surveillance of the populace remained an impossible goal for
Qing rulers to reach. One authority estimated that there was only about one district
magistrate for every 250,000 people in the early nineteenth century, with a total of
about 1500 magistrates in all.5 Although these low-level officials could be assisted
by as many as several hundred auxilary personnel, particularly clerks and runners, the
magistrates often felt their subordinates, who were not considered dynastic officials
and who consequently did not draw a regular government salary, to be among the
greatest sources of potential trouble in their jurisdictions as they tended to abuse their
positions to extort their livelihood from the rest of the populace.6 This state of affairs
at bottom reflected a dynastic tendency to understaff and underpay its local
administration ostensibly in the name of economy. This only exacerbated the already
'Kung-chuan Hsiao, Rural China, Imperial Control in the Nineteenth Century, (Seattle:
University of Washington Press, 1960), p. 5.
6 Bradley W. Reed, Talons and Teeth, County Clerks and Runners in the Qing Dynasty, (Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 2000) provides the most recent and detailed analysis of local government at
the district level in the late Qing and challenges the official view of auxiliary personnel as inevitably
corrupt.
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considerable obstacles to local control presented by the empire's extent and its
limited communications infrastructure.
The baojia system was a primary method for coping with the problem of local
control without recruiting large numbers of expensive and/or venal personnel to
maintain surveillance of the populace. It was a "subadministrative structure" intended
to induce the population to produce registers of its movements and activities that
could then be scrutinized by officials mainly for purposes of tax collection and law
enforcement. Generally speaking, registration units were based on households, every
ten of which constituted a pai and was headed by a member who was responsible for
keeping the registers up to date and reporting any suspicious activities to official
authorities. As a general rule, ten pai constituted a jia of 100 households and ten jia a
bao of 1,000 households, each with a leader. Although the heads of these three
sections had particular responsibilities to keep up their registers and make periodic
reports regarding their status, all members registered within the baojia system were
supposed to report criminal activity to the heads of their household units, who would
then relay the information through the baojia quasi-official hierarchy to regular
n
officialdom, which conducted the actual investigations, seizures and arrests. Two
copies of the register for each jia were maintained; one for the jia section head and
7 Hsiao, Rural China, pp. 43-83 provides a comprehensive overview of the baojia system. He notes
that there was considerable regional variation in terminology and content of the baojia system, which
also evolved and declined over time. At some point before the nineteenth century at least some baojia
personnel in some places also became responsible for rural tax collection, which has added to
confusion over the exact nature of their duties at a given time and place. In documents concerning
opium prohibition baojia personnel are clearly intended to function as police informers although they
are occasionally themselves implicated in opium offenses.
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4 4
one for the district magistrate. One copy would be revised by the head and submitted
to the magistrate, who would exchange his copy for similar revision. Innkeepers
were expected to maintain similar registers.8
Reports certifying the absence of illegal activity within their jurisdictions
were submitted by all baojia to their respective districts. The district magistrates, in
turn, would pass similar certifications concerning their jurisdictions onto authorities
at the prefectural-level capital. These would in turn forward prefectural certifications
to the governor or governor-general, who would then produce a provincial level
certification and submit it as a year-end report to the throne.
Implementation of the baojia by the Qing began almost as soon as the
dynasty was established in Beijing in 1644 and its development can be divided into
three historical stages.9 In the initial period, running from the beginning of the
dynasty to around 1707, there were two different systems of surveillance in place, the
baojia system in the south and the baoshe system in the north. By the middle period,
lasting to about 1757, the baoshe was abandoned for the more systematized baojia,
which the emperors Yongzheng and Qianlong both sought to refine and expand.1 0
8 The specifics of the selection of baojia personnel and their duties, which could also cover such
functions as fire protection and dispute resolution, are explained in detail by Huang Liuhung, who
served as a district magistrate in Shandong, Zhili during the 1670's; Huang Liuhung, Fuhui quanshu
(A complete book concerning happiness and benevolence), trans. Djang Chu (1694; reprint, Tucson:
Arizona University Press,, 1984), pp. 465-474, 498, 501-503.
9 This periodization is based primarily on Wen Zhun-tian, Baojia zhidu, pp. 216-222 and
supplemented by Hsiao, Rural China, pp. 47-56.
1 0 Authorities assert that the throne also attempted to impose baojia on non-Han peoples throughout the
empire; Wen Zhun-tian, Baojia zhidu, p. 220; Hsiao, Rural China, pp. 47-48. The impression of
ubiquity, however, is false. Wen only provides evidence for baojia extension throughout the
"prefectures and districts" o f "each province." Hsiao gives the impression that Miao and Muslims
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45
Despite these and other sporadic attempts to impose the baojia on a number of
isolated non-Han groups, the baojia remained a primarily a form of administrative
control restricted to junxian regions with large Han populations.1 1 In the later
periods of the Jiaqing and Daoguang reigns the system went into decline despite
continued attempts, especially on the part of the Jiaqing Emperor, to reinvigorate it.
There was, however, considerable variation in the organizational structure during the
whole of the Qing and in different regions throughout the empire.1 2 In many coastal
provinces, for example, the expanding population of "shed people" (pengmin) of the
mountains, first registered in 1739, were re-registered into jia that consisted of ten
famlies in 1824.1 3
Most opium documents cite baojia legislation from late 1814 as the
precedent for the routine examination of provincial registers.1 4 The 1814 statues
were generally organized into baojia, but the sources he cites make it quite clear that only Miao living
in close proximity to Han settlement are meant. Wild Miao" are specifically excluded. Moreover, it
does not appear that any new form of organization is to be imposed on the Miao who already are said
to be organized in their own hechuan units, similar to baojia. The "Muslims" referred to are the Hui of
Gansu exclusively; Qingchao wenxian tongkao (Encyclopedic collation o f the institutions o f the Qing)
(1936; reprint, Taipei: Shangwu Yinshuguan, 1987), 23:5055b, 5056c. These exaggerations are
symptomatic of both authors' approach to the baojia system as an almost totalitarian form of
surveillance.
1 1 Wen Zhun-tian, Baojia zhidu, p. 204; Baojia shu (Baojia handbook), comp. Xu Dong, in Muling shu
(The local magistrate's handbook), Xu Dong, comp., (1848; reprint, Yangzhou: Jiangsu Guangling
Guji Keyinshe, 1990), l:6b-7b.
i2HDSL, 158:2a-12a; Kung-chuan Hsiao, Rural China, p. 44. This situation has created disagreement
among scholars on a number of issues, such as the degree of gentry participation in the baojia system;
Kung-chuan Hsiao, Rural China, pp. 48, 67-72; T'ung-tsu Chu, Local Government in China under the
Qing, (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1962; reprint, Stanford: Stanford University Press,
1969), p. 153.
n QSL DG 68:13a-14b.
1 4 See, for example, YPZZ, DG 15/12/20, 1:195-196; Gongzhongjinyan, DG 14/12/24.
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46
were simply part of the sporadic, but ongoing, effort by the dynasty to periodically
reinvigorate the baojia system, which often fell into neglect.1 5 The perennial nature
of this problem was probably less due to any particular historical event rather than, as
one official noted, the simple fact that those baojia personnel who discharged their
duties faithfully were vulnerable to reprisals from either the offenders they exposed
or their relatives.1 6
Motivation to revive the system between the mid-eighteenth century to the
first quarter of the nineteenth century probably arose from the large-scale upheavals,
particularly the White Lotus rebellions, of this period. Decrees to expand the scope
of the baojia system to many frontier enclaves of Han settlement, such as in
Mongolia, were issued.1 7 From the fourth year of his reign in 1799 the Jiaqing
Emperor, who was convinced of the efficacy of the baojia when properly supervised
by regular officials, issued a number of edicts concerning improvement of the
system. Perhaps the most significant of these edicts was that issued in 1814 relieving
baojia personnel of their dangerous duty of arresting offenders. Henceforth, the
baojia would only be responsible for reporting offenses to regular authorities rather
1 8
than actually apprehending the offenders themselves. This would increase the
1 5 For an example of similar legislation from 1746 during the Qianlong reign, see HDSL, 158:2b.
1 6 Baojia shu, 2:25.
l7Kung-chuan Hsiao, Rural China, pp. 48-49.
1 8 Ibid., pp. 49-51; Qingchaoxu wenxian tongkao (Supplement to the encyclopedic collation o f the
institutions ofthe Qing) (1921; reprint, Taipei: Shangwu Yinshuguan, 1987), 25:7759b-7760a.
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47
burden on local administrations when carrying out law enforcement in general and
the opium prohibitions in particular. Such an expansion of responsibility was
probably an important reason why officials were reluctant or unable to effectively
suppress opium in their jurisdictions.
The Jiaqing emperor's ostensible reason for this and other 1814 revisions was
the conventional one that praised the system as an excellent one for bandit
suppression and that cited the ebb and flow of population throughout the empire as
necessitating constant update of the registers, which officialdom had neglected to
keep up with. In another edict also issued in the same year, he decreed that in the fall
registers were to be compiled and submitted by bao section heads in rural villages
and hamlets to district and department magistrates, who were to personally verily the
registers. Mutual responsibility certificates were to then be issued and door plaques,
which listed the residents of each household, revised. Officials from the circuit and
prefectural administrations were also ordered to make supervisiory inspections of
their jurisdictions to ensure compliance and then submit their reports to provincial
authorities, who would then submit year-end reports to the throne.1 9 This was, in
effect, a reform program intended to relieve baojia personnel of all duties except
those essential to police surveillance, which was to focus both on the compilation
and annual examination of baojia registers and on a subsequent issuance of mutual
responsibility certificates (hubao ganjie) that committed these personnel to the
1 9 Kung-ehuan Hsiao, Rural China, pp. 52-53; Xk wenxian tongkao, 25:7760a.
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48
declaration that no crimnal activities existed within their jurisdictions. The accuracy
of the registers compiled by the activities of section heads was to be verified by
regular district officials, who were to actually go to the villages and make personal
inspections of the door plaques. In addition prefectural and circuit officials were to
make spot checks to ensure the compliance of their districts. Finally, their reports
were to be submitted to provincial governors and governors-general for relay to the
20
court at the end of the year.
The aspect of this system that found especial favor with the Jiaqing emperor
was the concept of mutual responsibility between the section heads and their charges.
If criminal activities went unreported and were subsequently discovered, both the
criminal offenders and their baojia supervisors were punished, as were the rest of the
• 21
households comprising the jia section to which the original offenders belonged.
The immediate impetus for the emperor's interest in the baojia system in general and
its mutual responsibility procedures in particular seems to have been the infamous
"Eight Trigrams Uprisng" of 1813 under Lin Qing, which penetrated the outer
precincts of the Forbidden City itself. The emperor was particularly determined to
prevent the harboring of seditionists and he felt the mutual responsibility system to
be integral to the maintenance of an early warning system that would have stopped
the Eight Trigrams rebels long before they broke into the palace grounds.2 2
2 0 Kung-chuan Hsiao, Rural China, p. 53.
2 1 Ibid., pp. 53-54; X u wenxian tongkao, 25:7760a.
2 2 Kung-chuan Hsiao, Rural China, pp. 53-54.
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In terms of opium prohibition enforcement, however, such drastic extensions
of mutual responsibilty do not seem to have occurred and prosecutions in such cases
were limited to the offenders and their immediate baojia section heads, usually "rural
agents" (dibao), a general term for the heads of baojia sections, or "community
liason officers" (xiangyue), who performed functions similar to those of section
93
heads. There was, thus, considerable nuance concerning the extent and application
of mutual responsibility within the baojia system that has not been extensively
examined in the standard accounts ofthe subject, which leave unexamined the local
documentary record that reveals how dynastic law was executed in the provinces and
territories of the empire at different times and under different conditions.2 4
There is considerable scholarly consensus that the baojia system was
generally ineffective throughout the dynasty in general and in and after the Daoguang
2 1 Kung-chuan Hsiao provides an entirely different definition of the xiangyue post as encompassing the
responsibility for periodic public lectures on morality as defined by the Sacred Edicts; Rural China, p.
185. The lecture system itself was known by the same term. Opium prohibition documents from
Xinjiang, however, provide an explicit, alternative definition of the post as being responsible for
"reporting the comings and goings of merchants and pass along their petitions for trading licenses and
matters concerning litigation;" Gongzhong jinyan, DG 20/2/19. See chapter four for details on a
trafficking case involving the community liason official Rong Jixiang. The importance of the
xiangyue's function in the baojia system is also affirmed by the essayist Lu Shiyi (no dates), who sets
out to clarify the confusion surrounding the term. The xiangyue is one who literally "binds" ("yue")
the people of a "village" ("xiang") together in order to accomplish three main tasks, community
sustenance through the community granary; community education through the community school; and
community defense through the baojia system. He is, in other words, the head of the village; Baojia
shu, 3:1a. It is possible that xiangyue involvement in the lecture system arose through their general
educational duties and probable that their duties varied considerably from place to place.
2 4 The standard view of the baojia requires revision in light of newly accessible documents from the
provinces and territories of the empire. Kung-chuan Hsiao's unsurpassed study of the structures of
rural control, while recognizing the difficulties involved in generalization, portrays the baojia system
of mutual responsibility in somewhat contradictory terms as both grossly inefficient and sinisterly
ubiquitous; Rural China, p. 46. Indeed, this is characteristic of Hsiao's overall view of Qing local
institutions, which seems deeply influenced by anachronistic concepts of totalitarianism.
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25
reign in particular. The view of many Qing officials discussing the subject during
the Jiaqing and Daoguang periods was more complex. In general it was contended
that the baojia system could function effectively if suitably adapted to local
conditions and conscientiously admininistered by local magistrates. Simplification
of procedure, which technically necessitated the bimonthly recording of the
perambulations of large numbers of male and female residents as well as their ages,
occupations and other detailed biographical data by often semi-literate section heads
who were press-ganged into their duties and feared reprisals, was the prerequisite for
the success of both these proposals. The two main aspects of this simplification
process were the elimination of yamen runners, who were always assumed to practice
extortion, and radical reductions in the scope of information compiled in the registers
26
as well as in the types of people who had to register. Geography and ethnicity,
however, continued to cause problems. Regions of sparse settlement or isolated
locations were considered to preclude comprehensive implementation of the baojia-,
one writer even recommended registration be limited to urban areas.2 7 Others were
far less pessimistic and held that while the system required diligence from local
2 5 Kung-chuan Hsiao, Rural China, p. 46; Wen Zhun-tian, Baojia zhidu, pp. 223-224;T'ung-tsu Ch'u,
Local Government, pp. 151-152.
2 6 Baojia shu\ 2:21a, 24a, 32b, 34a, 41b. There are many baojia essays in chapters seventy-four and
seventy-five of in Qingjingshi wenbian (Collected writings on statecraft from the Qing dynasty), ed.
Ho Changling, (1887 ed.; reprint, Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1992). Wen Zhun-tian, Baojia zhidu, pp.
273-363 also provides extended excerpts from essayists on the baojia. Despite overlap between the
essays of the Baojia shu and those of the Qingjingshi wenbian, neither collection is comprehensive.
A cursory examination indicates that Wen obtained his material, which he supplements with his own
commentary, entirely from the Qingjingshi wenbian.
2 1 Baojia shw, 3:32b-33a.
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magistrates, it could be successfully imposed even on non-Han peoples.2 8
Nevertheless, even the more sanguine admitted that the system all too often existed
i 29
m name only.
In effect, what most Qing officials who wrote on the subject were actually
saying was that the baojia system needed reform, but that its success ultimately
rested on the shoulders of local officials. In addition to admonitory vermilion
comments from a frustrated Daoguang Emperor to certain lax officials, there is
evidence in statistics from the opium prohibition operations of the 1830's and 1840's
to support this claim. O f the 817 kilos of opium confiscated in Guizhou from the end
of 1838 to early 1839, for example, ninety percent was seized in the district of the
provincial seat with the rest being collected from eighteen other prefectural and sub-
prefectural units. Such a gross imbalance, while no doubt explicable in large part
by the centripetal economic force of the provincial seat, suggests that prohibition
enforcement was uneven within the province, with the greatest surveillance capacity
over both the general populace and the lower levels of officialdom concentrated at its
urban administrative center. This uneven coverage was endemic to the junxian
administrative system, which was urban-centric and experienced commensurate
difficulty in penetrating rural areas even via the extended agency of the baojia
system.
2 8 Ibid„ 2:22b, 3:25b
2 9 Ibid., 2:21b. This particular observation was made in 1826.
3 0See appendix E, Table of Opium Offenses & Amnesties in Guizhou, late 1838-February 1839.
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52
Hb: Conclusions on Core Administration
Whatever its faults, and they were clearly considerable, the baojia system did
provide dynastic officials with a more direct access to the populations they ruled and
this produced a certain level of expectation from the throne that did not exist for
administrations mediated through the structures of indirect rule in the southwest and
in Xinjiang. While none of these structures proved able to eradicate the opium
problem, the presence of the baojia system precluded local officials in China proper
from excusing themselves from prohibition enforcement on the basis of a complete
lack of enforcement infrastructure, an excuse repeatedly made by officials concerning
areas outside the junxian system, particularly in the southwest. It also provided these
same officials with an enhanced potential for prohibition enforcement should they
choose a policy of active enforcement, a choice which was clearly made, if unevenly,
in Guizhou. Such a course of action was not even an option for officials plagued by
Central and South Asian traffickers in southern Xinjiang or by indigenous cultivators
in southwestern Yunnan, all of whom existed largely or completely outside any
dynastic control structures whatsoever.
In order to understand precisely why Xinjiang and the southwest enjoyed this
kind of immunity from official surveillance, it is necessary to make a more detailed
inquiry into the historical backgrounds of both regions as they were incorporated into
the Qing empire.
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53
III. The Administration of Xinjiang
Section Ilia: The Establishment of the Administration (1759-1830)
The search for opium in Xinjiang was to be conducted over an enormous and
diverse region in terms of climate, terrain and inhabitants. The Qing dynasty had
finally taken the whole region from the Zunghar Mongols in 1759, dubbed it the
"New[ly Opened] Frontier" (i.e. Xinjiang) and divided the immense expanse into
three "Marches" (/«), known as the Eastern March (donglu), the Northern March
(beilu), also known as Zungaria, and the Southern March, (nanlu), which was also
known as Kashgaria or Altishahr (Turki for "Six Cities"). This division roughly
corresponded to the geographical and social conditions that obtained at the time of
the Qing conquest. The Tian Mountains (Tianshan), Xinjiang's basic geographic
dividing line, bisected Xinjiang into northern and southern halves.
The Eastern March, northeast of the Tian Mountains and comprising
Xinjiang's eastern border with Gansu, was primarily composed of two khanates
organized under the Mongol jasak system, Turfan and Hami. These khanates had
been under intermittent Han influence since Ming times. During the latter half of the
eighteenth century this region had experienced an extensive influx of Han colonists
and exiles and had consequently partly fallen under the civilian junxian
administration of the Shaan(xi)-Gan(su) Governor General.3 1 The Northern March,
3lMillward, Beyond the Pass, pp. 32-33; Lin En-hsien, "Qingdai Xinjiang huanfang pingzhi chih
yanjiu" (Research on the garrison rotation system in Qing Xinjiang) Bianzhengyanjiusuo nianbao, 8
(1977): 168. The Eastern March's military affairs were the responsibility of a banner commander-in-
chief (dutong), stationed at Urumchi and subordinate to the Military Governor at Ili.
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54
also to the north of the Tian Mountains, was steppe, sparsely populated by Mongol
and Kazakh nomads and was almost immediately exposed to Han and Uighur
agricultural colonization. The administrative situation here was similar to that of the
Eastern March in that both the junxian and jasak systems were in use, the former in
the few Han-dominated urban areas, the latter among the Mongols of the steppe.
The Northern and Eastern Marches were linked via the mutual subordination o f their
junxian units to the civil administration of Gansu. The Southern March, south of
the Tian Mountains, was composed of oasis towns populated by East Turkestani
i n
Muslims, mostly Uighurs and Kazakhs.
Military government residencies united the three marches, making Xinjiang a
zone of military territorial administration. All major towns in Xinjiang were
presided over by military residents, all of whom were subordinated to the Military
Governor at Ili (Ili Jiangjun) in the Northern March, which also had a Councillor
(canzan dachen), stationed in the far north at Tarbagatai. In the Eastern March, the
Urumqi Banner Commander-in-Chief (dutong) was in overall command, while in the
3 2 There is some confusion between certain sources as to the precise extent of the "Independent
Subprefecture of Zhenxi." According to the Jiaqing chongxiu yitong zhi, Zhenxi was administratively
under the jurisdiction of Gansu and encompassed the Eastern March towns of Turfan, Hami, Urumqi
and Barkul, as well as the Northern March town of Ili; Jiaqing chongxiu yitong zhi (Jiaqing revision of
the comprehensive gazeteer of the Qing), comp. Mu-zhang-a et ah, (1842; reprint, Beijing: Zhonghua
Shuju, 1986) 16:12,548, 12,552. Nailene Josephine Chou's account of Zhenxi restricts its jurisdiction
to "[njorthem Xinjiang , excluding the Ili and Tarbagatai region."; Frontier Studies and Changing
Frontier Administration in Late Ch'ing China: The Case of Xinjiang, 1759-1911," (Ph.D. diss.,
University of Washington, 1976), pp. 23-24.
3 3 Administrative overviews of the marches include the following: Joseph Fletcher, "Ch'ing Inner Asia
c. 1800," in The Cambridge History o f China, Volume 10, Late Ch'ing, 1800-1911, Part I, ed. John K.
Fairbank (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), pp. 58-60; Millward, Beyond the Pass, pp.
32-33; Lin En Hsien, Qingchao zaiXinjiang de Han-Hui keli zhengce (The Qing dynasty Han-Hui
segregation policy in Xinjiang) (Taipei: Taiwan Commercial Press, 1988), pp. 3-12.
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55
south, another Councillor, stationed in Yarkand, was in charge. All the main
administrative divisions of the Southern March outside of Yarkand, as well as a few
in the Eastern March, were run by Superintendents ibanshi dachen). The tasks of all
these officials were almost exclusively military and those of the more urbanized
Southern March had to rely upon indigenous structures, namely the beg system, for
the bulk of the civil administration required by the large number of East Turkestani
inhabitants.3 4
Xinjiang's hybrid administration was also reflected in the organization of its
borders. In effect, the territory had two borders, an imprecise demarcation of
political and cultural influence almost literally embodied in the peoples of the region
who nominally accepted Qing suzerainity, and a more precisely delineated perimeter
of military guard posts or checkpoints that were maintained well inside Xinjiang's
more nebulous boundaries.3 5 The locations of the checkpoints themselves were not
always permanent and could shift with regional transhumance. Checkpoints could be
3 4 Millward, Beyond the Pass, pp. 32-33; 12-13. Lin, "Qingdai Xinjiang huanfang," pp. 168-169.
3 5 For example, according to the Yitong zhi, Kokand is part of the Qing empire and a map of the
khanate is duly provided showing its relation to other proximate vassal "tribes" (bu). Such works
made clear, if not precise, distinctions between the boundaries of the empire proper and its vassals;
Yitong zhi, 530:26326-26327. Thongchai Winichakul notes the importance of cultural context for the
modem intepretation of older maps produced from a non-Western tradition: "[T]he classification of a
local geography and the whole globe as separate categories in the indigenous knowledge about space
is comparable to the separate classification in modem science today of geography and astronomy or
astrophysics;" Siam Mapped, a History o f the Geo-body o f a Nation, (Honolulu: University o f Hawaii
Press, 1994), p. 31. In the Yitong zhi, the category of space concerned is one intended to depict a
relation between the Qing suzerain and his foreign tributary. In such a context, precise geographical
demarcation in modem scientific terms may be secondary or even irrelvant, while in a different
context, the Qing military checkpoint line for example, such demarcation might be paramount. For a
similar distinction in the Thai context, see Winichakul, Siam Mapped, p. 33.
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manned by banner or Green Standard troops as well as by units under the control of
Mongol allies or begs, whose tasks were primarily related to surveillance and other
duties often associated with border control. The interstate boundaries of the Qing
were thus not garrisoned and it was often possible to travel for hundreds of
kilometers into Qing territory before coming to a checkpoint. It is thus hardly
surprising that checkpoint lines forming the outer perimeter of Qing settlement in
Xinjiang were often considered interstate boundaries by foreign neighbors with
O £
designs on Qing territory such as the Russians.
By the latter half of the seventeenth century Xinjiang, which had previously
formed part of the fourteenth-century Chaghadai Khanate of the Mongol empire, had
come under the rule of indigenous Naqshbandi Sufi holy men, known as Khojas
( .Hezhuo), Sufi saints whose elite famlies derived their immense prestige from claims
of descent from the Prophet Muhammad. It was also at this time that the beg system
as an indigenous institution of administration reached its full development. Sufism,
especially the orders of Naqshbandiyya and Kubrawiyya, was a powerful regional
social force in part because its religious leaders could count on considerable political
and social support from their masses of disciples and "attempts to curb their power or
restrict their influence were always dangerous, even on occasions when there was
undeniably some justification for them."3 7 The two most important sects of Sufism
3 6 Wei Yunzhi, "Qingdai Xinjiang kalun de tantao" (Examination of checkpoints in Qing Xinjiang),
Zhongguo lishi xuehui shixue jikan 18 (1986): 187-217.
3 7 Ira M. Lapidus, A History o f Islamic Societies, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p.
428; Bernard Spuler, "Central Asia from the Sixteenth Century to the Russian Conquests," in The
Cambridge History o f Islam, Volume 1A, The Central Islamic Lands from Pre-Islamic Times to the
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57
in Xinjiang, known before the Qing conquest as eastern Turkestan (Moghulistan),
were the White Mountain and the Black Mountain (Aqtaghlik and Qarataghlik
respectively). These two rival groups, whose disagreements were more political than
o o
religious, continuously struggled with each other for supremacy. This factionalism,
which permeated society at every level, was exploited by all subsequent conquerors
of the region, but the Islamic religion itself proved at the same time to be the most
important force for the maintenance of East Turkestani identity and formed the
QQ
regional basis for continuing resistance against all would-be conquerors as well.
Eastern Turkestan's first external conquerors were the Zunghar Mongols, who
began their conquest of the southern region of Altishahr in 1678 from their home
territory of Zungharia in northern Xinjiang.4 0 In the aftermath of this conquest the
Zunghars, pressed by military committements in Outer Mongolia, did not occupy
Altishahr directly. Instead they relied on the the indigenous beg system in southern
First World War, ed. P. M. Holt, Ann K.S. Lambton and Bernard Lewis, (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1970), p. 477.
3 8 Jin Yijiu, ed., Yisilanjiao shi (A history of Islam) (Hebei: Zhongguo Shehui Kexue Chubanshe,
1992), p. 455. The two sects were also known as the "white hats" and the "black hats."
3 9 The capacity for Islam to both unite and divide the East Turkestanis is particularly evident in the
Jahangir Jihad of 1820-28; Chen Wangcheng, "Zhanggeer Shijian zhi yanjiu" (A study of the Jahangir
Incident) (master's thesis, Zhengzhi University, 1992).
4 0 The Zunghars were one of the four western Mongol, also known as Oirat or Confederate, tribes, who
were known as the Kalmucks in Turkish. These terms all contrasted the four tribes, who lived in
"Outer Mongolia," with the eastern Mongols of "Inner Mongolia." The four tribes were the Torghuts,
Khoshuuts, Choros and Dorbot. The most powerful tribe of the four, the Choros, later was known as
Zunghars, which was originally another designation of all four tribes meaning "people of the left
hand." There is considerable variation throughout the sources in designations of these tribes. The
Oirats, for example, are also known as the Eleuths, and both terms were also used to designate the
Choros tribe alone. See Rene Grousset, The Empire o f the Steppes, A History o f Central Asia, trans.
Naomi Walford, (New Brunswick NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1970), pp. 519-520; Millward,
Beyond the Pass, p. 27.
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58
Xinjiang, headed by Khoja religious authorities whose families were held hostage in
Zungaria, to institute a structure of indirect rule in the south.4 1
The Qing initially attempted to perpetuate this system of indirect rule in
southern Xinjiang while largely preserving the jasak system in the northern
steppe immediately after their defeat of the Zhungars in 1755. Yet while the
Zhungar inhabitants of the Northern March, having been wiped out or
deported, were no longer an administrative problem, the Khojas were not
willing merely to exchange one set of overlords for another, however much
they owed the Qing for throwing out the Zhungars 4 2 The "Revolt of the Big
and Little Khojas," which lasted from 1756-1759, ended the political role of
the Khojas in the Southern March of Xinjiang, as Altishahr was subsequently
known. The revolt convinced the dynasty that it needed a direct military
presence in the territory and that it could no longer rely on the Khojas to front
the civil administration of Altishahr. Xinjiang's dual system of military
residency by Qing officials presiding over a civilian administration staffed
4 1 Ma Dazheng and Cai Jiayi, "Zhungaer Guizu dui Nanjiang de Tongzhi" ("The Rule of the Zhungar
Nobility in Southern Xinjiang"], in Zhungaer shilun wenji (Anthology of articles on Zhungar history),
vol. 2, (Beijing: Zhongguo Shehuikexue Yuan Minzu Yanjiu Suo, 1981), p. 292.
42G u o Yunhua, "Qing zhengfu tongyi Xinjiang de lishi yiyi" (The historical significance of the Qing
government's unification of XinjianG), in Zhungaer shilun wenji (Anthology of articles on Zhungar
history), vol. 2, (Beijing: Zhongguo Shehuikexue Yuan Minzu Yanjiu Suo, 1981), p. 318. Qing rule,
in Chinese sources past and present, is always characterized as a vast improvement over the heavy
exactions and hostage system of the Zhungars, who did, however, prohibit the slave trade endemic to
the region. The overall impression left by such observations is that Uighur indigenous rule was the
least socio-economically progressive form of organization for the region, a situation that was only
improved by Zhungar and Qing rule. For a standard account of this type, see Ma and Cai, "Zhungaer
guizu," pp. 292-295.
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59
exclusively by East Turkestani begs was a direct product of the dynasty's
experience of the Khojas' revolt [Quote from Pingding on Qing replacement of
Khojas with Begs],
The Khoja revolt forced the dynasty to extensively modify the Zunghar
system of indirect rale primarily in order to eliminate the Khojas as secular
authorities and gain more direct control over the local beg administrators. This was
done mainly by putting Altishahr's civil officials of the beg system under the
immediate authority of the Qing military officials of the three marches and the
ultimate authority of the court in Beijing.4 3 In essence, the Qing governed the local
East Turkestanis through the begs, who ran the day-to-day civil administration of the
Southern March, and, in consequence, had a variety of responsibilities, which
included acting as the region's frontline police investigators during the
implementation of the opuim prohibitions.4 4 A 1761 proposal to impose the baojia
4 3 Miao Pusheng, Boke zhidu [The beg system] (Urumqi: Xinjiang Renmin Chubanshe, 1995), pp. 24-
45; Some of these modifications had to be performed more than once. For example, the Qianlong
Emperor's 1760 attempt to separate church and state by barring akhunds, who were official religious
functionaries, from participation in civil administrative affairs had to be reinstituted in the wake of the
suppression ofthe Jahangir Jihad in 1828; QSL DG 151:2a-b.
4 4 Lin En-hsien, Qingchao zaiXinjiang, pp. 68-109. Ranks among begs were numerous. The hakim
begs, who are the ones most frequently encountered in documents relating to opium suppression, were
the Muslim equivalent of the Southern March's Qing superintendants. They were the general
supervisors o f all affairs great and small in a particular town and the environs under its jurisdiction.
See also, Tuo-jin et al., (Qinding) Huijiangzeli (Imperially commissioned collection ofthe sub
statutes of the Muslim Frontier) (1842; reprinted as Menggu zeli, Huijiangzeli (Collection of the sub
statutes of Mongolia and the Muslim Frontier), ed. Lti Yiran, Ma Dazheng et al., Beijing: Quanguo
Tushuguan Wenxian Suowei Fuzhi Zhongxin, 1988), 2:1a. Information on the various gradations of
beg officialdom can be found in juan 2 of this work, as well as in QSG 117:3402-3406 and in Yong-
gui et al., Huijiangzhi (Gazetteer of the Muslim Frontier), in Zhongguo fangzhi congshu xibu difang
(Collectanea of Chinese local gazetteers, western localities) (1772; reprint, Taipei: Chengwen
Chubanshe, 1968)4:137-200.
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60
system on the Southern March, as had already been done in the Eastern March, was
rejected because of the confusion it would create and because the problem of finding
reliable locals to fill posts would remain.4 5
Han merchants, however, were another matter and the Qing attempted to
impose the baojia system upon them wherever they appeared in sufficient numbers.
In Yarkand, where there existed approximately 200-400 resident Chinese merchants
in the 1830's, a baojia system was used to keep an eye on Han activity 4 6 A
community liason official was actually punished in 1840 for failure to detect opium
trafficking between Han merchants and the Muslim settlement of Karghalik, one of
ten such areas subordinate to the Yarkand regional administration. This official was
explicitly stated to have been Karghalik's own community liason officer4 7
The hybrid administration of Xinjiang during the Daoguang period was
particularly unstable, combining as it did some of the worst elements of both regional
automony and military government. On the one hand, the dynastic policy of indirect
rule, which was ostensibly intended to avoid the exploitation of East Turkestanis by
ethnically alien Qing officials, tended to leave local begs largely unsupervised. In
some cases this precluded even the most cursory inspections by senior territorial
administrators of major Muslim enclaves such as Khotan for fear that members of
k QSL, QL 638:10b-l la, quoted in Lai Yongbao, "Qing Qian, Jia, Dao san qiao zhili Huijiang
xisicheng zhi yanjiu" (A study of the administration of the Muslim Frontier during the Qianlong,
Jiaqing and Daoguang reigns) (master's thesis, Zhengzhi University, 1981), p. 136.
4 6 These population estimates are cited in Millward, Beyond the Pass, pp. 148-149.
4 7 Gongzhong jinyan, DG 20/2/19
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61
official entourages would take the opportunity to practice extortion on the local
A f >
residents. These problems became particularly clear in the aftermath of one of the
most serious local uprisings, the Jahangir Rebellion of 1826. According to the
Imperial Commissioner Na-yan-cheng (1764-1833), the famous Manchu official sent
to reestablish stable dynastic rule in Xinjiang after the rebellion, among many other
abuses of the local populace, hakim begs were purchasing their posts from regular
Qing officials and recouping their expenses through random extractions once in
office4 9
The venality of beg offices exemplifies the corrupt connections between begs
and regular Qing officials, both of whom the throne held responsible at various times
for regional instability. In general the imposition and maintenance of military rule in
Xinjiang, with the consequent denigration of civil institutions, has been held
ultimately responsible for this instability. This was due in large measure to
prioritizing, characteristic of military administration, of the management of garrisons
over that of civilian populations.5 0 O f equal significance was the deliberate dynastic
policy of cutting up Xinjiang into a number of spheres of overlapping authority in
order to prevent any one official from gaining control of the territory's enormous
garrison.5 1 An extreme fragmentation of authority was the result. The watershed
4 8 Lai Yongbao, "San qiao zhili Huijiang xisicheng," 145-146.
4 9Chen W angcheng," Zhanggeer Shijian 170-176.
^Lai Yongbao, "San Qiao Zhili Huijiang xisicheng," 272-273.
5 1 The vast majority of the Qing presence in Xinjiang was military and the main forces, usually around
20,000 troops, were stationed in the Northern March at Ili, which was considered to be the key
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62
events of 1826-1830, which cultimated in a direct invasion of the Southern March by
Kokand, exposed the weakness of Qing control in the region and fundamentally
altered its character,
IHb: The Transformation of the Administration (post-1830)
Opium prohibition in Xinjiang occurred within a larger period of struggle for
regional domination between the Qing dynasty and the Khanate of Kokand (1710-
1876), an expansionist Muslim Uzbek state whose foundations had been laid in the
mid-eighteenth century in the neighboring Ferghana Valley. The territory of the
khanate was actually a fragment of the previous Uzbek Shaybanid Khanate (1500-
1599), which was itself a fragment of the old Chagatai Khanate.5 2 Kokand's
(Haohari) periodic attempts to conquer Altishahr, which mainifested themselves
mainly as internal revolts sparked by the offspring of deposed Khoja living in exile in
khanate, were the main reasons that the region constituted "the weakest appendage of
the Ch'ing empire" throughout the tenure of the dynasty.5 3
strategic zone for controlling the whole of Xinjiang. These were garrison troops over half of which
were elite, mounted banner units. In contrast there were generally around 6,000 Qing troops of all
types, only about 800 of which were bannermen, stationed in the Southern March. In the wake of the
Khokandi invasion of 1830, troop strength in the Southern March was increased to 15,000 men, 3,000
of whom were transferred from Ili; Lin En-hsien, "Qingdai Xinjiang," 168-169; Joseph Fletcher, "The
Heyday of the Ch'ing Order in Mongolia, Sinkiang and Tibet," in The Cambridge History o f China,
Volume 10, Late Ch'ing, 1800-1911, Part I, ed. John K. Fairbank (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1978), p. 374. It has been estimated that, by 1831, Xinjiang's Uighur population alone was
approximately 650,000 people. In other words, the Southern March's entire garrison, at its increased
strength, was less than 2% of the Uighur population, while the Xinjiang's entire military establishment
was around 5% of it; Miao Pusheng, "Qingdai Weiwuerhzuu renkou kaoshu" (Inquiry into the Qing
dynasty’s Uighur population) Xinjiang shehui kexue 1 (1989): 74.
5 2 For a concise narrative of the permutations which resulted in the Khanate of Kokand, see Grousset,
The Empire o f the Steppes, chapter 8, "Turkestan under the House of Jagatai" and chapter 13, "The
Shaybanids."
5 3 Fletcher, "The Heyday," p. 395.
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63
The khanate's challenge to Qing rule in Xinjiang was by no means
exclusively military. Indeed, long after the Qing eradicated large-scale military
resistance to their rule in Turkestan, problems of local control created or exacerbated
by Kokandi trade activities, as well as by religious and cultural affinities with the
East Turkestanis of Altishahr, remained endemic. The Kokandis were busily taking
advantage of these affinities even as they sent submissive emisaries to the Qing.
They were able to do this because as Uzbeks, they "had racial and religious
relationfs] with the Uyghur people in Eastern Turkestan, particularly in Kashgaria, as
Turkic Muslims. They [thus] had a common antipathy against the Manchurians
[Qing] who were pagans to them." This antipathy manifested itself in an unending
series of plots between the Kokandis, descendants of Khojas and various local begs,
to resist the Qing regional presence.5 4
Before 1820, Kokand and the Qing empire conducted formalized trade
relations and Kokand's penetration into Altishahr had been commercial and cultural
rather than military. Kokandi merchants frequented the major towns of Eastern
Turkestan and gradually became very influential. Their major trade center in the
region was at Kashgar, via which they carried on trade with China and the Pamir
region in such goods as tea, silk textiles and rhubarb. They soon came to monopolize
this trade and settled down permanently in the region. However, they continued to
5 4 Toru Saguchi, "The Eastern Trade of the Khoqand Khanate," Memoirs o f the Research Department
o f the Toyo Bunko, 24 (1965), part III.
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64
maintain close ties with their native state of Kokand, which often used them as its
agents and as sources of wealth from which to increase its strength.5 5
Thus, behind a facade of tribute relations, the Kokandis were making
preparations to replace Qing regional hegemony with their own. Aside from various
military operations designed to occupy areas where the Qings were not, the Kokandis
worked to exploit various weaknesses which afflicted the Qing presence in Eastern
Turkestan. The most serious of these weaknesses was the prevalence of a sub-culture
of smuggling which made a mockery of Qing efforts at local control and smoothed
the way for subsequent Kokandi military operations.
This sub-culture probably pre-dated the arrival of either the Qing Empire or
the Khanate of Kokand in Eastern Turkestan. However, smuggling was not used by
Kokand merely for profit but also for power. The infrastructure of smuggling that
ran throughout Eastern Turkestan was an inter-cultural construct composed of
various Central Asian traders, many of whom had become permanent residents
through marriage with local Uighur women, Chinese traders, border guards and
minor officials.5 6 Such a nexus emeshed Chinese officialdom into an indirect
collusion with Kokand. Qing documents reveal official fears that Chinese merchants
were actively assisting their Kokandi counterparts in evading Chinese government
5 5 Ibid, 89.
“ Ibid., 81, 82, 85-86.
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65
trade regulations and that frontier guards were allowing Andijan merchants to bribe
them into "inspecting only a part of their merchandise."5 7
These activities were identified by Chinese officials as part of the cause
behind the numerous and large-scale upheavals in Eastern Turkestan in and after
1820:
Since the collusion between Khoqandian and Chinese merchants has
never been revealed to light, Andijan merchants took full advantage of
their bribery tactics to increase their profits in each of the Eastern
Turkestan towns . .. [The Kokandis thus] freely passed the border and
C O
lived in [the] thousands in many towns west of Aqsu.
There was, thus, an elaborate infrastructure for smuggling goods into
Xinjiang that pre-dated the opium traffic and probably the Khanate of Kokand, but
served the latter's regional ambitions. In the early 1830's, transborder opium
smuggling in Xinjiang from points west arose precisely because of Kokand's
continuing attempts to control the commerce of the Southern March by such extra
military means.
From 1759 until approximately 1820, the relations between Kokand and the
Qing empire can be characterized as those between nominal vassal and nominal
suzerain. However, from the beginning of the 19th century, cracks began to appear
in this relationship which foreshadowed Kokand's rise to regional domination and its
transition to a new status as that of an or openly independent state.
5 7 Ibid., 53,81.
5 8Translated in Saguchi, "Eastern Trade," 82.
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During the following decade between 1820 and 1830, a "qualitative change"
occurred in the heretofore relatively peaceful Qing-Kokandi relationship that
culminated in Kokand's large-scale military incursion into the Southern March in
1830. These forces plundered the western regions of the Southern March and
persuaded 20,000 indigenous East Turkestani residents to emigrate when military
threats to the khanate by its eastern neighbor Bukhara forced these troops to
withdraw.5 9 Nevertheless, despite this withdrawal,
Kokand had made her point. Altishahr was remote, difficult to defend
and dependent on foreign trade. Kokand, independent, adjacent and
protected by a huge mountain range, had achieved a special position
in Altishahr and could make endless trouble unless the Ch'ing came to
terms. In the invasion of 1830, the empire had lost its bargaining
60
position.
In the negotiations that followed, the Qing made a number of concessions to
Kokand that would culminate in 1835 in what Joseph Fletcher called "China's first
'unequal treaty' settlement."6 1 Initially Kokandi demands in 1833 to establish
political and commercial agents in major Southern March trade centers was
reluctantly granted by the dynasty, which, however, refused to grant the Khanate the
5 9 I have largely followed the periodization and analysis provided by Pan Zhiping, Zhongya
Haohanguo yu Qingdai Xinjiang (The Central Asian Khanate of Kokand and Qing dynasty Xinjiang)
(Beijing: Zhongguo Shehui Kexue Chubanshe, 1991), p. 24. Accounts of the 1830 incursion can be
found in Fletcher, "The Heyday," pp. 360-385; Pan Zhiping, Zhongya Haohanguo yu Qingdai
Xinjiang, pp. 119-153. It should be noted that in the various official postmortems both of the
numerous and violent upheavals that preceeded the 1830 incursion and of the incursion itself,
collusion between Kokandi and Qing merchants was seen as an important contributing factor because
these connections enabled the Kokandis to freely pass the border and "live in the thousands" in the
towns west of Aksu; Saguchi, "Eastern Trade," 82.
6 0 Fletcher, "The Heyday," p. 371.
6 1 The treaty is discussed in detail in Fletcher, "The Heyday," pp. 375-385.
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67
power to levy customs duties on all foreign merchants operating in the region.
Kokandi incursions continued into the nominally Qing territory of Sarikol, itself
technically part of Yarkand’ s administrative region, that stretched west beyond the
Xinjiang checkpoint line for over 200 kilometers. Kokand was able to extend its
right to tax both the Kazakh and Kirghiz nomads resident in this region and in the
Pamirs with the acquiesence of the court, which now designated the checkpoint line
as a kind of quasi-border beyond which it renounced all responsiblity for the
protection of nomadic peoples, a policy that continued even after the reestablishment
of nominal Qing sovereignty in the region in 1836.
The system was also weakend by the 1832 suspension of duties paid by
foreign merchants at the checkpoints, which also terminated inspections of foreign
wares by Qing officials, all in deference to Kokandi demands. This particular
concession by the Qing would have particular significance for the opium traffic in the
territory, as subsequently noted by local officials, because it enabled all merchants
63
entering Xinjiang to smuggle in unharrassed a variety of goods, including opium.
The settlement that culminated in the 1835 treaty in effect added yet another
administrative layer to the Southern March by granting Kokand consular jurisdiction
over foreign merchants in the Southern March as well as the power to levy taxes on
them. The Daoguang Emperor had conceeded extraterritorial rights to the Kokandis ,
6 2 Ibid., pp. 375-376,381.
63YPZZ, DG 19/12/22, 1:785-789.
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68
who also profited from their control over duties on goods entering the Southern
March. This abdication of local control to the khanate would prove instrumental for
the expansion of the Central and South Asian opium traffic into Xinjiang.
Illb: Conclusions on Xinjiang Administration
While control of limited urban space was facilitated by the presence of
comparatively large numbers of Han residents in the Northern and Eastern Marches,
the complex society of the oasis towns of the Southern Marches proved particularly
resistant to incorporation into the Qing Empire via the traditional junxian
bureaucratic structure that was employed in most towns of the north and east. This
was due to a number of historical, ethnic and geographic factors that all contributed
to an extensive system of indirect dynastic rule in the territory. Furthermore,
Xinjiang, both because of its frontier character and large Inner Asian populations,
generally lacked "unofficial" structures of social control usually associated with Han
gentry society that would otherwise have helped to relieve the official administrative
burden.6 4 In essence, one of the social effects of the geography of Xinjiang was to
preclude the development of gentry social structures. This is precisely why begs were
required in the Southern March.6 5
6 4 Lin Zexu relied heavily on local gentry in his initial prohibition operations against Han consumers
and traffickers in 1839 precisely in order to circumvent the corrupt Guangzhou administration;
Wakeman, "The Canton Trade," pp. 184-185.
6 5 By 1842 in Hami, for example, there were only a total of thirty successful candidates for the official
exams throughout the whole of the Qing dynasty up to that time. Moreover, all of these men held
either the lowest or no official position. Hami, which had had the longest exposure to Han political
and cultural influence of any place in Xinjiang, had still not produced a gentry that could mediate
between officialdom and the local masses for purposes of tax collection, security, etc.; Hami zhi (Hami
gazetteer), ed. Chui Fang, in Zhongguo fangzhi congshu xibu difang (Collectanea of Chinese local
gazetteers, western localities) (1846; reprint, Taipei: Chengwen Chubanshe, 1967), 46.1a-2a.
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69
An extremely complex and variegated administrative apparatus, partly
dependent on quasi-officials such as begs and local baojia personnel and largely
unable to penetrate distant and sparsely inhabited rural locales, was the overall result
of Xinjiang's historical experience prior to the implementation of the opium
prohibitions. This situation was exacerbated by the ambitions of the Khanate of
Kokand, which successfully superimposed its own administrative structure on the
Southern March. It was this final administrative layer that proved of decisive
importance to opium trafficking in the territory, erecting as it did a kind of
extraterritoriality that sustained and augmented a well-developed system of
smuggling that shielded opium traffickers, among others, from frontier inspections.
None of these obstacles to Qing local control would have existed without the
presence of the Khanate of Kokand, which broke the dynastic monopoly on force so
essential to the maintenance of administrative order.
In sum, the administrative heterogenity of Xinjiang meant that there would be
continuous regional instability that made strict enforcement the prohibitions
impossible, especially since the dynasty had suspended its border control system for
foreign merchants after 1832. A similar problem existed in southwestern China,
particularly in the province of Yunnan. In contrast, however, there was no well-
organized alien state whose machinations acted as a mainstay of the local opium
traffic. Instead, administrative blindspots entirely within the provincial boundaries of
the empire itself proved impervious to prohibition efforts.
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70
IV. The Administration of the Southwest
!Va: The Native Chieftain System
The native chieftain system was intended to administer the numerous
indigenous minority peoples of the southwest along lines broadly similar to those of
the beg system in Xinjiang. The existence of this seperate administrative
jurisdiction, itself a product of ethno-geographic diversity, provided a relatively
inviolate space free of routine central government surveillance. Qing administrative
absence was total, however, in the "wild" (ye) zones, espcially in southwestern
Yunnan, that were inhabited by indigenous peoples under no recognized system of
administrative organization however indirectly connected to the dynasty. In effect
the adminstrative space of the southwest was divided into three levels that ran the
gamut of local control: the junxian jurisdictions, the native chieftainships and the
wild zones.
While the Ming dynasty saw the general administrative consolidation of the
southwest into the junxian system, shifts in territorial jurisdiction between
administrative regions constituting the borders of the three provinces of Yunnan,
Guizhou and Sichuan continued through the Qing. Moreover, intra-provincial
administrative transformations also occurred during this period, most notably that of
the administrative conversion of many regions populated by ethnic minorities from
indigenous to central government rule (gaitu guiliu), which had also been pursued
since the Ming in one form or another. Although the overall effect of these changes
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was to enhance the control of the center throughout the region, this control was
neither absolute nor undisputed. Shifts of prefectures from control of one province
to another, often arising from conversion operations, caused disputes between
respective groups of provincial officialdom as well as armed conflicts between Qing
forces and those of the expropriated native chieftains.6 6 Even when successful,
conversion operations were often intended merely to replace those at the highest
levels of native administration, leaving the lower levels of local officialdom in the
hands of indigneous officials.6 7 Thus, a number of regions underwent a largely
nominal conversion and the native chieftain system persisted at the grassroots level.
The western and southwestern regions of Yunnan remained particularly impervious
to incorporation by the central government.
The native chieftain system of the Qing dynasty was, broadly speaking, a
holdover from the Ming dynasty, which had initiated a more systematized and
formalized structure of indirect imperial rule in the southwest than had previously
S 6 One of the most notable of these conflicts occurred between the provincial administration of Sichuan
and Ortai, the imperial official who implemented one of the largest conversion operations of the Qing.
Ortai wanted to shift Sichuanese territory to the control of Yunnan to form Wumeng Prefecture (later
known as Zhaotong Prefecture) as an integral part o f his strategy for the conversion of Yi ("Lolo")
native chieftainships in northeastern Yunnan/southeastern Sichuan between 1726 and 1732; Kent
Clarke Smith, "Ch'ing Policy and the Development of Southwest China: Aspects o f Ortai's Govemor-
Generalship, 1726-1731,” (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1971), pp. 138-139.
6 7 Even so drastic a conversion policy as Ortai's, however, had quite limited objectives in terms of
degree and spatial extent. Ortai, for example, opposed radical assimilationist policies and wished to
preserve the lower levels of the native chieftainship infrastructure, transforming their titles in name
only; Smith, Ch'ing Policy and the Development of Southwest China," pp. 141-42. For further
evidence of the continuity of native power at the lowest administrative levels, see You Zhong, Yunnan
minzu shi (An ethnic history of Yunnan) (Kunming: Yunnan Daxue Chubansbe, 1994), pp. 525-526.
For an overview of the Chinese scholarship on the complex nature of conversion operations, see Ma
Ruheng and Ma Dazheng, eds., Qingdai de bianjiang zhengce (Qing dynasty border policy) (Beijing:
Zhongguo Shehui Kexue Chubanshe, 1994), pp. 33-36.
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existed.6 8 The official ranks of this system, filled by indigenous elites who had
undergone radically varying degrees of assimilation, were formally intended to
mirror that of their junxian counterparts, including a primary division between
military and civilian branches of responsibility.6 9
The native chieftain system did not remain static during the Qing but many of
the problems that arose during this period were legacies of the Ming system. Chief
among these was that posts in the system, unlike those of the central government,
6 8 The following overview of the native chieftain system is based on You Zhong, Zhongguo xinan
m im u shi (A history of China's southwestern ethnicities) (Kunming: Yunnan People's Press, 1985),
pp. 362-368; John E. Herman, Empire in the Southwest: Early Qing Reforms to the Native Chieftain
System,” The Journal o f Asian Studies, 56, no. 1 (February 1997): 50-52; Gong Yin, Zhongguo tusi
zhidu (China's Native Chieftain System) (Kunming: Yunnan Renmin Chubanshe, 1992), pp. 110-12;
Ma and Cai, Qingdai de bianjiang zhengce, 34-36 and 382-406. Herman gives a detailed treatment of
the Qing reforms of the tusi system, which were centered mainly on issues related to inheritance and
education; "Empire in the Southwest," pp. 52-68.
6 9 The native chieftain system employs a wide range of terminology that was not only differentiated by
administrative category, but also historically and regionally. The Yuan formally initiated the system,
known as the "native military and civil chieftain system" (tuguan tusi zhidu), whose ranks and
organization generally persisted through the Qing. The civil/military distiction, however, only became
fully articulated after the Ming; Gong Yin, Zhongguo tusi zhidu, p. 23n. Herman notes that civil
native chieftains came under the supervision of the Board of Personnel, military ones under the Board
of War; "Empire in the Southwest," p. 50. By contrast, the Qingdai liubu chengyu cidian, among
other works, classifies civil ranks as "tusi" and military ranks a s "tubie"; Li Pengnian, Liu Ziyang and
Chen Qiangyi, eds., Qingdai liubu chengyu cidian (An administrative terminology of the Six Boards
of the Qing Dynasty) (1842; reprint, Tianjin: Tianjin Renmin Chubanshe, 1990), pp. 152 and 243,
respectively. Even this distinction, however, is rather too neat as demonstrated by Dian Luoshao's
Qiannan zhifangjilue (Summary of the main administrative aspects of Guizhou) (1847; reprint,
Guiyang: Guizhou Renmin Chubanshe, 1992), which lists one group of officials as tusi, who are
subdivided into those who obtain their patents of rank from the Board of Personnel and those who
obtain their patents from the Board of War; and a second group as tubian, who obtained their
commissions from the provincial Governor-General rather than from the central government; p. 339.
This latter group is almost exclusively composed of supernumerary military ranks. The explanation of
the Qiannan zhifangjilue seems to hold good for Guizhou at least and I am inclined to accept it. If it
is correct, supernumerary military ranks were "locally" appointed officials. Nevertheless, the sources
are clearly in conflict over the precise nature of the terminology and Gong Yin persuasively observes
that the civil/military distinction was used by imperial courts (seemingly throughout the imperial
period) as dictated by time and place, but was not really descriptive of the specific functions of the
native chieftain officialdom. They were nominal distinctions only and probably mainly significant for
purposes of prestige and pay; Zhongguo tusi zhidu, 23n.
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73
were hereditary, with the higher level posts occupied by a recalcitrant indigenous
elite. All successions to these offices, whether by son, brother or wife, had to be
approved by the central government. Such nominal central control over native
chieftain succession proved insufficient to restrain local elites, who became local
7fl
tyrants, or, at least, so the Chinese sources inform us. Worse still, from the court's
point of view, were incidents of collusion between native chieftains and Han
opponents of Qing rule, such as that which occurred between the last Ming claimant
to the throne, the Yongli Emperor, and a native chieftain in Hunan.7 1 The
disruptions that arose from the incompetence, malice or resistance of native
chieftains often provided Qing forces with pretexts to implement conversion efforts
in the southwest, the high point of which was the series of operations executed by the
famous Qing official and imperial confidant Ortai throughout the Yongzheng reign.
Two conflicting themes pervade the history of Qing relations with the
indigenous peoples of the southwest. The first theme stressed the fundamental
7 0 Qing officials often tyrannized in turn over native officials and their subjects with disastrous results
for all concerned. This appears to have been the immediate cause of the 1735 Miao uprising that
effectively ended Ortai's activist conversion policies in the southwest; Zhongguo Diyi Lishi Dangan
Guan, Renmin Daxue Qingshi Yanjiusuo and Guizhou Sheng Dangan Guan, eds., Qingdai qianqi
Miaomin qiyi dangan shiliao (Archival Historical Materials Related to the Miao Uprisings of the
Early Qing Period), 3 vols. (Beijing: Guangming Ribao, 1987), QL 1/12/15, 1:228-230.
7ILiu Fengyun, Qingdai Sanfanyanjiu (A study of the Three Feudatories of the Qing dynasty)
(Beijing: Zhongguo Renmin Daxue Chubanshe, 1994), p. 119n. The effects of inter-ethnic collusion
continued to plague the dynasty and constituted one of its most important security concerns in the
southwest. Confessions exacted in the wake of the massive and costly "Qian(long) Jia(qing) Miao
Uprising" o f 1794-1796., for example, revealed the participation o f "tuman" (i.e. the national
minority known today as the "tujia z u " ), Han, and Hui, all of whom sought to regain lands taken from
them Han and Miao landlords; Hu Qiwei, "Qian Jia Miaomin qiyi canjiaren gongdan jianshu" (A brief
discussion o f the confession statements of participants in the Qian-Jia Miao uprising), in Miaozu
yanjiu luncong (A collection of research articles on the Miao ethnicity), ed. Hu Qi Wang, Li Yangui,
(Guiyang: Guizhou Remnin Chubanshe, 1988), pp. 196-197.
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74
alienation of these peoples from the mainstream of imperial institutions and culture,
as expressed in the Kangxi Emperor's vermilion rescript of 1709 to Guizhou
Governor Chen Shen (n.d.). The emperor cogently summarized this minimalist
approach to local control by conveying his sense of the limits of Qing power to
transform the region as well as the fundamental contradiction faced by the empire in
its relations with the indigenous Miao ethnicity (Miaozu).
The native chieftains are of myriad types and their customs vary.
From antiquity the royal regulations were unable to bind them. It is
completely impossible to control them as We do the subjects of the
interior and this has been so from the beginning. We must make the
best of it and attempt only a general type of control. An excessively
stringent application of the law will be a source of endless trouble, but
if words and laws are too lenient, this will certainly lead to an
extraordinary number of criminal acts. Preventing incidents from
occurring must be our main policy for an excess of incidents will be
79
too costly for Our state to bear.
A typical formulation of the alternative, more activist viewpoint was
expressed by one of its most vigorous proponents, Ortai, in a late 1726 memorial
advocating intensification of conversion operations. Ortai singled out the native
chieftain system as a fomenter of regional strife that could no longer be tolerated and,
in the process, noted the determining effect of regional geographic conditions on
conventional bureaucratic institutions.
I think that the Ming's former division of the area into native- and
central government-controlled zones originally arose from the new
frontier's malarial climate, to which Chinese officials were not
accustomed. So, they relied on native chieftains for control and this
1 2 Kangxi chao hanwen zhupi zouzhe huibian (A compilation of the Kangxi court's vennilion rescripts),
Zhongguo Diyi Lishi Danganguan, ed., (Beijing: Dangan Chubanshe, 1984), KX 16/2/1, 1: 601.
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75
led to repression. Now, after many centuries, the policy of "Using
Barbarians to Control Barbarians" has become "Using Thieves to
Control Thieves." Miao and Yi [bandits] worry neither about pursuit
nor execution and the native chieftains [being outside the ranks of
conventional officialdom] cannot be punished by dismissal or land
confiscation. Reports of misconduct regarding bribes used to halt
inquiries have been received, but higher officials don't inquire too
deeply into these matters . . . so the inhabitants of the border are
without appeal. If we do not uproot the sources of these abuses and
rectify military, penal, financial and taxation affairs, we will not be
able to deal with the fundamental problem of unrest.
For Ortai, the aboriginal officers' position outside the control structure of
regular Qing bureaucratic channels was a fundamental cause of regional instability.
Fie believed that "all reports of rogues by Miao and Lo [Yi] involve aboriginal
officers, who make great depredations without restraint. Under cover of their
aboriginal offices and chieftains' authority, they carry out their murderous and
thieving plans. Both Han and barbarian are harmed by this, the border's great
scourge."7 3 Ortai's solution was an intensification of conversion operations.
Regional instability, however significant an issue for the center, was only part
of the incentive for conversion. The major structural imperative was regional socio
economic development, particularly that of the copper mining industry, which ensued
almost immediately after the defeat of the Three Feudatories in 1681. While the Qing
initially did not wish to restore the preivious system of official landowning that had
abetted Wu Sangui's regime, financial pressures soon forced the dynasty to permit the
7 3QSG, 2 8 8 /3 4 :1 0 ,2 3 1 Yongzheng chao hanwen zhupi zouzhe huibian (A compilation of the
Yongzheng court's vermilion rescripts), Zhongguo Diyi Lishi Danganguan, ed., (Nanjing: Nanjiung
GujiShudian, 1989-91), 8:115-116.
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76
sale of land to private cultivators in order to raise provincial tax revenue. Large scale
Han colonization into the minority areas of southern Yunnan commenced at this
point, increasing contact between Han immigrants and the region's indigenous
peoples, and stimulating various commercial contacts between them, including traffic
in opium .7 4
It has been estimated that this commercial and industrial expansion
quadrupled the population of the southwest from 5 to 20 million between 1700 and
1850.7 5 Inter-provincial commercial routes experienced a commensurate
development. One of the most important of these routes was the Yangzi River route
linking southern and eastern Sichuan with the eastern major trade centers of Hankou
and Shanghai via the northeastern Yunnanese prefectures of Dongchuan and
Zhaotong and on through Guizhou. Dongchuan, which possessed the largest number
of copper mines in Yunnan, was an important economic center in its own right.
Southwestern merchants, as well as those from Hunan, Hubei, Jiangxi and
Guangdong, flocked to the Sichuan-Yunnan border region to trade in all manner of
goods, including copper, cotton, salt and cloth. Another route along the West River
linked Yunnan to the Lingnan provinces of Guangxi and Guangdong. Opium flowed
74Y o u Zhong, Yunnan minzu shi, pp. 502-503.
7 5 James Lee, "Food Supply and Population Growth in Southwest China, 1250-1850,” The Journal o f
Asian Studies 41:4 (Aug., 1982): 712. For an overview of the mines of the southwest, see Chen Hua,
Qingdai diyu shehui jingjiyanjiu (Studies of regional socio-economies in the Qing), (Beijing:
Zhongguo Renmin Daxue Chubanshe, 1996), pp. 335-351; for an anthology of related primary
sources, see Qingshi Yanjiu Suo, ed., Qingdai de kuangye (The Qing mining industry), 2 vols.
(Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1983).
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77
along all these routes from western Yunnan northward into Sichuan and eastward
7 f\
through Guizhou into Lingnan as well as out from Lingnan into the southwest.
Large-scale immigration and its related commercial development were both
beneficial and disruptive to dynastic control of the southwest. By the Daoguang reign
Han settlers had penetrated into some of the farthest reaches of the region, but had
yet to provide an adequate revenue basis for the central government to effect a
thorough socio-economic conversion to a junxian administrative structure. Dian
Luoshao's 1847 administrative work on Guizhou succinctly summarized the relations
between officialdom and the general populace, stating that "officials must be
appointed to open up Guizhou; for officials to be appointed, people must come from
all directions [to support them]. The two are without question mutually related."
Unfortunately, provincial revenue was insufficient to pay for administrative costs, so
Guizhou's administration had to be subsidized, not only for the province's own
development but also to maintain control of Yunnan.7 7
7 6 For general accounts of the routes, see Liu Xiusheng, "Qingdai guonei shangye jiaotong kaolue"
(Overview of domestic commercial communications routes in the Qing dynasty), Qingshi luncong
(1992): 10-11; Chen Hua, Qingdai diyu shehui jingjiyanjiu, p. 337. For the flow of opium along
these routes, see Carol Benedict, Bubonic Plague in Nineteenth-Century China, (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 1996), pp. 51-53. Benedict relies on late nineteenth-century British sources to trace
the flow of the drug and only discusses the Yunnan drug trade's eastward penetration into Lingnan.
Qing documents from the Daoguang reign suggest a more extensive and complex network that
included a transborder traffic with Vietnam and a major regional smuggling route fromn western
Yunnan to southeastern Sichuan as well as a reverse flow of the coastal drug from east to west; see, for
example, YPZZ, DG 11/5/9, 1:77 for brief references to Yunnan's connection with Vietnam and
Guangdong. For connections between Yunnan, Guizhou and Sichuan see funji diqin, 267; 11, DG
19/4/13.
7 7 Dian Luoshao, Qiannan zhifangjilue, pp. 273-274. Actually, neither Yunnan nor Guizhou could
generate enough revenue to pay for their administrative costs, which often included expensive military
operations. The Qing solution was to transfer revenue from more prospersous provinces into the
southwest; Zhang Pengyuan, "Luohou diqu de ziben xingcheng-Yungui de xiexiang yu yapian"
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78
An early 1831 land dispute case from Tengyue Subprefecture, on Yunnan's
western border with Burma, reveals how Han settlers could serve to both disrupt and
facilitate Qing attempts to maintain some sort of administrative order in frontier
areas. The case concerned an an encroachment by eighty Yi famlies from the native
chieftainship of Nandian upon land that lay on the border between it and Zhanxi
County. The land had been illicitly pawned by a previous native chieftain to some
Han settlers, who had no titles to it, but had been working the land for a few
generations. The memorialist, Tengyue Subprefectural Magistrate Zhou Shu, noted
that this type of land acquisition in was common in places lying adjacent to
"barbarian areas," (yifang) where such "old practices," which had been illegal since
1770, had not been completely eradicated.
The Nandian native chieftain argued that his dispatch of the landless Yi
famlies was intended to secure the land from bandits, who were just being brought
under control after years of depredations. Prefectural authorities, however, noted that
that each mountain peak of the region was originally the home of several different
ethnicities, some of whom had resisted past attempts by the Nandian native chieftain
to subordinate them. These attempts included the installation of a subregional native
chieftain by Nandian who was to coordinate settlement of the area by more compliant
peoples. The introduction of the Yi families was part of this strategy, but it met a
united resistance by local Han and other "wild barbarians" (yeyi). A number of Han
(Capital formation in an underdeveloped region-assistance loans and opium in Yunnan and Guizhou),
Guizhou Wenshi Congkan, 1 (1990): 50-55.
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79
residents brought the case to prefectural authorities, who were anxious to prevent this
localized dispute from expanding into a major border conflict.
Magistrate Zhou Shu was reluctant to enforce the letter of the law, which
would have returned the illicitly pawned land back to the Nandian native
chieftainship, as it would have deprived Han settlers of a livelihood they had come to
depend on for generations. Zhou also did not wish to force the Yi families from their
newly acquired land for similar reasons. He noted that whatever the law technically
required, its spirit was to prevent incidents and these would surely continue if either
side was driven to desperation. In the end, both sides kept their land, but their titles
to it were formalized and restricted. Further settlement by Nandian was prohibited,
but the native chieftain was paid rent by the Han settlers. Zhou Shu was satisfied
because he felt that it was advantageous for Han settlers to be present for they would
provide surveillance of the majority aboriginal populace, which tended to collude
with "wild [aboriginal] bandits." The decision was thus also intended to legitimate
the Han presence, which would "firm up our frontier screen," since the nature of the
70
aboriginals was as undependable that of "dogs and sheep."
This case is representative of the multiple tensions that accompanied
dynastic expansion into the southwest. The most typical conflict revealed herein is
that between Han settlers and indigenous peoples, who often lost their land through
7 8 This account can be found in Chuxiong Yizu Wenhua Yanjiusuo, ed., Qingdai Wuding Yizu Nashi
tusi dangan shiliao jiaobian (Edited compilation of Qing dynasty archival historical materials related
to the Na line's Yi native chieftainship in Wuding Prefecture) (Beijing: Zhongyang Minzu Daxue
Chubanshe, 1993), DG 11/3/21, #4, pp. 26-30.
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80
economic transactions. It is, however, not possible to simply distinguish between
competing groups on the basis of ethnicity alone for, as this case also shows, some
indigenous groups could side with Han settlers against their neighboring aboriginals.
Indeed, in this particular case, the main source of conflict was the Nandian native
chieftainship's attempt to consolidate its jurisdiction, via a subregional native
chieftainship, over indigenous peoples resident in an unincorporated part of Nandian
itself. Finally, there are the conflicts between the prefectural authorities of the
junxian system and the Han settlers and native chieftains respectively. These are
particularly interesting because they illustrate the larger dilemma faced by the
dynasty in its attempt to consolidate its own rule over the southwest. For provincial
officialdom Han settlers are a mixed blessing as they are the most reliable sources of
frontier stability and revenue on the one hand, but they are also a major cause of
costly frontier incidents involving the indigenous peoples on the other. Native
chieftainships are viewed in a similar fashion in that they are often the only way to
keep order among the bewildering diversity of the indigenous populace, but their
largely unsupervised activities can prove just as disruptive to local order. Aside from
alliances based on racial affinities, provincial officials were also troubled by the rich
possibilities for inter-ethnic collusion among their multiethnic charges on the basis of
79
economic interests.
79Shepherd notes many of the same patterns in Qing frontier policy in Taiwan; "Introduction: The
Political Economy of the Taiwan Frontier," chapter 1 in Statecraft and Political Economy.
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81
Attempts to control the southwest's diverse and mobile populations, primarily
via the baojia system, often followed in the wake of Han immigrants, who often
could not be controlled by native chieftains. This no doubt in part reflected the
O A
preferences of local officials as expressed by Magistrate Zhou Shu above.
Population registration is an important indicator of the degree of administrative
control exerted by provincial authorities over an area as it is a prerequisite for
revenue extraction and other regular administrative activities, including enforcement
of the opium prohibitions. The degree of incorporation of the southwest, judging by
registration figures, was not very high throughout most of the Qing period. During
initial registration efforts in the 1740's, for example, "at least half the southwestern
population did not register" and no formal registration of non-Han ethnicities was
even attempted before 1756. Furthermore, these statements are only generally
applicable to the region as a whole. Many prefectural and sub-prefectural localilties
did not report any population figures at all, perhaps because they had yet to organize
baojia. Finally, "all residents in the areas under native rule continued to be excluded
from registration . .. [while] non-Han in areas under control of the central
government were included in the reported population .... Han who lived within
native jurisdictions were almost always excluded from the regularly reported
population."8 1
8 0 As Han immigrants entered southeastern Guizhou, for example, local officials requested that the
resulting mixed population of Han and Miao be registered under the baojia because of the native
chieftainships inability to control the immigrants; QSL, DG 99:40b-41b.
slLee, "Food Supply," pp. 721-724.
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82
It should be emphasized that the presence of either the junxian system of
baojia or of the native chieftain system in a region was not a decisive determinant of
the ethnicity of the local inhabitants. The immediate cause of the large-scale uprising
in the Miao Territory (Miaojiang) of southeastern Guizhou in 1873, for example, was
the local Han subprefectural magistrate's attempt to use the existing baojia system to
extort money from its Miao members. The intimate realtionship between territory
and ethnicity is exemplified by the very existence of the ethno-geographic term
"Miao Territory," which was inhabited primarily by "uncivilized" Miao (sheng
Miao). Xu Jiagan's 1878 account of this region demonstrates the complexties facing
any registration attempt to determine precisely the ethnic composition of a
southwestern locale in the midst of the contemporary socio-economic transformation.
Xu observed that the local Miao stockades were so wild and remote that
"civilization" (zhengjiao) could not penetrate them. There also were "Han who have
been assimilated into Miao" (Hanmin bian Miao) as a result of settler interaction
with the locals. Finally, there were relatively permeable enclaves of "civilized" Miao
(shu Miao) "over h a lf whom were Han and their offspring who had gone native. To
add further ethno-geographic complexity, Han surnames were not reliable indicators
of ethnic identity as they had been adopted by many Miao.8 2
8 2 Xu Jiagan, Miaojiang wen jian lu (A record of things seen and heard in the Miao Territory), ed. Wu
Yiwen, (1878; reprint, Guiyang: Guizhou Renmin Chubanshe, 1997), pp. 162-163, 199. Da Aibi's
1749 work, Qiannan shilue, which contains unattributed interpolations from the later Jiaqing and
Daoguang reigns, lists a number of Han surnames adopted by the Miao of Songtao Subprefecture in
northeastern Guizhou and notes that assimilated Han were known as "Assimilated [into] Miao" (bian
Miao)\ Da Aibi, Qiannan shilue (Guizhou administrative primer) (1749; reprint, Guiyang: Guizhou
Renmin Chubanshe, 1992), p. 171; quoted in You Zhong, Yunnan minzu shi, p. 689. As Norma
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83
Qing administrators sought to maintain control over this diversity, partly by
discursive methods such as grouping various conglomerations of Miao into "tribes."
Whatever the actual ethnic components of their resident populations, distinct ethno-
geographic spheres of influence within a southwestern province were acknowledged
terminologically in official communications. A homicide case in a mid-1828 routine
memorial, which also contains the earliest specific case record of opium gathering in
the southwest, is exemplary in this regard. The incident began in the native
chieftainship of Gengma, located in the junxian prefecture of Shunning in
southwestern Yunnan, a major source of provincial opium. At several points in the
document, the location of the opium within the Gengma Native Chieftainship
('Gengma Tusi) is declared to be too far from "China proper" (neidi) for local officials
83
{difang guan) to keep under surveillance.
It is fairly clear from the context of this and other Yunnanese memorials that
"China proper" should actually read "Yunnan proper" as neidi refers to that part of
Yunnan that is under direct Han junxian administration. An essay contained in the
Collected writings on statecraft from the Qing dynasty, "On the Native
Chieftainships of Yongchang [Prefecture]," provides more explicit evidence for this
Diamond has shown, the Miao, even today, are spatially, linguistically, economically and culturally
diverse; in essence, the Miao identity was an externally imposed Han construction initially arising
from late Ming Yunnan-Guizhou gazetteers' distinctions between wild and civilized types; Norma
Diamond, "Defining the Miao: Ming, Qing and Contemporary Views" in Cultural Encounters on
China's Ethnic Frontiers, ed. Stevan Harrell, (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1995), pp. 92-
100. The court was extremely sensitive to ethinc identification to facilitate its largely futile attempts to
keep the diverse residents of the southwest separate and peaceful while at the same time weeding out
disruptive elements from among all of them.
8jNeige weijin, #10092 (Tongben), DG 8/5/22.
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84
interpretation. This piece is in part devoted to clarifying the distinction between the
"barbarians of Yunnan proper" {neidi zh iyi), "the barbarians beyond Yunnan proper"
{waidi zhi yi) and the "barbarians of the border" (yanbian zhi yi). Despite the essay's
title, the author, Liu Bin, also includes Shunning Prefecture in his discussion as well
as that o f Yongchang, which forms the northwestern border of Shunning in western
Yunnan. Nowhere does he discuss any wider geographic entity beyond southwestern
Yunnan.
Liu begins by admitting that the difference between the barbarians of Yunnan
proper and those of the border, which is presumably what seperates Yunnan proper
from waidi, is purely geographic and the two groups are subsequently lumped
together as barbarians of Yunnan proper. Liu's primary distinction is between those
barbarians who live in neidi intermixed with Han populations and are under some
form of Han administrative control, and those who live in waidi, who are under Han
control "in name only, but are actually not subordinated to us." These "wild people"
are actually not under any control at all. Moreover, some groups who would be
technically classified as border groups because of their location, are actually waidi in
administrative terms. The region of Gengma, a native chieftainship from 1585 to
1934, is categorized as "beyond Yunnan proper" {waidi) and the author states that
consequently "the laws do not reach there." In Liu's conception then, native
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85
chieftainships were waidi and exerted little if any control on behalf of the dynasty
84
over their extensive territories in southwestern Yunnan.
There is also some evidence that indicates that the various official references
to "barbarian territory," that do not explicitly tie indigenous peoples to the native
chieftainship system are intended to refer to "wild" groups who actually did not
belong to any dynastic administrative system whatsoever. A local gazeteer from
Shunning Prefecture contains an account of a revolt in October, 1799 by a group of
wild Dai tribals, whose territory is said to lay beyond the nearby Menglian Native
Chieftainship. The gazeteer notes that they were considered wild both because they
lacked "chiefs" (junzhang) and because they were not under control of any Burmese
"native chieftainship."8 5 It appears that many of the ethno-geographic references to
non-Han peoples that occur throughout the southwestern prohibition documents
actually indicate these wild groups rather than the inhabitants of the native
chieftainships. The existence of such groups adds a third, "wild" side to Yunnan's
bilateral system of adminstrative space that explains why local officials considered
any problem involving these peoples to be administratively insoluable.
8 4 All references to Liu's essay are from Liu Bin, "Yongchang tusi lun" (On the native chieftainships of
Yongchang [Prefecture]), in Qingjingshi wenbian (Collected writings on statecraft from the Qing
dynasty), ed. Ho Changling, (1887 ed.; reprint, Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1992), 86:4b-5b, 3:2131-
2132. The Gengma Native Chieftainship was established during the Ming in 1585 and lasted until
1934; Gong Yin, Zhongguo tusi zhidu, pp. 550-551.
8 5 Shunning fuzhi (Gazetteer of Shunning Prefecture), comp. Zhu Zhanlce et al., in Chung-kuo fang-
chih tsung-shu (Collectanea of Chinese regional gazetteers) (1904; reprinted, Taibei: Chengwen
Chubanshe, 1968), 17:6b-7b.
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These terminological nuances reflect a concrete imperial microcosm within
the province of Yunnan where distinctions between neidi and waidi refer not to
borders between ethnically and politically distinct states but to boundaries between
certain forms of ethnically-determined administrative organization within a single
province of a particular state. These boundaries formed interior frontiers within
southwestern provinces that were at best semi-permeable to imperial legislation and
surveillance. Moreover, the wild areas were beyond all boundaries and,
consequently, all control. By the Daoguang period the expansion of Han settlement
within the southwest, although considerable, had yet to effect a thorough
administrative transformation of these interior frontiers into more stable, manageable
units of the junxian system.
Moreover, these interior frontiers were by no means restricted to regions at
the extremities of Han expansionism such as southwestern Yunnan. In another
essay, devoted to stressing the importance of geography for control of the indigenous
peoples throughout Yunnan, Liu Bin noted that while the prefectures of Dongchuan
and Zhaotong, instituted by Ortai's 1725 conversion operations to form part of
Yunnan's northeastern border with both Sichuan and Guizhou, had been transformed
into units under control of the junxian system, the region's vast expanses and deep
mountains still concealed large numbers of indigenes who caused disruptions .
8 6 Liu Bin, "Lun quan Dian xingshi" (On the overall situation in Yunnan), in Qingjingshi wenbian
(Collected writings on statecraft from the Qing dynasty), ed. Ho Changling, (1887 ed.; reprint,
Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1992), 87:5b, 3:2150.
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87
Areas like these were the wild zones where opium transgression proliferated and
much of the Yunnan-Sichuan border seems to have been in such a zone.
If the administrative structures of the junxian and native chieftain systems
were not perfectly descriptive of the ethnic identity of the populations they were
intended to control, these structures did determine the extent and degree of Qing
bureaucratic control within a given area and were themselves initially determined in
07
large measure by a locale's preponderant ethnicity rather than by territorial criteria.
As the rationales for and persistence of conversion operations indicate, the junxian
system was the center's preferred form of local administration for purposes of
revenue collection, resource extraction and often for those of long-term local
security. In general, areas under the domination of native chieftains remained only
partially under Qing bureaucratic control and surveillance throughout the eighteenth
00
and nineteenth centuries.
With the onset of the nineteenth century the mines of the southwest, which
had done so much to stimulate dynastic socio-economic and political expansion in
S 7 The case of the civilized Miao is problematic if, as maintained by Xu Jiagan, they consisted largely
of Han who had gone native. It is not entirely clear, for example, whether a critical mass o f such
people was crucial for establishing the baojia and other junxian institutions in a particular locale.
James Lee concludes from his examination of population records that "exemption from population
registration [which was itself an indicator of a territory's incorporation into the junxian system] was
mainly a function of territory, not, as has been thought, of ethnicity," " Food Supply," p. 724. This
statement requries qualification in so far as the territories themselves were often ethnically determined
to begin with and it was mainly due to immigration, which was often semi-legal at best, that population
registration began to transcend the boundaries of the Han ethnicity. Actually, both territory and
ethnicity were important in this process and difficult to distinguish in practice.
8 8 Lee, from the perspective of population registration, provides extensive evidence for the exemption
of "land under native jurisdication" and "areas with semiautonomous jurisdictions" from official
surveillance through 1851; "Food Supply," pp. 725-727.
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the region, began to give out. Population growth slowed and the economy stagnated.
Large-scale inter-ethnic feuding between Han and Hui, sometimes involving
thousands, broke out in various areas of Yunnan, including the western perfectures of
Shunning and Yongchang. Banditry, most notably by the Sichuanese Guolu gangs
increased and created further disruptions. Bandits were particularly active along the
Yunnan-Sichuan border and became involved in opium smuggling among other
activities.8 9 Indeed, opium served as one important, possibly the most important,
substitute for mining in the subsequently reduced economic circumstances of the
southwest.9 0
IVb: Conclusions on the Administration of the Southwest
Ethno-geographic diversity in the Qing southwest hindered the development
of junxian structures in ways broadly similar to those of contemporary Xinjiang
because it necessitated the establishment of non-Han administrative intermediaries,
native chieftains rather than begs in this case, between the dynasty and its indigenous
subjects. The motives for Qing penetration of the southwest, however, were
primarily economic and of long standing while those of the northwest were largely
strategic in character and relatively late in developing. One consequence of this
8 9 For the disruptions in Shunning Tengyue and Yongchang, see Zhu Zhanke, Shunning Fu zhi, 17:6b-
7b, 17:9a, 17:15b. You Zhong, Yunnan minzu shi, pp. 566-67 gives a somewhat different account of
the conflicts among native chieftainships in Shunning. For conditions in Sichuan, see Wu Kangling,
ed., Sichuan tongshi (A complete history of Sichuan), vol. 6 (Chengdu: Sichuan Daxue Chubanshe,
1994), pp. 1-6, 13-14. For factors leading to the socio-economic and demographic stagnation of the
southwest as a whole, see Lee, "Food Supply," 743.
9 0 One Chinese scholar has argued that opium was the major form of capital formation in the southwest,
which he defines as Guizhou and Yunnan provinces, from the second half of the nineteenth century
through the Republican period; Zhang Pengyuan, "Luohou Diqu de Ziben Xingcheng," 55-60, 64-67.
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89
difference was a comparatively more intensified colonization of the southwest,
especially in the form of conversion operations, that resulted in an almost continuous
state of inter-ethinc conflict. This ultimately caused a major destabilization of Qing
rule during the Panthay Rebellion (1856-1873), which saw the establishment of the
Muslim Sultinate of Pingnan under Du Wenxiu.9 1 Perhaps even more disruptive for
the central government was the trans-ethnic unity, which appears to have been largely
class-based, that arose from contact between Han and the locals. Such unity is
visible in Zhou Shu's land dispute case above and in the presence of Han officials in
the Pingnan Sultinate.
If the ethnic divisions embodied in the native chieftainship and junxian
systems created enclaves that were difficult for official investigators to penetrate,
contact between ethnicities helped to stimulate local opium production and
commerce. As cases like that from Gengma will show, Han merchants often
obtained Yunnanese opium from native chieftainships during their trading excursions
to these areas and circulated it to the north and east. Furthermore, the existence of
wild enclaves, especially in southwestern Yunnan, constituted a safe zone outside of
all direct and indirect official control where traffickers and indigenous producers
could freely mix. In general the results of the dynasty's ethnic policies in the
9 1 Kwang Ching-liu and Richard J. Smith, "The Military Challenge: The North-West and the Coast,"
in The Cambridge History o f China, Volume 11, Late Ch'ing, 1800-1911, Part 2, ed. John K. Fairbank
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), pp. 212-214. "Panthay" is a Burmese term for the
Muslims of Yunnan; Henry Yule and A.C. Burnell, Hobson Jobson, (1886; reprint, Calcutta, Rupa
Press, 1986), pp. 669b-670a.
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southwest exacerbated the regional opium problem and helped it to spread beyond
the region as did its failure to incorporate wild areas.
V. Chapter Conclusions
The ethno-geographic diversity of the Qing empire both necessitated
administrative variegation and made local control a more complex problem for the
dynasty, which attempted to respond by tailoring its regional administration to local
conditions. Nevertheless, in many areas the center was ultimately interested in
achieving a level of territorial incorporation that was only attainable through the
imposition of the junxian system of administrative organization and control.
Such a system, however, was far from perfect, vulnerable as it was to
innumerable forms of official malfeasance and indifference. Yet the baojia registers
did provide an additional weapon for official law enforcement to avail itself of and
the baojia system itself remained the primary medium for the implementation of the
opium prohibitions among the populace. As subsequent chapters will show, it also
seems to have retarded illicit opium cultivation in several southeastern coastal
provinces something that the dynasty was unable to achieve in the vast and
unsupervised expanses of either Xinjiang or the southwest.
O f course, the baojia system was a tool of purely domestic enforcement and,
as such, was unable to reach the Euro-American traffickers of the southeast coast.
These and their Inner Asian counterparts in the northwest were able to keep largely
outside any imperial structures of control. Both groups, moreover, were able to
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establish their own spheres of quite localized control inside imperial territory itself in
both Guangzhou and the Southern March. Finally, these domestic enclaves
maintained links with larger zones of Asia's south and southeastern maritime zones,
India and Inner Asia all of which were well beyond any structures of dynastic
control. These inviolate areas would prove fatal for the dynasty's struggle to prohibit
opium.
Qing authority was also limited inside the borders of the empire. As the
structure of both the southwestern and Xinjiang administrations shows, the political
borders of a Qing province were not necessarily coterminous with those of its actual
administrative power. Aside from the obvious compromise of dynastic authority
represented by the native chieftainship and beg systems, there existed large areas
within some provinces and territories where a Qing political vaccuum existed for
purposes of sustained local control. This condition is especially apparent in
southwestern Yunnan, which would become the center of the empire's local
cultivation problem during the Daoguang reign.
All of these administrative blindspots arose as much from the success of Qing
expansionism as they did the weakness of Qing government. The dynasty was
steadily pursuing an unprecedented course of territorial conquest, consolidation and
incorporation throughout much of the eighteenth century and attempted to continue
these latter two operations into the nineteenth. In terms of the opium problem, this
expansion was significant because it created or exacerbated confrontations with
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indigenous peoples throughout the empire's western frontiers that would later prove
to be obstacles to effective enforcement. Indeed, the sheer extent of the expanded
empire's administrative responsibilities served to weaken an already over-extended
officialdom. These problems alone made prohibition an immense task and no doubt
encouraged the dynastic tendency to define the opium problem as one primarily of
coastal urban smuggling. In short the lineaments of Qing administration
fundamentally determined the dynasty's perception of the opium problem and its
consequent prescription.
In order to better understand the results of the interaction between perception
and prescription, it is now necessary to examine legislative history the central
government's attempts to deal prohibit opium in the face of the complex problems
generated by the empire's ethno-geographic diversity. Since Qing general prohibition
policy was formulated mainly within the context of the junxian system, the evolution
of the opium problem as it existed in the coastal provinces and, secondarily, in the
interior provinces of China proper, an examination of the opium problem as it existed
in these areas will be used to supplement the legislative overview.
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Chapter 3.
The Opium Problem in the Han Core & the Formation of Central Government
Policy
I. Introduction
Opium in various forms had a long history in China and was not considered a
major problem by the central government until the drug traffic was decisively
connected to the outflow of silver in the early 1830's. Despite some previous
indications that opium trafficking and cultivation had spread to the interior, the early
1830's also marks the beginning of the period in which the government took full
cognizance of the fact that opium was becoming a transprovincial, multifaceted
problem no longer limited to the southeast coast. The Qing court's conviction that
the opium traffic both caused the silver drain and was spreading unchecked
throughout the empire produced the intensified enforcement of the prohibitions that
characterized the Daoguang prohibition policies of the 1830's.
This conviction arose within a historical context of two centuries of opium
legislation and sporadic prohibition. While it cannot be said that there was a
sustained official engagement with opium policy over this time, it is clear that the
policies and practices of the 1830's were influenced by the dynasty's previous
experience with opium as both a legal medicine and a contraband drug. The
prohibition record of the Jiaqing period (1796-1820) was particularly crucial in this
respect. During this reign the composition of the drug itself changed from a mixture
of opium and tobacco, known as madak, to a more potent paste of relatively pure
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opium extract. The first legislation punishing non-official consumers also occurred
during this period, as well as the discovery by the throne that opium had spread
beyond the southeast coast to interior provinces as far west as Sichuan. Finally, it
was also during this period that the government began to exhibit concern regarding
the silver drain, which would ultimately be connected to the opium trade in the
succeeding Daoguang reign.
All these factors helped to bring about a more active prohibition of opium
during the Jiaqing reign that would only increase under the Daoguang Emperor with
the expansion of production in India and within the Qing empire itself. Despite this
diversification of the opium problem, central government policy continued, as it had
in the past, to focus on southeast coastal smuggling, which did indeed account for the
bulk of the opium in China, as the central problem to be addressed. The belief that
the eradication of one particular aspect o f the problem would constitute the
eradication of all other dimensions of opium production and consumption remained
the most important continuity in government policy. Regardless, however, of
whether the main legislative target was coastal smugglers or urban consumers, the
production sites in both India and in the empire's western regions remained
effectively beyond the center's control and this limitation ensured that the opium
problem would continue to plague the Qing domain.
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II. Opium Policy during the Yongzhcng Reign (1723-1735) and the Qianlong Reign
(1736-1795)
While comparatively little is known of the system of opium distribution and
consumption in China during the early Qing period, sufficient documentation exists
to show that the drug was being brought into the Southeast Asian maritime zone by
Europeans, who transferred it to Chinese merchants for sale along the empire's
southeast coast. It is furthermore fairly clear that opium could either act as a
legitimate medicine, as it had for centuries in China, or as an addictive drug. Initially,
the crucial distinction between the two was the presence of tobacco, which when
mixed with opium produced a smokable addictive drug, madak, which would prompt
the first anti-opium legislation in Chinsese history during the Yongzheng period.
Madak was produced by dissolving crude opium in water, which was then
boiled, strained and boiled again to a syrupy consistency. This syrup was then mixed
with shredded tobacco leaves preparatory to smoking. It was smoked in a pipe and
yielded about .2 percent morphia by volume; an experience Jonathan Spence has
compared to "a few inhalations of marijuana."1 The practice of smoking madak
'j
seems to have arisen in China no later than 1710. The most likely candidates for
the transmission of madak to China are the Dutch either indirectly via Chinese
'Jonathan Spence, "Opium Smoking in Ch'ing China," in Conflict and Control in Late Imperial China,
ed. Frederic Wakeman Jr. and Carolyn Grant, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975), pp.
147-149.
2 The most thorough discussion of scholarly opinion on this issue is Lin Man-houng, "Qingmo Shehui
Liuxing Xishi Yapian Yanjiu," appendix 1. Lin herself opts for 1710.
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traders resident in the former's East Indian colony on Java or directly during Dutch
control of Taiwan from 1624 to 1662.3
A Chinese account published in 1736 provides evidence for the Java
transmission route. Huang Shujing (n.d.) served as Regional Inspecting Censor for
Taiwan (xuntai yushi) in the early Yongzheng period and wrote an account of it, parts
of which were subsequently and extensively quoted in a Taiwan prefectural gazetteer.
These included several accounts of opium ingestion and smoking in the region.
Huang stated that the Dutch were responsible for the manufacture of yapian yan and
pushed it on the indigenous inhabitants of Java. He thought that consumption of the
drug was illegal for both the Dutch and the resident Chinese traders, who plied their
commercial trades back and forth between the Dutch East Indies and China. It was
the covert consumption and smuggling of these merchants that had brought the Javan
drug to the Fujian locales of Zhangzhou, Quanzhou and Xiamen. Madak was then
brought by transients from these areas to Taiwan.4
Huang also described how madak was made. Hemp and other vegetable
materials were mixed with crude opium and decocted. The result was then mixed
with tobacco and smoked in a bamboo pipe filled with shredded coir fibers. The
3Spence, "Opium Smoking," p. 147; Wang Hongbin, Jindu shijian (A history of drug prohibition),
(Beijing: Yuelu Shushe, 1997), pp. 16-17. H.B. Morse asserted that the Dutch had brought Javanese
opium to Taiwan from where it then spread to the mainland; Hosea Ballou Morse, The International
Relations o f the Chinese Empire: ThePeriod o f Conflict, 1834-1860, (New York: Longmans, Green
and Co., 1910), pp. 172-173.
4Taiwan fuzhi (Gazetteer of Taiwan Prefecture), eds. Fan Xian et al., in Taiwan fuzhi sanzhong
(Three gazetteers from Taiwan Prefecture), ed. Chen Donglin, (1747; reprint, Beijing: Zhonghua
Shuju, 1985), 19:34a, 38a-b, quoted in Wang Hongbin, p. 21; Spence, "Opium Smoking," p. 148.
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price of madak was "many times" that of tobacco and it was specially manufactured
and sold by "opium dens" (yapian guari). Huang noted the drug's addictive
properties, saying that it hooked smokers after only one or two trials and left a
detailed description of the drug's debilitating effects.5
By whatever agency opium finally entered China, the most significant aspect
of the pre-prohibition period is for subsequent legislation was the fact that the
"opium" being consumed in the southeast coastal areas of China at this time was a
mixture of opium, tobacco and other vegetable matter; hence, as Wang Hongbin has
argued, the distinction between the legal, taxable medicine yapian and the illegal
narcotic yapian yan, a Chinese compound of the words for crude opium and
tobacco.6 Yapian yan, the madak form of opium, rather than crude opium or opium
paste, was the target of the prohibition legislation of the Yongzheng period and
throughout most of the eighteenth century. A major reason why this early legislation
would change by the century's end was because the composition of opium itself
would undergo an important transformation into the more addictive and profitable
paste, which could be derived solely from crude opium. The smokable extract in the
form of paste yielded about fifty times more morphia than madak.7 This physical
sTaiwan fu zhi, 19:34a, 38a-b.
6 Wang Hongbin, Jindu shijian, p. 19. Spence, "Opium Smoking," pp. 148-149, calls attention to the
confusion between the two forms of opium, but does not push his analysis as far as Wang, whose work
provides the most cogent synthesis of the sources on the pre-nineteenth century opium problem to
date.
7Spence, "Opium Smoking," p. 149.
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98
transformation would criminalize the possession of opium, which in its crude state
o
had been previously taxed as a legal medicine, in any form.
The Yongzheng period, specifically the seventh year of the reign (1729), saw
the first formal prohibition legislation of the Qing period. Prior to this reign, opium
was taxed as a medicine.9 The Yongzheng laws were concerned with neither
cultivation nor consumption, but with trafficking, which seems to have been
exclusively confined to coastal areas. Traffickers were to be sentenced as per the
statutes on contraband to a month in the cangue and then subjected to military exile
for life on a nearby frontier (1250 km. from the offender's native district). Opium
den proprietors, in accordance with the statutes on heterodoxy concerning those who
had led young men of good family astray, received the most serious punishment of
strangulation after the assizes. Accomplices were to be given 100 blows with the
heavy bamboo and sent into regular exile for life at the maximum distance of 1500
kilometers from their native places. There were also provisions for dealing with
official malfeasance, mainly bribery and extortion, arising from enforcement of the
prohibitions. These included punishments for port officials, such as Customs
Superintendents (Haiguan Jiandu), who failed to detect opium offenses. These
statutes were supplemented in 1730 by regulations that specifically targeted itinerant
8 This argument has been put forward most explicitly by Wang Hongbin, Jindu shijian, p. 23.
9See citations in Lin Man-houng, "Qingmo Shehui Liuxing Xishi Yapian Yanjiu," pp. 61-62.
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traffickers in Taiwan, who were to be sent back across the straits to their native
places on the mainland.1 0
The penalties meted out for trafficking and even for den-running were
certainly not the harshest possible under the Qing code. The dynastic exile system
was divided into three ascending degrees of severity, regular exile, military exile and
exile to the frontiers. Most sub-divisions of the first and second degrees were
primarily concerned with removing offenders to various, possibly symbolic distances
from their native places, while generally confining exile to within China proper. The
highest of the five sub-degrees of military exile sent the offender to an "insalubrious
region in Yunnan, Guizhou, Guangdong or Guangxi."1 1 Opium traffickers during the
Yongzheng and Qianlong reigns suffered only the second sub-degree of military
exile.
Nor was the cause of den-runners entirely without hope. Aside from the
somewhat academic qualification that strangulation after the assizes was still
considered less severe than either immediate strangulation or decapitation, whether
delayed or immediate, all Qing offenders whose sentences were subject to assize
1 0 Yu Ende, Zhongguo jinyan faling bianjian shi (A history of changes in China's opium prohibition
laws) (1934; reprint, Taibei: Wenhai Chubanshe, 1973), pp. 16-17; HDSL, 828.1a. Note that neither
version of the Yongzheng regulations is entirely satisfactory. The HDSL incorrectly and inexplicably
notes the date the regulations were promulgated as the ninth year of the Yongzheng Emperor (1731),
but a case from the seventh year of the Yongzheng Emperor's reign makes it clear that the prohibition
regulations were already in force by m id-1729; Yongzheng Chao hanwen zhupi zouzhe huibian, Y Z
1I1I2C, 15:901-902. Yu Ende provides the correct date but gives a slightly altered version o f the text
that does not specify the degree of military life exile to which traffickers were subjected.
"Joanna Waley-Cohen, Exile in mid-Qing China, Banishment to Xinjiang 1758-1820, (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1991), pp. 53-56.
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100
review apparently had a near-certain chance of having their capital sentences
commuted to some form of exile. Authorities generally agree that only around ten
percent of those sentenced to capital punishment after assize review were actually
executed.1 2
Whatever their effects in actual practice, both the general set of laws
promulgated in 1729 and those regionally specific to Taiwan issued in 1730 served to
characterize the opium problem as one of coastal trafficking from the outset of
central government prohibition policy. Indeed, the 1729 legislation arose as a direct
response to a memorial from the coast. In early 1728 one of Guangdong's Regional
Military Commanders in the Green Standards, Su Mingliang (7-1743) submitted a
proposal to increase official punishments for failure to detect four particularly serious
offenses in the region. One of these was opium trafficking, which Su considered a
major source of banditry in Guangdong. He charged that merchants from both Fujian
and Guangdong were trafficking in opium as an addictive drug by pretending it was a
medicine. He noted that these traffickers were particularly active in Xiamen and
Taiwan, both under the provincial jurisdiction of Fujian at the time. He also
provided one of the earliest official descriptions of opium's processing methods and
addictive properties. Su asserted that it was precisely these properties that were
turning large numbers of desperate addicts into thieves.1 3
1 2 Derk Bodde and Clarence Morris, Law in Imperial China, (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvannia Press, 1967), pp. 141-142. Waley-Cohn, Exile, p. 63n, confirms this assertion.
13Yongzheng chao hanwen zhupi zouzhe huibian, YZ 6/11/6, 13:848b-851b, quoted in Wang Hongbin,
Jindu shijian, pp. 20-21.
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Su felt that prohibition of consumption would simply provide local officials
with another pretext for extortion. He instead recommended that traffickers and den
proprietors be arrested, as well as those who should be aware of their activities, such
as sailors, neighbors and baojia personnel. Local officialdom was also not ignored in
these proposals and Su suggested severe punishments for those who failed to detect
opium offenses.1 4 All these recommendations were literally incorporated into the
1729 prohibition regulations and trafficking in opium became a formal offense.
A case, the only one of the Yongzheng reign that has come to light, arose
shortly after the promulgation of these regulations and demonstrated how difficult
they were to implement. In August 1729 a merchant, Chen Yuan, was apprehended
in Zhangzhou, Fujian with twenty kilos of what was finally determined to be crude
opium rather than a smokable mixture of opium and tobacco. This distinction saved
Chen from being convicted under the new statutes, although he was initially
condemned by the prefectural magistrate, Li Zhiguo (n.d.). This conviction was later
overturned by the provincial governor, with the concurrence of the emperor, on the
grounds that Chen had been selling a legitimate medicine rather than an illegal
narcotic; the opium was not being sold mixed with tobacco. Magistrate Li, however,
was not punished for his ignorance in order to avoid giving the populace the
impression that the opium prohibitions were a dead letter.1 5
u Yongzheng chao hanwen zhupi zouzhe huibian, YZ 6/11/6, 13:848b-851b.
1 5 This case has received considerable attention from scholars. Spence treats it in some detail; "Opium
Smoking," pp. 156-157, and it has been translated into English; Fu Lo-shu, A Documentary Chronicle
o f Sino-Western Relations, vol. 1, Association for Asian Studies Monographs and Papers, no. 22
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102
Despite the fragmentary nature of the evidence presented above, it is possible
to draw several firm conclusions as to the nature, influence and significance of the
Yongzheng prohibitions. These regulations were an initial response to an exclusively
coastal problem in a very geographically circumscribed region, namely that of the
Guangdong-Fujian-Taiwan maritime zone. In line with the socio-economic and
ethno-geographic conditions of this area, the opium problem specifically mainfested
itself both as trafficking, which involved both Chinese and foreign smugglers in port
cities and on the ocean, and as consumption by the local urban subjects of the Qing
empire. These conditions produced a set of laws that addressed the urban, coastal
and trafficking dimensions of the problem. Consumption was ignored for reasons
that remain somewhat obscure, but are clearly related to the difficulties of
enforcement. The limitations on officialdom's ability to deal with this dimension of
the problem would produce a standard rationale that asserted that the elimination of
trafficking would automatically eliminate consumption by putting pressure on the
drug supply chain's most accessible link.
Enforcement was further complicated by the equivocal nature of opium,
which could serve either as a medicine or as a narcotic. In the Yongzheng period
paste either did not exist in China or had yet to be identified by the government as
another illegal form of the drug. Instead, the crucial factor that determined whether
or not opium was legal was the presence or absence of its medium of tobacco. If
(Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1966), pp. 162-164. For a recent Chinese analysis, see Wang
Hongbin, Jindu shijian, pp. 18-20.
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103
Chen Yuan's case is any guide, it would seem that traffickers could easily avoid
criminal charges by keeping their opium stocks separate from their tobacco. This
would also have made operating an opium den, where consumption of the madak
actually occurred, a more legally hazardous occupation both because of stiffer
penalties and because the offense would be unambiguous. These conditions not only
explain how the Qing empire could simultaneously tax and prohibit opium, but may
also help to account for the striking absence of opium cases during the Qianlong
reign, the period when evidence for both legal and illegal opium first appears in an
unambiguous fashion.1 6
Despite this distinction in legal terms, the exact physical composition of the
contraband opium of the Qianlong reign, as well as for a considerable time
afterwards, remains obscure. This arises from a terminological ambiguity in the
Qing official record on prohibition concerning the word opium itself, which in
addition to a number o f regional appellations appears in three basic variants. Two of
these, yapian yantu and yapian yangao, are relatively stable and can be confidently
translated with near perfect consistency as "crude opium" and unadulterated refined
"opium paste," respectively.1 7 Unfortunately, yapian yan, the third term and by far
1 6 Despite the overall impression of lax enforcement, there is evidence that the opium prohibitions
during the Yongzheng reign were taken seriously by European maritime traders; Hosea Ballou Morse,
The Chronicles o f the East India Company Trading to China 1635-1834, 5 vols. (Oxford: The
Clarendon Press, 1926-1929), 1:215; Paul Van Dyke, "The Contraband T rade," chapter 2 in "Port
Canton and the Pearl River Delta, 1690 to 1845," (Ph.D. diss., University of Southern California,
forthcoming).
1 7 Reports o f opium confiscations are particularly straightforward in this respect, with the vast majority
giving seperate totals for raw opium and paste. YPZZ, DG 20/7/20, 2:286-289.
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104
the most common, can refer to either of the other two forms as well as to madak.
This not only means that the word yapian yan can mean madak in a Yongzheng-era
document and paste in a Daoguang-era one, it also makes it impossible to determine
which of these two substances is being referred to in many documents during the
t o
period of transition from madak to paste. While it is often possible to determine
the exact meaning of yapian yan due to its clear connection in a text with either
yapian yantu or yapian yangao, there are many documents that employ the term
either ambiguously or equivocally.1 9
In addition to terminological problems Chinese evidence for the illegality of
madak during the Qianlong period is far from direct, although there is clear evidence
that opium, undoubtedly of the medicinal type, was being taxed as a legal import no
later than 175 3.2 0 The Yongzheng laws were entered without alteration during their
first Qianlong period revision in 1740 and there is no evidence of any additions for
the remainder of the reign.2 1 There is also not much evidence, however, that these
1 8 Lin Man-houng provides a rule of thumb that renders the words "yan" and "gao" as "refined" (shu)
opium and "tu" as "raw" (sheng) opium; "Qingmo Shehui Liuxing Xishi Yapian Yanjiu," p. 2.
Unfortunately, this plausible method still cannot distinguish between madak and paste, and indeed
further obscures this important distinction.
19T w o prohibition documents from central government boards in Beijing during the early 1 830's
provide a common example. In one the term yapian gao is clearly connected to the term yapian
yantu, in the other the former's linkage to yapian yantu is equally straightforward. Moreover, there
are also several ambiguous usages of yapian yan in the first document; TCD, DG 10/5/?, pp. 219-226;
DG 11/6/2, pp. 33-34. Thus in the DG 10 document, the term yapian yan could mean both yapian
yantu as well as yapian yangao, depending on where it occurs in the text. These two documents
reveal that the term yapian yan was not even stable over a very brief period of time among the central
government bureaus themselves and that there was, consequently, a heavy dependence on context,
which was apparently not always clear.
2 0 Most evidence for the Qianlong era's stance on prohibition comes from western sources; Morse,
International relations, p. 174. Van Dyke, "The Contraband Trade."
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prohibitions were actually enforced although the East India Company plainly took
these opium prohibitions seriously enough to actively discourage several attempts to
sell opium directly from its ships in China between 1750 and 1775.2 2
The only Qianlong era Chinese case memorial relates the arrest of a Zhejiang
native caught smoking "yan" in Beijing. It is unclear whether this term refers to
tobacco or to madak.2 3 Nevertheless, it does seem that the court considered opium a
serious health hazard as demonstrated in a memorial from 1776. Cao Xuemin (n.d.),
a minister from the Court of the Imperial Stud (taipu si), requested the prohibition of
"water tobacco" (suiyu), a form of tobacco used in water pipes, and compared its
physical effects to that of "Fujian opium" {Fujian yapian). The tobacco was duly
banned by imperial decree.2 4 Cao's memorial shows that by this point of the
Qianlong reign opium was plainly associated with a specific province of the
2 1 Ma Jianshi and Yang Yutang, eds. Da Qing Lii li tongkao jiaozhu [Annotation of Da Qing Lu li]
(1778; reprint, Beijing: Zhongguo Zhengfa Daxue Chubanshe, 1992), pp. 621, 623.
2 2 Morse, Trading to China, 1:288-89; 1:301; 2:20; Van Dyke, "The Contraband Trade."
2 3 Junji chajin, #684, QL ?/8/13. This memorial was filed by the Ming-Qing Archives among its
Qianlong documents, but it is unclear how the provenance of this undated and anonymous memorial
was determined. While Beijing is not mentioned, the village of Shicao outside of Dongbian Gate is
identified as where the crime took place. Dongbian Gate was located in the northeast comer o f the
Outer City. For a Qianlong-era map depicting the location of the gate, see Xu Pingfang, ed., Ming-
Qing Beijing chengtu [Urban map of Beijing in the Ming and Qing dynasties] (Beijing: Ditu
Chubanshe, 1986), p. 131.
2 4 Junji chajin, #934-936, QL 41/10/17. Cao's reasons for his request seem largely due to the personal
disgust he experienced upon returning from the capital after a stint in Rehe. The minster was
dismayed to have his ears assaulted with the "particularly strange and hateful sound" of pipes full of
water tobacco, whose name he also found "inelegant," being sucked on by night in the streets of the
capital.
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106
southeast coast, a province which encompassed Taiwan as well as part of the
mainland.
In general, records indicate that madak came to southeast China, ultimately
from Dutch-controlled sources, sometime soon after 1624 and smoking caused
enough local control problems to generate the prohibition of 1729. This prohibition,
however, was not enforced very vigorously throughout the eighteenth century,
perhaps because of the difficulty of distinguishing between medicinal opium and
madak, which continued to be smoked as late as 1793, and no doubt beyond, when it
appears in the records of Lord Macartney's embassy. A significant shift in
consumption habits from madak to pure opium, which was more powerful and
addictive, seems to have occurred around the time that the Jiaqing emperor ascended
the throne in 1796.2 6
There are several accounts, dating from the late Qianlong or early Jiaqing
periods, that contain descriptions of opium smoking that resemble the more
complicated process of using paste rather than the simpler procedures for madak.
Exemplary among these is that related by Yu Jiao (n.d.) in a work complied
somewhat before 1800:
25Cited in Morse, International relations, 1:173.
2 6 Wang Hongbin presents evidence for the appearance of pure opium smoking during the latter half of
the eighteenth century and shows that some nineteenth century Chinese authorities held the practice to
have emerged in the closing years of the Qianlong emperor's reign; Jindu shijian, pp. 25-26. Morse
refers to a memorial circa 1855, "now mislaid," that stated that 'opium smoking was introduced at the
beginning of the reign of Kiaking [Jiaqing];' International relations, 1:173n. Despite strong evidence
that paste smoking appeared during the regnal transition from Qianlong to Jiaqing, the specific details
of when and how paste smoking came to China remain debatable.
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107
Opium comes from the various kingdoms beyond the seas and
resembles horse dung colored a light green. It is soaked in three
changes of water over as many nights and the dregs are removed in
progressively smaller amounts, leaving only the liquid. This is
decocted into paste, like that used by physicians to treat lesions and
toxins. The paste is apportioned into pills like grains, a lamp is placed
near a couch, and a bamboo tube is grasped in the manner of a flute.
One reclines and smokes. Smoking really requires two to lay down
and pass the pipe between them; the pleasure is thereby doubled. The
smoke enters the belly and augments the vital principle so that no
fatigue is experienced from sunset to dawn. If one continues on in
this manner, after a few months it seeps into one's heart and spleen so
that if one does not smoke daily on a regular basis, illness results.
This is commonly known as addiction, which in extreme cases causes
tears and mucus to flow and so debilitates the limbs that they cannot
97
be raised.
Whenever it precisely occurred, this shift in consumption habits was
significant because it increased trafficking. Aside from the fact that opium paste was
stronger, hence more efficacious and addictive, the increased value of the drug would
have emboldened traffickers to increase their profits without risking capital
punishment. It also probably stimulated the spread of the drug from the coast inland.
This spread was the most immediate, powerful incentive for revision of the
prohibitions. As the scope of consumption and trafficking increased, the inefficacy
of the old prohibition laws, never very high, was repeatedly exposed and this created
an imperative for a new set of prohibitions more appropriate to deal with the
contemporary problem. Such a legislative change begins only with the Jiaqing reign.
2 7 Quoted in Wang Hongbin, Jindu shijian, p. 25. Qin Heping cites another Jiaqing era source that
provides a similar description of consumption and addiction; Yunnan yapian wenti yu jinyan yundong
(Yunnan's opium problem and prohibition movement), (Chengdu: Sichuan Minzu Chubanshe, 1998),
pp. 7-8.
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108
III. Opium Policy in the Jiaqing Reign (1796-1820)
While there is some indirect evidence for the promulgation of a new set of
prohibition laws in the first year of the reign of the Jiaqing emperor, it was only in
the eighteenth year of the reign, 1813, that the 1729 regulations were substantially
revised. These revisions arose from a series of smuggling cases, several of which
demonstrated that opium had begun to flow from coastal China, particularly
Guangdong, into the interior. The earliest case of the Jiaqing reign that has come to
light occurred in Fujian and involved the decoction and sale of opium from a
gambling den on the island of Haitan in Fuzhou Prefecture. A report on the
investigation of this case was issued on October 13, 1806. The den operator, Chen
2 8 Yu Ende, citing an edition of the Guangzhou Gazetteer and evidence from East India Company
records provided by H.B. Morse, accepts that some kind of new prohibitions were promulgated in
1796, but are no longer extant; Jirtyan faling, p. 22. Morse himself, however, uses the same East India
Company evidence to deny the existence of the 1796 edict; Trading to China, 2:316. The East India
Company evidence, dated 1798, explicitly states that "no Edict has lately been issued," but does say
that an intention to do so was communicated to "private" residents of Guangzhou. This prompted
Company officials reiterate their order that no Company ships should bring opium to China. Late
nineteenth century sources also assert the promulgation of prohibition regulations in 1796, but do not
provide any details; Wang Zhichun, Qingchao rouyuan j i [A Qing record of succoring those from
afar] (1879; reprint, Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1989), 7:165. Wang cites text from a memorial by
Liang-Guang Governor-General Jiang Youxian (1766-1830) regarding the formulation of a new set of
prohibition regulations. The cited material is not from 1796, but taken directly from the text of a
memorial submitted by the Governor-General on May 2, 1815 in the twentieth year of the Jiaqing
reign; Qingdai waijiao shiliao [Historical materials related to Qing foreign relations], ed. Guoli
Gugong Bowuyuan, (Taibei: Guoli Gugong Bowuyuan, 1932), 4:29a-30a. Wang Hongbin notes that
similar material was erroneously cited as evidence for the 1796 regulations by the Qingchao xu
wenxian tongkao, but while he is correct that the year of this memorial must be 1815 rather than 1796,
he does not cite Jiang Youxian's May 2, 1815 memorial as the original source of the tongkao citation;
Jindu shijian, p. 35. It seems reasonable to conclude that materials concerning 1815 deliberations
have been systematically mistaken as evidence for a formal 1796 prohibition. There remains,
however, the assertion, similar to that of Wang, by Yao Weiyuan that non-medicinal opium and
paraphernalia were criminalized in 1780 during the Qianlong reign and that opium was totally banned
in 1796. Yao cites the Donghua Lit as his source for this information but his citations are vague; Yao
Weiyuan, Yapian Zhanzheng shishi kao [Verification of historical facts related to the Opium War],
(1942; reprint, Beijing: Renmin Chubanshe, 1984), p. 12. I have been unable to confirm his citation
for the 1796 legislation and must conclude that it is in error.
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109
Zhenmao, had obtained his opium from a Guangdong vessel and was probably
selling madak rather than paste. He was sentenced to strangulation after the assizes
90
as stipulated in the 1729 regulations.
The next case, a brief summary of which is preserved in an imperial decree
dated April 6, 1810, occurred in Beijing itself. A man surnamed Yang was caught
with an unspecified amount of opium, again probably madak, in the eastern section
of the Outer City. Port officials in Fujian and Guangdong were blamed for failing to
solve their local trafficking problems, which were expanding to interior locales far
T O
from the coast. These officials were ordered to intensify their prohibition efforts.
This decree is probably the one briefly alluded to in a report on foreign activities in
Macao drafted on July 13, 1811 by Liang-Guang Governor-General Song Yun (1754-
1835). Song Yun concurred that local foreign traffickers were the source of the
T1
problem and warned them that opium was contraband. Song Yun's report also
provides evidence that local officials in Guangdong were uncertain as to the specific
ingredients of madak, but they did know that it was decocted into a kind of "tobacco"
(yan) whose addictive properties were harmful to health and property. The physical
and financial effects of consumption would remain the primary justifications for
prohibition until the mid-1830's, when the influx of opium was connected to the
2 9 Gongzhong jinyan, JQ 11/9/2.
30YPZZ, JQ 15/3/2, 1:1.
3'it should be noted that Song, as Military Governor of Ili in 1809, had presided over an attempted
murder case involving the transport of small amounts of opium paste to Xinjiang by penal exiles from
Guangdong. See chapter four for further details.
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110
outflow of silver from the empire. Indeed, as late as 1830, the deletrious effects of
opium were characterized as similar to tobacco.3 3
These cases, and perhaps others, all served to reinforce the central
government's impression that opium, in the form of madak, was a problem
originating from foreign traders in Fujian and Guangdong. This perception was
significantly altered by a March 7,1811 report on an opium case drafted by Hubei
Governor Qian lie (1760-1812).3 4 Not only did this case represent the farthest
westward penetration of the drug into the empire's interior, it was also one of the
earliest references to "paste" (gao) in the official record. The case report included a
brief but significant description of the decoction process in which crude opium is
chopped up, boiled in water, "made into paste" (chenggao) and smoked using a kind
of "lamp" (deng) that is passed around between users, who proceed to "drink smoke"
o r
(yinyan). While this description does not entirely coincide with the extended
process of paste making and consumption, the employment of the term paste makes it
32Qingdai waijiao shiliao, JQ 16/5/13, 3:42a-43b. It is interesting to note that as part of the
negotiations with foreign merchants arising from notification of the prohibitions, Song Yun was
presented with a gift of tobacco (yangyan), which he distributed to subordinates. This is turther
evidence that senior local officials did not well understand the relationship between tobacco and
opium.
33YPZZ, DG 9/12/16, 1:62-63.
34Space precludes a detailed treatment of the development of the opium problem in Hubei and Hunan
through the Daoguang period, concerning which more than fifty documents are extant, ranging from
1811 to 1844.
j5Gongzhong jinyan, JQ 16/2/13.
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111
distinctly different from accounts of madak smoking and this makes it likely to be the
earliest official attempt to describe paste making and consumption on record.3 6
The aspect of this process that most disturbed Qian Jie was the close
relationship that passing around the opium lamp produced among otherwise casual
aquaintances, who while smoking "reveal their innermost feelings to one another as
between elder and younger brother." They were thus emboldened to commit criminal
acts by both the drug's stimulant properties and by the camaraderie that arose from
the social character of its consumption. Qian had come to these conclusions through
personal experience, stating that he had dealt harshly but ineffectively with daylight
breakins in Guangxi and found that many young perpetrators were dying of
withdrawal in custody. He concluded that their expensive addictions drove them to
commit these brazen robberies and enabled them to remain undeterred by
punishment.3 7
Qian concluded his report by declaring that prohibition at the coastal source
was being undermined by the corruption of customs personnel. He argued for greater
supervision by superiors and urged that those smugglers arrested in the interior be
closely interrogated as to their sources of supply and their routes. He ended by
recommending the usual punishments for officials who failed to effectively enforce
the prohibitions.3 8 Five months later, on August 5, 1813, the first major imperial
3 6 Compare this description with one circa 1756; Spence, "Opium Smoking," p. 149.
3 7 Gongzhong jinyan, JQ 16/2/13.
3 S Gongzhong jinyan, JQ 16/2/13.
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112
decree on opium prohibition since 1729 was issued. At this point the term "opium"
still appears to connote madak rather than paste. Neither cultivation nor paste was an
explicit object of central government concern in 1813.3 9 There is one case, however,
involving the transport of opium paste from Guangdong to Xinjiang by penal exiles
that provides evidence for the the appearance and criminalization of this form of
opium as early as 1809.4 0
While there were clearly some additional reports of opium offenses in the
intervening months between March and August of 1813, the imperial decree
promulgating the new prohibition regulations was profoundly influenced by Qian
Jie's report.4 1 Indeed, the Board of Punishments' recommendations for the revision
of the prohibitions, also dated August 5, cited both Qian's memorial and an April
1813 imperial decree that strongly affirmed his views as precedents. This decree had
ordered senior provincial officials in Guangdong, Fujian, Zhejiang and Jiangsu to
intensify their prohibition efforts to stop the flow of opium into the interior.4 2 In its
39The dynasty's main administrative statute book, the HDSL, seems to conflate Jiaqing and Daoguang
era legislation and can give the impression that both cultivation and paste smoking were the subjects
of Jiaqing era legislation; HDSL, 828:2a-5a. A number of statutes from both reigns were combined in
the HDSL entry and not clearly distinguished by the vague language of the commentary appended to
them.
40 Gongzhong jinyan, JQ 12/12/29. While the term "paste" (gao) appears in this document, it is not
made clear how the drug was consumed. This is probably because consumption per se had yet to be
criminalized while possession was noted for its potential connection with trafficking. See chapter four
for futher details regarding this case.
4 1 For example, an August 1811 court letter to Liang-Guang Governor-General Song Yun and senior
Guangdong officials mentioned the collusion of maritime patrol units and opium smugglers; YPZZ, JQ
16/6/26, 1:3-4.
n QSL, JQ 240:la-2a, 31:233
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113
review of these precedents, and of the original 1729 legislation, the Board concluded
that the main problem with existing regulations was their ambiguity regarding
purchase and consumption, both of which had previously been punished with only
100 blows of the heavy bamboo and which did not contain formal provisions for the
punishment of non-official consumers. The Board recommended that two months in
the cangue be added to this punishment for non-official consumers while officials
and imperial guardsmen should suffer the same penalties in addition to being
stripped of their rank, as they would be for gambling.4 3 This is the first special
legislation against consumers in the history of opium prohibition but it would be
neither the last nor the most harsh.
The promulgation of the new regulations on August 5, 1813 reflected the
influence of both Qian Jie's recommendations on smuggling in the interior and the
Board of Punishment's suggestions regarding enhanced punishments for consumers.
It even went beyond both documents to decry both smoking among Beijing eunuchs
and illicit taxation of opium by local officials on the southeast coast. Rumors
concerning both these practices had reached the imperial ear and these also affected
the formulation of the new regulations. The Jiaqing Emperor especially singled out
illicit taxation as the major reason for the failure of officials in the provinces of
Guangdong, Fujian, Zhejiang and Jiangsu to stop the opium traffic. Operations
43FPZZ, JQ 18/7/10, 1:5-6. It should be noted that no official case of any punishment of opium
consumers prior to this date has come to light. This is possibly because the punishment for the offense
did not require confirmation by the central government. It is likely, however, that this quasi-official
regulation was rarely if ever enforced.
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114
against smugglers and tighter supervision of the lower levels of officialdom in these
locales were ordered.4 4 Measures against the foreign dimension of the opium traffic
followed a year later in June of 1814 with a court letter to the Governor-General of
Liang-Guang and the Governor of Guangdong ordering them to arrest foreign
traffickers who persisted in violating the prohibitions. This was reiterated in another
decree in May of 1815 warning Macao residents that they were subject to imperial
restrictions on both opium and Christian proselytizing while living on Chinese soil.
Violators would be permanently banished from China.4 5
There are records of a number of consumption and trafficking cases scattered
throughout the rest of the Jiaqing reign. Cases and reports continued to center in
Guangdong with a particular focus on Macao, where customs inspections were
reported to be particularly lax. Enforcement concentrated primarily on Han
merchants while a system of incentives was implemented to encourage both officials
and commoners to detect offenders. Inspections of foreign vessels were also to be
intensified and foreign smugglers permanently prohibited from trading in China.4 6
Nevertheless, smuggling continued. Three maritime smuggling cases involving
UYPZZ, JQ 18/7/10, 1:7. More specific details for all these provisions can be found in HDSL,
828: la-3b. The recommendations by the board of punishments are also summarized as the precedent
for these provisions in HDSL, 828:4b-5a.
45YPZZ, JQ 19/5/4, 1:11-12; JQ 20/3/23, 1:18-19. Christianity was often paired with opium smuggling
in the prohibition memorials o f the Jiaqing reign, when officials seem to have considered both the
metaphorical and actual opium of the people equally reprehensible. One of the earliest references I
have come across is from an 1807 memorial by Liang-Guang Governor-General Wu Taiguang (1750-
1833) who identified opium , fantan gambling and Christianity as three pernicious western imports
indulged in by local gentry; Qingdai waijiao shiliao, 2:8a-9a.
46Qingdai waijiao shiliao, 4:28b-30b.
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crude opium (yapian ni) and paste (yapian yangao) were reported in early 1816 and a
case of official trafficking occurred in July 1818.4 7 An additional trafficking case
involving paste occurred in Guangdong in 1819 4 8
Cases involving Guangdong and points beyond continued to pop up,
including trafficking and consumption activities as deep into the interior as Shanxi
and Sichuan.4 9 An early 1815 report from the Board of Punishments informed the
throne of the discovery of a Guangzhou Bannerman trafficker who had come to
Beijing as part of an entourage.5 0 A trafficking case involving transport of small
amounts of crude opium from Guangdong to Beijing occurred at the end of the
Jiaqing reign.5 1 Around the same time yet another case, involving a triple homicide,
occurred in Jiangsu when a brawl broke out between a group of travelers who tried to
extort money from one of their number who had bought opium from a Guangdong
peddlar.5 2 Such incidents continued to reinforce in the court's mind the idea that
47Gongzhong jinyan, JQ 21/1/20; Gongzhong jinyan, JQ 23/6/2.
4 8 Neige weijin, #10066 (buben), DG 1/7/5.
49Sichuan Daxue Lishi Xi and the Sichuan Sheng Danganguan, eds., Qingdai Qian-Jia-Dao Baxian
dangan xuanbian [Selection from the archives of Ba County during the Qianlong, Jiaqing and
Daoguang reign periods of the Qing dynasty], 2 vols., (Chengdu: Sichuan Daxue Chubanshe, 1996),
2:272, JQ 21/5/6. This document is a local public notice regarding the general prohibition of opium.
For a public exhortation dated 1817 from Shanxi, see page 22 below.
50YPZZ, JQ 20/1/10, 1:13-15; JQ 20/1/10, 1:15. The bannerman had attempted to bring in around 6.5
kilos of raw opium, which he had purchased in Guangzhou for about 21.5 silver taels per kilogram.
His abortive attempt to sell the opium in Beijing indicates that he would have gotten considerably
more than this there. His punishment was modified in several respects due to his banner status. He
avoided the cangue, but was instead banished to Xinjiang.
slThis case was only discovered near the end of the Daoguang Emperor's first year in 1821; Neige
weijin, #10066 (buben), DG 1/9/15.
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116
Guangdong was the source of China's opium problem and that lax customs
inspections were the primary reason foreign opium continued to flow into the empire.
A series of six cases from Anhui, which occurred between 1816 and 1820 and
involved seven traffickers and one official consumer, revealed a regular smuggling
route between that province and Guangdong as well as a steady market. These cases
showed that crude opium was generally purchased by mainly Guangdong pedlars
from ships along the coast of their native province. The pedlars then decocted the
crude product into smokeable paste, a process that often involved the loss as much as
a third of the crude product, and transported it, usually in amounts of several kilos, to
Anhui. The prices they obtained for the paste ranged from about 1.2 to 1.9 silver
taels per tael (about 38 grams) of paste. Crude opium was also sold in one instance
for around 4.5 silver taels per kilo.5 3
If the prohibition effort in Anhui, whose officials seem to have made a
genuine attempt to enforce the new Jiaqing prohibitions, revealed a well-developed
opium smuggling network, efforts in Taiwan revealed the existence of open
commercial traffic. A report on prohibition operations in Danshui District, issued
on January 8, 1814, described active resistance by traffickers, their associates and
5 2 Gongzhong jinyan, JQ 25/3/15. This case is one of many exemplifying the reason local officials
considered enforcement of opium prohibitions problematic because they often encouraged vigilante
behavior and extortion that sometimes resulted in crimes far worse than opium offenses.
5 3 Gongzhong jinyan, JQ 25/2/18. There are a few other documents on opium cases from Anhui, most
of which provide statistics or details on individual cases of official consumption. The majority o f the
documents span from early 1839 to late 1840. The latest statistical report reveals that by the
beginning of 1840 over 720 offenders had been arrested and 869 kilos of raw opium and paste had
been confiscated; Gongzhong DG, DG 19/12/4, 10394a-395b.
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117
their relatives, who wounded one of the lictors sent to apprehend them and then
attempted by distributing gifts of betel nut to get all the shopkeepers of the town to
shut down in protest against the arrests of their kinsmen. The shutdown, however,
remained restricted to those shops that had been openly selling crude opium and
several of the main perpetrators were soon apprehended while the rest sailed away.
The ensuing inquiry revealed that at least some of the opium had come from
Guangdong sailors.5 4
The organized resistance put up by the Danshui traffickers was a dramatic
manifestation of the kind of social relations so deplored by Hubei Governor Qian Jie
and is indicative of how rapidly routine enforcement of the prohibitions could turn
traffickers into rebels, especially in an environment where opium had long been
present and was part of the everyday socio-economy. This was probably one of the
main reasons that a court letter of the Jiaqing period noted that prohibition conducted
at the ports were far less disruptive than that conducted in China proper.5 5 Incidents
like that which occurred at Danshui bolstered the inclination of the court to
concentrate prohibition operations in ports rather than in the interior.
The prohibition attempts by Chen Lihe, district magistrate of Taiyu in Shanxi
province, also help to explain why the court wanted to limit enforcement to ports if at
all possible.5 6 In 1817 Chen erected a stele inscribed with " a pledge to prohibit
M Gongzhong jinyan, JQ 18/12/17.
ssQingdai waijiao shiliao, JQ 19/5/4, 4:19a-b.
^Although it is difficult to get a highly detailed picture of Shanxi's opium problem, it is clear that
Taiyu District in Taiyuan Prefecture was the most important center of provincial traffic as early as
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118
opium," intended to commit every member of the local population to refrain from
opium consumption and, especially, trafficking. While the immediate purpose of the
stele seems to have been issue a public warning that Chen would soon be conducting
prohibition operations in Taiyu, its real intent was probably to erect a permanent
public record of warning and committment. Revealingly, Chen's means of
retribution against recalcitrant traffickers and their official co-conspirators was
supernatural rather than legal:
[A]ll merchants in the district who go to Fujian, Guangdong, Jiangsu
or Zhejiang to buy goods must pledge that they will not bring a single
fragment of opium back to Taiyu for sale, to the great harm of its
populace. If they render respectful adherence to their oaths of
abstinence, the spirits will surely reward them. If they resume
trafficking, the officials will certainly punish them! And if official
law cannot reach them, the spirits will surely lend assistance.
1821. This was primarily due to the activities of merchants from this district, who were identified as
the main culprits at this time due to their extensive commercial intercourse with Guangdong and other
southern coastal provinces; Gongzhong DG, DG 1/2/26, 1:173a-b. Yet only one consumption and five
trafficking cases, two from Taiyu, were reported before 1838; Junji jinyan, #1787-#1789, DG
12/12/17; Gongzhong jinyan, DG 15/12/29; YPZZ, DG 11/12/30, 1:108-109. There were three other
cases, however, involving Shanxi natives discovered in Beijing during the year 1830-31; ZZD, DG
10/5/?, pp. 219-226; DG 11/6/2, pp. 33-34; Junji jinyan, #1621-1622, DG 11/7/10. Cases of
consumption alone jumped to seventeen in 1838 and a month later, three routes, one from Tianjin, one
from the southeast coast and one from Sichuan had been identified as the major smuggling routes into
the province. Taiyu District alone reported 192 kilos of raw opium and paste turned in, the single
largest confiscation in the province; Junji jinyan, #2080-#2082, DG 18/10/28; Gongzhong DG, DG
18/11/28, 7:384a-385b. Around this time eleven Shanxi-related cases, six involving smugglers from
Taiyu and one from Jiexiu, another important center, were discovered in Beijing; Gongzhong DG, DG
18/12/14, 7:556a-560a. At this point it appears that Tianjin, rather than Guangdong, was Shanxi's
major source of southeastern coastal opium. By mid-1839 a total of 1448 kilos of raw opium and
paste had been confiscated and 113 consumers and traffickers caught; YPZZ, DG 19/4/25, 1:560-561.
There was a drastic decrease in confiscations shortly after this date. Between January and October of
1840, for example, only four kilos of raw opium and paste were confiscated. Nevertheless, both Taiyu
and Jiexiu remained focii of prohibition efforts; YPZZ, DG 20/9/11, 2:449-450. Records from
subsequent reigns show that opium persisted in Shanxi well into the late Qing; Li Sanmou, "Yapian zai
Shanxi de weiliai" [The Opium Scourge in Shanxi], PuyangXuebao 6 (1990): 24-25. Lin Man-houng
provides an outline of Shanxi's opium problem during the Daoguang period; "Qingmo Shehui Liuxing
Xishi Yapian Yanjiu," pp. 77-78.
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119
If any officials take bribes or connive to conceal trafficking, the spirits
will surely punish them and beset them with calamity in the same way
that they will do to traffickers and consumers! Ah! The people
cannot possibly be harmed because the spirits cannot possibly be
deceived.
Those of my merchants who travel to Fujian, Guangdong, Jiangsu and
Zhejiang on the sea desire that there be neither wind nor waves; those
who travel on land desire that there be neither narrow passes nor
dangerous defiles. When they are at peace, what profit can they not
seek to gain? Must they for such a thing as opium violate the laws of
the state and rouse the wrath of the spirits!5 7
There is no better evidence for the recognition by local officials of their
limited ability to enforce the opium prohibitions both on the subjects of their
jurisdictions and on their immediate subordinates. The limitations of systems of
direct surveillance by higher officials also encouraged an official policy focussed on
intercepting opium at ports, which were considered easier to monitor.
The prohibition record of the Jiaqing reign relates several major changes in
the way opium was produced, consumed and criminalized. This period saw the
physical transformation of the drug from madak to paste and a geographic expansion
of the traffic. These local changes forced the central government to revise its
regulations, most significantly in its criminalization of consumption by commoners,
in order to cope with a larger, more immediate threat to administrative control. This
threat, however expanded, remained less than empire-wide in scope and significance
5 7The full Chinese text of Chen's stele can be found, along with a very brief analysis, in Yang Kaida,
"Guanyu 'Zhe jin yapianyan bei"' ["Concerning the 'Stele of the pledge to prohibit opium'"], in Yunnan
Shifandaxue Zhexue ShehuikexueXuebao 26:4 (August, 1994): 27-28. The text is an excerpt from
Chen's biography in the Shibing District Gazetteer, Chen's home district in Yunnan province. I have
provided a full translation o f the text, which is one of a very few such documents for public
consumption that have come to light from before the Opium W ar, in appendix A.
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120
during the course of the Jiaqing Emperor's rule. It was only in the Daoguang reign,
in response to the discovery both of domestic cultivation and especially of the
putative connection between the opium traffic and the state's loss of silver, that the
opium problem would be perceived by the court as ubiquitous and lethal to the
economic well-being of the state
IVa. Opium Policy in the Daoguang Reign; First Phase (1821-1836)
At the beginning of the Daoguang reign the opium trade was entering a phase
of rapid expansion, due mainly to competition in India itself between Company-
produced Bengal opium and native Malwa. This competition, which encouraged the
an increase in production of both types, coincided with a struggle between British
and Macao merchants for control of the drug traffic on the Chinese end. During this
period of the 1820's about 10,000 opium chests per annum entered China. By the
1830's yet another increase in the traffic, to about 40,000 chests per year by 1839,
occurred as a result of further expansion in India as well as because of new methods
of distribution and an influx of private merchants into Guangzhou.5 8 These
developments began to elicit major prohibition legislation by the Qing government
beginning in the early 1830's.
Although this further refinement of anti-trafficking legislation was of some
importance, the most significant development to occur in the early 1830's was the
formulation of the first anti-cultivation legislation in Chinese history. Cultivation in
the imperial interior was first formally brought to the attention of the court by Censor
58Greenberg, British Trade, pp. 112-113.
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121
Yin Peifen in 1822, who called for stricter enforcement of the prohibitions after he
had received word of poppy cultivation in Yunnan.5 9 This produced a series of
imperial decrees, investigations in Yunnnan and deliberations on revised legislation
by the Board of Punishment and the Board of Personnel, that ultimately resulted in
the earliest Qing regulations touching upon cultivation.6 0 Curiously, these
regulations did not result in any corresponding major revision of prohibition statutes,
which only occurred when another Censor, Shao Zhenghu, made a similar complaint
to the throne based on information from a number of locales nearly a decade later in
mid-1830:
The environs of Taizhou in Zhejiang have the most numerous
cultivators, while the numbers of those in the prefectures of Ningbo,
Shaoxing, Yanzhou, and Wenzhou are not far behind. Types of local
opium like "Tai Juice" and "Kui Juice" are no different from the
opium that comes from overseas. Large numbers of pedlars sell it
everywhere and local officials have not been conscientious in
investigation and enforcement of the prohibitions, resulting in the
spread of opium outside this region so that Fujian, Guangdong and
Yunnan all have cultivation and trafficking. Local opium is known as
"Fu[jian] Juice" and Guang[dong] Juice" and "[Aj’ Furong Paste," etc.
61
5 9 Dao, Xian, Tong, Guang si chao zouyi [Memorials from the four Qing reigns of Daoguang,
Xianfeng, Tongzhi and Guangxu], vol. 1, ed. Guoli Gugong Bowuyuan, (1901; reprint, Taibei:
Taiwan Shangwu Chubanshe, 1970), pp. 72a-75a. See chapter four for a discussion of Yin's memorial
in the context of the opium problem in Yunnan.
6 0 A decree concerning punishments for officials who failed to detect opium offences issued in
September 1823 specifically listed cultivation as an offense. The decree, which resulted from
deliberations by the Board of Punishment and the Board of Personnel, noted that there had been no
previous statutes fixing punishments for failure to detect crimes or for cultivation offenses; OSL. DG
56:3a-4a. These deliberations were themselves ordered by the emperor in a prior decree response to
Yun-Gui Governor-General Ming-shan's report on cultivaiton in the province, whose original impetus
had been Yin's memorial; QSL, DG 54:17b-19b.
6 1 Junji jinyan, #1545-1546, DG 10/6/24.
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122
Shao considered the cultivation problem to be particularly serious because it
could increase the spread of opium enormously and because it would impair
legitimate cultivation of foodstuffs. Consequently he requested that all senior
provincial officials throughout the empire be ordered to conduct search and seizure
operations against both traffickers and cultivators as well as to deliberate on a new
set of prohibition regulations that provided for a number of new offenses, cultivation
foremost among them.6 2 Shao's memorial produced an imperial decree on August
12, 1830 strongly affirming his assertions and ordering senior provincial officials to
apprehend offenders and begin revising existing prohibition regulations. This
decree soon resulted in both new opium statutes and an empire-wide search for
cultivators, traffickers and official consumers.
Within a few months the Governor-General of Min-Zhe, Sun Erjun (1770-
1832), confirmed Shao's charges of cultivation in his jurisdiction and submitted
proposed legislation that was approved by Grand Secretary Lu Yinbo (1760-1839) in
his joint memorial with the Board of Punishments to the throne on the subject.
Henceforth, those who cultivated opium as well as those who decocted paste from
the crude product were to be sentenced under the same provisions as traffickers to
military exile for life on a nearby frontier in cases of perpetrators and to three years'
penal servitude for accessories. Aside from more detailed provisions for the
6 2 Junji jinyan, #1545-1546, DG 10/6/24.
63QSL DG 170:22b-23a.
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123
punishment of negligent or complicit official personnel, the new statutes also
mandated the uprooting and official confiscation of opium plots.6 4
By mid-1831 additions were proposed by Censor Liu Guangsan that
intensified the penalties for consumers, who were now required to identify where and
from whom they had purchased their opium. Failure to do so would result in their
conviction as accessories to trafficking, which carried the far more serious
punishment of three years' penal servitude, in addition to the existing punishments
for consumers of 100 blows of the heavy bamboo and two months in the cangue that
had been established in 1813. Liu argued for the adoption of harsher penalties
against consumers because he believed that information regarding the links of the
traffic was essential to successful prohibition. He also asserted that there was
extensive consumption among yamen personnel in localities throughout the empire
and requested that senior local authorities conduct secret investigations of their
subordinates to root out consumers as well as issue annual certificates to the effect
that their administrations were free of cosumers.6 5 Lu Yinbo memorialized to
approve Liu's additions as he had Sun's original proposals.6 6
Sun's recommendations were all approved by imperial decree in early 1831
and Liu's soon after in the middle of the year.6 7 It is possible that a series of
6 4 Junji jinyan #1554-1557, DG 10/11/18; #1559-1567, DG 10/12/18.
65YPZZ, DG 11/5/15, 1:79-80.
66YPZZ, DG 11/6/16, 1:88-90.
61YPZZ, DG 10/12/18, 1:72; QSL DG 191:la-b.
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124
consumption and trafficking cases discovered in the capital throughout 1831 helped
impel the court to an increased level of prohibition activism. The trafficking and
consumption case of the eunuch Zhang Jinfu, which involved five other eunuchs and
a Muslim Beile all of whom gathered to smoke opium outside the south gate of the
Yuan Ming Yuan summer palace, was particularly prominent.6 8 The result of Sun's
suggestions and the Beijing opium cases was an intensified level of search and
seizure operations against traffickers as well as the initiation of anti-cultivation
operations and secret investigations to detect consumption by administrative
personnel. Finally, the pressure on consumers, who proved quite vulnerable to
prohibition operations, continued to grow. The scope and intensity of all these
measures was unprecedented and represent the first major prohibition escalation of
the Daoguang period.
The baojia system of public registration was chosen as the medium via which
the search for illicit cultivators would be conducted as well as to assist in the
detection of traffickers and consumers. This system became the basis for the first
sustained empire-wide attempt to enforce the opium prohibitions. Inspection of rural
locales for cultivation was to occur in spring, but fields also seem to have been
checked just after the autumn harvest when registers were normally inspected.6 9
6 8 ZZD, DG 11/10/?, pp. 123-130; Junji jinyan, #1627-1628, 11/7/16; #1645-1652, DG 11/10/8;
#1667-1669, DG 11/11/4; YPZZ DG 11/10/29, 1:102-104; DG 11/11/5, 1:105. Apart from the
Zhang Jinfu case, there were four other Beijing trafficking and consumption cases; ZZD, DG 10/5/?,
pp. 218-226; DG 11/6/2, pp. 33-36; DG 11/11/?, pp. 127-129; DG 11/11/?, pp. 241-244; Junji jinyan
#1621-1622, DG 11/7/10.
69See, for example, Gongzhong jinyan, DG 14/12/24 [Zhejiang].
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125
Then the inspection bonds would be submitted by rural agents to the effect that there
was no cultivation within their jurisdictions. These bonds would be forwarded by
local officials to the central government as part of the annual system of baojia year-
end reporting and submission of mutual responsibility certificates. In this way it was
hoped that the inspection dimension of prohibition enforcement would put a minimal
additional burden on local officials by extending the baojia practice of self
surveillance to cover prohibition enforcement. This strategy was facilitated by the
fact that, in 1830, three of the four provinces initially identified by Shao Zhenghu as
having an opium cultivation problem were coastal provinces whose populaces were
largely already registered as part of the regular baojia system.7 0 Despite the
discovery of opium trafficking and cultivation in large expanses of the interior not
fully incorporated into the junxian system, and hence possessing only the most
rudimentary registration procedures at best, baojia inspections remained the primary
and preferred method of implementation of the prohibitions among the populace of
the empire.7 1 This was despite the fact that at least one local official, Peng Yusong,
(n.d.) who had participated in prohibition operations in Yunnan, privately asserted
that such certifications concerning the lack of cultivation or official consumption in a
7 0 Large areas of Yunnan remained outside the junxian, and consequently the baojia, system, in
practice if not in name, and this crippled prohibition enforcement in the province; see chapter 4 for
details.
7 1 As a result of both the 1830 and the 1839 regulations, baojia registers were periodically examined
and reports submitted in many provinces beginning with the first decade of the reign; YPZZ, DG
11/12/19, 1:194 [Jiangxi]; DG 11/12/20, 1:195-196 [Zhejiang]; Gongzhong jinyan, DG 15/11/23
[Hunan]; DG 15/11/29 [Hubei]; DG 15/12/2 [Henan]; Gongzhong baojia, DG 11/12/10 [Fujian]; DG
11/11/20 [Guangxi]; DG 11/11/27 [Hubei]; DG 11/12/10 [Fujian]; 20/12/10 [Fujian]; DG 20/4/4
[Jilin]; DG 20/11/28 [Shaan-Gan];20/12/22 [Hubei]; DG 23/12/23 [Hubei]; DG 24/11/27 [Shaan-
Gan]; DG 24/12/13 [Hubei]; DG 29/12/7 [Hubei],
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126
district were simply paper declarations with which district officials deceived their
79
provincial superiors, who in turned used them to deceive the throne.
The baojia system was even proposed as a solution to cultivation in provinces
where it had yet to be discovered. In some provinces where no evidence of
cultivation had been found, there was still concern that the practice would soon arise
via the stimulus of interprovincial trafficking. Some senior provincial officials, such
as Shandong Governor Ne-er-jing-e (7-1857), predicted that traffickers from other
provinces would move in and attempt to make purchasing contracts with peasants for
opium crops. Ne-er-jing-e put the baojia registration system forward as the main
way to head off this problem by alerting its personnel to be especially vigilant for
itinerant merchants trying to enter into such contracts with the locals and by
punishing them if such agreements subsequently came to light.7 3 Baojia was thus
also seen as a preventive measure, as well as one of detection, by local officials.
In the view of other officials the focus for prohibition enforcement would be
partially determined by the baojia system's ability to detect a particular form of
opium offense. Liang-Guang Governor-General Tao Shu (1779-1839) argued that
decoction of crude opium into smokeable paste was a link in the drug chain quite
vulnerable to detection by the baojia neighborhood system of surveillance because
7 2 Zhang Pufan, Qing chao fazhi shi [History of the Qing legal system], (Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju,
1998), p. 383; Qin Heping, Yunnan yapian wenti, pp. 163-164. Both accounts are based on the
observations of Peng, who served as the Yongchang prefectural magistrate and conducted important
prohibition operations on behalf of the Yun-Gui Governor-General in the early 1840's.
13YPZZ, DG 11/7/2, 1:91-94. Such contracts for cultivation were reported in early 1839 from
Guizhou; see chapter four.
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127
anyone living near such a processing site was immediately assailed by the foul odor
created by the procedure. In contrast he considered small scale trafficking difficult to
detect, while cultivation was easily detected because of the space it required. The
assumptions behind such views were questionable; Xinjiang cultivators, for example,
were discovered to be decocting paste right on the site of their isolated wilderness
opium plots. But the official mentality from which they sprung was clearly one
predisposed to rely upon the administratively less taxing baojia system for many
aspects of opium enforcement.7 4
Initial inquiries vindicated Shao Zhenghu's information regarding cultivation
in every case. Moreover, cultivation also subsequently turned up in several areas not
mentioned in Shao's initial memorial and which had reported no evidence of
cultivation during the first investigations conducted in the eleventh year of the
Daoguang Emperor. By early 1833 cultivation had been discovered in Guizhou as
part of the ongoing anti-cultivation investigations initiated in late 1830. Cultivation
was not discovered in Xinjiang until late 1839, at least four years after these initial
investigations had been suspended in all imperial provinces and territories outside
- } C
select coastal and southwestern provinces.
1 aYPZZ, DG 11/9/8, 1:96-98. For the Xinjiang cultivation case, see chapter 4.
75See chapter four for an extended discussion o f the opium problem in Xinjiang and chapter five for an
extended discussion of the southwestern opium problem. A small amount of cultivation was also
discovered in Guangxi in mid-1839, but was declared eradicated after little more than five months;
Gongzhong DG, DG 19/3/21, 6:80b-81b; Junji jinyan #2904-2905, DG 19/8/27. Some officials were
punished for failure to detect this cultivation, which occurred in three of the province's western
prefectures bordering on Vietnam, Yunnan and Guizhou; Gongzhong DG, DG 19/3/21, 6:80b-81b;
Junji jinyan #2581 -#2584, DG 19/4/26; SYDD, DG 19/4/26, p. 52. A subsequent report from the
province in May 1840 revealed that twenty-two cultivation cases had been discovered through the
baojia system with a consequent eradication of over 129,500 poppy plants. The provinical governor
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128
Aside from these examples of belated discovery, all of which came from
locales that had initially found no evidence of cultivation, there were other areas
whose declarations were quite problematic, and there is evidence that some of these
inquiries, such as that of Shaan-Gan Governor-General Yang Yuchun (1761-1837),
were quite perfunctory.7 6 It was precisely this casual approach to prohibition which
so exasperated the Daoguang Emperor and did much to undermine attempts to
intensify enforcement.
As the first reports began to come in from the empire in the wake of the
imperial decrees on cultivation and official consumption, it appeared that cultivation
was limited to Zhejiang, Yunnan, Guangdong and Fujian; all other provinces and
territories initially failed to turn up any illicit cultivation.7 7 Cultivation in
attributed all these cases to cultivators surreptitiously entering Guangxi from the neighboring
provinces o f Guizhou and Yunnan; Gongzhong jinyan, DG 20/4/10. Baojia surveillance was the
primary method employed to discourage further cultivation and there is no record of any subsequent
poppy-planting; Gongzhong DG, DG 19/3/21, 6:80b-81b;
7 6 Yang and his successor Hu-song-e (7-1847), submitted a series of five identical reports in
compliance with the new regulations until reportage was suspended by the throne in early 1837;
Gongzhong jinyan DG 11/12/16; DG 12/12/12; DG 13/11/29; DG 14/12/1; DG 15/11/28. Yang's
initial report, which did state that there was trafficking in the province as well as the manufacture of
drug paraphernalia, was cited as a precedent for anti-paraphernalia regulations in the official dynastic
statutes; HDSL, 828:6a-b. Yang had initially asserted that the high mountains and frozen earth of
Gansu precluded cultivation there, but local gazeteers show poppies were native to Gansu and
approximately 22,317 kilos of raw opium, from which the state derived 18,464 silver taels in revenue,
was produced by the province in 1893; Ganzhou fuzhi [Gazetteer of Ganzhou Prefecture], Zhong
Gengqi, ed., (1780; reprint, Lanzhou: Gansu Wenhua Chubanshe, 1995), p. 229; Junji zashui, #1071-
1073, GX 16/8/13; #1074-1076, GX 16/8/13; #1696-1697, GX 17/9/20; #1851-1853, GX 18/2/17;
#2049-2050, GX 18/7/21. A similar assertion regarding the preclusion of local cultivation by the cold
climate was made by Shanxi Governor A-le-qing-a in 1831; ZZD, DG 11/2/15, pp. 176-182. Rumors
of cultivation persisted and prompted the throne to order another unsuccessful search for cultivation in
early 1839; YPZZ, DG 19/1/29, 1:500-501. Nevertheless, by the late 185Q's poppy cultivation had
openly appeared in Shanxi; Li Sanmou, "Yapian zai Shanxi," 24.
7 7 The cultivation problem in Yunnan is discussed in detail in chapter 4. For initial cultivation reports
from Guangdong see YPZZ DG 11/6/29, 1:90-91. Reports from early 1835 and 1836 indicate that
cultivation was initially discovered in Fujian in 1831; Gongzhong jinyan, DG 14/12/24; DG 15/12/13.
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129
Guangdong was reported as restricted to Chaozhou Prefecture and seems to have
been quickly declared eradicated.7 8 By early 1836 cultivation was also officially
declared eradicated from Fujian, where it was ostensibly restricted to the prefecture
of Quanzhou.7 9 In contrast Yunnan's cultivation problem, which was by far the
largest of any discovered in the empire and which had already been the subject of
several reports to the dynasty, remained a continuous and growing problem.8 0
Zhejiang's cultivation problems were somewhat more complicated. Governor-
General Sun, who also described cultivation techniques in some detail, alleged that
cultivation had been occurring there since "the first year of the Daoguang Emperor
(1820)." This makes Zhejiang's opium cultivation one of the earliest on record.8 1
Cultivation was discovered in several prefectures, but by early 1835 cultivation was
Zhejiang cultivation was discoved just at the end of 1830; Junji jinyan #1554-1557, DG 10/11/18.
Reports of no cultivation for the eleventh year of the Daoguang Emperor (Feb. 13,1831-January 23,
1832) are extant for the following 11 provinces and one territory; Gongzhong jinyan DG 11/2/8
[Shanxi]; DG 11/3/8 [Hubei]; DG 11/3/25 [Shaanxi]; DG 11/4/10 [Anhui]; DG 11/5/15 [Henan]; DG
11/5/22 [Hunan]; DG 11/5/29 [Guizhou]; DG 11/4/27 [Gansu]; DG 11/12/19 [Sichuan]; DG 11/12/19
[Zhili]; DG 11/9/27 [Jiangxi]; DG 11/12/21 [Rehe]. Extant subsequent reports submitted after the
Daoguang Emperor's eleventh year indicate that no cultivation was initially found in the three
remaining provinces; Gongzhong jinyan DG 12/1/27 [Shandong]; DG 12/2/7 [Jiangsu]; DG 13/2/29
[Guangxi], This accounts for all eighteen provinces of China proper. See chapter 4 for reports o f no
cultivation in Xinjiang by the Urumqi Banner Commander-in-Chief. The presence of this report and
others from the Inner Mongolian territory of Rehe shows that the search for cultivation was also
conducted outside China proper, but it is unclear whether or not all other imperial territories
participated.
78KPZZ, DG 11/6/29, 1:90-91. There is no record of any other instances of cultivation in Guangdong.
7 9Gongzhong jinyan, DG 15/12/13.
8 0 See chapter four for details on Yunnan.
8 1 Junji jinyan #1554-1557, DG 10/11/18. See also Lin Man-houng's discussion o f Sun's memorial and
her citations of other sources corroborrating Sun's statements; "Qingmo Shehui Liuxing Xishi Yapian
Yanjiu;" p. 185.
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130
82 *
declared non-existent in the province. In early 1839, however, illicit poppies were
re-discovered in the secluded, mountainous regions of Taizhou Prefecture, the
administrative unit identified by Shao as the major site of coastal cultivation and one
of the provincial locations where cultivation was found in 1830. Poppies were also
subsequently detected in the adjoining prefecture of Wenzhou, which Shao's
oo
memorial had also previously exposed. About fifteen hectares of poppy fields were
first uncovered and uprooted in Taizhou, but Zhejiang Governor Wu-er-tai-e (?-
1842) admitted in a follow-up report that provincial poppy probably had not been
completely eradicated. 8 4 By the time the governor felt able to report the eradication
of the problem in August of 1840, two senior officials had already been dispatched
by the emperor to Zhejiang to conduct an independent investigation of the matter and
several local officials had been demoted for failure to detect the problem in their
previous year-end reports in 1838.
Unfortunately the detailed report subsequently submitted by the two official
investigators, Qi Zuncao and Huang Juezi, did not entirely support Wu-er-tai-e's
s2Gongzhong jinyan DG 14/12/24. Unfortunately, no documents have come to light concerning
provincial cultivation between its discovery in late 1830 and this memorial from early 1835.
8 3 Censor Shen Peng (no dates) submitted a memorial in mid-1840 declaring cultivation persisted in
both Taizhou and Wenzhou due to official involvement in the opium traffic as consumers; Junji
jinyan, #3244-#3245, DG 20/3/20.. A memorial submitted one month later by Wu-er-tai-e in response
erroneously declared that cultivation had already been eradicated from Wenzhou; Gongzhong jinyan,
DG 20/4/10.
mYPZZ, DG 19/1/10, 1:483-484; WJD DG 19/4/18, pp. 208-210.
8 5 For information on demotions, see YPZZ, DG 19/4/18, 1:555; DG 19/6/13, 1:634; DG 20/4/26,
2:113; DG 20/8/6, 2:315. For Wu-er-tai-e's declaration, see YPZZ, DG 20/7/16, 2:268-269. For the
imperial decree ordering the two officials to Zhejiang, see YPZZ, DG 20/3/20, 2:63.
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131
declaration. While they conceeded that "not a stalk or le a f of an opium plant
remained in the infested areas, the stumps of the plants, from which new shoots
could sprout, still remained to be uprooted. They also confirmed that the vast
majority of the cultivation in Zhejiang was centered in Taizhou, where they identified
six districts "where there was no place cultivation had not occurred since the early
years of the Daoguang reign." Local poppies were put to a variety of legitimate
uses, such as fertilizer, but they were also being processed to produce "Tai Juice," a
form of opium that was much more profitable than any legitmate crop that could be
raised locally. Poppy cultivation was tolerated by local officials because those who
grew them did not, unlike other legitimate cultivators, put up resistance when grain
taxes were collected. The local peasantry seems to have had strong proprietary
feelings about its poppy as well, judging by an April 12, 1840 report briefly
describing violent resistance to a poppy eradication operation by a group of thirty-
on
four peasants, apparently led by one Zhu Yongding, in Taizhou's Tiantai District.
Qi and Huang also noted that, while there was no evidence of official
corruption or consumption of opium, there was gross incompetence on the part of
local officials, who after five months had yet to catch twenty-four of the Tiantai
peasant resisters, including Zhu Yongding, among other fugitives. The investigators
recommended a number of local officials for censure.8 8
i6YPZZ, DG 20/8/18, 2:346-348.
8 7 Gongzhong jinyan, DG 20/4/10.
**YPZZ, DG 20/8/18, 2:346-348.
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132
After a three-year hiatus in the official record, the Zhu case reappeared in
greater and somewhat altered detail in early 1843. The delay seems to have been
caused by two British military operations, which resulted in considerable disruption
of regular local administration. The inquiry conducted by Zhejiang provincial
governor Liu Yunke (7-1853) revealed that the Tiantai peasants had begun to grow
poppy towards the end of 1839 when their meager harvest of grain crops proved
insufficient to sustain them. Opium cultivation in this particular locale was facilitated
by the fact that it was separated from the towns by mountains so that "official
investigations could not reach" into this area of the district. Initial success with a few
small plots interspersed among regular fields encouraged expansion to about double
the original cultivation area and Zhu Yongding was a major participant as were
members of the Yang clan, Yang Shifu prominent among them.8 9
Liu also reported that the district magistrate in Tiantai, Gao Zhenwan, one of
the local officials originally censured in the wake of the April 1840 investigations,
had hired several locals who knew the area well to search out the opium plots as part
of the intensification of local search and seizure operations. It was this group, led by
Lin Zhongchong, that had initially discovered Zhu Yongding's opium plots during
Zhu's absence. Gao arrived on the scene, had them detain Zhu's wife and uproot the
poppies. This act provoked resistance by a large number of the Yang clan, led by
Yang Shifu, all of whom had made such considerable investments in the enterprise
8 9 Gongzhong jinyan, DG 23/12/13.
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133
that they feared ruin if the opium crop were destroyed. This is what drove them to
block Lin’ s party from uprooting Yang's own poppies. Gao ordered Lin to arrest
Yang and his group and an altercation ensued in which Lin and several others were
wounded by an array of agricultural implements. Upon the arrival of lictors from the
magistrate's yamen, the peasants, including Zhu's wife, scattered. Gao's men
completed the eradication operation and returned to the yamen. After a few months
some of the peasants, including Yang Shifu were caught. Yang and six other
prisoners died in custody, probably while awaiting the apprehension of the rest of
their fellows. A number of prisoners were banished to Xinjiang as slaves or given
lesser punishments for varying subsidiary crimes. Eighteen peasant resistors,
including Zhu Yongding remained at large.9 0
As the record of opium cultivation in Zhejiang shows, provincial
declarations of opium eradication were questionable if not mendacious. The overall
official record of cultivation nevertheless also supports the conclusion that coastal
cultivation was negligible in comparison to that of the interior, especially Yunnan.
As will be seen more clearly in chapters four and five, a major reason for this
difference was the higher degree of local control enjoyed by the Qing state in the
Han-dominated coastal areas where the junxian system and its attendant baojia
security apparatus were more fully in place. In contrast to the coastal areas
9 0 Gongzhong jinyan, DG 23/12/13. Enslavement, either to Qing troops or begs, was the most serious
form o f banishment to Xinjiang, in part because these government slaves had no legal protection and
could thus be abused by anyone of higher status, or even, under certain conditions, killed with
impunity; Waley-Cohen, Exile, pp. 166-167.
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134
cultivation was never declared eradicated in either Yunnan or Xinjiang, where it was
comparatively widespread and not restricted to a prefecture or two.
By the end of 1835 many provinces and territories had been relieved of one or
more of their obligations to conduct searches for cultivation or official consumption
because no offenses had turned up in the preceeding five years.9 1 It was also around
this time that the next major piece of opium legislation was proposed. While the
possibility of legalization of the drug was soon rejected in favor of an even more
intense level of prohibition, the emergence of this issue exposed dissension in the
ranks of senior officiadom over the direction that opium policy should take. As
usual, official perceptions were conditioned by the accumultation of experience
derived from the implementation of prohibition in the provinces as well as in the
capital itself.
In the first decade of the Daoguang reign coastal opium cases continued to
Q9
occur and there were several decrees issued in response. Two major issues arising
9 1Suspension of investigations, varied in time place and nature, but most seem to have been issued
towards the end of the fifteenth year of the Daoguang Emperor (Jan. 29, 1835-Feb. 7, 1836) after
approximately four years of investigations had turned up no official consumption or local cultivation
in most areas. The suspensions themselves were rescripted onto a memorial by the emperor who
stated something to the effect that since no offenses had been detected, it was no longer necessary to
memorialize on the subject. There does not seem to be much consistency to the suspensions, which
sometimes only stopped investigation of official consumption but not of cultivation; Gongzhong
jinyan, DG 15/11/23 [Guangdong], Other rescripts seem to have suspended both; Gongzhong jinyan
DG 15/11/23 [Hunan], It is possible that surveillance for cultivation was maintained in those areas
where it had originally been discovered. An early 1836 report from Fujian, however, which declared
the eradication of its cultivation, recieved a rescript that suspended both investigations for official
consumption and for cultivation; Gongzhong jinyan, DG 15/12/13. It also remains unclear whether or
not investigations continued at the local level after the necessity for reporting on them to the throne
was obviated.
92These included the addition of statutes punishing officials for "failure to detect" (shicha) crimes, an
offence that had been explicitly excused in previous 1817 legislation from the Jiaqing period; YPZZ,
DG 3/8/2, 1:51-52; Junji jinyan, #1515-#1518, DG 3/8/2. The original impetus for this legislation was
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135
out of these cases concerned rumors of illicit taxation of contraband opium by port
authorities in Guangdong and the latent indications that opium smuggling was
somehow connected to the scarcity and consequent price rise of silver. While no
conclusive evidence was obtained in either case, the court was clearly convinced that
excessive amounts of silver were leaving China via Guangdong and that nearly all
opium was entering China through the same pathway.9 3
Censor Yi Peifen's 1822 memorial on opium cultivation in Yunnan, which is discussed in detail in
chapter five as is the 1828 Ma Wen case from southwestern Yunnan. Extant cases for the first decade
of the Daoguang period are scanty and almost exclusively come from either the coast or Beijing;
YPZZ, DG 1/8/25, 1:25-27; DG 1/10/14, 1:27-28; DG 1/20/11, 1:32-33; DG 2/3/28, 1:40-43; DG
3/2/7, 1:49-50; Junji jinyan #1504-1508, DG 2/10/26; #1521-#1523, DG 3/11/6; #1524-#1526, DG
5/4/10; #1527-#1528, DG 9/6/16; Gongzhong jinyan DG 6/5/19. One extant case occurred in Jiangxi;
Junji jinyan, #1514, DG 3/8/1. In addition to these cases, all of which were reported in the form of
secret palace memorials, four routine memorials extant from this period also record trafficking cases,
three from Guangdong and one from Beijing; Neige weijin, #10066 (buben), DG 1/7/5; DG 1/9/15;
#10076 (tongben), DG 4/5/21; #10088 (buben), DG 7/3/7. While it is not entirely clear why some
cases were reported via the palace memorial system and some via the routine memorial system, it
seems that the former cases tended to involve either official malfeasance of some sort and/or maritime
Euro-American smugglers. The latter cases generally, if not exclusively, concerned capital offenses,
most of which were homicides that incidentally occurred during the commission of an opium offense.
Only one of these four routine memorial cases involved a capital opium crime, namely den running,
which at this point in time was the only opium-related crime punishable by death. These
administrative conditions may explain why there are so few cases extant for this period in the central
government archives, which contain the overwhelming majority of documentation, as most sentences
for most opium offenses did not require any sort of notification of or review by the central government
and thus remained matters of purely local administration.
9jModem opinion regarding the extent to which the opium trade caused the silver drain remains
divided, at least in the west. Owen, Greenberg, Kuhn & Mann-Jones and Hsin-pao Chang, for
example, accept that the traffic was largely responsible for the drain. Morse, Fairbank, Wakeman and
Polachek cite other factors, decline o f domestic copper production, Gresham's Law, etc., as more
decisive. Evidence for the latter view seems based largely on H.B. Morse's unsubstantriated assertion
that Qing reduction in the copper content of its cash coinage "fully accounts for the loss of 20 to 30
percent in its exchange value;" Morse, International Relations, p. 204, quoted in Fairbank, Trade and
Diplomacy, p. 77. Morse invokes unidentified "numismatists" as the ultimate source for his statement.
See Greenberg, British Trade, p. 142, for a refutation of Morse. Hsin-pao Chang still provides the
most extended, if somewhat inconclusive, consideration of this question; Commissioner Lin, pp. 36-
46. While there are clearly problems with both positions, one indisputable fact is that drug smugglers
like William Jardine were making immense profits from Chinese drug users and it is difficult to
believe that a traffic that constituted the single largest commodity trade of the nineteenth century had
an insignificant impact on China's supply of silver.
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136
In early 1822 Censor Huang Zhongmo (n.d.) submitted a memorial asserting
that the Guangdong Superintendant of Customs was taxing the drug traffic instead of
suppressing it.9 4 This prompted an imperial decree ordering a secret investigation of
the Guangdong Customs to be conducted. Three months later the Guangdong
governor's investigation concluded that there were no such illicit taxes being
collected and four months after this report the Superintendant himself denied the
censor's charge and explained that customs revenues had increased due to a rise in
commercial activity on the part of British and American traders.9 5
Huang's memorial also drew attention to the silver drain, which he blamed on
the regional demand for foreign coinage. While similar observations had been made
in the Jiaqing period, no one seems to have previously discussed the outflow of silver
and the influx of opium in the same memorial.9 6 Huang certainly did not make a
direct connection between the two problems, but his discussion of both issues in the
same memorial was the beginning of an administrative trend that culminated seven
years later in an 1829 memorial by Censor Zhang Yuan ( no dates) that linked the
two problems together. Zhang noted that opium purchases resulted in an
unprecedented annual outlflow of silver to the tune of as much as "several million"
07
silver taels. This report produced an imperial decree ordering high level provincial
94YPZZ, DG 2/2/12, 1:37-38; DG 2/2/15, 1:38-39.
95YPZZ, DG 2/5/25, 1:44-45; DG 2/11/23, 1:46-47.
96YPZZ, DG 2/2/12, 1:37-38. For an example of a Jiaqing-era memorial concerning the silver drain,
see YPZZ, JQ 19/1/25, 1:8-9.
97YPZZ, DG 9/1/24, 1:54-55.
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officials to deliberate on new prohibitions for the use of domestic silver in foreign
commercial exchanges and for the importation of opium, both of which were already
illegal.9 8 Evidence for the subsequent influence of Zhang's views can be found in an
early 1830 decree that linked the silver shortage of the interior to the coastal opium
traffic, which this document declared to be the more dangerous of the two
problems.9 9
Whether or not the opium trade was actually responsible for the empire's
silver shortage, by the early 1830’ s there was a clear official conviction that the drug
traffic in Guangdong was the main cause of the shortage of domestic silver. This
was considerered an extremely serious matter by the court. Memorials asserting the
connection between the silver drain and the drug trade became increasingly
unambiguous.1 0 0 This conviction ultimately ensured that opium prohibition would
be intensified and that Guangdong would be the focus of this newly expanded anti
drug policy.
9SYPZZ, DG 9/1/25, 1:55-56. Li Hongbing (7-1846), in his capacity of Governor General of Liang-
Guang, was one of the senior provincial officials responding to this 1829 decree and disagreed with
Censor Zhang on almost every point, including the charge that foreign vessels were bringing opium
into Guangdong and moving large amounts of silver taels out of the empire under the noses of
officials; YPZZ, DG 9/6/1, 1:56-58. Li, however, was hardly an unimpeachable source. Within four
months of his response Li was alerting the court to his discovery that British smugglers were taking
out large amounts of domestic silver in exchange for opium; YPZZ, DG 9/10/28, 1:60-61. By 1832 Li
was cashiered for failure to enforce the prohibtions against local personnel in collusion with British
smugglers; Polachek, Inner Opium War, pp. 109-110.
99YPZZ, DG 9/12/16, 1:62-63.
1 0 0 YPZZ, DG 11/5/24, 1:84-86; DG 13/4/6, 1:138-139; DG 14/9/10, 1:157-159.
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138
IVb. Opium Policy in the Daoguang Reign; Second Phase (1836-1841)
Drug policy in the 1830's was increasingly driven by silver policy and by
1836 the silver drain had become serious enough for the throne to entertain the most
controversial drug policy yet proposed, legalization of opium.1 0 1 Vice Minister for
the Court of Imperial Sacrifices XuNaiji's (n.d.) memorials of June 1836 were
neither the first to point out the direct connection between the inflow of opium and
the outflow of silver nor even to propose the legalization of the drug, which the
Governor General of Liang-Guang Lu Kun (1772-1835) had already suggested late in
1834.1 0 2 Xu's proposals, which were actually a summary of the ideas developed
by a group of scholars from Guangzhou's famous aacademy, the Xuehai Tang, were
subsequently refined into statutes and submitted by Liang-Guang Governor-General
Deng Tingzhen (1775-1846) and Guangdong Governor Qi Gong (1777-1844) in
I A"3
compliance with an imperial decree to deliberate the matter. These proposals
were all predicated on the assertion that strict enforcement of the prohibitions was
being used as a pretext for official extortion of innocent victims and was stopping
1 0 1 For the primacy and impetus o f silver policy, see Li Yongqing, :Youguan jinyan yundong, 79-80.
m Yapian Zhanzheng [The Opium War], 6 vols. ed. Ch'i Ssu-ho, Lin Shu-hui and Shou Ch'i-yii.
(Shanghai: Shenzhou Guoguang She, 1954) DG 14/10/3, 1:133-134.
1 0 3 The standard account o f the legalization debate remains Chang, Commissioner Lin, pp. 85-92.
Polachek, Inner Opium War, pp. 113-119, presents a more speculative version of the same account.
Two excellent Chinese overviews of the debate are Tian Rukang and Li Huaxing, "Jinyan yundong de
sixiang Qianqu-pingjia xin fasheng de Zhu Zun Xu Qiu zouzhe" [Intellectual precursors of the opium
prohibition m ovement-an evaluation of the newly discovered memorials of Zhu Zun and Xu Qiu]
FudanXuebao 1 (1978): 99-107; Lin Youneng, "Guanyu chijin pai de jige wenti" [Several questions
concerning the legalization clique] Lishi Jiaoxue Wenti 4 (1987): 20-21, 30-31.
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139
neither the opium problem nor the silver drain. He recommended a return to the
Qianlong-era policy of an import duty on opium and the legalization of cultivation.1 0 4
Strenuous objections to legalization proposals were prompt and a group soon
formed in open opposition. Several central government officials, most prominently
Vice Director of the Board of Rites Zhu Zun, Censor Xu Qiu and Censor Yuan
Yulin, submitted detailed refutations of arguments for legalization. In addition to a
number of ethical objections it was contended that once legalized opium would
become completely uncontrollable and would still not solve what all involved
acknowledged to be the primary problem of the silver drain because the tea trade
alone would be insufficient to offset opium purchases and the difference would
continue to be made up in domestic silver. Moreover, legalized cultivation in the
interior would not be able to replace foreign imports for, as Zhu noted, extensive
cultivation had already arisen in provinces such as Yunnan without a noticeably
reducing domestic purchases of foreign opium.1 0 5
All three men called for stricter enforcement of the existing prohibitions and
for better supervision of local officialdom.1 0 6 Their arguments were nominally
accepted by the throne, which issued several decrees intended to improve
1 0 4 The content o f Xu's memorials, as well as that of Governor-General Deng and Governor Qi, have
been analyzed in detail in Chang, Commissioner Lin, pp. 85-89; Lin Youneng, "Jige Wenti," pp. 20-
21. The memorials themselves, and the relevant imperial decree, may be found in YPZZ, DG 16/4/27
#3 & #4, 1:200-203; DG 16/4/29, 1:203; DG 16/7/27, 1:205-209.
1 0 5 The memorials of Zhu Zun and Xu Qiu are reproduced in punctuated form in Tian and Li, "Sixiang
Qianqu," pp. 103-107. This article is an extended analysis of the memorials o f both men. That of
Yuan Yulin can be found in YPZZ, DG 16/10/4, 1:213-217.
1 0 6 Tian and Li, "Sixiang Qianqu," pp. 103-107; YPZZ, DG 16/10/4, 1:213-217.
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140
enforcement of the prohibitions against the related problems of opium and silver
trafficking, but did not condemn the legalization position outright.1 0 7 The primary
focus of this stepped-up enforcement were domestic traffickers rather than foreign
smugglers. This policy was the concrete result of the underlying philosophy of the
anti-legalization position expressed in Xu Qiu's original dictum that one should
"concentrate more on the domestic than the foreign; first rule yourself, then rule
others," Despite the overt hard line taken against foreign traffickers, imperial
108
authorities continued to enforce the drug laws exclusively against their subjects.
The explicit policy of virtually exclusive domestic enforcement, which had
been latent in the opium prohibition statutes all along, emerged from the legalization
debate. As stated by Governor-General Deng and Governor Qi in their joint
memorial submitted to distance themselves from legalization, the main issue was not
intensification or repeal of the prohibitions but to stop the outflow of silver
abroad.1 0 9 Deng predicated the achievement of this ultimate goal on the principle
that "as there is a place from which domestic silver flows forth, so there must be a
1 0 7 YPZZ, DG 16/8/9, 1:210. This imperial ambiguity was noted in a subsequent memorial by Deng;
YPZZ, DG 16/11/20, 1:220-222. Significantly, a decree demoting Xu Naiji for his "reckless request
for the repeal of the prohibitions" was not issued by the throne until two years later; YPZZ, DG
18/9/11, 1:391. The Daoguang Emperor stated that he had come to this decision after a solicitation of
senior provincial officials regarding Huang Juezi's request to intensity prohibition had produced not a
single advocate of legalization. It seems that for two years the emperor remained uncommitted to
either a policy of strict enforcement or of legalization.
I0 S Tian and Li, "Sixiang Qianqu," pp. 106-107. These smugglers, who included William Jardine and
the manaical James Innes, were not much inconvenienced by Guangdong officialdom's putative
attempts to kick them out o f China and all of them, except two whose whereabouts remain unclear,
were still in Guangzhou when Commissioner Lin arrived in March 1839; Chang, Commissioner Lin, p.
98.
10 9 YPZZ, DG 16/11/20, 1:220-222.
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141
way through which it exits China." He concluded that the "fast crab" (kuaixie)
Chinese smuggling boats were the main agency of silver's egress from China. Of
course, these craft, along with the "scrambling dragons" (palong) also constituted the
main agents for the conveyance of opium from foreign receiving ships (yapian tun) at
Lintin Island and other off-shore locales to the Chinese mainland. By capturing and
making an example of their Chinese crews Deng proposed to cut off the
collaboration between domestic smugglers and their foreign counterparts, whose
profits would thereby be "secretly reduced and their greed shut off." He also targeted
the "brokerages" (yaokou), wholesale organizations of traffickers who combined their
capital to make opium purchases at the foreign factories and arrange drug pick ups
from the receiving ships.1 1 0 The throne assented and Deng's regulations were duly
formulated and implemented.1 1 1
This policy of indirect assault on foreign smugglers via a direct attack on
domestic traffickers set a fatal limit on the writ of the opium prohibitions and drove
the dynasty to increasingly draconian punishments of its subjects while foreigners
continued to operate with impunity and opium offenses continued to spread and
multiply. The lopsided emphasis on domestic enforcement ultimately resulted in the
notorious 1839 "New Regulations," whose most controversial and significant
provision was capital punishment for opium consumers.
1 1 0 YPZZ, DG 16/11/20, 1:220-222.
UIYPZZ, DG 16/12/20, 1:223-224; DG 17/9/23, 1:239-241.
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142
From approximately 4,000 chests per year from 1800 to 1818 the coastal
opium trade between 1835 and 1839 again expanded enormously from an already
huge figure of 30,000 chests per year to a colossal 40,000, enough to supply perhaps
1 1 'S
eight and a half million smokers. The series of explosions that occurred in the
coastal trade during the 1830's, which saw the number of imported chests steadily
triple from the previous decade, is sufficient explanation for the corresponding
efforts by the central government to intensify prohibition. By m id-183 8 it was clear
that the opium traffic and the outflow of silver continued unabated despite reports
from Guangdong of the arrest of 692 offenders and the seizure or voluntary turn
over of 5213 kilos of crude opium and 139 kilos of opium paste in the wake of the
implementation of Deng's prohibition regulations. If Deng, as these fragmentary
figures suggest, was seizing an average of about 1300 kilos per month, this
represents only about 0.6% of all opium being smuggled into coastal China per year
at this point.1 1 3 Moreover, Guangdong's figures appear to exhibit the highest rate of
confiscation in the southeast during this period with available statistics for the entire
ll2Chang, Commissioner Lin, p. 34. This estimate, from Chinese sources, is based on the assumption
that smokers consumed just under a gram of smokeable extract per day. Chang, however, provides
additional estimates from a variety of contemporary observers, all of which were at considerable
variance (34-35). He concludes that an accurate estimate of the total numbers of smokers is
impossible due to lack of detailed records regarding average consumption rates and sales figures (35).
Most contemporary western estimates, however seem to range well under or approaching one percent
of the total imperial population of approximately 400 million.
‘' T he reported seizure figures only cover a four-month period from mid-January to mid-April 1839;
Gongzhong DG, DG 19/1/14, 8:737a-738a; DG 19/4/25, 8:258a-259a; YPZZ, DG 19/3/16, 1:522-524.
Some previous cases are alluded to, running from the "spring of the seventeenth year of the Daoguang
Emperor" to the end of 1838, but no statistics are provided; Gongzhong DG, DG 19/1/14, 8:737a-
738a.
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region indicating an overall seizure rate of about 1% .1 1 4 The new measures arising
out of the 1836 policy debates were clearly unsatisfactory.
This lackluster performance no doubt influenced the famous, controversial
memorial submitted by Minister of Rites Huang Juezi on June 2, 1838 that sparked
the final great prohibition debate of the Daoguang reign and ultimately resulted in the
formulation and promulgation of the thirty-nine statutes of the New Regulations and
the appointment of Huguang Governor-General Lin Zexu (1785-1850) as Imperial
Commissioner in charge of personally overseeing the implementation of the
prohibitions in Guangdong. This debate has received extended attention from
i i r
scholars and it is thus unnecessary to deal with its specifics in detail. The 1838
debate produced a set of regulations that tended to constrict enforcement of the
prohibitions to the traffickers of the empire's coastal urban zone, particularly the
province of Guangdong, radically impairing attention to the interior's opium problem.
Huang's motives, as well as those of virtually everyone else involved, arose
primarily from concern over the silver drain rather than out of concern for opium
consumption's effects on the populace.1 1 6 There was equal consensus, however, that
ll4Jiangsu authorities had only seized about 378 kilos of raw opium and paste during the month of
Jaunuary 1839; Gongzhong DG, DG 18/11/9, 7:138a-b; YPZZ, DG 19/1/13, 1:491-492. Statistics for
Jiangsu are even more fragmentary than those for Guangdong, but clearly indicate amounts seized
were considerably less than those seized in Guangdong. Fujian authorities did much better, seizing
4740 kilos o f opium of all types and 324 offenders up to May 1839, but this still falls short of the
Guangdong statistics; YPZZ, DG 19/3/25, 1:538-539. No comparable statistics from Zhejiang have
come to light.
U3In English, the definitive treatment remains Chang, Commissioner Lin, pp. 92-98. Yu Ende, Jinyan
fating, pp. 60-65, is a standard, if dated, Chinese work. Chinese revisionist scholarship, however, has
produced a number of important articles, perhaps the most significant being Wu Yixiong, "Jinyan
Zhenglun."
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144
the opium traffic was the primary cause of the drain. Consequently, prohibition
became the central topic of discussion. Huang's initial proposition was that an
increase in the opium traffic had increased the empire's loss of silver. This increase
in traffic was directly due to an increase in the number of drug consumers. Thus, a
reduction in opium consumption would automatically bring about a corresponding
reduction in the silver drain. This relationship explained why the current coastal anti
smuggling policies, which focussed primarily on domestic traffickers, had produced
no alleviation of either the silver drain or its attendant opium problem. Furthermore,
such policies were impracticable because of the malfeasance of local officials and the
expanse of coastline that had to be constantly patrolled. As opium consumers were
the most vulnerable and important link in the chain of drug commerce, prohibition
operations should make them the central target. To this end, Huang advocated
capital punishment for addicts in an attempt to eradicate the domestic market for
opium by eradicating its consumers, who were far more susceptible to state control
measures than either foreign smugglers or domestic traffickers. This harsh
punishment would mercilessly ensue after a grace period of a year, during which
consumers would be given the opportunity to break their habits.1 1 7
Capital punishment for opium consumers proved the most controversial issue
among the twenty-eight senior provincial officials ordered to deliberate Huang's
U6Yu Ende, Jinyanfaling, p. 61; Wu Yixiong, "Jinyan Zhenglun," 59-60.
1 1 7 Chang, Commissioner Lin, p. 92; Xu Haiquan, "Huang Juezi yu jinyan yundong" ["Huang Juezi and
the opium prohibition movement" ], Jiangxi Shifandaxue Xuebao 3 (1990): 40-41.
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145
118
memorial by imperial decree. The ensuing debate demonstrated a remarkable
degree of consensus concerning the next measures to be taken against the opium
traffic. Eight of the participants favored an anti-consumer strategy, but only one of
them fully supported capital punishment for addicts. In contrast twenty-one favored
an anti-import strategy that centered on stepped-up control of the maritime zone of
the southeast coast, particularly around the port o f Guangzhou. This shift away from
capital punishment for consumers to port control with an intensifed effort against
both traffickers and lax or corrupt officials guaranteed that prohibition operations
would be focussed primarily in urban Guangdong ports where officials and
traffickers abounded.1 1 9
The thirty-nine statutes of the New Regulations, promulgated on June 15,
1839, that finally resulted from the 1838 debate embodied the conviction of senior
officials that the eradication of coastal trafficking from Guangdong would constitute
the eradication of the empire's opium problem. These regulations were primarily a
product of the Grand Council, dominated by Mu-zhang-a (1782-1856), and were
particularly aimed at Chinese traffickers involved in opium brokerages, who were to
suffer the maximum punishment of immediate decapitation. Nevertheless, capital
punishment for consumers, after a grace period of a year and a half, was also
formally adopted and violators were to be strangled after the assizes. Formal
U 8For the brief decree, see YPZZ, DG 18/intercalary 4/25, 1:258.
U 9Wang Licheng, "Yapian Zhanzheng qianxi de jinyan juece pingxi" [An evaluation and analysis of
prohibition policy on the eve o f the Opium War], Lanzhou Daxue Xuebao 18:4 (1990): 9-14.
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146
provisions were also made for the first time for voluntary surrender to authorities by
offenders as well as the handover of any opium or paraphernalia in exchange for
1 ? A
amnesty. This statute normalized a practice already common, if unevenly applied,
throughout the empire and one that would be increasingly resorted to in the frenzied
race to avoid being caught beyond the grace period.1 2 1 In effect, the intensification of
prohibition that ensued between 1839 and 1841 was driven in large measure by local
officialdom's fervent wish to avoid the implementation of mass capital punishment
upon the expiration of the grace period.
These amnesty provisions were also applied to foreign traffickers in both
Xinjiang and in Guangdong, probably in order to avoid immediate direct
confrontation. After several months in Guangzhou, where he arrived on March 10,
1839, Commissioner Lin Zexu successfully made a specific request that a special
statute be drafted to deal with foreign traffickers, who were to suffer the same
1 2 0 For a foil text of the New Regulations, see YPZZ, DG 19/5/2, 1:564-586. Yu Ende, Jinyan faling,
pp. 66-69 provides lists of those statutes that were either altered by the New Regulations or initiated
by them. This list, however, does not appear to be comprehensive as the statute concerning volunary
surrender, which the New Regulations themselves state was "previously without spectial provisions
for," is lacking.
1 2 1 The precise evolution of this important statute remains obscure, but for evidence of its
implementation prior to the promulgation of the New Regulations, but subsequent to the Huang
memorial, see YPZZ, DG 19/4/25[Shanxi], 1:560-561; DG 19/1/9, 1:480-482 [Hunan]; DG 18/8/2,
1:356-358 [Hubei]; DG 18/12/29, 1:477-479 [Guangxi]; YPZZ, DG 19/3/25, 1:538-539 [Fujian]; DG
18/11/9, 7:138a-b [Jiangsu]; Gongzhong DG, DG 18/10/11, 6:867b-868b [Jiangxi]; DG 19/1/14,
8:737a-738a [Guangdong], A memorial from Metropolitan Censor Ai-zong-a dated January 6, 1840
stated that while some form of amnesty was being practiced in "every province," it had yet to be
uniformly applied outside the capital, which contained the majority of handover participants; Junji
jinyan, #2375-2377, DG 19/12/2. This lack of uniformity would account for regional and
chronological gaps in the documentary record. Scrutinizing Censor for Works Huang Lezhi (no dates)
stated in April 1839 that amnesty was still an act of "extra-legal benevolence;" Junii jinyan, #2454-
#2456, DG 19/3/3.
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147
punishment, immediate strangulation. The law was to take effect eighteen months
after the arrival of a formal promulgation notice in Guangzhou and, in the interim,
foreign traffickers could absolve themselves by turning over their opium .1 2 2 Foreign
traders in Xinjiang subsequently participated in such an amnesty program, which
local officials and the throne considered to be quite successful.1 2 3 In Guangdong,
however, the opium handover operation did not proceed so smoothly and Lin's
successful attempt to confiscate foreign opium in Guangzhou provided the British
empire with a pretext for war.1 2 4
The statutes concerning cultivation were also broadened and their attendant
punishments intensified. Cultivation of opium, as well as decoction of paste, were
now ranked with trafficking as capital offenses punishable by stragulation after the
assizes. Offender's property, including fields, would be confiscated by the state; this
m YPZZ, DG 19/4/6, 1:548-550; DG 19/4/29, 1:562-563; Hsin-pao Chang, Commissioner Lin, pp. 97-
98. Chang says that foreign perpetrators guilty of trafficking were to be immediately decapitated and
accessories immediately strangled;. This does not seem to accord with Lin's original memorial,
wherein only a statute prescribing immediate strangulation for certain offenses committed by
foreigners is discussed. Lin cited two homicide cases from the early Daoguang reign where British
had been executed as per this statute without any offcial protest. Lin used these precedents as
evidence that British traders did not enjoy the support of their government, thus conceding jurisdiction
to China. Lin's account of these cases appears to have been in error as no British citizen had been
executed by the Qing since the Lady Hughes affair of 1784; Hsin-pao Chang, Commissioner Lin, p.
12. This erroneous conviction, however, probably emboldened both Lin and the Daoguang Emperor
to take direct action against the uncooperative traders.
l23See chapter four for a detailed account of the Xinjiang amnesty.
1 2 4 As is well-known, Commissioner Lin confronted recalcitrant foreign traffickers, who would
ultimately surrender an estimated 1,188,127 kilos of opium (about 21,603 chests) after being
blockaded inside their Guangzhou factories for forty-seven days. In the end this ordeal was neither
life-threatening nor unprofitable to the traders, who happily turned over their opium to Lin after
British Superintendant Captain Charles Elliot assured them that the Crown would cover their losses.
The opium traffic having come to a standstill for five months as a result of Lin's operations, the
traffickers were only too happy to surrender their opium, valued at $9 milllion, pledging to turn over
even more than they had in stock; Hsin-pao Chang, Commissioner Lin, pp. 120-188; Wakeman, "The
Canton Trade," pp. 185-188.
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penalty also applied to anyone who knowingly rented fields to cultivators or accepted
their hire. The offenders who turned themselves in would suffer a reduced penalty
and avoid confiscation altogether. The statute also included the standard
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punishments for baojia and official personnel who failed to detect these offenses.
Surprisingly, an objection was raised against these anti-cultivation provisions.
Shanxi Circuit Investigating Censor Guo Baiyin (7-1884), who on January 16, 1839
submitted a memorial expressing doubt about the coastal, urban assumptions of the
New Regulations even before they were formally promulgated. Guo's position was
succinctly formulated in his assertion that, "provinces like Guangxi, Sichuan,
Yunnan and Guizhou are places where barbarian ships cannot reach and foreign
opium cannot penetrate. All these places come by opium from the locals' poppy-
planting and paste-making."1 2 6
Guo's argument was that the effect of opium was different in western China,
where it was locally cultivated, than in the eastern urban coastal regions where it was
sold by foreigners. While foreign opium drained silver and wasted the wealth of the
populace, the effect of locally cultivated opium, known as "little dirt" (xiaotu), was
more insidious. It exhausted the soil and deprived the state of taxes because its
production remained secret. These qualities made "little dirt" a serious problem in its
own right.1 2 7
1 2 5 YPZZ, DG 19/5/2, 1:564-586; Yu Ende, Jinyan faling, p. 66.
i2 6 WJD, DG 18/12/22, pp. 11-12.
1 2 7 Ibid.
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Guo also called for greater awareness of the important role played by "little
dirt" in the agricultural economy of the west. With a farmer's sensitivity to seasons,
he observed that the New Regulations could not be put into effect in many rural
regions until spring of 1839. By then opium would already have sprouted and
peasants would have been more likely to resist eradication operations because of
their irrevocably heavy investments in the crop. Although the opium crop would be
destroyed, it would be too late for these peasants to plant a new crop of grain, thus
taxes would continue to be lost.
The memorial did not succeed in persuading the throne to reconsider its
prohibition policy in terms of rural cultivation. Indeed, it succeeded only in
generating an imperial decree ordering intensified search and seizure operations in
Guizhou and Yunnan.1 2 9 This order clearly ignored Guo's warning that opium could
not be hastily eradicated from the countryside, which depended on the drug crop for
income and to fulfill tax obligations. The resistance case of Zhu Yongding in
Zhejiang, which occured precisely because peasants felt their livelihoods threatened
by an arbitrary prohibition policy, would confirm many of Guo's predictions, but
such events appear to have had no influence on dynastic policy, which remained
quite immune to Guo's argument.
,2 8 Ib id .
m YPZZ, DG 18/12/2, 1:446.
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The memorial also demonstrates that an intensified level of prohibition
enforcement was not limited to Guangdong or even the southeast coast in the wake of
the promulgation of the New Regulations of June 1839. In general there was an
enormous increase in official investigation and prosecution of opium offenders
throughout the empire during this period of intensified enforcement.1 3 0 A few
consumption and trafficking cases were even discovered in places as far away as the
1 O 1 1 'I '}
Qing garrison in Tibet and in both Inner and Outer Mongolia. Significantly,
1 3 0 lndividual cases are too numerous to cite, but the chronological tables of contents in YPZZ volumes
1 and 2 provide an excellent overview of the expansion enforcement operations from 1810 to 1841. A
memorial from a metropolitan censor covering a period approximately a year prior to formal
promulgation of the New Regulations of June 15, 1839 stated that over 1100 cases had been cracked;
Junji jinyan, #2497-2498, DG 19/3/22, This figure apparently refers to opium offenses empire-wide.
l31Tibetan officials were included in the order to conduct search and seizure operations. The resident
Qing Superintendant Meng-Bao (no dates) stated that while there were no incidents of large-scale
trafficking, it was "difficult to guarantee" that there were absolutely no "foreigners" (presumably
Tibetans) smuggling opium through the checkpoints. He was certain that resident "soldiers and
subjects of China proper" were "contaminated" by drug use. Meng-Bao's strategy was similar to the
court's in that he proposed to crack down on users to deprive the elusive foreign smugglers of a
market. Consequently, Six Han merchants and craftsmen were found to have either brought opium
into Tibet from China proper for personal use or to have purchased it from cavalry trooper Su
Tingbiao who was decocting raw opium into paste on the spot. Many, including Su, were from
Sichuan. Su himself, who was trying to raise travel funds for his return home, bought a little over a
kilo of raw opium from an unidentified source; Gongzhong jinyan, DG 20/7/17. Another case, a
comparatively minor one involving consumption by military personnel, all of whom were from
Sichuan, was discovered little more than a month later; Junji diqin, #1020-1022, DG 20/8/24;
Gongzhong shenban (Beijing: Ming-Qing Archives), DG 21/3/23. By early 1841 Bao-Meng had
concluded that the local Tibetans were too poor to smoke opium, and that what opium problems
existed among the thousand or so resident Chinese could be easily controlled because o f their small
numbers; Gongzhong DG, DG 21/?/?, 30:71 lb-712a.
lj2An early 1836 report from Rehe stated that an investigation of the baojia sections produced no
evidence of trafficking or cultivation; Junji jinyan, #1887-1888, DG 15/12/26. By March 1838,
however, seven Han traffickers and consumers along with 8.5 kilos of raw opium had been discovered
in Chengde Prefecture; ZZD, DG 18/3/?, pp. 61-62. By the end of the year, another case of trafficking
and consumption involving five people appeared in Ulan Bator, Outer Mongolia. The emperor
himself complained that Han were contaminated the formerly pristine territory with opium; QSL, DG
317:36a-37b. An early 1840 report stated that no new cases had been discovered, mainly due to the
strict limits on commercial contact between neighboring indigenous peoples and the subjects of China
proper. Trafficking activity, however, was suspected in the Khobdo region of western Outer Mongolia
on the border with Xinjiang; Gongzhong DG, DG 19/12/1, 10:370a-371a.
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cases in these areas were discovered exclusively among Han traders or troops, who
were bringing in opium in small amounts from China proper. Consequently opium
arrived in such areas through the agency of Han commercial and military
133
penetration.
The empire-wide implementation of the New Regulations created a number
of administrative complications. While those arising directly from ethno-geographic
diversity are best exemplified in the regional case studies of Xinjiang and the
southwest, other problems arose simply from the expansion of anti-drug operations.
Even successful prohibition caused problems. For example, over-crowding of
remand centers, where offenders awaited their sentences, became a serious problem
in Guangdong, Jiangxi, Anhui, Guangxi and Guizhou.1 3 4 Verification and disposal
of the large amounts of confiscated opium also presented a major challenge as well
as an opportunity for official pilferage and inflation of confiscation statistics.1 3 5
1 3 3 This point has been made by Lin Man-Houng in relation to a very abbreviated reference to the 1840
cases in Tibet; "Qingmo Shehui Liuxing Xishi Yapian Yanjiu," p. 73. She seems to have only had
access to Meng-Bao's final report in 1841, which does not describe any of the cases in detail. She also
briefly cites a case of a Shandong smuggler in Rehe in 1842; "Qingmo Shehui Liuxing Xishi Yapian
Yanjiu," p. 75.
m YPZZ, DG 20/3/11, 2:56-58 [Guangdong]; DG 20/9/8, 2:442 [Jiangxi]; DG 20/10/20, 2:531-532
[Guangxi]; DG 21/1/18, 3:81-82 [Guizhou]; WJD, DG 20/10/29, pp. 248-249 [Anhui], Lin Zexu
submitted the first of these reports, which requested alterations in adminstrative procedure to speed
execution of sentence. He stated that the capture of over 1400 offenders in one year, along with over
150 apprehended over the previous two months necessitated an acceleration of processing. Most of
those held were probably accomplices to various opium offenses awaiting transportation to their place
of exile.
1 3 5 Even before the implementation of the New Regulations a proposal to transport all opium seized
throughout the empire to Beijing for verification and disposal in order to avoid official over-reporting
was rejected as impractical and personal supervision of disposal operations by senior provincial
officials was substituted; YPZZ, DG 18/10/18, 1:410. The Daoguang Emperor subsequently noted
that he had heard of local officials' attempts to improve their confiscation statistics by manufacturing
their own paraphernalia and bogus opium paste as well as official pilferage for purposes of resale;
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The New Regulations also created ethical problems that directly affected
official enforcement. Both Guizhou Governor He Changling and Sichuan Governor-
General Bao-xing held the severity of the New Regulations partially responsible for
local officialdom's reluctance to sustain enforcement operations beyond the grace
period, when consumers would face capital punishment.1 3 6 This problem had been
previously alluded to by Scrutinizing Censor for Works Kuang Deng (n.d.), who
submitted a memorial in April 1840 calling for a greater effort to clear all opium
cases before the expiration of the grace period, which he noted would occur in little
more than six months. Kuang feared that once capital punishment for consumers
became operative in 1841, no provincial officials would have the stomach to
continue their investigations. Kuang reasoned that a sustained effort to catch all
offenders needed to be made before 1841 in order to both save lives and to avoid
1 T 7
burdening local officialdom with a serious ethical dilemma. The emperor's
response was to issue a decree warning senior provincial officials that they were
responsible for the implementation of the prohibitions by their subordinates, who if
properly supervised should be incapable of obstructionism.1 3 8
YPZZ, DG 19/3/3, 1:520. He was probably referring to Scrutinizing Censor for Works Huang Lezhi,
who enumerated an extensive list of abuses of the handover program, including the substitution of
such substances as sugar, rice gruel and rhubarb for opium; Junji jinyan, #2454-#2456, DG 19/3/3.
U6Choubanyiwu shimo buyi [Supplement to Choubanyiwu shimo bityi] (Taibei: Academia Sinica,
1968), DG 22/1/22, p. 6 [Guizhou]; YPZZ, DG 21/1/25, 3:203-204 [Sichuan],
1 3 7 Junji jinyan, #3281-#3283, DG 20/3/28.
m YPZZ, DG 20/3/28, 2:94.
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This purely formalistic response ensured that the genuine issues of official
compliance raised by He, Bao-xing and Kuang would not be seriously addressed by
the throne. Indeed, straightforward application of the New Regulations themselves,
which possessed a number of contradictions, ambiguities and omissions, was often
ethically problematic, as demonstrated by a few cases from Beijing and
Guangdong.1 3 9
The two cases from Beijing occurred in January of 1843. The first involved
consumption by a twenty-eight year-old opera singer, Yang Fushou, who deposed
that he had suffered from severe backpains since childhood and had only found relief
when a fellow performer introduced him to smoking opium ash, residue from
previously smoked paste, and the consumption of opium pills in 1833. Yang was
cured after several dosages, but the pains reoccurred in early 1842 during a
perfomance near the Lama Temple and he subsequently smoked and popped pills a
few times until caught in the act by an official night raid on his inn.1 4 0
The second case involved a woman, forty year-old Ms. Li, wife of thirty-eight
year-old Wang Er. Ms. Li suffered from stomach pains and bought about thirty-five
grams of opium paste from a neighbor as well as a pipe from an itinerant Guangdong
peddlar. She was cured, but was subsequently ordered by her husband to stop and
1 3 9 Even scholars who defend the efficacy of the New Regulations admit that they were problematic; Li
Shuyuan, "Guanyu 'qinding yanjin yapianyan tiaoli’ de pingjia wenti” [Problems concerning the
evaluation of the ’imperial regulations on the strict prohibition of opium’ ], Shixue Yuebao 5 (1985):
120. Qing officials were not unaware of at least some of these problems; Junji jinyan, #2789-#2792,
DG 19/6/20.
1 4 0 Neige weijin, #10122 (buben), DG 22/11/30.
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154
dispose of her paste and paraphernalia because of the prohibitions. Ms. Li instead
buried these items in the rear of her courtyard, telling her husband she had destroyed
them. In 1842, Wang lost his job and decided to rent out his wife as a prostitute.
Wang soon became a pimp for several other women and operated a brothel out of his
residence. Around this time Ms. Li experienced a relapse of her stomach pains and
retrieved her opium and paraphernalia from the back courtyard. On the day she
resumed smoking her home was raided by officials on an anti-vice operation and her
opium, pipe and lamp were discovered in the process.1 4 1
Officials in both cases were concerned primarily with determining whether or
not either Yang or Li had engaged in more extensive trafficking activities, as well as
determining from whom they had purchased their opium and who else, if anyone,
was involved with them in consumption acitivites. Once these questions had been
clarified, both people were sentenced to strangulation after the assizes for opium
consumption. These sentences were confirmed in identical imperial vermilion
rescripts brushed onto the front panels of the case memorials. In neither case was
1 49
illness considered a mitigating circumstance. Ms. Li's husband Wang Er, in
contrast, received 100 blows of the heavy bamboo and three months in the cangue for
1 4 1 Neige weijin, #10122 (buben), DG 22/11/30
l4 2 Neige weijin, #10122 (buben), DG 22/11/30. The memorials concerning both cases are stored
loose in the same box and are marked with the same date. They are distinguished by the vermilion
rescript on their front panels listing the names o f the respective offenders.
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155
his pimping activities. Ms. Li's co-workers each got 100 blows and a month in the
cangue.1 4 3
Both these cases involved minimal amounts of opium intended for short-term
personal use and involved no widespread consumption by multiple individuals or
large-scale trafficking, both of which would have been considered much more
serious offenses. Traffickers, however, who were capable of far greater harm by
virtue of their mass marketing activities, could avoid capital punishment under
certain circumstances by turning themselves in. In effect, this meant that individual
consumers, who might not be aware of legal provisions for voluntary surrender,
could be treated with far greater severity than more experienced traffickers who
turned themselves over when they heard they were being sought by authorities. Such
a case occurred in Guangdong in April 1842 when the opium brokerage operator Tan
Huanying's death sentence was commuted to the maximum degree of regular life
exile at a distance of 1500 kilometers because he had turned himself in. Tan had
begun his venture in 1837 because his wine and cake shop was doing poorly. Along
with a business partner he acquired ninety kilos of crude opium and ran a
wholesaling operation until apprehended in 1842.1 4 4
These cases confirm the fears of many senior provincial officials that capital
punishment for opium consumers would result in grossly disproportionate
punishment of offenders. There are dozens of extant capital cases, mostly from
1 4 3 Neige weijin, #10122 (buben), DG 22/11/30.
1 4 4 Neige weijin, #10122 (buben), DG 22/7/19.
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156
Beijing, Zhili and Guangdong, involving personal use of opium for ostensibly
medicinal purposes, primarily pain relief.1 4 5 It is quite clear from the number and
content of such cases that imperial confirmation of capital punishment for
consumption became a routine matter after the grace period expired.1 4 6 It should be
reiterated, however, that a capital sentence, even when confirmed by the imperial
vermilion rescript, did not necessarily result in death. In early 1845, for example, the
Board of Punishments, citing the New Regulations, requested that more than fifty
traffickers and consumers sentenced to execution have their sentences reduced,
apparently to some form of banishment, because their executions had been delayed
three times or more since their sentences had been handed down. These opium
offenders appear to have been part of a larger group of capital offenders of all types,
all of whom were being pardoned under a more general statute concerning delayed
executions.1 4 7 The fragmentary nature of the official record makes it impossible to
determine the extent to which these cases, most of which must have been
1 4 5 These explanations, which are admittedly suspiciously uniform, should not be taken lightly.
Testimony by late-nineteenth-century witnesses before the Royal Commission on Opium in 1893
generally agreed that "the relief of pain and sickness was a major reason why people took up opium
smoking;" R. K. Newman, "Opium Smoking in Late Imperial China: A Reconsideration," Modern
Asian Studies, 29, no. 4 (1995): 776.
1 4 6 These cases are all discussed in the Board of Punishment's routine memorials (xingke tiberi), which
generally provide much more detail regarding offenders and their fates than any other type of official
document. It is unclear why the vast majority of extant cases are from the provinces of Guangdong,
Zhili and Hubei.
1 4 7 Junji jinyan, #145, DG 24/12/22. These offenders had clearly had their cases declared huan jue
("deferred execution") during the annual review of capital cases at the autumn and court assizes. This
result was one of four possible, three of which would delay or reduce the punishment. Capital cases
categorized as delayed executions were often commuted to a lesser punishment after a two-year
interval; Bodde and Morris, Law in Imperial China, pp. 134-143. This system, combined with the
fragmentary state of the Board of Punishment records, often makes it impossible to ultimately
determine whether or not a capital sentence was actually carried out.
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157
investigated around 1842, were exceptional. The Daoguang Emperor replied that the
offenders would have to wait until each's respective execution had been delayed five
times. The Board could then memorialize again on the subject.1 4 8 An 1855 Board of
Punishments' memorial from the succeeding Xianfeng reign, citing this group of
cases as a precedent, clearly stated that they had finally been commuted.1 4 9
Despite important qualifications of the significance of a capital sentence, it
should also be noted that had there been almost no chance of such a sentence being
carried out, the New Regulations' provision for capital punishment for addicts would
not have caused such controversy among senior provincial officials, who clearly
considered mass executions to be a distinct possibility. It ultimately remains
impossible to decisively determine the fate of opium offenders sentenced to death.
The degree of official concern expressed over capital punishment for opium
consumers, however, indicates that such punishment was not taken lightly, as other
details of the practical legal record might lead us to assume. Seen in this light, the
routine confirmation of capital sentences for opium consumption by the emperor was
an ominous development.
Another aspect of prohibition that became routinized was submission of case
lists of opium consumption from all over the empire. This practice was decreed in
late 1842 and continued into the reign of the Xianfeng Emperor.1 5 0 Separate lists
m QSL, DG 12:25b.
1 4 9 The Xianfeng Emperor duly followed the precedent and commuted five more opium offenders of
deferred execution status; Gongzhong jinyan, XF 4/12/21.
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158
were compiled for ordinary consumers in the provinces and official consumers both
in and outside the capital. Autumn and court assize cases awaiting an imperial
decision were detailed on a third list.1 5 1 These lists, from which some cases are
missing, were supposed to provide central government officials with a quick
overview of pending consumption cases throughout the empire.1 5 2 Despite the
problematic nature of the official record, it is clear from these and other sources that
prohibition operations peaked in 1840 and rapidly tapered off, although case lists and
scattered cases show that prohibitions continued to be enforced to some degree at
different times and places across the empire.1 5 3 This marked drop in cases roughly
coincides with the end of the grace period for consumers, the disgrace of Lin in
1 5 0 This decree is briefly quoted in one of the first such reports; Junji jinyan, #90-91, DG 23/7/14. For
the single Xianfeng autumn assizes list that has come to light, see Gongzhong jinyan, XF 4/8/3. This
document is the summary memorial, for non-official consumers in this instance, that typically
accompanied the case list, which is missing. The twelve offenders in the eleven consumption cases
alluded to in the memorial were all put on deferred execution status by imperial rescript.
l51For examples of official consumer and autumn assize lists, see Choubanyiwu shimo buyi, DG
23/intercalary 7/14, pp. 57-61.
1 5 2 A fragmentary documentary record prevents a final determination o f the degree to which these lists
accurately reflected prosecution of consumption cases throughout the empire. In the case list covering
the twenty-second year of the Daoguang Emperor, for example, contains references to two cases from
Huguang, one each from Hunan and Hubei, for which routine memorials are extant; Junji jinyan, #93-
100, DG 23/7/14; Neige weijin, #10122 (buben), DG 22/2/10 and DG 22/8/5. This same list,
however, lacks another consumption case from Hubei for which a routine memorial is also extant;
Neige weijin, #10122 (buben), DG 22/5/8. While the case lists clearly show that not all routine
memorials concerning opium consumption have come to light, they cannot be considered
comprehensive.
1 5j T o cite only a few pieces of evidence, in Beijing's First Historical Archives of China there are fifty
separate secret palace memorials concerning prohibition operations throughout the empire dated the
twentieth year of the Daoguang Emperor (Feb. 3, 1840-January 13, 1841), but only twenty-one for the
following year. In the Archives' holdings of the Grand Council copy archive, there are seventy-four
memorials for the emperor's twentieth year, but only twenty-seven for his twenty-first year (January
23, 1841-January 31, 1843).
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159
Guangzhou and the disastrous conclusion of the first and most important phase of the
Sino-British conflict on the southeast coast.
Although ini 843 the throne declared its firm determination to continue the
implementation of the prohibitions, large-scale operations were plainly curtailed,
most likely due to the exigencies of war as demonstrated by the three-year delay in
the Zhu Yongding case from Zhejiang.1 5 4 Nevertheless, prohibition continued and
throughout the rest of the reign opium offenders, including consumers, continued to
1
be discovered and executed. No major prohibition legislation, however, was
issued after the promulgation of the New Regulations in June 1839.
V. Chapter Conclusions
Since the first prohibition of 1729 the throne perceived the opium problem in
China to be centered in the maritime regions of Guangdong province and tailored
most of its legislation accordingly. Unfortunately for the Qing government, the
opium problem did not remain so neatly circumscribed, but eventually spread
throughout the empire. By the time this fact was fully confronted by the court in the
lS 4 Xu wenxian tongkao, 53:808la-b.
l35Some routine memorials from the final year o f the Daoguang Emperor's reign refer to an imperial
decree issued that same year commuting capital punishment for consumers in some cases; Neige
weijin, #10135 (buben), DG 30/5/18, DG 30/7/24, Yet there are other cases resulting in executions of
consumers that also occurred in the same year; Neige weijin, #10135 (buben), DG 30/11/1. The death
of the emperor actually occurred during the first month of the thirtieth year of his reign. Upon the
naming of his successor, the Xianfeng Emperor, twelve days later, a number of acts of imperial
benevolence ensued as part of the inaugural ceremonies. One of these acts was the commutation of
capital sentences for certain categories o f offenders. A prerequisite for commutation was that a crime
would had to have occurred before the accession date, which is cited in both the commutation
memorials; QSL, DG 2 :10a-12b. This accounts for the variation in the routine memorials above as the
DG 30/11/1 offense probably occurred after the accession date, while those of the other two probably
occurred before it. Capital punishment for opium crimes was only abolished in 1859 after
legalization; HDSL, 828:la-b.
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late 1830's opium had undergone both a physical transformation from madak to paste
and from an article of exclusively foreign origin to a domestic product that generated
income for both the Qing state and its subjects. It had also diversified into several
types and competition between two of these, Malwa and Patna, was instrumental in
the immense expansion in the traffic during the 1830's. All these transformations
intensified the opium problem and made it increasingly difficult for the Daoguang
emperor to deal with the drug in the manner of his predecessors. Consequently a
corresponding legislative transformation ensued.
The immediate cause of the increased prohibition activism of the Daoguang
years was directly related to the conviction, which also crystalized in the 1830's, by
senior Qing officials that a serious silver drain was being caused by the opium traffic.
Such a drain was considered the direct result of an increase in the demand for opium,
which was driven by the drug's emergence as a highly addictive paste and by
increases in the output of its major production zones in India. The drain was also
believed to center in Guangdong. It was, consequently, logical to both intensify
prohibition to deal with the increased flow of opium and to focus prohibition efforts
on Guangdong, specifically its major port city of Guangzhou.
The New Regulations of 1839, like most of the prohibition legislation that
proceeded it, were formulated primarily with the suppression of this coastal urban
smuggling in mind, mainly because the government correctly believed that most of
the opium entering China at the time was coming in due to the activity of Chinese
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161
and Euro-American smugglers along the coast of Guangdong. The main brunt of
enforcement would fall on Qing traffickers and consumers rather than foreign
smugglers primarily due to the inability of local administrative structures to control
the maritime coastal zone and the foreign merchants who moved about freely within
it. This strategy was also determined, however, by the urban basis of these
structures, which were not very effective at prohibition unless closely monitored by
high level provincial authorities.
Qing administration was structurally better equipped to deal with urban
smuggling and consumption than with rural cultivation, which proved resilient
enough not only to survive the intensified prohibition efforts of the 1830's but to
successfully compete with and eventually displace foreign opium in China.
Cultivation was centered in western China, where these administrative structures
were further weakened by the presence of large non-Han populations whose
relationship to the Qing central government was mediated by their own indigenous
administrative apparatuses. This situation not only made cultivation even more
difficult to control than in the provinces of the Han core, it also made trafficking
harder to stop. To compound these problems the proximity of certain of the empire's
western territories, particularly Xinjiang, to foreign states beyond any Qing control
whatsoever gave rise to another foreign trafficking problem wholly independent of
that of the coast.
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The southeastern coastal opium problem proved to be the regional problem
with the most influence on central government policy formation and implementation.
Indeed, prohibition policy and the opium traffic of the southeastern maritime
provinces were in an almost dialectical relationship as the cycle of local violation
gave rise to central legislation, the implementation of which in turn engendered new
forms of violation and legislation. Unfortunately for the court, as early as the Jiaqing
reign there was clear evidence that opium was not simply a problem confined to a
single region or an obstacle to the smooth functioning of Sino-British foreign
relations, but was already a domestic problem with its own dynamics that would
ultimately test the limits of the Qing state to enforce its will in places far from the
empire's coastal zone. One of the farthest of those places, in terms of both distance
and culture, was Xinjiang.
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Chapter 4.
The Opium Problem in Xinjiang
I. Overview of the Opium Problem in Xinjiang
Xinjiang's status as a border territory rather than as a province of China
proper created a unique regional opium problem that complicated local prohibition
efforts. The ethno-geographic conditions in Xinjiang constrained the court's efforts
to assert its authority. These limitations were caused not only by the sheer extent of
the territory, which made comprehensive local control impossible, but also by the
presence of large populations of East Turkestani and other Inner Asians, resident
both within and beyond the empire, who resisted Qing control. The administrative
complexities that arose from the dynasty's attempt to incorporate Xinjiang using
structures both locally appropriate and compatible with central government priorities
and practices considerably limited the efficacy of prohibition in the territory.
Xinjiang's natural environment alone was a formidable enough obstacle to
prohibition. The isolated steppe, desert and alpine conditions of Xinjiang were
excellent for opium smuggling and cultivation. The climate itself allowed for the
sowing of three crops per year, one each in spring, early fall and late fall, a situation
that had not escaped the notice of Yi-shan (7-1878), the Military Governor of Ili
during the initial prohibition period. On his way back to Beijing, where he would
ultimately be appointed in 1841 to preside over a disastrous Qing counter-offensive
against the British in Guangdong, Yi-shan passed through Gansu, where he stopped
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164
in the provincial capital for a brief discussion with Li Xingyuan (1797-1851), who
was then Provincial Surveillance Commissioner.
By the time of this discussion, which Li's diary recorded on August thirteenth,
1840, Yi-shan had become well-acquainted with Xinjiang opium, which was flowing
into Gansu. He told Li there were three types, "winter, spring and summer," all of
which were generally known as "western opium (qiangtu)," and concluded that while
Qing officialdom "could prevent the sale of opium, it cannot stop its production. "
This extended cropping season was in part responsible for this situation, and
constituted a dramatic contrast to most other cultivation sites in the Qing interior,
which could produce only one crop per year in the spring.1 Cultivation was a
Xinjiang-wide problem and extant cases mainly involve Han merchants, although
cultivation by both Han and East Turkestani Muslims in the military agricultural
colonies (tuntiari) that existed throughout the territory was also noted by the
Councilor of Yarkand En-te-heng-e (7-1842), who would spearhead prohibition
operations in the territory.
lLi Xingyuan, Li Xingyuan riji [The diary of Li Xingyuan], ed. Yuan Yingguang and Tong Hao, 2
vols. (Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1987), 1:96. Xinjiang opium sown during late fall was especially
difficult to detect because of its resemblance to sprouts of winter wheat; Zeng Wenwu Zhongguo
jingguan xiyu shi [A history of China's management of its western regions] (Shanghai: Shangwu
Yinshuguan, 1936; reprint, as vol. 81 of Minzu congshu, diyi bian [Republican period collectanea,
first series ], Shanghai: Shanghai Shudian, 1989), p. 607. It has been suggested that qiangtu actually
refers to hemp or marijuana; Chen Zhao, "Wan Qing Xinjiang jinyan shulun" [Overview o f late Qing
opium prohibition in Xinjiang], Xiyu Yanjiu, 3 (1996): 26. Whatever its actual composition, Zhang
Bingde, the metropolitan censor who originally exposed the Xinjiang opium traffic in late 1839,
considered qiangtu "more harmful than opium;” YPZZ, DG 20/4/10, 2:96.
2 En-te-heng-e stated that "both Karashahr and Kucha have had cases of Chinese and Muslim
clandestine cultivation o f opium, which have been reported and processed;" YPZZ, DG 19/12/22,
1:787. O f these two cases, I have only found the report from Karashahr; Junji jinyan, #2952-2957.
En-te-heng-e also noted that "civilians in Kashgar's and Barchuk's agricultural colonies, military
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The ethno-geographic diversity of Xinjiang ensured that the opium problem
in the territory was commensurately variegated. Consumption of the drug, mainly in
the form of smoking, was found among Han townspeople in all parts of Xinjiang,
and there were also cases of official consumption and trafficking as well. East
Turkestani Muslims were generally declared by Qing officials to have never used the
drug. This official stance ensured that there were no cases of opium consumption by
East Turkestanis prosecuted in Xinjiang, although there were trafficking cases
involving them.
In the Eastern March, Han merchants were the main participants in the opium
traffic. In the Southern March, Han merchant traffickers mixed with foreign drug
dealers from Central and South Asia, including the khanate of Kokand, Badakhshan
[northeastern Afghanistan], Kashmir and "India," as well as with indigenous East
Turkestani Muslim traffickers.
The problem of opium prohibition in Xinjiang was further complicated by the
participation of the khanate of Kokand in the drug traffic, a participation that
transformed the local opium problem from one of domestic enforcement into one of
inter-state relations. The Kokandis in the Southern March came primarily from the
khanate's southern trade depot of Andijan , which conducted trade primarily with
southern Xinjiang. In the Northern March, there was also trafficking between Han
personnel in Aksu's and Ush Turfan's agricultural colonies . .. and various desolate places around
cities and farms all have Muslims engaged in cultivation, and incidents of illicit cultivation are
unavoidable;" YPZZ, DG 19/12/22, 1:787. These statements by En-te-heng-e are the only official
evidence I have come across for cultivation of opium by East Turkestanis in Xinjiang.
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and foreign merchants, most of whom seem to have come from Tashkent, the
khanate's northern trade depot with the Tsarist Empire. The problem of foreign
merchant participation in the drug trade took on a more ominous and intractable
dimension, implicitly supported as it was by the state power of the khanate of
Kokand, that could not be dealt with simply by a formulaic application of the New
Regulations.
The solution of the Qing state to the myriad problems presented by
prohibition in Xinjiang was strict enforcement of the prohibitions on Han merchants
and a much looser enforcement of them against foreign traffickers. Official coercion
was focused on Han traffickers, who were still seen as the root of the problem by
local officials, and cultivators rather than on users or foreign merchants. According
to local officials, these merchants were ignorant of the prohibitions and willingly
turned over all their opium. They suffered no further punishment in consequence,
although a few of them were initially cangued.
Despite the distinction made between all these groups, officials initially
attempted during the grace period granted by the New Regulations to persuade all
persons involved with opium in Xinjiang to turn themselves and their drugs over to
authorities in exchange for amnesty. The results of this policy were equivocal and
definitely did not eradicate opium from Xinjiang.
Although opium crime in Xinjiang can be documented as early as 1808
during the reign of the previous Jiaqing Emperor, the overwhelming majority of the
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prohibition operations took place between late 1839 through 1840, over a period of
little more than a year. During this time, thousands of kilos of opium were seized
and hundreds of people were arrested or turned themselves in across the territory.
The main reason for this period of intense search and seizure operations was official
desire to bring the opium problem under control before the end of the grace period in
early 1841 forced the implementation of the New Regulations in full. Comparatively
few records of new cases have come to light after this date.
Ha. Opium Prohibition Comes to Xinjiang
Xinjiang was the last place in the Qing empire where opium was discovered
during the during the promulgation of the New Regulations, and Beijing's attention
was drawn to the territory only after Vice Minister of the Court of Judicial Review
Hui-feng (? - 1851) complained in August 1839 that he had heard of no reports on
opium cases from there. Hui's suspicions were rooted in his conviction that in the
Chinese interior, "80-90% of officials, soldiers and commoners are contaminated"
with opium in some fashion.
Despite the gravity of this situation, Hui-feng was relatively sanguine about
the state's ability to assert control in the provinces. Citing operations in Guangdong
as evidence, Hui-feng felt investigative personnel were sufficiently numerous to
handle the caseload generated by the enforcement of the opium prohibitions. These
assumptions drew Hui-feng's attention to Xinjiang, whose officials, he said, were
37PZZ, DG 19/7/27, 1: 675-677.
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exceptional in that they had so far made no reports of investigations or arrests of
opium offenders. He held that this silence did not arise from the fact that Xinjiang
was "without traffickers and consumers, but because its numbers of official and
military personnel are few in comparison with China proper [neidi]. People are
scattered, the land vast; close surveillance is difficult." From this, he concluded that
if the officials of Xinjiang did not make concerted enforcement efforts, cases would
continue to go undiscovered in Xinjiang, whose sheer size alone made trafficking
inevitable there.4
Moreover, this expanse also was veined with "small roads of all sorts" that
connected the territory with foreign lands with which extensive trade was conducted;
thus, "there must be incidents of opium smuggling . . . and the officials, Muslims,
Mongols and merchant commoners of the towns who go back and forth trading
cannot avoid an intimate familiarity with the consumption of opium." Hui-feng
feared that the region's intricate transportation network, combined with its proximity
to aggressive border states facilitated " all sorts of plo ts. . . by the tribes of Russia
and Andijan [i.e. Kokand] that lie beyond the checkpoints, and by our own traitorous
merchant traffickers."5 The results of these plots, Hui-feng declared, were loss of
silver and enervation of border troops, the significance of which transcended that of
mere local drug abuse.6
4YPZZ, DG 19/7/27, 1:675-676. Contrary to Hui-feng's characterization, Guangdong, being the main
focus of prohibition implementation was, o f course, exceptional in every respect.
5YPZZ, DG 19/7/27, 1: 675-677.
6YPZZ, DG 19/7/27, 1:675-677.
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Unlike the characterizations based on rumors regarding opium activity in a
particular locality made by some other metropolitan censors, notably those by Censor
Du Yanshi pertaining to the inter-provincial traffic between Sichuan and Yunnan,
those made Hui-feng were based on personal experience connected with the locality
in question.7 In Hui-feng's case, this experience arose from a tour as the Gansu
Provincial Surveillance Commissioner (Anchashi) from November 1829 to February
1832, during which he handled cases of provincial trafficking in Gansu of opium
whose origin was ultimately traced through Xinjiang to Kokandi traders from
Andijan.8
Hui-feng's memorial initiated the active implementation of the New
Regulations in Xinjiang by both alerting the court to the almost certain presence of
opium there, and by persuading it to issue an imperial decree on September 5, 1839
ordering Qing officialdom throughout the territory to launch investigations in order
to prohibit the opium traffic in the region.9
This decree was not the first of its type. Two reports in response to the
decree of August 12,1830, which ordered an empire-wide search for opium
cultivators and traffickers, were issued successively in January of 1835 and 1836 by
the then Urumqi Banner Commander-in-Chief Chang-qing (7-1856), who found no
7 Du’ s report is examined in chapter five.
8 YPZZ, DG 19/7/27, 1:675-677; Wei Hsiu-mei, comp., Q ingji zhiguan biao [Offices and personnel of
the late Qing period], 2 vols. Taibei: Institute of Modem History, Academia Sinica, 1977), 2: 875.
9 YPZZ, DG 19/7/27, 1:678.
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170
trace of any opium activity in the region. A vermilion rescript at on the latter
memorial suspended further investigation.1 0
Although the inquiries made by Changqing seem to have been restricted to
the Eastern March, there is no evidence that opium was discovered anywhere in
Xinjiang during this initial investigation. The promulgation of the New Regulations,
which stepped up pressure on local officials to make genuine efforts find opium
offenders in their jurisdictions, showed the investigation conducted during the first
half of the 1830's to have been perfunctory at best. Evidence was presented by a
number of officials that showed the opium traffic present in Xinjiang no later than
1832 and as early as 1808.1 1
The September 5 decree acknowledged that Xinjiang’ s regional characteristics
were very different from China proper and might hinder the implementation of the
New Regulations. Consequently, the court charged regional senior military and civil
1 0 Gongzhong jinyan, DG 14/12/2, DG 15/12/3. These reports were the last two in what was probably a
series of reports initiated by Changqing's predecessor Chengge (no dates).
1 ‘in addition to the evidence offered by Hui-feng for trafficking that occurred during his tenure as the
Provincial Surveillance Commissioner of Gansu from 1829 to 1832, testimony arising from the arrests
of the largest trafficking ring ever discovered in Xinjiang showed opium smuggling and consumption
to have been present in the territory by 1834. The full circumstances of this case were only reported in
September 1841 in a memorial by the Councilor of Yarkand Tu-ming-e (7-1847); YPZZ, DG 21/7/29,
4:72-76. There is also the testimony of Tu-ming-e's predecessor En-te-heng-e, who believed the
transborder traffic with Kokand to have been initiated in 1832;TPZZ, DG 19/12/22, 1:785-789.
Predating all these views is a memorial dated January 26, 1808 revealing that a criminal exile from
Guangdong had been caught with opium in Xinjiang; Gongzhong jinyan, JQ 12/12/29. Finally, there
is literary evidence, mainly in the form o f poetry produced by official exiles in Xinjiang that shows
that poppies were being cultivated in the territory as early as 1770 for purposes that remain unclear,
but seem related to their decorative function; Hong Liangji, Tianshan ke hua [Observations from a
traveler in the Tian Mountains] (1843; reprint, Beijing: Zhongguo Shuju, 1993); Hong Liangji, Yili
jishi shi [A poetic chronicle of Ili] ed. Zhongyang Minzu Xueyuan Tushuguan (ca. 1800; reprint,
Beijing: Zhongyang Minzu Xueyuan Tushuguan, 1983), pp. 21a-21b and 18b, respectively; Chen
Zhao, "Wan Qing Xinjiang jinyan shulun," 26.
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171
officials to offer their suggestions to the throne for the adaptation of the New
Regulations.1 2 These adaptations (biantong), were generally suggested by the
administrative heads of the three marches, rather than their subordinates in the lesser
towns, who either reported that no adaptations were necessary in their jurisdictions or
sent their suggestions to their respective administrative centers.
While the decree also acknowledged that Xinjiang's size and its proximity to
foreign states made it "difficult to guarantee that there are no incidents of foreigners
smuggling opium through the checkpoints for purposes of sale and resale," this
smuggling was to be strictly prohibited by an intensification of prohibition by local
officials throughout the territory. The court, however, incorrectly assumed that the
opium problem in Xinjiang was exclusively one of smuggling by foreigners, mainly
Central and South Asian Muslims in this case, and despite Hui-feng's warning that
cultivation was also occurring in the territory, the decree mentioned only traffickers
and consumers.1 3
This was a reflection of the center's tendency to downplay cultivation and
concentrate on trafficking and, to a lesser extent, consumption, both of which were
much more susceptible to attack by an almost exclusively urban-based officialdom.
In this respect, the imperial decree of September 5 was an assertion, directed towards
the localized space of Xinjiang, of the central government's conviction that urban
1 2 YPZZ, DG 19/7/27, 1:678.
n YPZZ, DG 19/7/27, 1:678.
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trafficking was the primary cause of the opium problem throughout Qing China, and
that the eradication of such traffic would automatically result in the eradication of the
opium problem.
The most immediate effect of the September 5 decree was a series of
investigations by the highest provincial officials of the major towns.1 4 These reports,
all of which discovered opium activity in some form, demonstrated not only that the
problem was extremely widespread in Xinjiang, but that it was by no means confined
to urban trafficking and consumption. Hui-feng's concerns were amply vindicated,
including those of his concerning opium cultivation in the territory, which was
discovered in the Southern March town of Kara-shahr before many Xinjiang officials
were able to respond to the September 5 decree.1 5
lib: Recommendations from the Eastern March
The administrative head of the Eastern March in Urumqi, Banner
Commander-in-Chief Hui-ji saw no need for making any alterations to the New
1 4 Reports came from the following administrative locales: Junji jinyan, #2952-2957, DG 19/8/24
[Kara-shahr], #3082-3085, DG 19/11/21 [Urumqi], #3109-3112, DG 19/11/24 [Aksu]; YPZZ, DG
19/12/19, 1:780-781 [Kashgar], DG 19/12/22, 1:785-789 [Yarkand], DG 19/12/13, 1:772-774
[Khotan], DG 20/1/16, 2:3-7 [Ili]; Gongzhong jinyan, DG 20/1/11 [Tarbagatai], DG 20/1/27 [Turfan].
Note that all major towns in Xinjiang either did not submit reports, or, more likely, these nine are the
only ones that have surfaced. There was no reason for the locales of Hami, Kucha, and Wushe not to
respond to the July 7 decree, even if no opium had been discovered. Two pieces of evidence for this
contention is are memorials in response to this decree from Uliassutai, the Qing administrative capital
for western Outer Mongolia, and Khobdo, a subadministrative region of this area that formed part of
Xinjiang's northeastern border. While the memorialists of both documents found it "difficult to
guarantee no traitorous subjects had been smuggling opium" into and through the region into Xinjiang,
no cases had come to their attention. This was in part due to the fact that they lacked the personnel
necessary to conduct opium investigations in such a "vast territory;" YPZZ, 19/12/1, 1:749-750
[Khobdo]; WJD, DG 19/10/16, pp. 137-139; [Uliasutai],
1 5 Junji jinyan, #2952-2957, DG 19/8/24.
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Regulations to better suit conditions in his jurisdiction. He did, however, provide the
court with a concise summary of the opium problem in the Eastern March, where
Urumqi's status as a major regional urban center was attracting itinerant merchant
smugglers. These smugglers, along with urban consumers, embodied the most
common manifestation of the opium problem in the town, as shown by the thirty-
seven cases of opium-related offenses, nineteen of which occurred in Urumqi alone,
involving trafficking and consumption listed in the memorial. The other eighteen
were reported from various district and subprefectural magistrates of the region.1 6
All these reports show a reliance on officials of the junxian system for the
implementation of the prohibitions in the Han settlements of the region.
As the Qing official primarily responsible for processing opium cases for the
whole of the Eastern March, Hui-ji was in a better position than local magistrates to
detect patterns in the regional opium flow. Privy to reports from officials in the other
marches of Xinjiang, he found that opium was being smuggled in from Tarbagatai in
the Northern March and Yarkand in the Southern March. In other words, Urumqi
was the confluence of the opium flowing from the southwest and northwest of
Xinjiang eastwards into China proper. Noting the absence of foreign merchants in
Urumqi, where most of those arrested were "merchant subjects [shangmin] passing
through," Hui-ji concluded that opium was being sold to Han merchants by foreign
,6Junji jinyan, #3082-3085, DG 19/11/21. I have only come across one of these reports, that of Turfan
Unit Commander (lingdui dacheri) E-le-jin-tai, who reported three cases of Han merchant trafficking
and suspected that there were also foreign merchants actively moving opium into Turfan from western
Xinjiang. Like Huiji, E-le-jin-tai reported there were no local obstacles to the implementation of the
New Regulations; Gongzhong jinyan, DG 20/1/27.
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174
traders in the border towns, and then resold by them in the Eastern March to other
1 7
Han consumers and traffickers.
Hui-ji's solution was to request that the Qing Councilors in both Yarkand and
Tarbagatai be instructed to interdict foreign smugglers and cut off their routes near
the border. Traffickers would "then be without routes to bring in opium for sale and
users will be without places from which they can purchase opium." Addicts would
thus automatically disappear from lack of supply without further official action. This
formula was a Xinjiang version of the central government's macrocosmic
prescription for stopping the empire-wide opium problem by cutting off foreign
smuggling in Guangdong. The common goal of both these policies was to
everywhere effect the "automatic eradication of opium without prohibition (bujin
zichu)" by the intense application of force to a small group of people in a very
1 8
localized area.
The measures proposed by Hui-ji were quite standard for a region under a
junxian-sty\Q administration. Aside from the usual declarations to make intensive
searches and seizures, Hui-ji decided to use the baojia system to deal with the
problem of opium cultivation, which he felt certain existed amidst the alpine regions
around Urumqi. As investigation was then precluded by heavy snows, he proposed a
standard procedure, combining the inspection of fields during spring planting and
autumn harvest with the regular examinations of the baojia registers of his
1 7 Junji jinyan, #3082-3085, DG 19/11/21.
1 8 Junji jinyan, #3082-3085, DG 19/11/21.
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175
jurisdiction. Those who passed the inspection were required to sign and file mutual
responsibility certificates to refrain from opium cultivation.1 9
In Xinjiang, inspection of the baojia registers may have helped to ensure that
opium would not be cultivated in the village fields around the environs of major
towns, but did not preclude cultivation that continued to occur in Xinjiang's
extensive, unsettled and relatively uninhabited mountain and steppe regions,
precisely where there could be no baojia system of surveillance. This excessive
reliance on the baojia system narrowed official perspective to spaces under junxian-
style settlement to the exclusion of the very regions most likely to attract illicit
cultivators, making these regions even more attractive.
Generally speaking, there was very little in the reports from the Eastern
March contrary to the court's expectations, and in January 1840 it issued a decree
accepting to Hui-ji's recommendations and ordering the Councilors of both Yarkand
and Tarbagatai to intensify their investigations at the border checkpoints. The court
Art
also decreed a stepped-up search for opium in Urumqi by officials there.
He: Recommendations from the Northern March
Unlike Hui-ji, the Military Governor of Ili Yi-shan devoted the bulk of his
long memorial, written in February 1840, to suggesting various alterations to the
thirty-nine statutes of the New Regulations to adapt them to local conditions in
1 9 Junji jinyan, #3082-3085, DG 19/11/21.
20YPZZ, DG 19/12/19, 1:783.
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176
Xijiang. In his view, trafficking, both by foreigners and Qing subjects was the
central problem of the Northern M arch2 1
Yi-shan's comments were predicated on the principle, commonly held by
most officials at the time, that "the scourge of opium originated overseas and only
gradually entered China. It then flowed through the interior and only after a long
time reached the distant wildernesses there." While " the poisonous flow of opium in
Ili" was currently "not deep," it constituted a long-term danger to border security that
would only increase if it were not eliminated completely. Thus, prohibition of
coastal opium would to stop its westward flow into China.2 2
This conception of the spatial expansion of opium in China from the east
coast to the western interior was by no means mistaken. Yet, coastal opium was not
the only type available in the Chinese interior, and, in many places where an opium
problem unquestionably existed, coastal opium was not on hand at all, or only
existed in minor quantities. Moreover, opium was also flowing west to east from
Xinjiang, and from the southwest to the northeast from Yunnan.
The manner in which Yi-shan evaluated the opium problem in his locale was
driven both by the conviction that opium was basically a coastal problem and by the
fact that Xinjiang was a border territory whose indigenous population were East
Turkestani Muslims with transborder ties to the khanate of Kokand, which lay
n YPZZ, DG 20/1/16, 2:3-7. There is a brief discussion of Yi-shan's memorial, based on its extremely
abbreviated version in QSL DG 331:10a-l lb, in A-la-teng-ao-qi-er, Qingdaiyili jiangjun lun'gao
[Qing military governors of Ili], (Beijing: Minzu Chubanshe, 1995), pp. 126-128.
n YPZZ, DG 20/1/16, 2:3-7.
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177
immediately beyond Xinjiang's western frontier. Yi-shan feared that vigorous,
legalistic enforcement of the New Regulations against Kokandi merchant smugglers
would cause the khanate to retaliate, a situation that threatened to destabilize Qing
control of Xinjiang; hence his modifications to the New Regulations, which were
predicated on the fact that foreign traders in Xinjiang were using
domesticated camels for transport, so smuggling is comparatively
difficult, or else occurs in small quantities and, we believe, it does not
amount to much. We find a great disparity between this situation and
that of the coast, where ships are employed to carry immense loads
that are stored for sale, and strongly feel that the establishment of
uniform, generalized heavy punishments will obstruct the pacification
of the foreigners.2 3
Yi-shan's proposed modification under these conditions was leniency for
foreign first offenders trafficking in "small amounts," both during and after the grace
period. Offenders would not be executed, but excused after having their opium
confiscated during the grace period, or have their capital sentences commuted to
military life exile in China proper after the period had ended. Other types of
94
traffickers would still be dealt with as per the New Regulations.
Yi-shan's belief that the opium problem in Xinjiang was primarily external in
nature conditioned the way he apportioned administrative responsibility for handling
the problem. Noting that foreign smuggling came in from the west, north and south,
Yi-shan put the main responsibility for stopping the flow of foreign opium into
2 3 Ibid.
2 4 Ibid.
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178
Xinjiang on officials and troops concerned with monitoring commerce, as well as
hakim begs, all of whom were to intensify the inspections of foreign wares. Fixed
periods for foreign merchants to engage in trade were to be established to prevent
extended stays, during which they could engage in further illicit activities. These
measures were to "automatically eradicate" opium without the necessity of further
measures.2 5
Yi-shan's conviction that the coast was responsible for generating the empire-
wide opium problem was further reinforced by his experience with criminal exiles
from that region. Ili had been the main destination for the Qing empire's criminal
exiles since the Qing conquest of the Northern March in 1758. Eunuch opium
addicts were being exiled to Xinjiang no later than the end of the Jiaqing reign
(1820) and, by 1839 as a result of the New Regulations' punishments for accomplices
to various capital offenses many regular offenders were also being banished to
9 f\
Xinjiang as military slaves. In fact the first opium case that in Xinjiang that has
come to light occurred at the end of the twelfth year of the Jiaqing Emperor's reign in
early 1808 and involved two Guangdong exiles. Song Jun, Military Governor of Ili
2 5 Ibid.
26"Ili" actually consisted of a conglomeration o f nine towns and garrisons (Yili Jiu Cheng ); see Ji
Dachun, Xinjiang lishi cidian, p. 214. For the regulations concerning exile to Xinjiang for opium
offenses, see HDSL GX, 828:2b, 8a. By 1761, Xinjiang was already experiencing convict
overcrowding and this resulted in the establishment of a quota system to allocate convicts among the
various towns of the territory, under which the more serious the offense, the farther west one was sent,
with the most serious offenders ending up in Ili or Urumqi. Ili tended to get the bulk of this group
because, as explained in a 1766 memorial, "Ili is vast and they need people for reclamation work, so
probably we should send more convicts there than to Urumqi" at the rate of 3:1; translated in Waley-
Cohen, Exile, pp. 67-68.
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179
at the time, reported that one Huang Shizhong, originally exiled to Xinjiang as a
member of the Heaven and Earth Society {Tiandi Hui), had tried to poison someone
with opium paste, which had been purchased from a cashiered assistant brigade
commander and fellow Guangdong exile Cao Shouren, who had carried the drug
from the coast for ostensibly medicinal purposes.2 7 Song feared that some among
Ill's exile community of Fujianese and Guangdongnese had brought opium to
Xinjiang for sale and a search and seizure operation was consequently conducted 2 8
Over twenty years later Yi-shan echoed Song's reminder to the throne th a t"
Ili is where the banished are concentrated and those sent from Fujian and Guangdong
are particularly numerous, so it is actually difficult to guarantee there will be no
incidents of smoking or selling opium." He also revealed that among the offenders
in the 54 cases of possession and trafficking discovered so far in Ili, there were three
criminal exiles from the coast. In effect, enforcement of the New Regulations, which
did not provide specifically for offenses by exiles, was causing the export of coastal
opium problems to Xinjiang. Exiled addicts were a particular problem in Yi-shan's
view because
if the opium addiction is already deeply formed, we fear it is difficult
to hope for an immediate emergence from the addiction and this is
27 Gongzhong jinyan, JQ 12/12/29. This document identifies Huang as a member of the "Society for
the Promotion o f Brotherhood (Tiandi Hui)," which is a homonym in Chinese for the Heaven and
Earth Society and a common euphemism for the notorious secret society, which was facing increased
government persecution in the Jiaqing and Daoguang years; Qin Baoqi, Qing qianqi Tiandi Hui yanjiu
[Studies in the Heaven and Earth Society of the early Qing], (Beijing: Zhongguo Renmin Daxue
Chubanshe, 1988), p. 136.
2 8 Gongzhong jinyan, JQ 12/12/29. The results of this operation are unknown, but, judging by the
court's reaction to the discovery o f opium in Xinjiang in late 1839, the central government clearly did
not feel that there had been a significant, ongoing drug problem in the territory before that date.
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why the Imperial Decree's granting of a year and a half grace period,
while it is truly a sage ruler's gift of benevolence outside the confines
of the law, is still a small thread of clemency. The bodies of these
kinds of banished criminals are only partially clothed and their bellies
are without food to fill them. Those so forlorn are unable to shake
their addiction, which is plainly deep and strong. They are actually
J Q
without a way out and one feels especially sympathetic.
More than half these people had had their capital sentences commuted to
exile in Xinjiang and they were technically to be punished with death for further
offenses. Rather than simply execute them for smoking, however, Yi-shan suggested
instead that criminal exiles guilty o f opium consumption within the grace period be
sent to the Southern March as slaves of begs. Beyond the grace period, the
punishment would still be execution, nor would any mercy be extended to traffickers
30
or cultivators whose only addiction was to profit. This suggestion reflects the
reluctance of many officials to execute commoners en masse.
Yi-shan, like Hui-ji, planned to use the baojia system where it already
existed. However, vast areas of the Northern March where inhabited by steppe
nomads organized under the jasak system. Yi-shan proposed that these aiman, or
29YPZZ, DG 20/1/16,2:3-7.
3 0 Ibid. Yi-shan's suggestion is one of several examples in the Xinjiang prohibition documents that
demonstrate that convict recidivism was not inevitably punished by immediate execution, especially
when their subsequent crimes committed in exile were not capital offenses. See WJD, DG 21/10/20,
pp. 133-135 for further evidence. Waley-Cohen's treatment of convict recidivism tends to emphasize
that such lenient treatment was quite exceptional, but her contention seems based primarily on cases of
repeat capital offenses; Exile, pp. 181-184. The statutes on exile recidivism given in Wu Tan's Da
Qing lu li tongkao [Encyclopedic collation of the Qing code and substatutes] lists a number of non
capital substatutes for exile recidivism; Da Qing lii li tongkao jiaozhu [Annotation of Da Qing Hi li
tongkao], ed. M aJianshi and Yang Yutang, (ca. 1778; reprint, Beijing: Zhongguo Zhengfa Daxue
Chubanshe, 1992), pp. 256-263.
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181
tribal units were take up the burden of policing outlying wilderness areas to ensure
no cultivation or smuggling was taking place. In addition to patrolling, they were
ordered "to issue and keep a record of certificates guaranteeing that there has been no
planting of poppy." Aiman were, in effect, to police themselves as were the tusi of
o I
the southwest.
Overall, reports from the Northern March in response to the September 5
decree, which included one from the Councilor Tuan-duo-bu (n.d.) in Tarbagatai in
February 1840, raised more complex issues than those coming from the Eastern
T 9
March; mainly because of the presence of foreign traders. This led Yi-shan to
consider the destabilizing effects of opium in Xinjiang as less harmful than those
arising from an indiscriminate application of the prohibitions to a sensitive border
zone.
The emperor's vermilion rescript to the end of Yi-shan's memorial ordered the
Grand Council, headed at that time by Mu-zhang-a, and the Board of Punishments
"to deliberate and memorialize" on Yi-shan's proposed modifications of the New
Regulations, and the results of this deliberation, which accepted only some of Yi-
3 1 Ibid.
3 2Tuan-duo-bu's initial report contained no arrests for opium, but the Councilor was sure that it was
only a matter of time before cultivators were discovered in the vast wilderness regions o f his
jurisdiction. He was vindicated seven months later; Gongzhong jinyan, DG 20/1/11.
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182
shan's proposals, were embodied in a long memorial submitted under the name of
Mu-zhang-a on May 3 1 ,1 840.3 3
The reviewers began by agreeing with Yi-shan's observation that opium
smuggling on the coast was quite different from that in Xinjiang and acknowledged
that it was important to prevent prohibition enforcement from destabilizing the
frontier. In this spirit, Yi-shan's proposals for leniency were accepted, as were those
for tightening inspections at the border checkpoints of the Northern and Southern
Marches. They rejected, however, Yi-shan's attempt to extend this leniency beyond
the grace period by punishing foreign merchants with military penal servitude rather
than death, mainly because "circumstances" made it "difficult to actually banish each
and every criminal to military penal servitude in China proper."3 4
Regarding the issues of opium crimes by exiles raised by Yi-shan, the
reviewers generally concurred with his recommendations.3 5 The procedure they
came up with, however, was somewhat complex and amounted to an exchange of
troublemaking exiles between the Northern and Southern Marches. This leniency
33YPZZ, DG 20/5/1, 2:114-119. This memorial is very briefly summarized in a two-page entry in QSL
DG 331:10a-l lb. Unfortunately, the entry makes no mention of those points where Mu-zhang-a
disagreed with Yi-shan.
34YPZZ, DG 20/5/1,2:114-119.
35YPZZ, DG 20/5/1, 2:114-119. Mu-zhang-a stated that after 1812 (JQ 17), exiles were no longer sent
to Heilongjiang because of a censorial memorial declaring that as the auxiliary dynastic capital of
Shengjing (Mukden; present-day Shenyang) was located in the region, it was inappropriate to exile
criminals there. Waley-Cohen, Exile, makes no explicit mention of this explanation for a shift in exile
policy, but does note that "the influx of exiles into Manchuria prompted concern about potentially
detrimental influences on frontier society and on Manchu morals;" p. 60. Furthermore, Mu-zhang-a's
date is in conflict with that of 1820 (JQ 25) given in HDSL GX, 828:2b.
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183
was restricted only to opium smokers, whose crime was considered less serious than
trafficking and cultivation, despite the fact that all three were technically capital
offenses under the New Regulations. Exiles guilty of these offenses or of non-capital
offenses of a particularly serious degree, would all be beheaded, the former
immediately, the latter after the autumn assizes.
Yi-shan's proposals regarding the control of cultivation were all accepted by
the reviewers. However, some of Yi-shan's other proposals, which, for example,
sought to reduce punishment for traffickers who could identify those from whom
they themselves had purchased opium for resale, were generally rejected by the
reviewers as being either too lenient or too severe, as well as administratively
unwieldy. The emperor concurred with the reviewers.3 7
While the court largely accepted Yi-shan's general arguments regarding the
necessity of making certain exceptions for foreign traders in Xinjiang, it did not
concur with his views on the treatment of minor foreign traffickers, ostensibly
ignorant of Qing law, after the expiration of the grace period. While Beijing's
rhetorical stance was "hardline" in comparison with Yi-shan's, cases from both the
Northern and Southern Marches show that Inner Asian merchant traffickers were
36YPZZ, DG 20/5/1, 2:114-119. These exchanges were not limited to exiles. In at least one case Han
offenders in the Southern March whose crimes merited exile "beyond the pass" (i.e. Xinjiang) were
sent to Ili and Urumqi; Gongzhong jinyan, DG 20/2/19. It should be noted that exile policy
concerning residents of Xinjiang seems to have differed considerably from that covering other
imperial subjects. This no doubt arises from Xinjiang's role as the main destination for imperial
offenders sentenced to banishment to the frontier, the highest major degree of exile.
3 ,1 YPZZ, DG 20/5/1,2:114-119.
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184
treated with great toleration in practice, whatever the amount of opium they were
caught with and long after they had been formally notified of the prohibitions.
Instrumental in this process of loose enforcement of the opium prohibitions was the
implementation of what appears to have been a successful policy of opium handovers
by Inner Asian merchants to Qing officials, mainly in the Southern March, from
which the greatest number of trafficking reports originated.
lid: Recommendations from the Southern March
The Councilor of Yarkand En-te-heng-e submitted his response to the
September 5 decree on January 16,1839 to which he appended a long list of
modifications to the New Regulations entitled "Regulations for the Prohibition of
Opium in the Towns of Xinjiang's Southern March." He felt these modifications
necessary primarily because the large number of foreign merchants and East
Turkestanis made the Southern March a unique nexus for opium traffic between
these groups and the Han merchants transporting the drug eastward.3 8
En-te-heng-e was quite precise in his chronology of the trans-border opium
traffic. He asserted foreign merchants began bringing opium through the checkpoints
in the wake of the court's abolition of the tariff on foreign goods in 1832, which had
been one of the concessions to the Kokandis after their 1830 incursion into the
Southern March. His solution to this problem was to resurrect the pre-1830 system
T Q
of inspection for contraband.
™YPZZ, DG 19/12/22, 1:785-789.
3 9Ibid.
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185
En-te-heng-e proposed that all foreign merchants be escorted from the
checkpoints to the towns where they wished to trade, where their wares would be
inspected by the hakim beg in order to avoid "incidents" arising between foreign
Muslims and non-Muslim Qing personnel. The begs were to certify that no opium
was being smuggled, and the traders were required to sign "voluntary bonds" that
they would refrain from trafficking. The existing system of road passes (lupiao),
which allowed transit between towns within Xinjiang for foreigners and subjects
alike, was also employed to intensify surveillance of merchants, who had to undergo
a further inspection before they could obtain a pass. Inspections were, like most
other official activities in Xinjiang, differentiated by ethnicity, with hakim begs
performing them for all Muslims and the Community Liaison Officers of the baojia
performing them for Han merchants.4 0
Begs were also to take up most of the burden of policing the East Turkestani
villages that dotted the Southern March. Unfortunately, En-te-heng-e felt that these
begs, who constituted the entirety of officialdom in their locales, would prove "not
very efficient in their inspections," thus necessitating an additional layer of
surveillance in the form of other begs dispatched to conduct monthly inquiries and
obtain more mutual responsibility certificates.4 1
4 0 Ibid.
4 1 Ibid.
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186
The movements of the Han merchants who traded in Muslim villages were to
be further monitored by a system of passes issued by the towns in which they resided.
Their goods were to be inspected both by town officials and by the begs stationed in
the villages. Finally, despite the difficulties of registering a transient population, all
the itinerant Han merchants were to be organized into baojia units of ten for
purposes of mutual surveillance. These units were each headed by a Community
Liaison Officer, chosen from among the members.4 2
While these modifications resulted in an intensified application of the New
Regulations, other proposals relaxed them. En-te-heng-e, like Yi-shan, suggested
reductions in the severity of the punishments meted out to non-Han opium
traffickers. He proposed that foreign opium smugglers trafficking in small amounts
simply be expelled from Qing territory and not permitted to ever trade there again.
East Turkestanis guilty of a similar offense were to suffer banishment to an
insalubrious region of Yunnan, Guizhou, Guangdong or Guangxi, as per an 1830
statutory revision concerning the punishment of East Turkestanis as imperial
subjects.4 3
These attempts at leniency were rejected by the Grand Council, which, under
Mu-zhang-a, had been charged by the emperor to evaluate En-te-heng-e's proposals,
42Ibid.
4 3 En-te-heng-e did propose increasing the punishment of East Turkestanis guilty of collusion with
foreign merchants for stockpiling opium for sale from delayed to immediate strangulation. His
reasoning quite superficial and perfunctory, but it is possible that he actually wished to avoid
overcrowding the jails with prisoners waiting for their cases to be reviewed during the autumn assizes;
YPZZ, DG 19/12/22, 1:785-789.
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187
as they had done for those of Yi-shan. The results were issued in March 1840 in a
long memorial response from the Grand Council, which contended that En-te-heng-
e's modifications "convert light punishments into heavy ones and vice versa." They
requested that the Councilor of Yarkand justify his views.4 4
Despite this ostensibly hardline stance, the Grand Council, influenced by
foreign merchant handovers of their contraband, declared that since "these barbarians
cannot quickly familiarize themselves with the prohibition regulations, all these cases
will be seen as first offenses and punishment will be voided in accordance with the
statutes on voluntary handovers within the grace period."4 3 This was an important
loophole, for grace period or not, as long as foreign merchants handed over their
opium, they were always declared first offenders and absolved of further punishment.
In contrast to the central government's rejection of his modifications to
punishment, the Grand Council accepted En-te-heng-e's provisions for re
establishing a system of inspection and intensified surveillance in the Southern
March. All of these measures were approved as attempts to prevent collusion
between foreign traders, East Turkestani Muslims and Han merchants.4 6
En-te-heng-e's modifications of punishments for opium trafficking by foreign
merchants and East Turkestanis, however, continued to be debated, even after he
became Governor General of Shaan-Gan in February 1841. An imperial decree in
“ YPZZ, DG 20/3/27, 2:80-85.
4 5 Ibid.
46Ibid.
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response to the Grand Council's March 1840 memorial ordered further deliberation
of the points of disagreement, but the response from Xinjiang did not come until
August 1841, when the new Councilor of Yarkand Tu-ming-e (7-1847) finally
responded on behalf of his predecessor.4 7
The central issue was the attempt by En-te-heng-e to eliminate capital
punishment for foreign merchants and East Turkestanis trafficking in small amounts
of opium. Tu-ming-e concurred with En-te-heng-e's recommendations because he
maintained that the New Regulations' punishments for offenses of trafficking and
storage were predicated on conditions that obtained solely on the coast. His
reasoning was similar to that of Yi-shan's as he argued that conditions in Xinjiang
were different from those of the coast, where foreign ships gathered in large numbers
to continuously smuggle in hundreds of kilos of opium, rendering distinctions
48
between large and small amounts moot.
Individual traders in Xinjiang, by contrast, could bring in "no more than 100
or 200-odd taels [about 4-8 kilos]," so to punish them under the capital statutes for
coastal smuggling was "indiscriminate."4 9 Tu-ming-e's argument for special
treatment for East Turkestani subjects is less straightforward and seems based on a
4 7 Gongzhong jinyan, DG 21/6/17. Although the reasons for this delayed response are not clear, they
may be related to the fact that it was necessary to formulate a set of justifications for the proposed
modifications and that En-te-heng-e left his post during this process. Dates for posts held by En-te-
heng-e and Tu-ming-e are from Wei Hsiu-mei, Q ingji zhiguan biao, 2:537, 1144.
4 8 Gongzhong jinyan, DG 21/6/17.
4 9 Gongzhong jinyan, DG 21/6/17.
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189
fine distinction within the New Regulations, which mandated capital punishment for
all traffickers after the expiration of the grace period, but reduced the punishment to
military enslavement in Xinjiang for those trafficking in amounts under 500 taels
(approximately 19 kgs.) or only trafficking "once or twice."5 0
Although no material directly related to the ultimate decision on this debate
has come to light, Tu-ming-e's reasoning seems to have been tacitly accepted by the
court, which permitted all subsequent foreign violators to be excused from all
physical punishment as "first offenders" (chufan).5 1
He: Recommendations from the Marches: Conclusion
The initial response of Xinjiang's highest officials to the decree of September
5 demonstrated that the territory did indeed have an opium problem of inter-state
significance, similar in type, if not in scale, to that on the southeast coast. In both
areas, the presence of foreign merchants, backed by states beyond the empire's reach,
constituted the main manifestation of the local opium problem. Local officials all
considered their trafficking to be the most serious aspect of Xinjiang's opium
problem, but their conviction that only small amounts were being smuggled in
50There are, as is inevitably the case in legal affairs, a number of points of ambiguity that provided
justification for both En-te-heng-e's and the Grand Council's positions. Essentially, the Grand Council
insisted on equating East Turkestani collusion with foreign merchants as a crime equivalent to coastal
"stockpiling" (jituri), which came under the capital provisions for "running an opium brokerage"
(kaishe yaokou), an offense whose punishment was not mitigated by the grace period. En-te-heng-e
wanted to interpret the crime as "trafficking" (fanmai; generally termed "xingfan" in the New
Regulations}, which was not a capital offense during the grace period and qualified by distinctions
between "small" and "large" amounts; YPZZ, DG 19/12/22, 1:785-789, DG 20/3/27, 2:80-85;
Gongzhong jinyan, 21/6/17; Yapian Zhanzheng, 1:560, 565, 567.
5‘There are no case records showing capital punishment for either Central or South Asian traders, or
for East Turkestani offenders.
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190
comparison with the coast, coupled with their fear of causing incidents between
officialdom and the locals, moved them to propose leniency for Muslim traffickers in
the territory. The center, encouraged by foreign cooperation with the handover
program, responded with leniency for first offenders, an ambiguous status at best.
The formula of handing over possibly token amounts of opium in exchange for
pardon enabled the dynasty to save face and the foreign merchants to continue their
trafficking activities.
Ilia: Trafficking and Consumption in Xinjiang
By coastal standards, the opium traffic in Xinjiang was slight, amounting to a
total of only around 5500 kgs. (approximately 87 chests, 63 of which were
voluntarily handed over) seized or turned in throughout the period of intensification
of the prohibitions in Xinjiang between late 1839 and 1841.5 2 In contrast, the
foreign, mostly British, coastal opium traders initially handed over what all involved
considered to be a token amount of 1000-odd chests, or approximately 63,000
kilos. Even in comparison with amounts seized in the interior, 5500 kilos in little
over a year, while considerable, could not match the nearly 6200 kilos seized by
officials in Yunnan over a period of less than six months from late 1839 to early
1840.5 4
52See appendix B Opium: Confiscations in Xinjiang, December 1839-January 1841 for a regional
breakdown of official confiscation statistics.
5 3 Hsin-pao Chang, Commissioner Lin, pp. 147-148. During a period o f little more than a year and a
half beginning in early 1837, over 8800 kgs. was seized in Guangdong alone; YPZZ, DG 18/12/8,
1:449-450.
5 4 Gongzhong jinyan, DG 20/4/19.
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191
Despite these disparities, opium in Xinjiang was a problem whose
significance could not be measured in kilograms alone, mainly due to the fact the
territory was an eastward conduit for both foreign opium from Central and South
Asia, as well as for its own domestic product, into China proper. For some areas of
western China, including Xinjiang itself, little, if any, of the local opium came from
the coast. Instead, opium from these areas flowed toward China proper and it was
this fact that gave this regional opium an empire-wide significance.
IHb: Trans-border Traffic
The most serious dimension of this problem in Xinjiang was the influx of the
drug, mostly in crude form, from Central and South Asia. While some of the Central
Asians were subjects of the khanate of Kokand, which controlled the trade routes
into southern Xinjiang via its town of Andijan, the groups identified by En-te-heng-e
as most active in the Southern March traffic were those from Kashmir, Badakhshan
and "India."5 5 The political complexity of what was not yet Russian Central Asia
nor British northern India created a large zone of small independent states to the west
and southwest of Xinjiang whose merchants carried opium directly into Xinjiang.
While it is clear that many of these merchants were responding to a market created
by Euro-American trafficking activities on the China coast, there is little evidence to
55YPZZ, DG 19/12/22, 1:785-789. For Kokandi domination of the trade routes, see Saguchi, "Eastern
Trade," pp. 109-110. In Qing documents, Andijan is used both to refer to the town of that name in the
eastern Ferghana valley and for the khanate of Kokand itself, while "Kokand" could also stand for the
capital of the khanate as well as for the khanate itself; Saguchi, "The Eastern Trade," pp. 67-68.
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192
show that they had any direct connections to these coastal smugglers or to either
imperialist power, both of which are generally held to be behind the Xinjiang traffic.
At this time, Kashmir was under the domination of the Sikh empire in the
Punjab rather than of British India, and Badakhshan was independent of British rule
as well. These facts challenge assumptions regarding the exclusively Anglo-Russian
nature of the opium trade in Xinjiang.5 6 It is possible that "Indian" traders were
actually from the Punjab, which produced opium on its northeastern border with the
Raj of Kulu, itself a producer and exporter of opium southward to India proper.
Furthermore, even if there were traders from British India itself, it is not clear
whether they brought their opium with them, or purchased it in either the Sikh
empire or Kulu, where it was being openly sold in the 1820's.5 7
5 6 In this case, the understandable focus of Chinese nationalist scholarship on the imperialist (i.e.
western) aspects of the opium trade has resulted in over-simplification. "British" opium is said to have
been transmitted via Kashmir, Badakhshan, India as well as Kokand, which also acted as a conduit for
"Russian" opium; Xinjiang Weiwuer Zizhiqu Jiaoyu Weiyuanhui Gaojiao Lishi Jiaocai Bianxie Zu,
ed., Xinjiang difang shi [A local history of Xinjiang] (Urumqi: Xinjiang Daxue Chubanshe, 1992),
pp. 190-191; Xinjiang Shehui Kexue Yuan Lishi Yanjiu Suo, e d Xinjiang jianshi [A concise history
of Xinjiang], 3 vols. (Urumqi: Xinjiang renmin chubanshe, 1980), 2:2-3. The impression given is
that Britain had a deliberate policy of using traders from these states to smuggle opium into Xinjiang
to destabilize it. This position fails to take into account the possibility that traders from these regions
were getting their opium from outside of British India as well as the fact that three of the four regions
from which traders came to Xinjiang were completely independent of British control. While the opium
trade in Xinjiang was certainly stimulated by the largely British coastal traffic, there is no evidence,
from Qing sources or elsewhere, to suggest that it was being orchestrated by the British.
57 William Moorcroft and George Trebeck, British travelers in the Himalayan regions of the
subcontinent during the 1820's, briefly described opium use in the Sikh empire: "There is
considerable demand both for opium and the poppy in the Panjab, as the Sikhs, whose religious creed
forbids the use of tobacco, supply its place by opium and an infusion of poppy heads, to both of which
they are much addicted, the former being used by the more wealthy, the latter by the poorer people;"
William Moorcroft and George Trebeck, Travels in the Himalayan Provinces o f Hindustan and the
Panjab; in Ladakh and Kashmir; in Peshawar, Kabul, Kunduz and Bokhara, 2 vols. (London: John
Murray, 1841; reprint, New Delhi: Asian Educational Services, 1989), 1:141. For information on
Punjabi and Kulu opium production and sale, see Moorcroft and Trebeck, Travels in the Himalayan
Provinces, 1:141, 171. In Kashmir itself, poppy was cultivated for production o f narcotics before
1663, when the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb sought to prohibit the drug's cultivation. In the 1840's,
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193
While there is evidence that Russian traders, as early as 1834, were bringing
in small amounts of opium into northern Xinjiang, the ultimate origins of this
"Russian" opium are also not entirely clear, in part because Russian traders may have
purchased opium from the independent khanate of Bokhara, where it was cultivated
in abundance.5 8 Indeed, most of the opium trade by Russians seems to have been
conducted at the main Sino-Russian trade depot of Kiakhtia in Outer Mongolia, and,
to a lesser extent, in Manchuria rather than in Xinjiang.5 9 Qing sources from the
1830's and 40's reveal a single instance of Russian involvement in the opium traffic.
In September 1840, a report from the Councilor of Tarbagatai Tuan-duo-bu
stated that Ibrahim, a Mullah in his employ had used paid informants to expose a
"large numbers of foreigners" smuggling opium over Xinjiang's northern border.
poppy seeds were common enough to become an acceptable medium of tax remittance; Dewan Chand
Sharma, Kashmir under the Sikhs, (Delhi: Seema Publications, 1983), p. 131.
5 8 Zhongguo Shehui Kexue Yuan Jindai Shi Yanjiu Suo, Shae qin hua shi [A History of Tsarist
Russian Aggression against China], vol. 3, (Beijing: Renmin Chubanshe, 1981), p. 140; Joseph
Fletcher, "Sino-Russian Relations, 1800-62," in The Cambridge History o f China, Volume 10, Late
Ch'ing, 1800-1911, Part I, ed. John K. Fairbank (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), p.
328. For Bokhara, see Mohan Lai, Travels in the Panjab, Afghanistan and Turkistan, to Balk
Bokhara, and Herat; and A Visit to Great Britain and Germany, (1846; reprint, Patiala: Language
Department, Punjab, 1971), p. 132. Even Chinese nationalist scholarship committed to demonstrating
the direct complicity of Russian traders in the opium traffic acknowledges that "Russian" opium before
the 1870's was exclusively produced in Turkey, Iran, Kokand or Bokhara, none o f which was under
Tsarist rule; Zhang Zuoxi, "Shae dui Zhongguo de yapian maoyi" [Tsarist Russia's opium trade in
China], X uexiyu Tansuo 4 (1979): 142.
5 9 Mi Zhenbo, "Lun Yapien Zhanzheng qianhou Shae zhengfu zai Qiaketu diqu jinzhi yapien zousi de
zhengci" [On the Tsarist Russian government's policy of prohibition of opium smuggling in the
Kiakhtia region before and after the Opium War], NankaiXuebao 1 (1996): 47-50. Zhang Zuoxi's
article on the subject almost exclusively concerns Xinjiang opium, but much of his evidence for his
argument for Russian opium in Xinjiang either pertains to the 1850's and later, or is based on the
highly questionable interpretation that the term "barbarians from abroad (wailai y ire n )" employed in
Qing memorials from Xinjiang "primarily refers to Russian traders;" Zhang Zuoxi, "Shae dui
Zhongguo de yapien maoyi," 141.
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194
Only a few cases, however, seem to have arisen from these tips, the largest of which
was the seizure of two foreign smugglers, along with 425 kilos of opium. One of
them, Ai-lin-bai, was a 43 year-old Muslim trader from the Kokandi city of
Tashkent, the khanate's main trade depot with Russia. His partner, Ba-te-lin, hearing
that "opium was very profitable" in China, obtained 378 kilos and persuaded Ai-lin-
bai to smuggle it into Xinjiang.6 0
Along the way, Ai-lin-bai hooked up with Nasir, a 58 year-old Muslim from
Semipalitinsk in the Tsarist Empire, who had been hired by a Russian to smuggle
some opium, presumably the other 47 kilos, into Xinjiang. Sharing common
interests, the pair decided to proceed together. Warned by Kazakhs of the intensity
of the opium investigations then going on in the territory, they passed themselves off
as textile merchants in order to hire local bearers to assist them. The two planned to
hide their opium until an opportune moment arose when they could move it across
the patrol road that lay between them and their destination. Before they could
conceal the contraband in a stand of reeds near a lake, they were apprehended by a
Qing patrol.6 1
Tuan-duo-bu found both men to have knowingly violated the prohibitions
and, as they were acting on behalf of others, judged them as accessories to "running
an opium brokerage." Tuan-duo-bu, however, citing Yi-shan's adaptations to the
6 0 Junji minzu, #1030-#1034, DG 20/8/24.
6IJunji minzu, #1030-#1034, DG 20/8/24.
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195
New Regulations regarding first offenders trafficking in small amounts during the
grace period, recommended that the offenders spend two months in the cangue and
then be permanently expelled. They were to carry news of the imperial prohibitions
back to their respective territories, which Tuan-duo-bu considered "too distant" to
have received word of them.6 2
In December, an imperial rescript affirming this leniency noted 425 kilos was
hardly a small amount, but permitted reduction of sentence because it was a first
offense occurring during the grace period and because the offenders were ignorant of
the law. The rescript made no mention of the fact that both men knew of the
prohibitions before they entered Qing territory.6 3 There is no further record of the
case, and the sentence was presumably carried out.
This case is also unique in another respect for while it does show that subjects
of the Tsar were involved in opium smuggling into northern Xinjiang, it also reveals
that Kokandi merchants were active as well. The Qing informed both these states
through diplomatic channels of its opium prohibitions. Russia seems to have
complied, at least initially, in order to prevent the Qing court's suspension of its more
valuable trade in Chinese cotton and tea at Kiaktha, where opium had been formally
banned as early as 1800 by Russian trade regulations. The Qing expressed
6 2 Junji minzu, #1030-#1034, DG 20/8/24.
6 3 WJD, DG 20/12/5, pp. 53-56. The memorial in which the vermilion rescript was quoted was drafted
by imperial clansman and Director o f the Board of Personnel Yi-jing (7-1853), who was writing in
response to Tuan-duo-bu's request for rewards for the arresting officials. Ibrahim was also rewarded,
having initially discovered the smugglers, acted as translator, and led the arresting officers to the
culprits.
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196
satisfaction with Tsar Nicolas I's ukase of April 12, 1841, which announced formal
compliance with the prohibitions, despite the fact that neither the Russians, nor the
Chinese, seem to have ever caught any Russian smugglers in the area. While this
ukase was subsequently reiterated several times, Russians continued to smuggle.6 4
Kokand's reaction to official notification of the imperial prohibitions was
strikingly similar to that of Russia, but, in contrast, resulted in actual handovers of
considerable amounts of opium by under Kokandi jurisdiction. Implementation of
the prohibitions throughout Xinjiang beginning in late 1839 was characterized by a
number of these handovers by both foreign and domestic participants in the traffic.
Kokandi officials, along with Qing hakim begs, were important intermediaries in
these activities.
Operations in Khotan were typical. In January 1840, Superintendent Da-
ming-a reported on a handover involving the resident Kokandi Superintendent of
Trade (Hudaida), who, as a result of the khanate's 1835 agreement with the Qing,
had consular jurisdiction over all foreign merchants in Khotan. This meant that
6 4 Mi Zhenbo, "Shae zhengfu zai qiaketu," 48-50; G.N. Peskova, "The Opium Trade in China and
Russia's Position," in Chapters from the History o f Russo-Chinese Relations, 17 th - 19th Centuries,
ed. S.L. Tikhvinsky, trans. Vic Schneierson (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1985), pp. 291-295; QSL,
DG 353:29b-30a. Mi's article is based on an examination of Russian archival sources, many of which
were also cited by Peskova, and both concur, if not for the same reasons, that the Tsarist empire,
before the 1870's made a genuine effort to comply with Qing prohibitions. Mi's article is a notable
change from previous Chinese scholarship, exemplified by Zhang Zuoxi's 1979 article, which saw
Russian compliance as a cynical ploy and made little distinction between Russian policy in practice
before and after 1870; Zhang Zuoxi, "Shae dui Zhongguo de yapien maoyi," 141-142. It should be
noted that Zhang does provide evidence, ignored by Mi, of fairly extensive Russian trafficking from
the 1850's (142). Mi does, however, show evidence that the Tsar felt that Russian ability to enforce
the prohibitions on its own subjects was limited (48).
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197
Kokandi merchants resident in Khotan would receive special treatment when being
investigated for opium trafficking.6 5
Handovers by these "Andijani" merchants, were conducted by
Superintendent Sha-mu-sha-mai-ma-te and witnessed not by Qing military officials,
who were processing thirteen cases of opium paraphernalia handovers by Han
merchants at the time, but by Ke-mai-ma-te, hakim beg of Khotan. This group of
foreign merchants handed over 20.5 kilos of opium. Da-ming-a duly made what was
to become the standard official formula in such matters: "As for the Andijani
Superintendent of Trade . . . he is an ignorant foreigner who was not immediately
aware of the prohibitions. When informed of them by the hakim beg, he at once
ordered the foreign Muslims to all agree to hand over the opium they had in storage,
so he is quite submissive." Da-ming-a successfully requested that the Muslim traders
be spared further punishment.6 6
At least one other handover operation was conducted in Khotan in May 1840.
This time it involved four Kokandi merchants and a total of 181.5 kilos of crude
opium but was otherwise identical to the previous handover.6 7 The Kokandis' claim
6 5 YPZZ, DG 19/12/13, 1:772-774. The precise nature of Kokandi jurisdiction over "Indian,"
Kashmiri and Badakhshani merchants remains unclear as the Qing court formally rejected a bid by the
khanate to levy trade taxes on these groups in 1836. However, Kokandi representatives seem to have
gone ahead with the plan anyway without any actual opposition from the court; Pan Zhiping, Zhongya
Haohanguo yu Qingdai Xinjiang, pp. 147-148. Evidence from handovers at Yarkand, where the
Kokandi Superintendent seems to have rounded up both Kashmiris and Badakhshanis, demonstrates a
high degree of control over foreign merchants by Kokandi officials in the Southern March in practice;
Junjijinyan, #3104-3108, DG 19/11/18.
“ KPZZ, DG 20/1/29, 2:22.
6 7 Junji minzu, #1394-1395, DG 20/4/20.
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198
of ignorance was accepted by the court as sufficient grounds for clemency, despite
the fact that Kokand had formally acknowledged that it had notified its subjects of
the prohibitions on January 23, 1840.6 8
Kashgar was a major trade center of the Southern March and possessed a
large population of foreign merchants, headed by another Kokandi Superintendent,
who was the highest official of the khanate in Xinjiang and, as such, conveyed
diplomatic correspondence such as notification of the prohibitions, between the Qing
and Kokand. The hakim beg of Kashgar, Zuo-huo-zi-dun, was sent to this
Superintendent, Nu-lu-ba, to make inquiries similar to those made in Khotan. Zuo-
huo-zi-dun relayed the following response of Nu-lu-ba to Fu-xing-a, Kashgar's Unit
Commander who had initially dispatched the beg to investigate the foreign
merchants.
We have heard that the investigation of opium cases is intense and are
extremely afraid. We have immediately sent a communication to the
Beg of Kokand and received a response as follows: 'Since receiving
notice of the Celestial Court's prohibition of opium, all tribes under
Andijan's control have been notified by the Beg of Kokand that from
now on, no one is permitted to smuggle opium through the
checkpoints.6 9
68TPZZ, DG 20/5/20,2:137.
69YPZZ, DG 19/12/19, 1:780-781. This document also mentions seven cases of Han trafficking and 39
of voluntary turnovers, totaling around 48 kg. The "Beg of Kokand" referred to herein was Khan
Muhamad Ali, who ruled from 1822 to 1842. It is probable that Nu-lu-ba also used this title and the
term "beg" was substituted by Chinese translators. Such terminology was a very sensitive issue;
Kokandi missions to Beijing had been suspended in 1809-1810 because of Khan Alim's address of the
Jiaqing Emperor as "friend" in an official communication. The Khan's emissary subsequently excused
the faux pas on the grounds that "our Beg [i.e. Khan Alim] is young and ignorant of the ceremonial
protocol of the Celestial Court;" Pan Zhiping, Zhongya Haohanguo yu Qingdai Xinjiang, pp. pp. 81-
82.
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199
Nu-lu-ba conducted an investigation of his own and turned over about 85.5
kilos of crude opium to Qing officials in Kashgar. He and his merchants were
personally warned by Fu-xing-a to cease trafficking activities and to notify their
compatriots back home of the imperial prohibitions. Then, as related by Fu-xing-a,
"the foreigners all listened and kowtowed, saying that they were grateful," and
promised never to smuggle in opium again. Fu-xing-a praised this "submissive"
attitude of the Superintendent and assured the court that, in the event of subsequent
70
violations, cases could be handled in a similar manner.
Genuine interstate diplomacy was involved in enforcing the prohibitions in
Xinjiang, a situation that was unique in the Qing empire. Unlike the problems
encountered by British traders and officials in Guangzhou, there were no disputes at
Kashgar over the nature of Kokandi representation or mode of interstate
11
communications, which were conducted ostensibly along Qing lines.
Consequently, there was no armed confrontation in Xinjiang in the late 1830's over
the issue of the prohibitions. However, as noted previously, Kokand had already
extracted a number of concessions that gave it a considerable degree of autonomy in
the region. Thus, a war had already been fought to establish an order in the Southern
10YPZZ, DG 19/12/19, 1:780-781.
’ ‘Disagreement over protocol, however, was not the only obstacle. Lin Zexu, for example, decided
not to send a formal communication to the British crown from the Qing emperor because there were
no official British ambassadors in Guangzhou who could convey the message properly. He, instead,
decided to address Queen Victoria in his own capacity and in conjunction with the Govenor-General
of Liangguang and the Governor of Guangdong; Chang, Commissioner Lin, p. 134.
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200
March that both sides could accept, and this order was instrumental in preventing an
outbreak of hostilities over opium.
These handovers, while not unique to Xinjiang, constituted the specific
function of this post-1830 order in the context of the opium prohibitions. It should be
noted, however, that this did not stop the opium traffic, partly because it was driven
by local cultivation and by consumption further east in China proper. Of equal
importance for comparative purposes is the fact that this order was not imposed by
militarily superior Westerners on a backward Chinese empire, but by a militarily
inferior Muslim khanate on a practical Chinese state sensitive to the pressures for
compromise arising from its diversity and expanse.
In the March 1840 imperial decree response to Fu-xing-a, the court declared
itself satisfied with the Kokandi handover in Kashgar of eighty-five kilos of crude
opium. Nevertheless, the decree also charged that
all tribes of foreigners beyond the checkpoints be notified that
henceforward they will not be permitted to bring the slightest amount
of opium through the checkpoints. If there are any violations, then
they will be severely punished in order to stop up the source of opium
and to secure the borders.7 2
Despite the tone of this warning, no foreign Muslim traders in Xinjiang were ever
punished with anything worse than a public canguing and expulsion from Qing
territory, and there were only a few cases of punishment even this severe. In general,
foreign traders were merely required to turn over their opium to authorities whenever
n YPZZ, DG 20/1/29, 2:22.
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201
they were caught and let off ostensibly because of their ignorance and the difficulties
of making Qing prohibitions known in foreign lands.
Arrests of foreign merchants actually took place in Aksu, where in December
1839, Superintendent Bi-chang (7-1854) reported on five trafficking cases by Aksu's
hakim beg Ahmad. These cases involved Andijani, Kashmiri and local East
Turkestani traders, who were caught with a total of around fifty-six kilos of crude
opium and paste. The local Muslims, who were Qing subjects, had their opium
immediately destroyed and were put into the cangue. That of the foreign merchants
was impounded and they were remanded to Yarkand, administrative center of the
Southern March, for trial.7 3 While their ultimate fate is unclear, evidence from
Yarkand regarding twenty-one Kashmiri, Kokandi and Indian traffickers suggests
that they were let off after their opium was confiscated.7 4
After June 1840, Yarkand became the processing center for all foreign opium
handed over or seized in the Southern March, while Ili functioned in a similar
75
fashion in the north. Even before this, however, there were a large number of
foreign traffickers discovered by Councilor En-te-heng-e, who reported on the
ensuing handover operations in December 1839, approximately a month before he
submitted his "Regulations for the Prohibition of Opium in the Towns of Xinjiang's
7 3Junji jinyan, #3109-3112, DG 19/11/24.
7 4 Junjijinyan #3104-3108, DG 19/11/18; Junji minzu, unnumbered dapien copy, DG 19/11/18. Had
these foreign merchants received serious punishment, a decree to that effect would probably have been
issued.
15YPZZ, DG 20/520,2:137.
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202
Southern March." Acting on a tip from the Hakim Beg of Yarkand Ismail, En-te-
heng-e had the town's resident Kokandi Superintendent of Trade bring the Kashmiri,
Badakhshani and Indian suspects before him for investigation.7 6
Aside from the usual admissions of guilt, protestations of ignorance and pleas
for mercy, the traffickers collectively stated that they had never brought opium to
Yarkand until "last year" (1838), when Han merchants sought to purchase their drugs
for resale in China proper, where the price was high. Bringing in opium over the
frontier was easily done because there were no inspections at the checkpoints.
Further inquiry regarding the identity of these Han merchants was fruitless as the
foreign traders explained that "we do not ask after names and so are unable to
provide any." They did say that opium "smoking" (xishi)" was common in both
Kashmir and India and that their opium had been produced in the Ura-Tube (Yi-bo-
te) region of the Bukhara khanate, which lay on Kokand's western border.7 7 In all,
twenty-one traders handed over around 2499 kilos of opium, almost 2000 kilos of
which came from nine Kashmiri traders. Eleven Indian traders turned in
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approximately 453 kilos and a lone Badakhshani handed in nearly fifty-four kilos.
7 6 Junji jinyan, #3104-3108, DG 19/11/18.
7 7 Junji jinyan, #3104-3108, DG 19/11/18. I have not been able to conclusively confirm that "Yi-bo-te"
is the Chinese transliteration of Ura-Tube and have not been able to find any other Chinese reference
to it. I have based my speculation on Ura-Tube's geographical proximity to Kokand and a vague
linguistic similarity between the region's Turkic and Chinese pronunciations; Yuri Bregel, ed.,
"Central Asia: First Half o f the 19th Century," in Papers on Inner Asia Special Supplement:
Historical maps o f Central Asia, 9th-19 centuries A.D., (Bloomington: Indiana University Research
Institute for Inner Asian Studies, 2000), unpaginated map.
7 8 Junji jinyan, #3104-3108, DG 19/11/18.
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203
While he believed the transborder traffic had started much earlier with the
suspension of checkpoint inspections in 1832, En-te-heng-e did accept the foreign
merchants' testimony that the traffic was being driven by Han merchants anxious to
take advantage of the high prices in China proper. Thus, said En-te-heng-e, "because
the root of the problem has not been eradicated in China proper, its sprouts are now
appearing in the border zones." Despite his doubts about the merchants' account of
their own role in the traffic, En-te-heng-e requested and received an imperial pardon
for all 21 offenders.7 9
Within a month, twenty-two more merchants, including five Kashmiris, four
Badakhshanis, four Indians, one Kokandi, and several local and foreign merchants of
indeterminate origin handed in another 1204 kilos of opium, the bulk of it again
coming from the Kashmiris and the Indians. The resulting total of 3793 kgs.
constituted the bulk of the opium seized in Xinjiang during the prohibition period
• 80
and one of the largest single handover operations on record for the Qing interior.
This group's excuse was that they primarily dealt with Muslim settlements in
the surrounding countryside where news of the prohibitions penetrated only slowly.
En-te-heng-e, who had sent begs in to investigate these areas in the wake of his initial
investigations, admitted that the sheer extent of Yarkand's administrative region and
the scattered nature of its rural settlements made it impossible to keep track of
7 9 Junji minzu, unnumbered dapien copy, DG 19/11/18; YPZZ, DG 19/12/23, 1:792-793.
8 0 Junji minzu, #1391-1393, DG 20/12/29. Note this is the date of the document's receipt by the court;
it was probably drafted a month earlier. This report was actually an enclosure or addenda to a
memorial that I have not been able to locate and, consequently, does not record its drafting date.
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204
itinerant opium smugglers, who, he believed, were making contact with Han
0 1
merchants in these isolated East Turkestani villages. En-te-heng-e again requested,
and received, amnesty for these merchants based on their ignorance of the
prohibitions.8 2
Soon after, in March 1840, over fifty merchants, along with the Kokandi
Superintendent of Yarkand were summoned by En-te-heng-e to be made formally
aware o f the prohibitions and to sign pledges guaranteeing they would not engage in
the opium traffic. They also assured him that they had sent notification of the
prohibitions back to their home territories. After collecting the written pledges and
warning them that subsequent violations would bring total confiscation of their wares
and permanent expulsion from China, En-te-heng-e led them to witness the
destruction of all the opium that they had turned over, an affair that lasted three
days.8 3
Although all these handovers seem to have proceeded very smoothly, there
were subsequent complaints from Khan Muhammad Ali of Kokand on behalf of his
merchant subjects who had suffered considerable financial loss as a result of these
operations. A Chinese translation of the Khan's protest, delivered by an emissary to
Yarkand, was relayed to the court by the new Councilor of Yarkand, Tu-ming-e, in
8 1 Junji minzu, #1391-1393, DG 20/12/29.
8 2 Junji minzu, #1391-1393, DG 20/12/29; YPZZ, DG 20/1/29, 2:23.
8 3 Junji jinyan, #3272-3273, DG 20/2/19. The memorial provides no specifics on how the opium was
destroyed, but judging from similar operations elsewhere, it was probably mixed with "wood oil"
(itongyou) and burned.
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205
December 1841. The Khan was inquiring into a matter brought to his attention by
traders, from whom a large amount of opium had been confiscated in Yarkand
without compensation.
Tu-ming-e replied that opium was contraband in the Qing empire, but that he
had interceded with the emperor on behalf of "you little Muslims of Andijan" to
permit the traders to avoid punishment in exchange for handing over their opium. He
further noted that the Kokandi Superintendent had been told to relay the prohibitions
to Kokand two years previously and that their content should have been clear to all
after such a long time. With this reply and some gifts of silver and silk, the Kokandi
emissary was sent back to his master, and there is no further record of the incident.
This document confirms that handover operations were actually carried out
by officials in Yarkand and that they were fairly extensive. It also shows that
Kokandi merchants mounted a certain degree of resistance to the prohibitions in a
way similar to "western" diplomatic practice. The Qing citation of precedent in its
response is also consistent with this practice and nowhere throughout this exchange
is there any indication of the diplomatic ineptitude that some western scholars find
characteristic of Qing relations with the Euro-American coastal traders.
While the cross-border opium traffic constituted one of the more serious
dimensions of the opium problem in Xinjiang, it was ultimately being driven by
domestic traffickers within the Qing empire who were primarily responsible for the
8 4 Junji minzu, #1396-1402, DG 21/10/29. The Kokandi original is extant.
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206
transmission of the drug both between Xinjiang's various marches and to points
eastward into China proper. Consequently, the state also devoted considerable effort
to the apprehension of domestic traffickers in Xinjiang.
IIIc: Internal Traffic
Subjects of the Qing empire were also eligible for amnesty under the
handover provisions, and a number of them turned over their opium and
paraphernalia during the initial sweep by local officials in Xinjiang. In Kashgar, for
example, thirty-nine Chinese handed over a total of thirty-three kilos of crude opium
and opium paste, as well as thirty-nine pipes.8 5 Despite the fact that Han and
Muslims participated in the handovers under the supervision of Qing military
officials and begs respectively, the process and results of these activities were
basically similar.
While it is generally difficult to determine the overall efficacy of the
handover operations in controlling the opium traffic among all these groups, there is
one case involving a Han handover that demonstrates how this amnesty could be
used to cover trafficking activities rather than curtail them. During the handover
operations in Khotan, which involved both foreign and domestic traffickers,
Superintendent Da-ming-a reported thirteen Han commoners had already come
iSYPZZ, DG 19/12/19, 1:780. Ethnic subdivisions among "Qing subjects" are not clearly
distinguished. It is, for example, unclear whether or not the term "resident ['Han'] subjects (liuyu
minren)" includes Chinese Muslims. I have generally taken the term "minren" to refer primarily to
Han people who are not Muslim resident in Xinjiang. This is based both on the occasional reference
to the personal names o f individual offenders and on the fact that the documents provide adequate
evidence that cases concerning Muslim foreigners and East Turkestanis were handled by begs and
Kokandi superintendents, while those concerning Han were handled by Qing military officials.
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207
forward and turned in opium paraphernalia (yanju). In addition, three other Han
offenders, who had also turned over paraphernalia, turned in a total of one kilo of
opium after hearing that a further search would be made of their residences. This
belated handover prevented them from receiving a full amnesty, but did permit them
to receive a reduction in punishment.8 6
During the investigation of the Rong Jixiang case, largest trafficking ring ever
discovered in Xinjiang, it was subsequently found that He Tianzhong, one of these
three offenders, had been a trafficker and user. The ring began operations no later
than m id-1837, which is around the time He Tianzhong opened a branch shop for the
partnership in Khotan, where he turned in just under half a kilo of opium to Da-
ming-a late in 1839. Since he had been trafficking in tens of kilos up to this point,
this amount was not a great blow to him and certainly helped to throw off suspicion.
When this ring was broken in early 1840, He was implicated, re-tried and sentenced
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to penal servitude.
S6YPZZ, DG 19/12/13, 1:772-774. The actual sentence of the three offenders who initially withheld
their opium is not explicitly stated in Da-ming-a's memorial. However, one o f the three, He
Tianzhong, was subsequently involved with another case and his previous sentence was discussed;
Gongzhong jinyan, DG 20/2/19. Although Da-ming-a also does not specify exactly what crime they
were guilty o f , all three were probably punished under the statute concerning opium purchase without
resale or consumption of the drug, which carried a penalty o f " one hundred (actually forty) blows of
the heavy bamboo and three years' exile; Yapian Zhcmzheng, p. 566. The method of reducing this
sentence was a standard reduction in Qing law and not a special provision of the New Regulations;
HDSL, 739:7a.
8 7 Gongzhong jinyan, DG 20/2/19. This document actually deals with five separate cases in great
detail and will be dealt with more extensively below. He Tianzhong was a major participant in the
"Chen Case."
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208
He Tianzhong's brushes with opium prohibition law in Xinjiang permit a rare
opportunity to evaluate the efficacy o f the handover policy. Clearly, He used this
policy to conceal his much larger trafficking activities. Indeed, because the amount
he turned in was so small, it probably gave authorities the impression that the opium
was either for personal use or for very petty transactions. This amount, whose
plausibility was reinforced by similar amounts turned over by the other two
offenders, was a small price to pay for being allowed to continue his trafficking
activities. It also raises the possibility that others took advantage of the handover
88
policy in a similar manner.
Han traffickers played the major role in the purchase of opium in both the
Northern and Southern Marches for transshipment eastwards to Urumqi and beyond
to China proper. This is demonstrated by a series of cases handled by Councilor En-
te-heng-e that arose in the wake of his initial investigations in Yarkand. In a long
memorial issued in April 1840, En-te-heng-e reported on five separate smuggling and
consumption cases involving over one hundred offenders, most of whom were Han.
The ultimate suppliers, however, proved to be local Muslim traders and foreign
Muslim merchants.8 9
The first case proved that the opium smuggling network extended across
Xinjiang and involved both Muslims and Han. Ma Degui, a commoner merchant
8 8 The myriad potential abuses of the handover policy had been anticipated in April 1839 by
Scrutinizing Censor for Works Huang Lezhi; Junji jinyan, #2454-#2456, DG 19/3/3.
8 9 Gongzhong jinyan, DG 20/2/19.
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209
from Urumqi, ran a shop in Yarkand that did business with a local resident merchant,
Feng Yuxiu, a native of Shaanxi Province. In March of 1837, the two formed a
conspiracy to traffic in opium. Feng, who was fluent in Uighur, connected Ma to a
Badakhshani merchant in Yarkand who sold him thirty-eight of opium while Feng
bought 200 kilos more from Muslim quarter of Yarkand. The two planned to
transport the entire lot to Urumqi for sale.9 0
It was decided that Feng's brother, Feng Yucai, would help Ma take the
Yarkand opium to Urumqi. It was packed into three chests and Ma set out for the
Southern March town o f Aksu, about 300 kilometers northeast of Yarkand to hook
up with Feng Yucai. On the way, Ma lost almost twenty-seven kilos when some of
the opium fell into a river he was crossing. He finally reached Aksu, met up with
Feng and the two sold about seventy-two kilos of the opium there. Ma continued on
to Urumqi while Feng made a side trip to Turfan, where he unloaded another thirty
kilos. Feng then rejoined Ma in Urumqi where they then sold almost all the
remaining 110 kilos. The purchasers in all these transactions were Han people who
bought the opium in substantial lots largely for purposes of resale rather than
personal consumption.9 1
Ma Degui and his accomplices were not immediately sentenced because it
was discovered that one of them, Feng Yuxiu, was part of a larger trafficking ring run
9 0 Gongzhong jinyan, DG 20/2/19.
9Mongzhong jinyan, DG 20/2/19.
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210
by Rong Jixiang, who figured in several other cases, most notably that involving
officials of Barchuk's military agricultural colony, and was the most important
trafficker caught in Xinjiang during this period. This case, along with one other
discussed by En-te-heng-e, involved official trafficking and will be dealt with below.
The remaining two cases recounted in En-te-heng-e's memorial involve trafficking
between foreign Muslim traders and Han imperial subjects and merit closer
examination.
Late in 1837, members of the Chen family, who were originally from Gansu,
were running a general store and a wine shop in Yarkand. They also had a shop in
partnership with He Tianzhong in Turfan, where one of the Chen's, Chen Wentai,
had settler status. By this time, He had gone to Khotan to open a trading house.
Soon after, Chen Liangshi, the grandfather of Chen Wentai, decided it would be
profitable to get into the opium business and small amounts of the crude product
were soon being decocted in the wineshop just outside Yarkand's town walls. From
this point until late 1838, Chen Liangshi managed to sell at least 151 kilos of opium,
which he purchased for about nineteen silver taels per kilo, for about twenty-three
Q9
taels per kilo, a profit of over 20%.
9 2 Gongzhong jinyan, DG 20/2/19. Determining the conversion rate between Qing imperial silver taels
and the local copper currency of Altishahr, the pul, is an inexact science at best, especially because the
rate seems to have differed from town to town and the statistics are incomplete. Unfortunately, some
figure is necessary as the few documents on the Xinjiang opium traffic that mention prices do so in
pul. I have converted it at a rate o f 200 pulltael based on a loose interpretation of James Millward's
figures; Millward, Beyond the Pass, pp. 68-75.
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Chen Liangshi was buying his opium from a number of Inner Asians, some of
whom were from Kashmir and some of whom were local East Turkestani residents of
Yarkand. It seems that the latter were also getting much of their opium from across
the border.9 3 At any rate, the putative system of segregation intended to keep Qing
garrisons and settlers separate from Inner Asians does not seem to have prevented a
commerce in opium from springing up between the two groups.
Chen Liangshi died of an illness late in 1838 and his grandson Chen Wentai
took over the legal and illegal family businesses, continuing his purchases from
Muslim traders and made around 2900 taels from his transactions. He also expanded
operations to include sales of paste.9 4
Meanwhile the Chens' partner He Tianzhong, a participant in the handover
operations in Khotan in January 1840, was beginning his opium smuggling
operations to Khotan, where he was able to transport and sell seventeen kilos at his
wine shop before he was caught. At least five others, including a Manchu clerk,
purchased this opium for consumption or resale. With the exposure of the Chen's
operations, He was extradited from Khotan and resentenced to penal servitude
instead of the two-and-a-half years of exile he would have received. Chen Wentai
got a similar sentence. Those foreign traders involved in the case who could be
located were spared punishment as per standard procedure while the locals were
9 3 Gongzhong jinyan, DG 20/2/19.
9 4 Gongzhong jinyan, DG 20/2/19.
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212
subjected to a three-month stint in the public cangue and exile to a distant hamlet
monitored by a local beg 9 5
Such settlements, which were inhabited exclusively by East Turkestanis, were
difficult for authorities to control because of their isolation and because the dynasty
lacked the requisite Muslim manpower. Nevertheless, one case from a Muslim
settlement, arising from handover operations in Yarkand, did surface and revealed
that local villagers were acting as intermediaries between foreign merchants and Han
purchasers.
During handover operations in Yarkand in December of 1839, two of the
foreign participants, the Indian Da-nu and Yi-si-li, whose ethnicity is unrecorded,
remembered that they had deposited fifty-two kilos of opium with Yunus, an
inhabitant of the nearby village of Karghalik, who was to act as their retail agent.9 6
When Yunus was arrested he had sold opium, directly or via intermediaries, to at
least nineteen Han purchasers, several of whom were said to have transported it to
various Eastern March locales. Yunus spent three months in a public cangue in the
Muslim quarter of Yarkand and was then exiled to another "distant" Muslim
settlement and subjected to hard labor. Da-nu and Yi-si-li were fully pardoned, along
with around fifty of their compatriots, for voluntarily turning over their opium. Most
9 5 Gongzhong jinyan, DG 20/2/19.
96Gongzhong jinyan, DG 20/2/19. Karghalik lay about 110 kilometers to the southeast of Yarkand.
The town's name was transliterated into Chinese in several ways, but despite the unusual transliteration
given in En-te-heng-e's report (Ha-ha-li-ke instead of Ha-la-ga-li-ke or Ha-er-ga-li-ke ), the incident
clearly took place in Karghalik.
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213
of the Han purchasers received some form of banishment for trafficking in small
97
amounts.
The cases involving Ma Degui, Chen Liangshi and Yunus all demonstrate
that there was an extensive traffic in opium being conducted via a network of Han,
East Tukestani and foreign traders that connected the Eastern March with the foreign
lands to the west. Moreover, Han merchants were using their legitimate business to
purchase, process and sell opium, as well as employing the drug as a kind of
currency, something which Yunus also did. In the process of hauling their opium
towards China proper, these merchants broke the opium down into smaller and
smaller lots which were further subdivided and resold until they eventually trickled
down to individual users who were buying well under a kilo. Consequently, Yunus'
fairly small amount of opium resulted in an administratively inconvenient caseload
of nineteen separate opium offenders.
Furthermore, these merchants' perambulations spread opium throughout the
towns of the Southern March that were located far from Xinjiang's foreign frontiers
with the ultimate destination of China proper. A memorial written in m id-1840 by
Censor Zhang Bingde provides a rough map of Xinjiang opium's trajectory east of
the territory:
I have heard of a kind of opium from Xinjiang called "qiangtu,"
smaller in size than that which comes from Guangdong. Its use in
paste-making and smoking is no different from that of [Guangdong's]
opium. I, a native of Shanxi, have also heard that when people from
Xinzhou in Shanxi go to Xinjiang to trade, each smuggles back
9 7 Gongzhong jinyan, DG 20/2/19.
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214
qiangtu. By way of various passes, such as Jiayu and Hami, it secretly
enters the interior and is sold in Shaanxi, Henan, etc. It is, however,
especially plentiful in Shanxi.9 8
According to Zhang, Xinjiang was not only producing its own special brand
of opium, but was exporting it to other provinces much farther east. This eastward
transmission of opium was unquestionably stimulated by the drug's commodification
on the east coast by the British, but not much, if any, qiangtu was an import from
British India. The opium problem in Xinjiang, however, did not simply indicate that
there was an alternate, minor source o f foreign opium. In the wake of initial
investigations in the region, it soon became clear that the problem had literally taken
root within the confines of the Qing empire and adding a rural, domestic dimension
to what the central government had decided to treat as a primarily urban problem of
Han collusion with foreign smugglers.
IV: Local Cultivation in Xinjiang
Some of the complications caused by dependency on the beg system,
and by conditions in the Southern March in general, are revealed by the first case of
local cultivation discovered in Xinjiang, which occurred in the vicinity of Kiirla in
the Kara-shahr region of the Southern March.
The case provides a detailed description of how cultivators operated in
Xinjiang and demonstrates that high market prices for opium stimulated cultivation
by local Han merchants, who intended to transport their crop eastward into China
9iYPZZ, DG 20/4/10, 2:96.
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215
proper. Gu Mengxun, a native of Shaanxi Province, ran a shop in Kiirla in
partnership with Zhao Deshou. During April of 1839, business was bad, and Gu told
Zhao that since the price of opium was currently high, they should find a location to
plant poppies and decoct the paste to make into opium. Zhao agreed and the two
went prospecting for a likely spot in the wilds east of K iirla."
Gu, however, was not the only Han merchant looking for an opium plot that
day. While out looking around, Gu and Zhao ran into two acquaintances, Xie Zhi
and Zhong Yun, who were engaged in a similar search. The four decided to form a
partnership and find a plot together. The four then stumbled on a fifth agricultural
entrepreneur, Ren Ju, approximately fifty kilometers east of Kiirla as he was sowing
his plot, and the partnership acquired a fifth shareholder.1 0 0
A month later, the partnership had cleared an acre or so of wilderness, planted
their poppy, built some sheds, and were living on their new fields with Guo Fengde,
who had been hired at 500 strings of cash per month, to cook for them while they
tended their crop. The poppies were ready to be scraped for their juice within three
months, but this had not yet been done when Zhao, on a supply run back to Kiirla,
was arrested by the Hakim Beg of Kara-shahr Tuo-hu-ta and his patrol, who were out
searching for poppy cultivators. Zhao then led the authorities to the wilderness
hideout of his partners, who were all arrested along with the cook Guo and taken
"Junji jinyan, #'2952-#2957, DG 19/8/24.
1 0 0 Ibid.
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216
back to Kiirla, where they would be held until remanded to the regional
administrative center of Kara-shahr for trial. As the five men arrived under guard in
Kiirla and were passing through crowds of onlookers in the Muslim section of town,
they were approached by two associates, Li Yun and Old Man Liu, who got word to
the prisoners of a plan to free them.1 0 1
Li and Liu got nine of their associates together and successfully ambushed the
escort party on its way to Kara-shahr. The men rushed the transport carts shouting
and brandishing clubs, scattering the Muslim escorts, and freeing Gu and his five
compatriots. Gu and Zhao were recaptured by the beg and Guo turned himself in; in
addition, Li Yun and his men were soon caught by the sergeant in command of the
Kiirla outpost, Zhao Zhongming, but the rest escaped and seem never to have been
caught.1 0 2
At the trial in Kara-shahr, Gu, as chief conspirator, was sentenced
to military life exile to "an insalubrious region of the furthest frontier," while Zhao,
as an accomplice, received the lighter, but still quite serious, punishment of regular
1 r n
life exile at a distance of 1500 kilometers from his native place. These
1 0 1 lbid.
1 0 2 Ibid.
1 0 3 Ibid. It should be noted that neither of the sentences of exile technically required the offenders to be
banished to Xinjiang, which was the destination for criminals sentenced to banishment to the frontier,
the most severe of the three major degrees of exile. Gu's sentence, the highest sub-category of the
second major degree of exile (military), would have technically sent him to Yunnan, Guizhou,
Guangdong or Guangxi, while Zhao's sentence, being the highest sub-category of the lowest major
degree of exile (regular), would have probably sent him to another locale in China proper as
determined by the San liu dao li biao [Table o f destinations fo r exiles]. This administrative handbook
listed exile destinations for each of the three degrees of regular life exile for offenders o f every
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217
punishments, however, were not the only ones meted out. While an imperial decree
issued in October 1839 excused Hakim Beg Tuo-hu-ta, ostensibly because "his
accomplishments balanced out his errors," Sergeant Zhao Zhongming was held
responsible for failing both to have sent troops to escort the prisoners back to Kara-
shahr, and to have detected the cultivators' operation in the first place.1 0 4
The tone of the decree, which also confirmed all criminal sentences, clearly
shows that the court had not suspected opium was being cultivated in Xinjiang:
"[t]he flowing poison of opium daily grows more extreme, reaching into distant
places like Xinjiang and spreading its pollution even more. It is truly detestable!
Now, to have discovered in addition that there is poppy planting is even more
surprising." The Daoguang Emperor brushed on his own personal comments on this
case to literally underline precisely who was responsible for this situation: "[ajll
these things are a result of the invariably perfunctory manner o f the generals and
ministers of the various towns, who are unwilling to make conscientious
investigations."1 0 5
Despite this categorical assertion, the authors of the decree were convinced
that both official laxity and Xinjiang's vast, isolated terrain were the two interrelated
conditions that made it an ideal place for the cultivation and smuggling of opium:
prefecture in the empire. My analysis is based on information provided in Waley-Cohen, Exile, pp.
53-56.
m YPZZ,VG 19/9/22, 1:715-716.
1 0 5 Ibid.
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218
"incidents arise as a consequence of the fact that these towns are located amidst
desolate wilderness and wasteland. If investigations are not thorough, then it is
impossible to avoid incidents of disloyal subjects aiming for illicit profit, clandestine
poppy planting."1 0 6 Xinjiang's physical expanse was precisely what was held to
encourage official apathy, which itself was enhanced by an excessive reliance on
begs. Thus, it was considered even more imperative for local officials to be as
aggressive as possible. The decree's expressions of anger and astonishment at the
existence of both opium smuggling and cultivation in such a distant corner of the
empire demonstrate that the court had reached a new and unwelcome level of
awareness at the extent of the opium problem. They also reveal an acute
understanding of the relationship between physical space and bureaucratic laxity.
The court was quite correct in believing that Xinjiang's geography, in addition
to its complex and problematic administrative structure, encouraged the clandestine
production and sale of opium. The steppe of the Northern March was particularly
favorable to local cultivation. A report on search and seizure operations in the
region's northernmost major town, Tarbagatai, issued in September 1840 by its
councilor, Tuan-duo-bu, reveals the kind of distances, terrain and climate
encountered on such operations. Mongol horsemen were sent out by the local
government to sweep the mountainous winter wilderness of the region in search of
cultivators in conjunction with their usual duties of patrolling the region's
1 0 6 Ibid.
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219
checkpoints. The Mongols caught nine Han planters altogether. One of them, Ji
Shenglai, stated that the main perpetrators were four grain traders who worked in the
area around the towns of Kur-Kara-Usu and Jing He, which were both approximately
200 miles to the south of Tarbagatai.1 0 7
Enforcement of the opium prohibitions in the Northern March primarily
meant mounted operations in the mountains throughout the year. The lot of poppy
planters was hardly easier as the relatively safe alpine fields were far from market
towns where their produce could be sold. Since one of Xinjiang's three growing
seasons for opium was late fall, it was necessary for both the authorities and the
traffickers to operate under some of the most forbidding climactic conditions of the
northern steppe. This situation, which necessitated the use of Inner Asian horsemen
like the Mongols, who possessed the skills and stamina for such conditions that Han
troops did not, made enforcement in Xinjiang much harder than in a coastal urban
environment or even in a rural one in the more moderate climates of China proper.
Anti-cultivation operations in Xinjiang were dependent on multi-ethnic cooperation
between Han, Manchu, Mongol, and East Turkestani. Herein lay another
complicating factor that distinguished the prohibition of opium in Xinjiang from
other parts of the Empire.
l01YPZZ, DG 20/8/24, 2:387-388. Several other planters were discovered by Manchu clerks sent out
to investigate.
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220
The success of the prohibition effort was also dependent on the efficiency and
honesty of local officialdom. Unfortunately for the central government, evidence of
official collusion in the opium traffic was soon unearthed.
V : Official Corruption
There were a number of cases of official involvement in opium trafficking
and consumption discovered in Xinjiang during the prohibition efforts of the early
1840's. These ranged from comparatively minor cases of individual consumption to
involvement in major trafficking rings. Those in the former category, while certainly
disturbing to the court, were considered far less serious than those of the latter, which
included collusion between officialdom's lower levels and local Han merchants.
Such collusion not only enabled individual offenders to avoid investigation of their
trafficking activities, but also undermined the overall grassroots implementation
effort thus ensuring the unchecked spread of opium.
There were two major cases of official involvement in the Xinjiang opium
traffic discovered during the prohibition period. In general, both these cases
demonstrate that there were low level officials actively involved in the opium traffic
and that traffickers themselves used official status to cover their activities. The
cases' specific significances, however, are quite different. The first case, which I will
term the "Rong Jixiang case" after its central offender, shows how official collusion
in the traffic worked in great detail. The second case, which I will call the "Zhu-er-
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221
han case," shows how the investigation of official offenders was exploited to settle
personal scores.
Rong Jixiang's operations were exposed by the capture and confession of his
business partner, Feng Yucai, in Yarkand by En-te-heng-e during his anti-trafficking
operations in the first several months of 1840. Feng, who was conspiring with Ma
Degui to traffic in opium between Kashgar and Urumqi, deposed that Rong had not
only participated in this traffic, but had also formed another conspiracy in May of
1839 with Wang Zhuanshu, a low-ranking official who was serving in the Barchuk
military agricultural colony. Wang's elder brother, Wang Zhuanxin, another Barchuk
official, was also involved.1 0 8
Qing officials were alarmed and launched an extensive investigation into this
case, which was so complex that its full details did not come to light until for over
eighteen months. At the time of Feng's arrest in December of 1839, Rong was still at
large, but he was soon arrested in Turfan by personnel under the authority of Urumqi
Banner Commander-in-Chief Hui-ji in January of 1840. Rong's initial testimony was
"unverifiable and full of dissimulation," but with the discovery of twelve kilos of
opium in Rong's possession and with the testimony of Feng, Rong confessed to a
1 0 8 Gongzhong jinyan, DG 20/2/19. This was not the first time the brothers’ activities had come to the
attention of the throne. In December o f 1838 En-te-heng-e submitted a memorial concerning the
mismanagement of the Barchuk agricultural colony by Wang Zhuanshu. The Barchuk colony had
been originally established for strategic reasons in the wake o f the Kokandi incursion of 1830. In the
wake of the initial settlement Wang Zhuanxin had led in an additional twenty-eight settler families
from Urumqi in 1834 and their enterprise was successful enough for their region to be declared ready
for taxation, i.e. self-sufficient, in 1837. Wang Zhuanshu, in a deviation from standard procedure
authorized by the Councilor o f Yarkand, had then led a further fifty-seven households into the area,
but these had not only failed to achieve self-sufficiency, but were actually abandoning the settlement;
Gongzhong DG, DG 18/11/19, 7:248a-250a.
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222
number of trafficking incidents in Yarkand and Turfan that ultimately amounted to
574.5 kilos, or nearly ten percent of all opium seized in Xinjiang during the
prohibition operations of the early 1840's. An imperial decree soon followed in
February 1840 ordering the investigation and arrest of the Wangs.1 0 9
The investigation lasted until August of 1841, when the new Councilor of
Yarkand, Tu-ming-e was finally able to submit a detailed memorial of Rong's
trafficking career. Rong Jixiang was a 43 year-old native of Xianyang in Shaanxi
who entered into a partnership with Feng Yucai's elder brother, 44 year-old Shaanxi
native Feng Yuxiu, to open the Quan Hexiang General Store in Yarkand in 1832. By
1834, business was so bad that Rong suggested the two become involved in the more
profitable opium traffic. Feng agreed.1 1 0
Rong initially purchased twenty-six kilos from the Muslim quarter of
Yarkand and sold it locally. Opium continued to be purchased from various Muslims
foreign and domestic and there was at least one occasion when the drug's poor
quality made it impossible to sell. Nevertheless, trafficking operations continued and
by 1837, Feng and Rong had joined up with Ma Degui and expanded their operations
to Urumqi, where the bulk was sold, as well as Aksu and Turfan.1 1 1
I09WJD, DG 19/12/6, pp. 196-198. The total amount of opium comes from figures in YPZZ, DG
21/7/29, 4:72-76. The imperial decree can be found in YPZZDG 20/1/29, 2:21.
noYPZZ, DG 21/7/29, 4:72-76.
m Ibid.
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223
Another expansion opportunity came in mid-1839 when Wang Zhuanshu, a
rank 9b official in the Southern March military agricultural colony of Barchuk, had to
return to his native Anhui province to mourn the death of his father. Lacking funds
for so long a journey, he sought to raise money by selling opium for his friend Rong,
who reluctantly agreed to provide the purchasing capital. Rong, who had quasi-
official status as a community liaison officer in the local baojia system, feared
criminal charges but finally agreed to put up 800 strings of local copper cash (the
equivalent of approximately 4000 silver taels) to purchase around 272 kilos of opium
from a Badakhshani merchant. Wang was then to transport this opium to Turfan,
where he would link up with Rong to sell it off.1 1 2
On the way to Turfan, Wang Zhuanshu passed through Barchuk, where his
brother Wang Zhuanxin, a Sub-prefectural Magistrate-in-Waiting, was currently
serving as a low-level agri-colony official. The elder Wang had somehow heard of
his younger brother's activities and sought to blackmail him into turning over the
whole lot of opium to avoid arrest. Wang Zhuanshu persuaded his brother that he
only possessed thirty-eight kilos of opium, seventeen of which he had already
disposed of to discharge a local debt. The elder Wang ended up with about 19 kilos
six of which he reserved for his own use. He sold off the remainder in small lots. In
1 1 2 Ibid.
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224
one of these transactions, he obtained 5000 pul (worth about 25 silver taels) for only
about 1 kilo (around thirty taels in weight) of opium.1 1 3
After this rather expensive family reunion, Wang Zhuanshu continued on to
Turfan, where, in October of 1839, he met up with Rong Jixiang and sold 219 kilos
of crude opium to Bai Ba, a Han trafficker who was ultimately strangled in Urumqi
for his attempt to resell this opium, for 3300 silver taels.1 1 4 Soon after this
transaction, Wang Zhuanshu died of illness in Turfan.1 1 5 In January 1840, Rong was
arrested in the same place. After he was transported to Yarkand to stand trial for his
participation in the trafficking of Ma Degui and the Feng brothers, he was sent back
to Turfan where he was to be strangled after the autumn assizes for trafficking in
amounts over 19 kilos. The Fengs, as accessories, were both banished to military
penal servitude in an insalubrious region of the frontier. Wang Zhuanxin, who was
not part of the original trafficking ring, was stripped of his rank and exiled.1 1 6
li3Gongzhong jinyan DG 20/5/2. Wang Zhuanshu's opium was clearly the raw product as his elder
brother himself decocted nine kilos taken from his younger brother into seven kilos of smokable
extract for sale. In other words, this decoction process reduced the raw product by over twenty
percent.
m YPZZ, DG 21/7/29, 4:72-76. While this price of .5 silver taels/thirty-eight grams (i.e. one tael) of
opium is not as good a price as the .8 silver taels/thirty-eight grams of opium obtained by the elder
Wang, the difference is not so great considering that the younger Wang and Rong obtained silver for
opium rather than copper pul, which could only be converted into silver at a discount.
U 5Hui-ji felt his demise to be most opportune and suspected that Rong was using it to put most of the
blame on Wang as well as to conceal his own sources of supply. There was clearly more to this case
than Rong was admitting; WJD, DG 19/12/6, pp. 196-198.
m YPZZ, DG 21/7/29, 4:72-76.
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2 2 5
The Rong Jixiang case, the origins of which were traced back to 1834, was
the earliest opium offense to be discovered in Xinjiang in the course of the
intensified prohibition operations of 1839. It demonstrates that there was already a
considerable market for Muslim-supplied opium in Yarkand during this period and
that that market soon extended across the territory.
It also shows that there was official participation in the traffic by personnel
whose played a key role in maintaining grassroots surveillance of the Han populace,
namely the community liaison officers of the baojia system. En-te-heng-e
recognized this when he successfully requested the impeachment of the Garrison
Brigade Vice Commander (Chengshou Ying Dusi) of Yarkand Lu Zhenhong, who
had not only failed to ferret out any opium offenders whatsoever, but who had also
appointed Rong Jixiang, as well as another opium trafficker, to this important quasi
official post, for which individuals from well-to-do merchant families were normally
selected. En-te-heng-e noted that it was "the responsibility of the community liaison
officer to report the comings and goings of merchants and pass along their petitions
for trading licenses and matters concerning litigation to the Garrison Brigade [Vice]
Commander." Clearly this post was an ideal one for an opium trafficker, especially
117
when it was supervised by apathetic, overburdened or corrupt officials.
As the Zhu-er-han case will demonstrate, however, even conscientious
enforcement of the prohibitions could be dangerous for an official, especially when
u7Gongzhong, jinyan, DG 20/2/19. The imperial decree granting the request can be found in YPZZ,
DG 20/3/25, 2:64
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226
the perpetrators were members of the bureaucracy themselves. This case concerns a
Manchu "Clerk" (Bithesi) Zhu-er-han, who was initially impeached for smoking
opium in Barchuk, also the site of Wang Zhuanxin's extortion of his younger brother
Wang Zhuanshu's opium. The case began in April 1842 with a request for Zhu-er-
han's impeachment due to opium smoking and his lax enforcement of the
1 1 o
prohibitions by En-te-heng-e's successor as Councilor of Yarkand Tu-ming-e.
Zhu-er-han, after conducting opium investigations in Barchuk at the behest of
Tu-ming-e, had just finished a stint as a clerk in the Southern March locale of Kara-
shahr and was residing at a military postal station in Yarkand in the course of some
"public business" when he was reported for smoking opium by the Garrison Brigade
Vice Commander. A pipe and other paraphernalia were seized. Noting it was
particularly disgraceful for an official charged with arresting opium offenders to be
caught smoking the drug, Tu-ming-e successfully requested Zhu-er-han's
impeachment.1 1 9
Unfortunately for Tu-ming-e, this was not the end of the matter. Zhu-er-han,
well-versed as a Clerk in administrative procedure, submitted a statement of his own
claiming the opium charges had been trumped up by Tu-ming-e, whom he accused of
conniving to give a promotion meant for Zhu-er-han to one of the Councilor's own,
unqualified henchmen. Technically, Zhu-er-han did not possess the official status to
1 1 8 DaoguangXianfeng liangchao choubanyiwu shimo buyi [Supplement to the management of
barbarian affairs for the Daoguang and Xianfeng reigns] (Taibei: Jinshi Suo, 1982), pp. 12-13.
I19SYD, DG 22/4/11, p. 109.
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227
communicate directly with the central government and indeed could not do so in any
form without going through the intermediary office of the Councilor of Yarkand, the
man who had originally requested his impeachment. Therefore, Zhu-er-han made a
sealed, "unauthorized submission" (wangdi chengwen) of his written statement to the
Councilor's Yamen, which was obliged to forward it to Beijing.1 2 0
Zhu-er-han, however, was not the only official who knew how to manipulate
the system. Tu-ming-e, though forced to submit the Clerk's petition, did not include
it with his April 16, 1842 request for impeachment even though it had already been
handed over to him on April 9, 1842. This guaranteed that the request for
impeachment would be granted. Zhu-er-han's petition was sent by the Councilor's
Yamen to the Censorate five days after the request for impeachment was sent. These
various irregularities were noted by Senior Censor-in-Chief Kuizhao, who, on June
13, 1842, passed Zhu-er-han's petition to the emperor, who in turn declared that the
case be reinvestigated in the relatively central location of Aksu by Hui-ji and Bi-
chang, who had just left his post as the Councilor of Ili to become Shaan-Gan
191
Governor General.
Zhu-er-han's petition is both a detailed description of his meritorious services
as a Clerk from 1830 to 1842 and an equally detailed accusation against his superiors
and colleagues. He describes his gradual rise to the status of a provisional official in
t20Junji rainzu, frame #'1405-#1411, DG 22/5/5. This memorial, which was produced by Senior
Censor-in-Chief (Zuo duyushi) Kuizhao (no dates), also contains the text o f Zhu-er-han's petition.
m Junjiminzu, frame #T405-#1406, DG 22/5/5; SYD, DG 22/5/5, pp. 55, 63.
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228
1837 by citing various official memorials and notes the particular contributions he
made by mapping the course of a river in Kara-shahr under En-te-heng-e's
administration. He finally spent 2 uneventful years in Barchuk running a checkpoint
for opium smugglers at a strategic ford, a measure that had been proposed by En-te-
heng-e in his initial evaluation of the New Regulations.1 2 2
For all these services, Zhu-er-han felt himself an experienced official with a
degree of seniority. Zhu-er-han was passed over for several posts, including that of
Grain Tax Officer (Liang Yuan) in Barchuk, where he had already served three years.
Instead E-le-chun, who had never been to Barchuk and whom Zhu-er-han claimed
was illiterate in both Chinese and Manchu, was given the post by Tu-ming-e. Zhu-
er-han claimed that E-le-chun had obtained his post via his marriage to the daughter
of one of Tu-ming-e's household servants. On the basis of this and several other
examples, Zhu-er-han boldly claimed that Tu-ming-e "has received great favor but
has no consideration for the state's important border affairs" because he made official
appointments based on personal connections rather than professional merit.1 2 3
In early September of 1842, Hui-ji and Bi-chang concluded their investigation
and found that Zhu-er-han's accusations were "not entirely unreasonable." Su-luo, for
example, was actually tested for literacy and did poorly. Nevertheless, they found no
evidence of a conspiracy in Tu-ming-e's household to promote his favorites and
1 2 2 Junji minzu, frame #1407-#1408, DG 22/5/5; YPZZ, DG 19/12/22, 1:785-789.
I2 3 Junji minzu, frame #1407-#1408, DG 22/5/5.
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dependents. After several rounds of interrogation, Zhu-er-han stated that his arrest
for opium smoking had only come hours after he had submitted his petition, which
he had done because of his frustration at being continuously passed over for
promotion. He also admitted having smoked opium in 1837 for stomach pains but
claimed to have stopped in fear of the severity of the prohibitions. Nevertheless, he
retained his paraphernalia in order to smoke the residual opium ash mixed with water
and this is what he was caught doing on the night of his arrest. No actual opium,
however, was seized. Zhu-er-han had to endure confinement for an extended period
to demonstrate that he had broken his habit.1 2 4
Hui-ji and Bi-chang concluded that Zhu-er-han had made a false report of
official favoritism and had smoked opium within the grace period.1 2 3 These offenses
paled, however, before smoking opium after the grace period, which was a capital
offense. Fortunately, the law covering opium ash was unclear and the officials
requested another case review by the Board of Punishments.
Despite these conclusions, Tu-ming-e did not escape punishment for
withholding Zhu-er-han's petition, nor for his appointment of the incompetent E-le-
chun to a sensitive post, which while not an act of deliberate favoritism was
irresponsible and also provided Zhu-er-han with a pretext for his unauthorized
petition. E-le-chun lost his position and both Tu-ming-e and Fu-xing-a were to be
1 2 4 Junji jinyan, frame #1417-#1420, DG 22/8/7.
1 2 3 Ibid.
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censured. In November 1842, they received the imperial "favor" of being reduced
four degrees in rank, but retained in their respective offices. E-le-chun was also
retained but suffered a one-degree reduction and a fine.
The Board of Punishments completed its review in November 1842 and
concluded that if Zhu-er-han was simply using opium ash to treat his stomach pains,
he could have drunk the mixture rather than smoked it, which he was clearly
preparing to do because he had already lit his opium lamp when he was arrested.
This indicated that he had not entirely broken away from his old habits.
Nevertheless, the board found too many ambiguities in the case and requested that
Zhu-er-han be remanded to Turfan to await yet another reinvestigation of the case.
The emperor duly decreed the Military Governor of Hi Bu-yan-tai to make yet
another investigation.1 2 7
Bu-yan-tai issued his report on what appears to be the final investigation of
the Zhu-er-han case on March 10, 1843. The main point at issue was to determine
whether or not Zhu-er-han had been smoking paste, which would have meant an
automatic death sentence, or ash, which would probably have reduced the sentence.
Zhu-er-han's paraphernalia were examined for opium residue but none was found.
Zhu-er-han was then questioned once again and added new details to the record. A
doctor told him that his stomach pains would be relieved by smoking opium and
Zhu-er-han bought a few grams from an unidentified source during his tour of duty in
l26Junji jinyan, frame #1417-#1420, DG 22/8/7; SYD, DG 22/10/15, p. 187.
1 2 7 Junjijmyan, frame #37-#54, DG 22/10/15; SYD, DG 22/10/15, p. 187.
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231
Turfan in 1837. His stomach's qi was instantly returned to normal and he smoked no
longer until his pains recurred on the day he submitted his unauthorized petition. He
had retained some opium ash and added water to it in preparation to smoke when he
decided the mixture was too watery and that he would have to drink it. Soldiers
broke in and arrested him at that point, spilling the mixture. Bu-yan-tai concluded
from all this that Zhu-er-han's opium crime was minor in comparison with his false
accusations against his superior and he recommended that he be sentenced to hard
labor in Xinjiang.1 2 8 There is no further record of Zhu-er-han's fate.
There is enough material extant from his case, however, to show that the
power unleashed by enforcement of the prohibitions, a complex operation by itself,
was not easy to control and direct. In this case, Tu-ming-e seems to have decided to
use enforcement as an instrument of revenge against a contumacious subordinate and
ended up becoming the object of official investigation and punishment. Throughout
the Zhu-er-han case, regulations were being used offensively by officials for personal
reasons; the prohibitions were a means to these individual ends and the fact that they
were part of one's official duties made them more attractive and easier to use.
Indeed, the prohibitions made it possible to conflate the private and the public so that
private vendetta became indistinguishable from official obligation.
The opium prohibitions were certainly not unique in this respect. However,
the urgency with which they were pushed by the central government made them a
1 2 8 Gongzhong jinyan, DG 23/2/10.
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particularly potent source for those who could tap it, and both the Zhu-er-han and the
Rong Jixiang case demonstrate that this source was tapped by the lowest quasi
official of the baojia system to the highest official of Xinjiang's Southern March.1 2 9
VI: Chapter Conclusions
The Qing chose to deal with the opium problem in Xinjiang, and in other
frontier areas of the empire, by using the bureaucratic structures that served as
intermediaries between the dynasty and the various peoples engaged in opium
smuggling and cultivation. In Xinjiang, several ethnically determined, overlapping
systems existed that made administrative control under normal circumstances quite
complex. These complexities only intensified during attempts to implement criminal
statutes formulated by the central government for empire-wide application.
Specifically, the ethno-geographic diversity that had produced these systems
necessitated an extensive modification of the prohibitions, which were primarily
formulated in terms of the urban coast, where comparatively monocultural structures
of control were in place.
These multiple Xinjiang administrative structures failed to control opium
partly because they had never been intended for use as instruments of close control
and surveillance. Dynastic central government officials were reluctant to give
1 2 9 Philip A. Kuhn has discussed similar issues of access to state power by the "common people," in the
context of the sorcery scare of 1768; Soulstealers, The Chinese Sorcery Scare o f 1768 (Cambridge
MA: Harvard University Press, 1990), pp. 228-231. There are a number of social dynamic parallels
between the state's hunt for the elusive "Queue-clippers" and its search for opium traffickers and
addicts. Nevertheless, the commonality was not the only group looking for an opportunity to use state
power to settle personal scores or simply get ahead. Access to more such power than one normally
had as a minor local functionary also exerted a powerful attraction and helped to both feed the
frenzied search for transgressors and to hide the officials in their ranks.
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233
grassroots level officials and especially their minions pretexts to interfere with those
practices of the non-Han peoples of the empire that did not directly threaten local
control for fear of "incidents," which could lead to expensive suppression campaigns.
Until late 1839, Xinjiang opium was not considered to be this type of threat,
especially by senior local officials. Indeed, the traffic had explicitly existed in the
territory since 1832 at the latest and had not created any problems worth officials
thought worth mentioning for at least seven years.
The problem only became significant when the central government began to
inquire into the opium problem as it existed in the interior of China proper; hence,
the belated discovery of the opium traffic by local officials in late 1839 as a result of
Hui-feng's denunciatory memorial. It was, consequently, only when opium in
Xinjiang took on a trans-provincial significance that it became an object of central
government scrutiny, as it had briefly in 1809. By the end of 1839, the court's
regional perspective on the opium problem had expanded sufficiently for it to
perceive the drug in Xinjiang.
This expanded perspective remained, however, centered on the coast; so
much so that the routine functioning of the Qing penal system actually served to
uproot opium from the empire's eastern maritime zone and transplant it into
Xinjiang. As demonstrated by the experience of Yi-shan in 1840 and of Song Jun in
1809, the successful judicial processing of opium offenders could result in state-
sponsored transfer of active opium traffickers from the coast to Xinjiang via the
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234
regular workings of the state penal exile system. These incidents reveal that one of
the main goals of prohibition, namely to stop the spread of opium throughout the
empire, was being undermined by the myopically successful application of the
mechanisms of prohibition itself. There is perhaps no better example of the
disastrous consequences of the police practices implemented on the basis of the
court's assumptions regarding the coastal, urban nature of the opium problem. These
assumptions, while theoretically intended to address other manifestations of the drug
problem as well, tended to subordinate all other aspects of opium to those pertaining
to coastal ports in practice.
Xinjiang's drug problem, of course, did not arise purely as a result of intra
empire dynamics. Indeed, a regional perspective on opium reveals many affinities
between the two Qing imperial poles of Guangdong and Xinjiang, both of which
encompassed entrepots for foreign trade out of which arose two elaborate systems of
rules for controlling this commerce. There were foreign trade representatives and
problems of jurisdiction, which occasionally led to violence, in both localities. Most
importantly, the enormous expansion of the coastal market stimulated Central Asian
traffickers as well as Xinjiang cultivators and merchants to haul increasing quantities
of the drug east to China proper.
Muslims foreign and domestic were crucial for sustaining regional Han
traffickers' opium supply and their special status made it more difficult for the state
to get at them. The proximity of a potentially hostile Muslim state broke the
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235
monopoly on armed force that the Qing maintained in its dominions. As was more
directly demonstrated on the coast, external state military power, latent or overt, was
a crucial factor in sustaining transgressive behavior. In Xinjiang this power produced
the Kokandi consular system headed by Hudaida, who played key roles in mediating
handovers by the Central and South Asian traders who repeatedly maintained their
ignorance of Qing law. The manifestation of this power also differed from that
displayed on the coast during the Opium War in that it was not based on any
technological superiority, but instead was an interrelation of military and commercial
subversion, geographic position and cultural affinity.
Diversity, however, did not preclude mutual understanding nor did it always
work to the disadvantage of the Qing state. The shared history between the Qing
empire and the khanate of Kokand helped to ensure that there would be no major
confrontation comparable to that between the Qing and Great Britain in 1839.
Indeed, it was the center's awareness that "conditions in Xinjiang are different from
those of China proper," an idea expressed in the first imperial decree on opium in
Xinjiang, that prompted the modifications to the New Regulations proposed by the
heads of Xinjiang's three marches.
In the empire's southwest, there would be no coherent political entity such as
the khanate of Kokand with which to contend or, more problematically, with which
to negotiate. The history of prohibition in the provinces of the southwest shows that
the presence of a state independent of Qing control was, in itself, not the fundamental
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236
prerequisite for the maintenance of opium transgression. Instead, the mere absence
of effective grassroots administrative structures within the borders of Qing provinces
themselves was sufficient to ensure that opium would continue to be produced, sold
and consumed throughout imperial domains.
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Chapter 5.
The Opium Problem in Southwest China
I: Overview of the Opium Problem in Southwestern China
As the primary production site as well as the main nexus for commerce
between indigenous producers and Han traffickers in southwest China during the
prohibition period, the province of Yunnan will constitute the main focus of this
chapter. However, as in the case with Xinjiang, Yunnanese opium would have
remained of only limited significance to the central government had sale and
consumption of this local product remained confined to its province of origin. It was
the flow of Yunnanese opium to the north and east, where it reached points as far as
Guangdong, Shaanxi and Beijing itself, that particularly alarmed authorities in the
capital.
Two common sets of relations link together "southwest China," which I have
defined primarily as the province of Yunnan and secondarily as south and western
Guizhou and southeastern Sichuan, to form a region with a distinct opium problem.
The first is the system of inter-provincial trade relations that existed among the three,
which tended to ensure that should opium traffic begin in one of these areas, it would
soon spread to the other two by virtue of the extensive commercial networks that
connected all of them together.
The second set, one that was not restricted to these three regions, was the
"native chieftain" system (tusi) intended to administer the numerous indigenous
minority peoples along lines broadly similar to those of the beg system in Xinjiang.
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The existence of this separate administrative jurisdiction, itself a product of ethno-
geographic diversity, provided a relatively inviolate space for the production of
opium as well as a nexus relatively free of routine central government surveillance
wherein Han traffickers purchased opium from indigenous producers. The absence
of surveillance was total, however, in the "wild" zones, especially in southwestern
Yunnan, that were inhabited by indigenous peoples under no recognized system of
administrative organization however indirectly connected to the dynasty. A number
of the earliest opium cases from the region involve precisely such interaction
between Han merchants and the subjects of the native chieftainships or wild areas.
The intersection of these relations within the ethno-geographic confines of
southwest China initially produced a very marked division of labor within the opium
traffic, in which indigenous minority peoples produced the opium, which was then
sold to Han traffickers who transported the product to urban areas beyond provincial
boundaries. As the government became more aware of the nature and extent of the
opium problem in the southwest, it became clear that the wild areas were the main
production and distribution centers for the regional opium traffic and that they were
almost entirely immune to prohibition operations. This situation was decisive for a
policy shift from anti-cultivation to anti-trafficking advocated by many senior
provincial officials
Cultivation of opium could be pursued throughout much of the southwest
despite assertions such as those of Guizhou Governor Song-pu (7-1846) that arable
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239
land was too scarce to raise both staple crops and cash crops such as opium and that
the rest of the mountain soil of his province was too rocky to grow opium properly.1
In contrast Ruan Yuan, as governor-general of Yun-Gui, noted that the hot climate of
Yunnan was quite conducive for poppy cultivation. Despite considerable regional
variation, opium throughout the southwest was generally sown in fall, sprouted in
about twenty days, bloomed in March of the new year and had their bulbs scraped for
sap in summer. The cultivation of opium was quite labor-intensive in comparison
with other crops. Moreover, all officials, Governor Song included, realized that if
the price was high enough, peasants would find a way to plant poppy whatever the
obstacles. Aside from the obvious attractions of the drug's profitability, the people of
the southwest sought out the drug for the relief it provided them from a variety of
ills, especially endemic malaria, which opium smoking was thought to prevent.
1 YPZZ, DG 11/7/3, 1:95-96.
l YPZZ, DG 11/5/9, 1:77-79; Qin Heping, Yunnanyapien wenti, p. 13. Qin Heping also notes that
provincial cultivation took place primarily in the mountains of the south, west, east and center as well
as in the plains areas of the latter two zones (12).
3 Malaria was a determining factor of southwestern existence. Ortai believed the disease was the
reason for the Ming employment of the native chieftain system; QSG, 288/34:10,231. In Guizhou,
where malarial epidemics were common in summer and autumn, the traditional way o f avoiding
infection was summarized in a local saying as "don't get up early, don't eat your fill and don't bathe;
Xu Jiagan, Miaojiang wen jia n lu, p. 160." The Governor of Yunnan Yan Botai characterized the
interdependence of the two indigenous scourges of malaria and opium as follows: "In the regions
beyond Yunnan's border, malaria is easily contracted, and both the commoners and the barbarians vie
to become contaminated by opium consumption, ostensibly to prevent the disease;" Gongzhong
jinyan, DG 20/1/18. For a modem discussion of regional disease during the nineteenth century, see
Benedict, "Origins of Plague in Southwestern China," chap. 1 in Bubonic Plague. Western sources
noted that opium was held to be a febrifuge in many malarial regions of China; Newman, "Opium
Smoking," 776.
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Officials had equally compelling motives for encouraging cultivation, if the
assertions of Metropolitan Censor Lu Yinggu (7-1857) are to be believed. In a
memorial received by the throne in January 1840 Lu reported that as a native of
Yunnan he had heard of extensive cultivation throughout the province, including
around the environs of the provincial capital itself. The ultimate root of the problem
was that Yunnan's local officials could not as easily prevent the cultivation of opium
in the "barbarian territories" iyidi) as they could in Yunnan proper. Lu listed a
number of areas in which "poppies are everywhere cultivated for decoction and sale
of paste" due to the "a warm climate and fertile land" in these regions of southern and
southwestern Yunnan. These regions included Ava in Burma on the southern border
of Puer Prefecture, Shenhu Guan on the western border of Yongchang Prefecture and
Mengding on its southern border. He also mentioned Mengdian and Wandian in
northern Shunning Prefecture. Lu identified specific smuggling routes along
Yongchang Prefecture's Longchuan River as well as in Puer, Jingdong and Dali
prefectures. Sichuanese "Guo[lu]" bandits in gangs ranging from thirty to more than
one hundred circulated throughout these regions and conspired to traffic in opium
with "traitorous subjects of Yunnan proper," who went about their illicit activities
under the guise of legitimate trade. The Yunnanese traffickers entered Sichuan
primarily through the prefectures of Wuding, Yongbei and Dongchuan, which
formed much of Yunnan's northern border with Sichuan. Local garrisons, which
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241
usually consisted of no more than a few dozen men, were intimidated by these
numbers and did nothing."4
In an enclosure to this memorial, Lu also provided additional observations on
the local conditions of Yunnan and their relationship to opium cultivation. Lu
claimed that the bean and wheat fields of the more outlying prefectures,
subprefectures, departments and districts such as Mengzi, Guangnan, Kaihua,
Jingdong, Zhaozhou and Menghua had been converted into poppy fields and
wondered at the professed ignorance of such extensive cultivation on the part of local
officialdom.5
The purpose of Lu's memorial was to identify the convergence of interests
between local officialdom and their peasant charges that not only permitted
aYPZZ, DG 19/12/17, 1:774-775. Many of the locales to which Lu refers as bordering on barbarian
territory were in west-central Yunnan and did not form any inter-state boundary with Burma or
Vietnam. These territories are almost certainly wild regions. This was not the case with Ava, which
Lu does not distinguish as a Burmese (i.e. foreign) administrative region. A map o f Puer Prefecture in
the Yitong zhi is similarly ambiguous, making no significant distinctions between the interstate
boundaries (Jie) of Burma and Vietnam, and those of Yunnan's provincial Departments of Yun,
Zhenyuan and Yuanjiang, all five of which demarcated Puer's prefectural boundaries; Yitong zhi,
86:24824-24825. For an account of the Guolu bandits' activities in eighteenth century, see Cheng-yun
Liu, "Kuo-lu: A Sworn Brotherhood Organization in Szechuan," Late Imperial China 6, no. 1 (June
1985): 56-77.
5 Junji diqin, 267:2, DG 19/12/17. There is some confusion over the provenance of this document
because of its ambiguous position in the microfilm copies of opium memorials held in the Ming-Qing
Archives in Beijing. Microfilmed enclosures, which are themselves often undated and unattributed,
are generally placed after the memorial in which they were contained. The enclosure as preserved on
microfilm at the archives follows a memorial by Sichuan Governor-General Bao-xing concerning
opium cultivation; Junji diqin 267:1, DG 19/3/23 and thus gives the impression that it is an enclosure
from Bao-xing's memorial. Lu Yinggu's memorial o f DG 19/12/17 immediately follows this enclosure
in the Archives' microfilm records. Qin Heping refers to this document as Lu's; Yunnan yapian wenti,
p. 20.. I have decided to follow Qin's attribution after an examination of all three documents, which
indicated a greater textual affinity between the enclosure and the memorial of Lu Yinggu.
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242
cultivation to continue but actually encouraged it. He asserted that the main cause of
the problem was
that the profit obtained from poppy cultivation among the populace is
fairly substantial. In consequence, tax quotas can be fulfilled quite
early, so local officials benefit from the ease of revenue collection and
are concerned only with their performance evaluations; they are
heedless of the benefit or harm done to the populace. Thus, they
permit the people to cultivate and do nothing to prohibit it.6
Lu went on to extrapolate from these premises, reasoning that production
would increase in response to market demand, which would eventually drive prices
down and make the drug more readily available to a wider range of consumers,
which would include both military and official personnel.7 Lu's conclusion
demolished the justification for the central government's suppression policy , which
was largely predicated on the urban, coastal and mercantile nature of the traffic.
Many of the traffickers [in Yunnan] are Muslims and the place where
they gather to conduct business is Horse Road in Yuanmo District
[Department of Wuding ]. From here opium is transported via the
prefectures of Dongchuan and Zhaotong into Sichuan or Guizhou.
This is the reason why smokers in these places need not look to
foreign barbarians for aid.
If the free circulation of gangs through neighboring provinces is not
detected and arrested and eradication operations not intensified, then
even if opium from overseas is cut off, that produced in China proper
©
will be limitless and its legacy of harm unspeakable.
6Junji diguo, 267:2, DG 19/12/17.
7Ibid.
8 Ibid.
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In a few lines Lu Yinggu had captured the essence of the problem facing the Qing
central government in the southwest by the end of the 1830's. The southwestern
traffic, abetted by transportation networks, local administrative policies and contacts
between Han and other local ethnicities, had developed to the point that it was not
only capable of sustaining itself but was also able to expand its activities to serve
other markets beyond it. Moreover, what administrative structures that were in place
to stop the traffic were actually dependent on it for their continued existence. This
insight is particularly valuable because it explains how the initially alien opium trade
became rooted in the imperial social-economy as part of quotidian domestic practice.
It was the congeniality between the traffic and indigenous socio-economic practice,
rather than greedy merchants or an irrational and venal bureaucracy or a benighted
peasantry of addicts, that ensured the failure of the central government's belated
prohibition policies.9
The broad outlines of this particular form of opium problem in the southwest
were already clear by the early 1830's. This area was not only full of vast expanses
of territory naturally suited to opium cultivation, it was also spattered with areas
where the jurisdiction of provincial officials, who were apt to consider parts of their
own provinces foreign territory, was nebulous at best. Finally, it was also
crisscrossed with enough communications routes to facilitate interprovincial
commercial traffic both legitimate and otherwise. Aside from these elements, the
9 Qin Heping, in "Yunnan de jinyan wenti," has also called attention to the significance of Lu's
explanation for an analysis o f the opium problem in general, 61-63.
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empire's own structure of revenue extraction decisively linked the interests of local
officialdom to those of the local cultivators. All these factors would ultimately
combine in the latter half of the nineteenth century to make the southwest the world's
largest producer and exporter of opium.
II: Opium Prohibition Comes to the Southwest
Prohibition did not come to the southwest all at once, as it did in Xinjiang,
but progressed more gradually both geographically and chronologically. While
Sichuan officials were aware of a trafficking problem in their jurisdiction as early as
1816, documentation for prohibition operations in the interior during the Jiaqing
period is almost nonexistent and it seems probable that little was done from the
center regarding this dimension of the opium problem until the empire-wide search
for opium cultivation decreed on August 12, 1830 as a result of Censor Shao
Zhenghu's memorial revealing the existence of opium cultivation in Zhejiang. Shao,
however, also asserted that there was opium cultivation in Yunnan, where it was
known as "[ajfurong," as well as in Guangdong and Fujian, and prohibition in the
southwest was intensified as a result.1 0 Although there had been official reports of
opium cultivation in Yunnan as early as 1822, anti-opium operations do not seem to
1 0 For the text o f Shao's memorial, see Junji jinyan, #1545-1546, DG 10/6/24. For the decree, see
Gongzhong DG, DG 10/6/24, 2:644b-645a. "Afurong" in its entirety is first used in the Yunnan
prohibition documents in an 1831 memorial by Ruan Yuan; ZZD, DG 11/3/?, pp. 147-151. The term
is thought to have been ultimately derived from an Arabic word for opium, afyun; Chang,
Commissioner Lin, p. 16. A memorial by Yun-Gui Governor-General Gui-liang confirms that the
original name for the poppy itself was "afurong," which was then shortened to "furong" to refer to all
opium products derived from its sap. Fie asserted that this term was o f long-standing in Yunnan;
YPZZ, DG 21/4/27, 3:493-495.
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245
have begun in earnest until 1831, when cultivation was also discovered in Sichuan,
as well as rediscovered in Yunnan. Guizhou initially reported no cultivation, but a
year and a half later in 1833 reported that cultivation did indeed exist in the province.
By the time the New Regulations were promulgated in 1839 the court was well-
aware of the existence of a large trafficking and cultivation problem in the southwest
centered on Yunnan, where anti-opium operations had been pursued after a fashion
for nearly two decades.
Qing prohibition records indicate that opium initially entered the southwest in
the Jiaqing period, brought in by traffickers probably from coastal sources. A mid-
1816 public notice from Ba District issued by Sichuan's Surveillance Commissioner
Cao Liuxing (n.d.) decried gatherings of vagabonds who smoked opium as a
stimulant in the marketplaces of the province, where the demand for the drug had
grown large enough to attract increasing numbers of traffickers. There was as yet,
however, no mention of cultivation nor is there any record of major anti-opium
legislation being issued by the throne during this time (the last such was issued in
1813) which would account for the Surveillance Commissioner's action. He appears
to have taken the initiative to crack down on opium smugglers within his own
jurisdiction. Despite these ambiguities, the extant evidence makes it clear that the
opium problem initially appeared in the southwest exclusively as one of trafficking
and consumption.1 1 It did not remain so confined.
nBaxian dangan, 2:272, JQ 21/5/6.
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24 6
In late 1822 Censor Yin Peifen (n.d.) drew the court's attention to the
cultivation of poppy in Yunnan, but was not very specific as to locale, noting only
12
that there was poppy in both the "Eastern and Western Circuits" of the province.
He also noted the existence of an opium traffic between Yunnan and Guangdong to
the east as well as Vietnam to the south and of official smokers. A decree issued in
early 1823 ordered local officials to investigate and memorialize.1 3 By August of the
same year the response of Yun-Gui Governor-General Ming-shan (7-1834) had
generated another decree that mandated an intensification of official surveillance at
strategic locations along trade routes and that charged that anyone involved in the
traffic, regardless of their official status, be detected and punished.1 4 An 1831 report
by then Yun-Gui Governor-General Ruan Yuan states that Ming-shan, along with a
predecessor Governor-General Qingbao who held the post briefly in 1820, presided
over investigations of both trafficking and cultivation as had the governor of Yunnan
from 1820-1825 Han Kuiyun.1 5 Unfortunately, no specific information on any of
these cases has come to light. What is clear is that prohibitions against trafficking,
1 2 Circa 1820 the Eastern Circuit (Yidong Dao) encompassed seven prefectures in eastern Yunnan:
Chengjiang, Guangnan, Quqing, Kaihua, Dongchuan, Zhaotong and Guangxi while the Western
Circuit (Yixi Dao) encompassed eight prefectures: Dali, Chuxiong, Shunning, Lijiang, Yongchang,
Jingdong, Menghua and Yongbei; Yitongzhi, 475:24247.
1 3 Lin Man-houng makes brief mention of the first imperial decree in response to Yin Peifen's initial
report as it is reproduced in the QSL, DG 46:15a-b, and quotes from Yin's first memorial of 1822 as
reproduced in Dao, Xian, Tong, Guang si chao zouyi, pp. 72a-75a; "Qingmo Shehui Liuxing Xishi
Yapian Yanjiu," p. 184 and 82, respectively.
1 4 Mingshan's response is summarized in the text of the August decree; QSL, DG 54:17b-19b.
l5YPZZ, DG 11/5/9, 1:77-79.
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24 7
consumption and cultivation were being enforced in Yunnan, if sporadically, from
1820 on.
A very simple series of measures were initially proposed to deal with the
cultivation and trafficking problems discovered in Yunnan in the early 1820's. Yin
Peifen, who stated opium was being trafficked into the southwest from various
coastal provinces, identified Guangdong as the main source of coastal opium and
blamed maritime port officials' lack of diligence for the inland flow o f the drug. Yin
asked for stricter enforcement of existing prohibitions as well as the confiscation and
destruction of the local product. He also suggested that local officials personally
oversee these matters rather than delegating the responsibility to clerks (shuli), who
were considered particularly prone to engage in extortion of innocent victims. These
recommendations were all accepted as were those concerning the punishment of
officials who failed to enforce the prohibitions.1 6 While these recommendations
generally reflected the common contemporary view of the problem, Yin's official
perspective on the significance of the problem of local cultivation is almost unique at
this time. Unfortunately for the dynasty little seems to have been done to eradicate
cultivation in the southwest until nearly a decade later.
While there are a few allusions to several opium cases in Yunnan during the
decade of the 1820's, the specifics of only one case have been located for the entire
southwest during this period. On July 3, 1828 a routine provincial memorial was
issued by Yunnan Governor Yi-li-bu (7-1843) regarding a the death of one Ma Wen,
1 6 Dao, Xian, Tong, Guang si chao zouyi, p. 74a-b; QSL, DG 54:17b-19b.
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2 4 8
who was killed while resisting a "citizen's" arrest for opium trafficking. Ma and a
business partner Zhou Fachun traded in raw cotton, which they purchased from the
Gengma Native Chieftainship run by a Dai (Daizu) clan in Shunning Prefecture in
southwestern Yunnan, for sale in Yunnan Prefecture, the administrative center of the
province. During an expedition conducted some time during February and March of
1827 the men came upon wild poppies growing in a secluded area on the banks of the
Gengma River. Ma, who was "quite familiar with" the production of opium from
"j ajfurong bulbs," gathered about 4 kilos of sap to take back with him for decoction
and sale. Within a month or so they had headed north and reached Yunnan District,
Dali Prefecture, where they stayed at an inn in the village of Mafang. Lacking travel
funds to continue further east to their destination, Ma decocted some opium from the
sap in order to raise some money. He was seen, however, and soon confronted by a
gang of six men led by Huan Jinsheng, a 43 year-old local resident. Huan accused
Ma and Zhou of trafficking in opium and tried to search their baggage as a prelude to
handing both over to local authorities. An altercation ensued when Ma refused and
drew a knife. In the brawl that followed Huan smashed Ma's head in with an iron
flail. This act constituted a homicide, a capital offense, which incidentally helped to
ensure the case's otherwise unlikely preservation in the historical record.1 7
nNeige weijin, #10092 (tongben), DG 8/5/22. The document itself is missing one or more pages at
the beginning, but, like all routine memorials concerning criminal cases, has a case summary appended
to it. Moreover, as such a memorial contains multiple testimonies that are often repetitive, the salient
facts of the case have been preserved intact. Since I have been unable to locate the corresponding
metropolitan memorial (buben) that reviewed the case and was rescripted by the emperor with a final
decision, Huan's ultimate fate remains unknown. Zhou Fachun was preliminarily sentenced as an
accessory to opium trafficking.
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249
While the ultimate resolution of this case is unknown, there was no question
of the details concerning Ma's and Zhou's trafficking activities. One of the points
that Yi-li-bu specifically clarified was the provenance of their opium. It was
confirmed that the opium had come from a riverbank in the jurisdiction of the
Gengma Native Chieftainship, where it grew wild. No locals in Gengma were found
to have been growing it for sale, but no eradication of the wild poppies had taken
place because their location lay beyond Yunnan proper and the reach of its provincial
officials. It fell to the Gengma native chieftain Han Sipei to investigate the matter
and eradicate the opium. As a decree was issued on July 30, 1839 rewarding Han
with the Blue Feather (rank o f Junior Guardsman) for having seized nearly 314 kilos
of crude opium and paste, it is reasonable to assume he complied, at least on paper,
with the 1828 request.1 8
In addition to its unique testimony regarding the details of trafficking
activities in Yunnan during the 1820’ s, this case confirms that there was some degree
of enforcement occurring at the prefectural level at this time. The commonality, for
example, was clearly aware of the existence of the prohibitions on opium
consumption, production and trafficking. Indeed they were, perhaps, excessively
1 8 Neige weijin, #10092 (tongben), DG 8/5/22. Gong Yin notes that Han Sipei succeeded to the
Gengma Native Chieftainship in 1824 while still a minor and was assisted by his mother until his
majority, the date of which is unspecified as is the duration of his term in office; Gong Yin, Zhongguo
tusizhidu, p. 551. The text ofthe decree is reproduced in YPZZ, DG 19/6/20, 1:641. All
correspondence between Gengma and the provincial capital would have been conducted via Mianning
Subprefecture, which was the junxian link between the two and which would also have preserved
copies of this correspondence. The 1828 eradication order, for example, was relayed through this
subprefecture.
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250
aware of them. The vigilantism of Huan Jinsheng and his confederates shows
precisely why Yin Peifen had warned against the conduct of search and seizure
operations by non-official personnel, whose motives were always suspect and whose
actions often resulted in the commission of more serious crimes than those they were
ostensibly acting to prevent.1 9 This potential outside interference constituted yet
another obstacle to smooth and efficient implementation of the opium prohibitions,
which were also hindered in the southwest by the fact that poppies grew wild over
vast areas and were, consequently, readily available to those who knew how to use
them and had access to such locations.
This access often resulted in a kind of interaction between Han and non-Han
that, however innocent in the beginning, could ultimately lead to disruptive
criminality; hence the central government's attempts to restrict such contacts.
Nevertheless, some degree of contact was clearly indispensable for effective local
control. Yi-li-bu implies that no eradication operations whatsoever have previously
taken place in native chieftainships due mainly to the fact that official writ does not
extend very effectively into these areas. Nevertheless, official channels are precisely
what was relied upon by Yi-li-bu to charge the Gengma Native Chieftainship, which
apparently did not consider its indigenous poppy a problem, to do something about
1 9 There are several homicide cases extant that were generated by opium vigilantism in Yunnan and
Guizhou respectively; Neige weijin, #10119 (buben), DG 21/7/13; Neige weijin, #10116 (buben), DG
19/7/24. Regulations reiterating that investigations and arrests were to be conducted exclusively by
official personnel were circulated in Sichuan; Baxian dangan, 2:274-275, DG 23/intercalary 7/10.
2aNeige weijin, #10092 (tongben), DG 8/5/22.
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251
Despite the rich detail provided by this case, the historical record of the
opium problem in the southwest before the 1830's remains extremely spotty and it
must be concluded that part of the reason for this is because the central government
continued to focus its attention on what was undoubtedly the much larger problem of
coastal trafficking. Indeed, it is important to remember that Ma's trafficking
activities only came to light incidentally due to their connection with a homicide.
This fact, along with a paucity of documentation, makes likely that little was being
done to enforce the prohibitions in the southwest at this time although there was
clearly a local demand for opium. According to the official record it was only during
the first major effort of the Daoguang reign to eradicate opium, particularly its
cultivation, that brought the heretofore peripheral southwestern problem into a more
central focus.
Opium cultivation was not discovered in either Guizhou or Sichuan until the
empire-wide investigations for cultivation in the early 1830's. These cultivation sites
in both provinces are more precisely indicated in the extant official record that those
previously discovered in Yunnan for which there are mostly only vague references to
unspecified native chieftainships in 1805 and reports of cultivation in the province's
" ) 1
"Eastern and Western Circuits" in the early 1820's. In Sichuan cultivators were
reported in Huili Zhou in the province's southernmost prefecture ofNingyuan,
bordered on the south and east by the Yunnanese prefectures of Wuding and
2 1 Lin Man-houng, "Qingmo Shehui Liuxing Xishi Yapian Yanjiu," p. 183, cites evidence for
cultivation in Yunnan in 1805. There are records dating from 1687 showing that poppy was
indigenous to the province; cited in Qin Heping, Yunnanyapien wenti, p. 18.
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252
Dongchuan respectively. Most were thought to be active in areas adjacent to the
"barbarian frontier," {fan jie), probably a reference to uncontrolled areas on the
Sichuan-Yunnan border.2 2 In Guizhou twelve cultivators were initially apprehended
in a mountainous area of Puan District in the subprefecture of the same name, located
23
on Guizhou’ s western border with Yunnan.
There was also a general concurrence that opium was also entering the
southwest via trade routes running into it from the east and south. In 1831 Ruan
Yuan provided further confirmation of Yin Peifen's initial report that opium was
flowing in from both Vietnam and Lingnan.2 4 Around the same time Song-pu
identified routes from Guangxi in the east and Sichuan Governor-General E-shan
(1770-1838) pointed out the opium flow from points east such as Hubei, Guangdong
and Zhejiang. Finally, both Song and E-shan noted that opium was also coming into
their provinces from Yunnan itself.2 5 These reports foreshadow Yunnan's position as
the region's main opium exporter and the rise of a major traffic between Yunnan and
Sichuan that would be further explored by officials only in 1839 and after.
Initial solutions to regional and cultivation problems relied heavily on the
baojia system of surveillance and, to a lesser extent, on the native chieftain system.
22YPZZ, DG 11/10/01, 1:98-100. For information on the eight native chieftainships in the Huili Zhou
region, see Gong Yin, Zhongguo tusi zhidu, pp. 381, 384-387.
2 3 Junji, #062220, DG 12/12/16.
2 4 ZZD, 11/3/?, pp. 147-150.
2 5 For Sichuan, see YPZZ, DG 11/10/01, 1:98-100. For Guizhou, see YPZZ, DG 11/7/3, 1:95-96. For
Yunnan, see YPZZ, DG 11/5/9, 1:77-79. Merchant smugglers and bandits from both Guangdong and
Guangxi were an on-going problem throughout Guizhou, smuggling amounts as large as 640 kilos of
opium at a time; Junji jinyan, #245-249, DG 30/10/25,
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253
While Song-pu provided only brief comments in favor of these solutions, E-shan was
particularly strong and detailed in his advocacy. He wanted the responsibility for
frontline enforcement of the prohibitions to fall on district officials who conducted
regular baojia inspections. In the middle of a month heads of ten-household units
were to submit bonds certifying their members free of opium to heads of hundred-
household units. These duly relayed the bonds to the Security Group Head
(baozheng) of the district's baojia organization, who then relayed them to local
officials. Baojia units were also to keep itinerant merchants passing through their
locations under surveillance. As an incentive to all non-official subjects, half the
goods of these smugglers would be awarded to those who reported them. Circuits
and prefectures were to submit similar bonds for their jurisdictions.
As for native chieftainships, E-shan wanted their heads to inform residents
that opium cultivation was illegal and to submit annual certificates that confirmed
that chieftains had made personal inspections of their jurisdictions to ensure they
were free of cultivation. Any plots discovered were to be uprooted and the land
confiscated by the chieftain and distributed to legitimate cultivators.2 7 Ruan Yuan
noted the existence of cultivation among the inhabitants of both junxian and native
chieftain administrative regions and recommended periodic inspections of suspect
regions by official personnel to eradicate illicit crops, but provided few details.
2 6 For Sichuan, see YPZZ, DG 11/10/01, 1:98-100. For Guizhou, see YPZZ, DG 11/7/3, 1:95-96.
2 1 YPZZ, DG 11/10/01 1:98-100.
2 8 ZZD, 11/3/?, pp. 147-150.
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254
Song-pu made no mention of native chieftainships, probably because he had yet to
detect any local cultivation in Guizhou and was only aware of trafficking activities
within the province.2 9
The Daoguang Emperor was highly displeased with the cursory nature of
Ruan Yuan's report, the bulk of which consisted of a regurgitation of the pertinent
imperial decree. In his follow-up memorial Ruan Yuan quoted the scathing
comments of the imperial decree issued in response to his initial report charging that
he "merely used empty words to charge subordinates to investigate and prohibit
opium. How will this enable local officials to actually carry out operations so that
traitorous commoners will know fear?" He was ordered to make "suitable
deliberations" regarding the formulation of more effective prohibition regulations
and to order his subordinates to conduct continuous search and seizure operations.
The result of this critique was the much more detailed analysis issued on June 18,
1831.3 0
Ruan reported that poppy cultivation was particularly common among the
"barbarians and Han who live along the border" and cited previous cases of
prosecution for cultivation and trafficking by Qingbao, Ming-shan and Han Kejun.
He also noted the involvement of the Han subjects of Yunnan proper, who "under the
guise of gathering poppy seeds to press for oil" grew them for opium production.
Ruan Yuan claimed to have continued the "old" prohibition policies of his
29KPZZ, DG 11/7/3, 1:95-96.
30YPZZ, DG 11/5/9, 1:77-79.
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255
predecessors by intercepting smugglers at checkpoints on the provincial borders. He
also issued warnings against cultivation at sowing time and sent troops and lictors
out in both winter and spring to check for the plants themselves. The provincial seat
had sent supervisory personnel to various localities to ensure that these measures
would be implemented. The results of these measures were meager so far with a few
plots discovered and uprooted. Ruan Yuan, however, admitted the ease of
cultivation, the immense profits to be gained from it and the congeniality of Yunnan's
terrain and climate all necessitated stricter measures to eradicate the "longstanding"
3 1
practice of opium cultivation.
Ruan Yuan proposed to use the community liaison officers of the baojia
system in conjunction with garrison troops to make seasonal inspections and pledged
to strictly comply with the newly formulated regulations that required official
confiscation of all land under illicit cultivation after its poppies had been uprooted.
He also accepted the institution of a system of bonds similar to that proposed by E-
shan and of stricter surveillance of commercial traffic at strategic points. Lictors
would be required to submit detailed reports of their enforcement activities and
supervising officials would be sent out to monitor the overall progress of the
prohibition operations.3 2
Native chieftainships would be ordered by the circuits and prefectures
controlling southwestern border areas to notify their subjects that poppy cultivation
3'Ibid.
3 2 Ibid.
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256
was illegal. The chieftains were also to personally conduct inspections on an annual
basis and any illicit crops were to be destroyed and their plots confiscated. Those
who did not comply or who conspired with cultivators were to be impeached.3 3
The interlinear comments brushed onto Ruan Yuan's memorial by the
Daoguang Emperor indicate extreme skepticism as to the value of the proposed
measures. The emperor was particularly critical of Ruan Yuan's plans for uprooting
poppies, stating that the cultivators could certainly not be relied upon to supply the
manpower for such operations and unsupervised personnel detailed to such an
activity were likewise unreliable. The emperor also expressed profound doubts about
finding honest and capable lictors to man the commercial checkpoints.3 4 While these
points were all well-taken, it is difficult to imagine what would have satisfied these
objections short of full and immediate eradication of the opium problem in the
province.
Ilia: First Phase of Prohibition in the Southwest (1831-1836)
1. Yunnan
The Daoguang Emperor soon accepted many of Ruan Yuan's suggestions in
his decree response. On June 10, 1831 the emperor ordered periodic searches by
local officials, either at random or during the regular examination of the baojia
registers, and their findings would be annually reported on by the governor-general.
The emperor also entirely concurred with Ruan's proposals for dealing with the
3 3 Ibid.
3 4 Ibid.
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257
problem in the native chieftainships, who would be left largely to their own devices
after being notified of the prohibitions and of their responsibility to submit annual
reports.3 5 In his report of March 10, 1832 Ruan claimed that although some
cultivation remained deep in the mountains, "seventy to eighty percent" of Yunnan's
homegrown product had been eradicated due to the steady enforcement of the
prohibitions since both Ruan and Yi-li-bu had taken up their respective posts
between 1826 and 1827. Ruan believed that his extensive confiscations of
cultivators' land and the judicious use of physical punishment was having the desired
effect.3 6
This claim does not seem strongly supported by the statistical information
supplied by Ruan Yuan in his periodic reports, which indicate that rather a state of
equilibrium had been reached. His year-end provincial report drafted on January 28,
1833 listed twenty-three cases concerning opium offenses of all types; that drafted on
December 28, 1834 listed twenty-seven cases.3 7 A radical drop in the caseload only
became apparent in the case report by Yi-li-bu, the newly appointed Governor-
General of Yun-Gui, submitted January 29, 1836, which noted the prosecution of
only eight cases. An imperial rescript, appended to this memorial suspended further
investigations for official consumers, but no other such reports listing opium cases of
any sort have come to light until 1838, when the format of reporting changed to
35QSL, DG 191:22a-23b.
3 6Junji jinyan, #1746-#1749, DG 12/2/9.
3 7 Junji jinyan, #201-#204, DG 12/12/8, #198-#200, DG 14/11/28.
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258
include amounts of opium seized and the imperial decrees of the early 1830's are no
longer cited as precedents for reporting cases.3 8 This change was probably one of the
results of the debate over Huang Juezi's famous May 14, 1838 memorial from which
the New Regulations arose. It thus appears that reports regarding all enforcement
operations from early 1836 until this date were suspended, if not the operations
themselves.
Whatever reductions in local cultivation, the main target of prohibition
operations by Yunnan provincial officials, were actually achieved by the mid-1830's
were being offset by a commensurate rise in trafficking. Ruan Yuan had already
anticipated this problem in early 1832:
Opium smuggling from beyond the provincial border was initially
unavoidable. Then, after local furong began to be cultivated for sale,
it was relatively cheaper and thus easy to sell so that opium that came
from afar was more expensive. Profits became minimal and
traffickers gradually decreased in number .... Your servants
especially fear that, as the domestic cultivation of furong is gradually
cut off, external trafficking in opium will reappear, as will laxity in
•30
enforcement as time passes.
It was consequently necessary to maintain pressure on both traffickers and
cultivators, so that the sources of opium would dry up and obviate the need to
enforce the prohibitions against consumers. Surveillance at strategic points leading
into Yunnan was to be stepped up to deal with the anticipated expansion of
3 8 Gongzhong jinyan, DG 15/12/19; CCC, #69912, DG 15/12/19.
3 9 Junji jinyan, #1746-#1749, DG 12/2/9.
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259
traffickers, but little else seems to have been done.4 0 To prevent laxity, officials
deemed to be soft on enforcement were summarily dismissed 4 1
Anti-cultivation measures also seem to have had a limited effect despite the
"seventy to eighty percent" reduction claimed by Ruan Yuan. If such figures
concerning clandestine activity can be taken seriously at all, they are only relevant
for those areas under fairly continuous and dependable official surveillance. As
Ruan himself admitted, cultivation was still occurring in the mountains, which were
beyond official scrutiny. As for the native chieftainships, themselves considered
quasi-foreign territory by regular Qing officialdom, effective enforcement was
entirely at the whim of their rulers. A report by Ruan Yuan drafted on December 28,
1834 and based party on covert inspections of various regions found that the
inhabitants of Yunnan proper had all "come to fear the law so that illicit cultivation
of furong declines daily." Illicit cultivation in native chieftainships, however, was
"inevitable" and, while declining, could not be fully controlled. An unknown amount
of cultivation was also occurring in "many places in the mountains."4 2 It seems that
vigorous prohibition via the local administrative apparatus of the junxian system had
simply driven cultivators deeper into the wilderness without eliminating those in the
chieftainships.
4 0Ibid.
4 1 In Yunnan a provisional district magistrate in Zhao Zhou, Dali Prefecture was impeached for
acquitting several individuals who claimed that they were gathering poppy for both its oil and its
medical properties. They had been arrested by the previous magistrate for cultivation. The
provisional magistrate was impeached for being intentionally lax and the cultivators punished;
Gongzhong jinyan, DG 12/9/1.
4 2 Gongzhong jinyan, DG 14/11/28.
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Some local administrative documents from the Yi native chieftainship of
Maolian in Wuding Prefecture, which formed part of Yunnan’ s northern border with
Sichuan, have survived and demonstrate that the prohibitions were, at least, made
known in these areas and also show the difficulties encountered by native chieftains
who were ostensibly trying to enforce the prohibitions in their jurisdictions. Na
Zhenxing, the Headman (tumu) of Maolian throughout the Daoguang reign, drafted
his initial prohibition memorial of March/April 1831 in response to a complaint by
provincial authorities that he had failed to report quickly enough on the presence of
opium in his jurisdiction. He states that he made a personal inspection of the
regional hamlets, which were generally free of cultivation, with the exception of two
plots being cultivated by a kinsman of his. These were uprooted in front of an
official sent to supervise the operation. A report from another locale within Na's
jurisdiction also revealed cultivation by one Zhou Yushun, who stoutly refused to
uproot his poppies and claimed that the Na family had no jurisdiction over him. He
furthermore threatened to re-open an old lawsuit against the Na family as they were
clearly nursing some kind of grievance against him. A rescript appended to Na's
report ordered Zhou be detained at once.4 3
43Witding YizuNashi tusi dangan, DG 11/3, p. 252, #1. The introduction and appendices to this
volume contain supplementary information on the native chieftainship, whose history under several
clans spans the Yuan period into the twentieth century. Gong Yin, Zhongguo tusi zhidu, pp. 724-725
provides a concise outline of the native chieftainship. Na Zhenxing's title of "headman" was not part
o f the hierarchy of regular native officialdom. It seems to have been a very low rank used exclusively
in Sichuan, Yunnan and Guizhou; Gong Yin, Zhongguo tusi zhidu, p. 114.
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261
Within two months Na received a detailed summary of the prohibitions and
their rationale. It described what furong was and how it was produced and declared
it harmful both to agriculture and human health. Punishments of varying degrees
severity for all types of offenders were enumerated. Schedules for seasonal field
inspections were outlined. The summary also mandated that any violations were to
be reported to regular official personnel and bonds certifying locales free of opium
were to be submitted to the supervising circuits and prefectures. If any violations
were subsequently discovered in such locales, the officials' who had validated the
certificates would be punished. Two months after receiving this document, Na
issued a report confirming he had posted the anti-cultivation notices received from
the provincial seat in six villages within his jurisdiction. On December 14 Na
submitted a bond certifying that he had made investigations within his jurisdiction
for opium cultivation, counterfeiting and banditry and had found no offenders.4 4
Such is the brief record of prohibition operations at the fringes of the Qing
administration in the early 1830's. Ruan Yuan's proposals were plainly being
circulated as standard administrative procedure and at least some native officials
were complying and discovering cultivators. Implementation of the prohibitions,
u Wuding Yizu Nashi tusi dangan, DG 11/3, p. 253-255, #2, #3 & #4. It is interesting to note that the
personnel who conduct grassroots operations are referred to throughout the document by a term that
identifies them as part of the baojia system of police enforcement. This term, xiangbao, actually
refers to two officers (xiangyu and dibao) whose tasks are not always entirely clear, but are clearly
connected with community policing; compare the contrasting explanations for dibao in Kung-chuan
Hsiao, Rural China, p. 63 and Huang Liuhong, Fu hui quan shu, p. 21. Titles from native
chieftainships are totally absent in the summary from Maolian. It appears to have been originally
drafted for circulation among the baojia of the junxian regions of the province and thus provides
further, if indirect, evidence of the degree of separation between the junxian and native chieftain
systems.
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262
however, was not unproblematic; the altercation with Zhou Yushun demonstrates
that there was resistance to native chieftain authority and it was very personalized.
Indeed, it seems that this very personalization largely enabled resistance. It also
shows that "the ruled" were not always intimidated by the authority of quasi-officials,
whose ethnicity may have encouraged Han defiance, although in this case Zhou's
own ethnicity is unclear. What is clear is that Zhou felt that prohibition was
providing the Na clan with an opportunity to settle an old score, just one of the many
possible forms of official abuse that high Qing officials constantly worried about.
Statistical information from Yunnan compiled from memorials drafted
between early 1832 and early 1836, contains twenty-three cultivation cases.4 5 Four
of these occurred in Wuding Prefecture one of which involved a Muslim cultivator.
Eight others occurred in the eastern part of the province, mostly in prefectures
bordering on Guzhou. Seven were reported from western and southwestern Yunnan
and three from the central regions of the province. There were also fifty-six cases of
trafficking and consumption discovered over this period, with the bulk of them,
forty-three, occurring in Yunnan Prefecture, where the provincial capital was
located4 6
While it is difficult to reach many specific conclusions from this data, which
does not include statistics on amounts of opium seized and often conflates several
45 See appendix C: Table of Opium Offenses in Yunnan, March 1832-February 1836 for complete
details.
4 6 Ibid.
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263
distinct offenses, it can be said that cultivation was occuring along most provincial
borders and trafficking and consumption were centered on the region of the
provincial capital in central Yunnan. Of course, this region, being the administrative
hub of the province, would naturally maintain a greater level of official surveillance
and this may have created the erroneous impression that Yunnan Prefecture had the
biggest opium problem in the province rather than the highest level o f official
surveillance. Nevertheless the large number of trafficking and consumption cases in
the prefecture is no doubt also indicative of its status as a commercial hub towards
which such activities would naturally gravitate.4 7
Despite the paucity of detail in these records, they represent an intensification
of official scrutiny devoted to the opium problem in Yunnan and provided an
unprecedented amount of information to the central government regarding regional
cultivation, trafficking and consumption. This is true for the other provinces of the
southwest as well. From the time this new level of surveillance was initiated in 1831
there would be no significant change in the prohibitions or their enforcement until
the debates of the second half of the 1830's. Generally speaking, the solution of local
and central authorities during most of the decade did not address the southwestern
problem of trafficking from Vietnam and Lingnan beyond tightening inspections at
passes and customs points. Unlike in Xinjiang, where there eventually was some
discussion of the prohibitions at the state level between the Khanate of Kokand and
4 7Yilibu observed in a memorial in early 1839 that the large number of merchants drawn to the
provincial capital because of its large numbers of inhabitants ensured that there would be more
trafficking there than anywhere else in the province; Gongzhong DG, DG 18/11/9, 7:129b-130a.
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264
the Qing Empire, no communication with Vietnam seems to have been contemplated
or attempted. The effect of anti-cultivation measures is difficult to assess during this
period, but they clearly did not succeed in eradicating the problem from Yunnan,
whose rampant cultivation was used by legalization's prime opponent Zhu Zun to
help refute Xu Naiji during the 1836 legalization debate. Zhu claimed that the
mountains and wilds of the province were full of cultivators and that this domestic
production had done nothing to divert the flow of silver from China abroad, which
was the prime rational for Xu's proposal to legalize the drug.4 8
2. Guizhou
The record for prohibition operations in Guizhou that arose as a result of the
imperial decree of August 12, 1830 also shows that provincial officials were
beginning to submit detailed lists of offenders and locations. After Guizhou
Governor Song-pu had initially declaring natural conditions precluded opium
cultivation, Acting Governor Lin Qing (1791-1846) submitted a report in February of
1833 on the arrest of twelve cultivators in Puan Prefecture along with a number of
traffickers that resulted in a total of eighty-nine cases. Prior to this Song had only
arrested a few merchant traffickers and some smokers around the provincial seat of
Guiyang. Lin stated that he had been tipped off by a secret communication from the
Governor-General of Yun-Gui Ruan Yuan as to the activities of the cultivators.4 9
4 8 Zhu's DG October 1836 memorial is both cited and reproduced in full in Tian Rukang and Li
Huaxing "Jinyan Yundong de sixiang qingqu," 100-101 and 103-105, respectively.
4 9 For the Guiyang cases, see Junji jinyan, #1736-1737, DG 12/2/24. For the cultivation and
trafficking cases, see Junji, # 062220, DG 12/12/16.
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2 6 5
Lin held trafficking to be inevitable given Guizhou's geographical position as
a crossroads between Sichuan, Hunan, Yunnan and Guangxi, all of whose merchants
had brought opium and knowledge regarding its production to Guizhou. Lin felt,
however, that local cultivation was another matter entirely as it fell entirely within
his jurisdiction, spread rapidly and was "particularly injurious to the local garrisons."
He feared that Puan was not the only place where furong cultivation was taking place
as Guizhou was full of secluded mountainous terrain where "petty commoners who
think only of profit" could hide their illicit crops. Upon making further inquiries, he
found that poppies were quite common and their roots were often eaten by the
populace. He also received further reports of cultivation in Qianxi Zhou in Dading
Prefecture, on Guizhou's northwestern border with Sichuan and Yunnan.5 0
The baojia system had not proven effective in Puan as it was discovered that
a community liaison officer had shielded the twelve cultivators from officials. In
another case whose specifics were not given a local headman of a native
chieftainship in Dading had been arrested. Lin had dispatched officials to various
locales to locate poppies, uproot them and ensure that the illicit plots were converted
to the cultivation of grains and vegetables. Opium was to be confiscated and
destroyed by mixing it with wood oil and burning it. Cultivators among both Han
and Miao were being informed of the prohibitions and could avoid closer scrutiny if
they dug up their poppies. Bonds were also being issued for all social levels to
5 0 Junji, # 062220, DG 12/12/16.
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266
certify there was no opium in their locales. Lin, however, was not very satisfied with
these measures and suspected official connivance with traffickers and cultivators was
concealing perpetrators from detection. He promised follow-up investigations to
guard against this problem.5 1
Lin's report is also unprecedented among Guizhou's documents on opium
prohibition in that he provides the first detailed list of locales and offenders on
record. Unfortunately he neither details their crimes nor gives a total for the opium
confiscated. This lack of detail was typical during the early phases of prohibition,
and more was provided as prohibition intensified and the court became more
concerned with ensuring the opium seized by officials was accounted for to prevent
resale. In fact, the statistics provided by Guizhou administrators are the most
detailed and voluminous of any other interior province. In Lin's memorial, for
example, seventy-six offenders, aside from the Puan cultivators, are listed in fifteen
52
different locales. This is the most detailed list provided from Guizhou before 1838.
While it is not possible to determine how many of these cases concern
cultivation and how many concern trafficking, forty-five offenders were caught in
western Guizhou, mostly on the border with Yunnan. Of the remaining thirty-one,
twenty-three were apprehended in the region of the provincial capital. It seems likely
that most of these latter twenty-three involved trafficking rather than cultivation,
5‘Ibid.
5 2 Ibid.
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267
which would have been risky in the comparatively well-supervised environs of the
provincial administrative hub. In contrast, many of the relatively isolated western
c -5
Guizhou locales were probably cultivation sites.
The case lists submitted by Song-pu's successor Yu-tai (1788-1851) for the
years 1834-35 and 1835-36 were even less detailed, if more numerous. A memorial
dated January 11, 1835 briefly noted a total of fifty-five cases involving one hundred
twenty-eight offenders for a range of trafficking, consumption and cultivation
offenses. There are very few locales mentioned in connection with these cases, but
two out of a total of four lay in western Guizhou. Yu-tai also noted in his report that
there had been a marked decrease in provincial opium cases, but that the crime could
probably never be fully eradicated. He ended by affirming that there were no cases
of official consumption, but that vigilance would be maintained.5 4
In mid-1835 Censor Yuan Wenxiang issued a memorial calling attention to
the growing number of incidents of opium consumption, the establishment of opium
dens and the cultivation of poppy in Guizhou. Yuan suggested that poppy seeds had
originally been introduced by foreign merchants into Fujian and Guangdong and later
spread to Guizhou and Yunnan. Yuan noted that cultivation was popular because
opium was "several times more profitable than grain cultivation, but less laborious"
and claimed that numerous opium dens were being operated with official connivance
53See appendix D: Table of Trafficking & Cultivation Offenses in Guizhou circa February 1833 for a
full regional breakdown of these offenses.
5 4 Junji jinyan, #195-#197, DG 14/12/13.
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268
in obscure comers of Guizhou's towns and countryside. He predicted a number of
serious social problems would arise in the face of this cycle of provincial production,
distribution and consumption, including the exhaustion of familial resources on drug
purchases and robberies committed by impoverished addicts. Yuan also feared the
effect of mass drug production and consumption on grain prices, which would rise
dramatically if there was a large-scale local shift from grain to opium cultivation.5 5
He consequently requested, and received, an imperial decree ordering Guizhou
officials to intensify their prohibition operations, primarily via the baojia system.5 6
In response to Yuan's charges Governor Yu-tai, making the usual references
to the contributing factors of Yunnan and Lingnan traffickers as well as Guizhou's
local cultivators, asserted that violations had been much reduced. Furthermore, he
denied the existence of opium dens, which were easy to detect, but did say he had
heard of local toughs, in collusion with lictors and troops, who were committing acts
of plunder and extortion under cover of enforcing the prohibitions in the southeast of
the province. Nevertheless, Yu-tai assured the throne that he would continue his
efforts, especially against corrupt or lax officials.5 7
At least some of these assurances must have been taken seriously by the court
as investigative operations against consumers within the yamen, which had been
5 5 Junji jinyan, #1838-#1839, DG 15/3/26. It is somewhat unclear whether the text merely refers to
opium alone or both opium and tobacco. I have not encountered the term "opium tobacco" ("yapien
yancao") in any other document. Internal evidence from the memorial suggests that this term is
synonymous with furong, a standard tenn for opium in the southwest.
5 6 QSL, DG 264:41b-42a.
5 7 Gongzhong jinyan, DG 15/6/23.
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269
going on since 1831, but had turned up nothing, were suspended by a vermilion
rescript appended to Yu-tai's last known report on prohibition operations issued on
January 11, 1836. This memorial, which reiterates Yu-tai's assertion that opium
cases within the province were steadily decreasing, but that violations could not be
entirely eliminated, gives a brief list of twenty-one offenders who appear to be
co
mostly traffickers and consumers from six locales scattered throughout Guzhou.
Neither Yuan Wenxiang's proposals nor Yu-tai's prohibition operations
specifically addressed the economic appeal of opium to the peasantry. It would take
more than two additional years and a change of governors for this dimension of
Guizhou's opium problem to be seriously addressed by senior provincial officials.
This pattern seems characteristic of prohibition policies across the empire, which in
almost every instance preferred police measures to crop substitution programs.
3. Sichuan
The record for Sichuan during the first half of the 1830's is far less complete
than that of either Yunnan or Guizhou, but nevertheless demonstrates that some
attempt was being made in some localities to implement Governor-General E-shan's
prohibition measures. A local lateral communication from the city of Chongqing in
Ba District reports on a merchant smuggling case in November 1831 that netted
eighteen kilos of opium paste and thirty-eight kilos of crude opium. The discovery
occurred during because of a tip that an itinerant merchant was in possession of
opium. Investigation of the merchant's lodgings turned up the opium, but the
5 8 Gongzhong jinyan, DG 15/11/23.
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270
merchant had fled and remained at large.5 9 Another lateral communication from
Chongqing Prefecture dated January 11, 1835 quotes extensively from E-shan's
original deliberative memorial of DG December 13, 1831. The communication, a
status report on local prohibition operations, is one of the administrative results of
the implementation of E-shan's recommendations in Sichuan. While noting, as per
statute, that the prefectural yamen contains no opium users, the report goes on to
admit that smoking has not been entirely eradicated from the general populace and
notes several ongoing cases of trafficking and consumption. Traffickers are all
characterized as coming from provinces other than Sichuan. Nevertheless, numerous
arrests are said to be gradually reducing the problem and no reports of consumption,
cultivation or trafficking have come from any other locale in the jurisdiction,
including its native chieftainships.6 0
Before a further intensification of the prohibitions throughout the empire in
1839 extant reports from Sichuan continued to unearth trafficking and consumption
but no cultivation, including in Huili Zhou, the original site of Sichuanese provincial
opium discovered by the 1831 inquiries. Consequently, investigations for cultivation
were suspended by the imperial rescript appended to E-shan's routine report on
opium offenses drafted on January 22, 1836.6 1 It is, of course, improbable that
5 9 Baxian dang'an, 2:272, DG 11/?/?. The date of the initial report is given in this document as DG
11/10/4.
6 0 Baxian dang'an, 2:273, DG 14/2/13.
6IGongzhong jinyan, DG 15/12/20. 1 have been unable to locate any of Eshan's other memorials that
must have been drafted in compliance with the imperial decree of November 4, 1831 mandating
annual situation reports. These missing reports would have been produced between his initial
memorial of the same date and the January 22, 1836 memorial that concluded anti-cultivation
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271
opium had been eradicated from Sichuan and it would be rediscovered by early 1839.
Nevertheless, it is possible that a general decline in opium cultivation in Sichuan was
related in part to the rise of Yunnan as the major regional producer and exporter of
opium to the more commercialized and urbanized areas of southeastern Sichuan and
beyond.
Illb: First Phase Conclusions
Generally speaking, prohibition was intensified in the southwest in the wake
of the imperial anti-cultivation decree of August 12,1830. Indeed, it was discovered
during this empire-wide search that the center of cultivation lay in the southwest,
particularly in Yunnan, and constituted the most serious opium problem in the
empire outside the southeast coast. While trafficking and consumption activity
certainly played a role in elevating the status of the southwest to the level of a major
prohibition problem, it was local cultivation and the regional circulation of this
product that most alarmed the dynasty. Nevertheless, the court's attention remained
focused primarily on the coast and this deeply affected the policy debates over the
silver drain, opium legalization and the formulation of the New Regulations over the
three-year period from mid-1836 to mid-1839. By the end of 1836 the investigations
launched by the August 12, 1830 decree had been largely suspended throughout the
empire. At this point prohibition in the southwest, which seems to have been
operations. It is fairly certain, however, that no new cultivation locales were discovered during this
period between the end of 1831 and the beginning of 1836, hence the suspension of operations.
Investigations for trafficking appear to have been continued if not reported as demonstrated by a
trafficker's confession from Ba District dated September 22, 1837; Baxian dang'an, 2:274, DG
17/8/23.
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272
suspended to some degree, had become routinized and of limited efficacy. This
situation helped usher in more drastic measures and again intensified the level of
official scrutiny of opium offenses in the region. This increased surveillance
uncovered the existence of an organized trans-provincial opium traffic that not only
constituted a complete regional economy, but was also sending its competitively-
priced product beyond the southwest eastward towards the coast.
IV: Interim Phase of Prohibition in the Southwest (1836-1838)
The legalization and prohibition debates of this period created profound
changes in the conduct of opium operations throughout the empire and the southwest
was no exception. The most important innovation of this period was the
intensification of enforcement against addicts as demanded by Huang Jiezi that
would soon be enshrined in the New Regulations as a capital offense. To this end,
public notices for concoctions thought to enable addicts to break their habits were
posted and users were being called upon to turn themselves in and break their habits.
Trafficking rings, probably the most accessible link in the chain of opium production
and consumption, also became a major target of intensified operations. Furthermore,
official management of search and seizure operations received enhanced scrutiny as
evidenced by the appearance in official reports of specific amounts o f opium seized.
Finally and most importantly, offenders were being permitted to turn themselves in to
62
avoid punishment and to formally declare they would commit no further offenses.
62 Gongzhong DG, DG 18/11/9, 7:129b-130a.
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273
One document of immediate importance for an intensification of regional
prohibition, with a particular focus on cultivation, was Censor Guo Baiyin's
memorial of January 16, 1839, concerning the independent dynamic of the opium
problem of the imperial interior. As noted in chapter three, Guo feared the economic
effects of immediate eradication on the peasantry, who depended on the crop for their
livelihood, but there is little evidence that the throne heeded his advice to proceed
6 3
slowly with anti-cultivation operations.
In contrast to the center's apparent indifference to this reasonable advice,
some senior provincial officials, especially in Guizhou, seem to have acted more
circumspectly, at least at first. Governor He Changling's initial operations against
cultivators, for example, employed both crop substitution using wheat without any
plot confiscations or arrests.6 4 Whatever its original intent, Guo's memorial had
refocused the attention of the court on the southwestern cultivation problem at a
point when its attitude towards all opium offenses was hardening.
1. Yunnan
One of the effects of the debates over opium policy that had begun in 1836
was a court letter concerning the seriousness of Yunnan's opium problem, issued on
December 21, 1838 to Yun-Gui Governor-General Yi-li-bu and Yunnan Governor
Yan Botao (7-1855). The letter consisted largely of verbatim quotations from an
6 3 WJD, DG 18/12/22, pp. 11-12.
6 4 Junji jinyan, # 2327-#2328, DG 18/12/18.
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274
enclosure in a memorial from an unidentified official who made serious allegations
regarding the severity of the provincial opium problem. The enclosure opened with
the bald statement that there was extensive poppy cultivation in all the border
provinces, but that it was particularly widespread in the mountainous wilderness of
Yunnan, where the poor peasants obtained ten times more profit from opium than
from rice. It went on to assert that fifty to sixty percent of the province's private
secretaries, runners, students, merchants, soldiers and commoners were said to be
smoking the drug, many of these in opium dens that were operated openly. Such
widespread official consumption prevented any reports on the extent of the problem
from reaching the center and had riddled the local administration with informers who
could act to preempt official prohibition efforts. Moreover, cheap Yunnan opium
was flowing out of the province to other regions of China where it was successfully
competing with the more expensive product found there. The author requested an
imperial decree to the Governor-General of Yun-Gui and the Governor of Yunnan
charging them to intensify their prohibition efforts, but also stated that these should
not be oriented to rooting out past abuses but preventing their continuation into the
future. The emperor duly complied with this request, ordering an intensification of
the prohibition of these activities as part of the contemporary comprehensive,
stepped-up effort to eliminate the opium problem throughout the empire. This
enclosure and its corresponding court letter represented a first major change in
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2 7 5
imperial policy in the southwest since the decree of August 12, 1830 and acted as the
precedent for subsequent reports.6 5
The December 21, 1838 court letter extracted further detail about the opium
problem in Yunnan as well as more comprehensive rationale for its elimination,
which was necessitated by the discovery of the extent of both the local cultivation
and trafficking problems within the province and beyond its boundaries. The
material fruit of this crossfertilization was the hybrid mixture of local and coastal
opium that Yi-li-bu declared to be in circulation in his memorial of February 1, 1839.
This account o f anti-cultivation operations is mainly significant for confirming the
spatial limitations of imperial writ despite an intensification of prohibition. While
regular official personnel could conduct crop eradication operations in Yunnan
proper without restraint, Yi-li-bu felt that such personnel could not be used to
intensify prohibition in native chieftainships, where they would inevitably cause
incidents among the locals. He was thus compelled, as usual, to conduct prohibition
via the intermediary indigenous officials, who were weakly threatened with
punishment if offenses committed in Yunnan proper were somehow traced back by
regular officials to cultivation sites within their chieftainships.6 6
6 5 For the court letter, see YPZZ, DG 18/11/4, 1:419-420. For the enclosure, see Junji jinyan, #2275,
DG 18/12/9. The provenance of the enclosure is problematic. As with all such documents, it lacks the
name of the memorialist, but it was certainly drafted by someone outside the contemporary provincial
administration of Yunnan, possibly a metropolitan censor. The apparent discrepancy in dates between
the enclosure and the court letter in which it was quoted arise from the fact that the former is a file
copy bearing the date of its registration by the central administration and not its drafting date.
bbYPZZ, DG 18/12/18, 1:466-469.
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276
Yi-li-bu's solution to this limitation of imperial investigative authority was to
attempt to cut off the circulation of local opium after it had left its production sites.
By intensifying operations against the more accessible vectors of the opium infection,
namely urban traffickers, Yi-li-bu hoped to destroy the system that carried the drug
from regions of little or no official control, where it was of little concern to imperial
authorities, into China proper without causing undue and expensive unrest. At the
same time urban demand within the province, which constituted another major
incentive for native chieftainship cultivation, would come under more official
pressure, partly via the increasingly stringent measures against consumers formulated
f t l
by the center.
Yi-li-bu had managed to arrest an unspecified number of traffickers and seize
847 kilos of crude opium and paste, thus enabling him to declare that "every village
trembles in compliance with the state's commands and repents for fear of heavy
punishment." Unfortunately, the Daoguang Emperor was hardly so sanguine,
arguing that such a large amount of opium, whose origin had yet to be precisely
determined, emphasized the extent and duration of the problem. In contrast to the
past swift eradication and not containment of the problem was what the emperor now
demanded.6 8
67 Ibid.
6 8 Ibid.
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277
2. Guizhou
Pressure from the center was also affecting operations in Guizhou, where
highly detailed reports began to emerge. Governor He Changling (1785-1848) was
able to declare the seizure of 5 (6) kilos of paste and 760 (811) kilos of crude opium,
in addition to 397 (252) kilos of crude opium and 46 (44) kilos of paste voluntarily
handed over. This haul came from 57 (62) traffickers and 108 (90) consumers, all of
whom had been arrested, and from 1502 (1488) offenders of various sorts who had
turned themselves in. All of this information was broken down into provincial and
subprovincial locales and represented the results of several months' intensification of
prohibition operations during the last months of the Daoguang Emperor's eighteenth
69
year.
Intensification of official scrutiny cannot by itself explain the enormous
increase in cases, and it is rather the amnesty program, as previously described in
chapter 2, which added over 1500 people to the list of offenders, that stands out as
the major innovation responsible for it. Amnesty also contributed to a considerable
percentage of the total amount of opium confiscated by officials, and could be
credited with thirty-five percent of the total amount of 1157 kilos of crude opium and
ninety percent of the total amount of fifty-one kilos of paste that fell into official
■ ’ ‘ fig u res given represent totals in He's official reports. As they do not entirely tally with the case lists
enumerating the details of individual cases, I have provided separate totals that I have derived from
these case lists in parenthesis. Some discrepancies can be attributed to the fact that I have excluded
textual ambiguities from my totals. Consequently, I have assumed He's figures to be more accurate if
not unambiguously correct. For specifics, including citations for the original reports, see appendix E:
Table of Opium Offenses & Amnesties in Guizhou, late 1838-February 1839.
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278
hands. Finally, the amnesty program clearly contributed to the radical geographic
expansion of prohibition operations, which now reached into every prefecture of the
province. As appendix E shows, twenty-nine locales out of a total fifty-two reporting
in late 1838 and early 1839 submitted amnesty figures exclusively.7 0 The Daoguang
Emperor's vermilion rescript to these reports expressed satisfaction with what had
been accomplished, but was also clearly unsettled by the magnitude of the problem
• • 7 1 •
and its rapid spread. For perhaps the first time in the history of Qing prohibition
operations, the actual extent of opium production, trafficking and consumption was
being revealed to the court and, at least in Guizhou, this was primarily due to the
amnesty program.
What is missing from these statistics, however revelatory, is cultivation, the
distinctive problem of the southwest. In an enclosure to the memorial containing the
statistical information above Fie Changling filled this gap with a report on his own
personal investigation of the poppy problem in Guizhou. He discovered that both
Han and Miao were engaged in cultivation, which occurred mainly in isolated
regions where "official do not set foot." These regions, which had numerous
incidents of cultivation, mainly lay in the prefectures of Zunyi, which formed part of
the province's northern border with Sichuan, Dading, Xingyi and Anshun. These
three areas lay in western Guizhou and comprised most of its western border with
™He Changling's reports were actually compiled from statistics drawn from at least fifty-six locales,
but textual ambiguities make a final determination of this number extremely conjectural; Gongzhong
DG, DG 18/10/28, 7:4850b, DG 18/12/18, 30:568a-569b; Junji jinyan, #2321-2326, DG 18/12/18.
7 1 Junji jinyan, #2321-2326, DG 18/12/18.
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279
Yunnan. He Changling observed that the long growing period for poppy made it
vulnerable to detection and his personnel, mainly the community liaison officers of
the baojia system, had been paying particular attention to the autumn planting period
since September, 1837. He also added an important fact to what was currently
known about cultivation in Guizhou by revealing that cultivation was being sustained
almost exclusively by merchant smugglers from beyond the province, who would
contract for poppy harvests, even inspecting the fields beforehand and providing seed
79
money in advance.
His most recent efforts had unearthed cultivation, ranging from plots a
hectare or less in extent, cultivated by both Han and Miao from Langdai Ting,
Puding and Qingzhen all in Anshun Prefecture. Cultivation by more than ten villages
of "Tanka" coastal immigrants, who were possibly from Guangdong, was also
discovered in the region of the provincial capital in Guizhu District. He Changling
gathered the landlords of these plots together and got them to switch to wheat
cultivation, apparently without any arrests. He Changling felt that his measures,
which included both seasonal and irregular inspections, crop eradication and land
confiscation, had reduced cultivation from previous levels.7 3
3. Sichuan
No official reports have come to light from Sichuan during this interim period
and it is, consequently difficult to assess the contemporary state of the provincial
7 2 Ibid.
7 3 Ibid.
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2 8 0
opium problem. A report from Governor-General Bao-xing (1777-1848) dated May
6, 1839 asserting that investigations were ongoing drew a skeptical imperial
interlinear comment to the effect that this kind of statement constituted an exemplary
type of official perfunctory behavior. Indeed, such comments appear again in the
memorial and give the impression that Bao-xing's report is rather belated in the
court's view.7 4 It may be that the general paucity of prohibition documents extant
from Sichuan is due to the fact that Bao-xing held the post of provincial governor-
general from 1838 to 1847, with only a brief hiatus. His reluctance to pursue
prohibition vigorously might be explained by the fact that two of his sons, both of
whom held official posts, had been convicted of opium smoking some time before
April 15, 1839, the date of an imperial decree of censure for his failure to control his
sons.7 5 This might not only explain the emperor's tone in this memorial of May 6,
but could also explain Bao-xing's express preference for a fairly common selective
method of opium enforcement, which targeted traffickers and cultivators in
preference to addicts. This tactic was intended to automatically to deprive
consumers of their supplies without the state having to divert resources to anti
smoking efforts. Unfortunately, this position would soon become untenable with the
court's acceptance of Huang Jiezi's rationale for making opium consumption a capital
™YPZZ, DG 19/3/23, 1:532-533.
7 5See QSL, DG 320:4b, for the decree and Gongzhong DG, DG 19/4/25, 8:262b-263a for Bao-xing's
memorial expressing gratitude for the emperor's leniency. The fact that Bao-xing was an imperial
clansman may explain the emperor's decision.
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281
crime. Bao-xing also listed other by-now conventional measures such as publication
of concoctions for opium substitutes and implementation of an amnesty program.
Like his contemporaries in Guizhou and Yunnan, Bao-xing also provided
more specific statistics in his report to the throne. In contrast to their seizures,
however, the majority of Bao-xing's came from voluntary handovers arising from the
amnesty program. 331 kilos of crude opium and paste were handed in Ba District
and more than 136 kilos were turned over in Chengdu Prefecture. Approximately
147 kilos was seized from a boat on a branch of the Yangzi in Kuizhou, located on
Sichuan's eastern border with Hubei. In all around 825 kilos was confiscated with
fifty-seven percent of the total arising from the voluntary handovers in Ba and
Chengdu. Thirty-three offenders were also arrested. The number of those amnestied
was unspecified. Included in these figures were twenty-nine cases of cultivation,
which had been rediscovered in the province following the suspension of such
investigations in January 1836, with twenty of these occurring in Chengdu Prefecture
itself.7 6
V: Prohibition under the New Regulations (1839-1842)
In general by the time the New Regulations were promulgated in 1839
prohibition operations had been pursued in many areas of the southwest for nearly a
decade. Consequently, reports on prohibition operations had become fairly
16YPZZ, DG 19/3/23, 1:532-533. Bao-xing actually reported atotal confiscation of over 1233 kilos,
but 408 kilos of this amount was tobacco, which was also an illicit crop and had also been seized on
the boat. I have come across very few references to tobacco confiscations during this period and must
conclude that either not much was being produced or that such operations arose only incidentally.
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282
routinized by the end of the 1830's and consist mainly of statistical reports from
Yunnan and Guizhou. Curiously, despite efforts by the court to compile as much
detailed information as possible, the Yunnan materials contain only amounts of
opium seized and omit listing details on offenders or cases whereas the Guizhou
materials are comprehensive. The gap in the Yunnan historical record is almost
certainly due to loss rather than lax reporting, as many of its extant documents are
actually enclosures whose corresponding memorials have not been located. One of
the few memorials that has been found, Yan Botai's memorial of February 2, 1840,
does state that over one hundred offenders had been prosecuted during the previous
77
year. The cases detailing these offenses have probably also been lost.
A more serious deficiency of the Sichuan record is its nearly complete lack of
statistical reports. While this can also be explained away by loss, there is a
possibility that Governor-General Bao-xing was simply lax in his enforcement
operations. This latter view is supported by a complaint echoed in an imperial decree
from January 25, 1840 that too few cases have been discovered in Sichuan. Lax
enforcement does seem to have been a problem in Sichuan, whatever other factors
7 8 •
were operating to affect the record. While all these provincial differences make a
comparison of prohibition operations in the three provinces extremely difficult, but it
is still possible to make some tentative generalizations from the extant data, at least
for Guizhou and Yunnan.
7 7 Gongzhong jinyan, DG 20/1/18.
1 % YPZZ, DG 19/12/21, 1:784.
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1. Guizhou
Appendix G: Table of Opium Offenses, Amnesties & Confiscations in
Guizhou, January 1838-September 1842 is based on confiscation and offender
statistics ranging from January 26, 1838 to September 9, 1842. These statistics
appear, from intertextual evidence, to be relatively complete for about half this
period. The absence of comprehensive reports after October 10, 1840, however,
makes it impossible to reliably determine the totals in all categories for this period of
nearly five years. Those totals provided below for opium and for arrests are thus
restricted to the period between January 26, 1838 and October 10, 1840. The total
for consumers turning themselves in for amnesty only covers the period up to
September 1, 1839.
Perhaps the most striking fact arising from these figures is that after nearly
three years of elaborate prohibition operations, a mere 1852 (1073) kilos of crude
opium and paste had been confiscated, less than ten percent of the 14,640 kilos that
would be confiscated in Yunnan in a year and a half. Moreover, 932 kilos, fifty
percent of Guizhou's total confiscations, came from a single May 1839 operation
conducted by District Magistrate Feng Zhaopeng in a single locale, Guizhu District,
7Q
Guiyang Prefecture.
While figures for the extent o f cultivation are extremely fragmentary, it is
certain that they far exceeded the total of fourteen hectares that can be gleaned from
specific information in the documents of this period. The statistics also show that
7 9 WJD, DG 19/4/29, pp. 330-332.
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2 8 4
500 or so cultivators were either apprehended or turned themselves in and converted
their lands to either grain or cotton cultivation, voluntarily or otherwise. Conversion
to the latter crop was a scheme thought up by Governor He Changling to reduce
provincial expenditures to bring it in at great expense from Huguang. As an
incentive, He provided cotton seeds to those who had voluntarily uprooted their
poppy.8 0 This program is the only evidence that has come to light that the advice
given by Guo Baiyin in his January 16, 1839 memorial on crop substitution may have
been followed by senior provincial officials anywhere in the southwest.
Despite these efforts, which may have alleviated some hardship and probably
increased the number of cultivators able to apply for amnesty, opium cultivation
continued. He Changling explained the persistence of cultivation as mainly due to
regional poverty and the legitimate need for poppy oil as a source of illumination.
o 1
These were not reasons enough, however, to avoid the plant's total eradication. He
hoped that sustained efforts would wipe out cultivation after a year or two, an
estimate that he continued over several years to make regarding all opium offenses.
In general He Changling was confident that opium offenses in all forms were
decreasing as a result of intensification of the prohibitions and could be driven from
the province eventually. The Daoguang Emperor, who on the whole seemed satisfied
that He Changling was making concerted efforts to eradicate opium, expressed
profound doubts regarding this timetable due to his conviction that subordinate
8 0 Ibid.
slGongzhong DG, DG 19/5/16, pp. 421b-422a.
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285
personnel could not be relied upon to sustain enforcement operations. He Changling
clearly believed, however, that the severity o f the New Regulations was partially
responsible for local officialdom's reluctance to sustain enforcement operations
beyond the grace period when consumers would face capital punishment.8 2 This may
account in part for the numerous gaps in the official record beginning in 1841.
2. Yunnan
Confiscation statistics for Yunnan were submitted between April 16, 1839
and May 20, 1840 with a total of 14,460 kilos of crude opium and paste reported as
having been seized between December, 1838 and April, 1840. There are additional
statistics that extend this period to June 16, 1841, but the totals provided at this date
partially overlap those for 1840 and it is impossible to distinguish what was amassed
before May, 1840 and what was seized afterwards. Moreover, no case list for these
figures has come to light. Nevertheless, these latter statistics do provide totals for the
period from February 3, 1840 to June 16, 1841, a considerable expansion of the
statistical coverage. Hence they have been provided as a separate total in Appendix
F as have the figures for cases and offenders, which are often unavailable for Yunnan
during this period. One of the most important aspects of these figures is that they are
said to include cultivation offenses, and, vague as it is, this is the only information
regarding contemporary anti-cultivation operations that has come to light.
8 2 Junji jinyan, #3433-3434, DG 20/9/15. For He Changling's comments on the effect o f the New
Regulations see Choubanyiwu shimo buyi, DG 22/1/22, #4/6.
^’Figures for the period of December 1838 to April 1840 were derived from: Junji jinyan, #2460-
2461, DG 19/3/3 and #2603-2604, DG 19/4/29 and #2787-2788, DG 19/4/28; Gongzhong jinyan, DG
20/4/19 and DG 20/4/19 [enclosure]. Figures for the period ending June 16, 1841 were derived from
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286
While these statistics show that opium was being confiscated throughout the
province, there are clearly discrete regions of high concentration. Aside from
locales, such as Yunnan Prefecture, where prohibition was easily enforced and
confiscations relatively high due to the proximity of the provincial capital, a large
percentage of the total opium seized over this period of little more than a year and a
half was heavily concentrated in southwestern Yunnan, in the subprefectures of
Menghua and Jingdong as well as in Shunning and Yongchang prefectures. A total
of 4436 kilos, or over one-third of all opium confiscated during this period, was
seized in from just these four contiguous regions, which also contained the area
where the single largest seizure of opium occurred; Menghua Subprefecture, whose
acting magistrate Li Jie confiscated 1659 kilos of opium.8 4 Moreover, these four
regions were the site of three of the four confiscation operations recorded in
provincial native chieftainships during this time, with the Gengma Native
Chieftainship in Shunning leading this group through its contribution of 693 kilos.
These statistics show that opium was heavily concentrated in the border
region of Yunnan where favorable conditions for cultivation and administrative
weaknesses, both revealed in microcosm during the 1828 investigation of the Ma
Wen trafficking/homicide case in Gengma, became a magnet for bandit traffickers
who soon infested the region. The 853 kilos of opium seized by Jingdong
Subprefectural Magistrate Zeng Minhuang, the second largest confiscation by an
YPZZ, DG 21/4/27, 3:493-495. See appendix F: Table of Opium Confiscations in Yunnan, December
1838- April 1840 for a breakdown o f these confiscations by sub-provincial administrative unit.
8 4 Gongzhong jinyan, DG 20/4/19 [enclosure].
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287
individual official between 1838 and 1840, kept him from being censured for failing
to apprehend a large bandit gang smuggling furong from over the frontier in
barbarian territory through his jurisdiction deeper into Yunnan proper to the east
during September 1839.8 5
This smuggling activity was not an isolated incident but one of the first
glimpses of the extensive trafficking network that connected the opium production
sites in west-central, southwestern and western Yunnan with commercial markets in
southeastern Sichuan. The discovery of this network in early 1840 would
concentrate the court's attention on the interprovincial smuggling that had become
rampant in this area of the southwest and which was spreading its locally produced
opium throughout and beyond the region.
VI: Yunnan-Sichuan Trans-provincial Opium Traffic
As noted above, intensification of the prohibitions in the late 1830's revealed
an extensive inter-provincial trafficking network that centered on Yunnan and
Sichuan, but that carried the Yunnanese product to a number of places outside the
region, including Lingnan to the east, Shaanxi Province to the north and Beijing in
the northeast.8 6 In the case of Shaanxi, as well as of Lingnan, there is far more
evidence to show the sustained nature of the traffic from the southwest. While
8 5 Gongzhong jinyan, DG 20/4/19. See YPZZ, DG 20/6/13, 2:162-163 for the imperial decree
rewarding Li Jie, as soon as he recovered from an illness, with a promotion and granting that Zeng
Minhuang, due to his renewed diligence in confiscating opium, not be censured for his failure to
capture the bandits, who had resisted arrest and killed some of Zeng's men.
8 6 For the Beijing-Sichuan case, see YPZZ, DG 21/7/13, 4:32, DG 21/11/19, 4:485-489. The case was
initially discovered in Beijing and subsequently traced back to Sichuan.
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288
Lingnan figured prominently as a source of supply and as a market in several
memorials already mentioned, the extant official record is silent on the traffic
between the southwest and the northwest. The unofficial record, however, provides
enough information to form at least an outline of this traffic. Once again, Li
Hongxing, Shaanxi Provincial Surveillance Commissioner from May 26, 1840 to
January 11, 1841, was in an ideal position to record information on the southwestern
traffic in his diary just as he had done for the Xinjiang traffic. Moreover, his stint as
Sichuan's Provincial Surveillance Commissioner for approximately six months after
he left his Shaanxi post gave him an unusual opportunity to evaluate the traffic from
both ends.8 7
An entry for July 6, 1840 notes that opium is being smuggled into the
extreme southwestern tip of Shaanxi Province, the Ningqiang Zhou county seat in
Hanzhong Prefecture from across the provincial border in Sichuan's northeasternmost
prefecture of Baoning. At this point, however, Li writes that not much opium had
been found in the province despite extensive investigations. He also notes that
• • ♦ RR
checkpoints have yet to be established in the region to intercept smugglers.
8 7 Li Xingyuan, LiXingyuan Riji, DG 21/8/24, 1:272.
8 8 Li Xingyuan, Li Xingyuan Riji, DG 20/6/8, 1:77. Li's explanations help account for the paucity of
documents from both Gansu and Shaanxi on the regional opium traffic, for which his diary constitutes
the bulk of the evidence. One of the two memorials that I have come across from Shaanxi for the
entirety of 1839 through 1840 provides statistics for prohibition operations from December 1838 to
January 1840. A total of 234 traffickers and consumers were apprehended along with 1244 kilos of
raw opium and paste; Junji jinyan, #3184-#3185, DG 20/2/10. When compared to the 1852 kilos
seized in Guizhou between January 1838 and October 1840 from over nine hundred traffickers,
consumers and cultivators, the drug impound from Shaanxi does not seem particularly small. Li is
probably comparing his operations to those of the coast, where these figures would have represented
small amounts.
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289
Li's diary entries are not restricted to brief allusions to traffic between
Sichuan and Shaanxi. In a series of conversations with various officials who had
served in the upper levels of southwestern provincial administration, Li discovered
how deeply rooted opium had become in the socio-economy of the region. From the
Xi'an Regional Defense Commander Tai-yong (n.d.), who had spent a great deal of
time in Yunnan, Li learned that there were extensive poppy fields in the prefectures
of Dali, Yongchang, Zhaotong and Yunnan, where local officials, unable to prohibit
O Q
cultivation, taxed it instead. He heard of further official malfeasance from Su
Yanyu, who had served as Sichuan's Provincial Surveillance Commissioner almost
continuously from 1833 to 1838. Su said that the administrators of Yazhou
Prefecture, which was Sichuan's largest and comprised the entirety of its western
border with Tibet, as well as part of its southwestern border with Yunnan, "stood by
and did nothing" as smugglers went to and fro under its very nose. Su, who also
stated that the farther opium got from Yunnan the more money it could be sold for
until it fetched a price in Shaanxi of nearly one hundred silver taels per kilo, believed
local officials would do nothing to stop these activities to avoid calling attention to
their inability to control their jurisdictions.9 0
Fufeng District Magistrate Hong Xin, a native of Sichuan, provided evidence
of actual official collusion with the smugglers, stating that the local Green Standard
garrisons provided armed protection for the smugglers, who he identified as Guolu
8 9 Li Xingyuan, LiXingyuan Riji, DG 20/6/28, 1:83.
9 0 Li Xingyuan, Li Xingyuan Riji, DG 20/9/14, 1:107-108.
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290
bandits, during their activities in Yunnan. He added Yi tribespeople provided the
protection once the smugglers had passed into Sichuan. Li subsequently recorded
further information he had received on the subject in some detail. The Yi who
inhabited Ningyuan were sitting astride the main smuggling route between Sichuan
and Yunnan and this enabled them to take full advantages of the opportunities
offered by the extensive opium traffic between the two provinces. Their position
made the drug both "cheap to consume and profitable to sell" and they apparently did
both.9 1
During his tenure as Sichuan Provincial Surveillance Commissioner Li was
thus well-informed enough to deal with the interprovincial trafficking problem. It
appears that he was so well-informed that he despaired of ever solving the problem.
Li went so far as to determine several strategic choke points for smugglers and
believed that if all crossings, private and public, in the region were put under strict
surveillance the smuggling could be stopped. He concluded, however, that this was
merely an "armchair strategy" (zhishang tanbing) because no reliable subordinates
could be found to carry out such a mission unsupervised.9 2 This crippling lack of
confidence is reinforced when Li notes in another entry that a large confiscation of
158 kilos must have involved extortionary collusion on the part of lictors and
93
troops.
9 1 Li Xingyuan, Li Xingyuan Riji, DG 21/2/23, 1:175.
9 2 Li Xingyuan, Li Xingyuan Riji, DG 21/4/13, 1:215.
9 3 Li Xingyuan, Li Xingyuan Riji, DG 21/6/28, 1:247.
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291
In contrast Censor Lu Yinggu was more proactive, if skeptical of local
officialdom. Indeed, the views of the two men can represent those extremes of the
local official demoralized by what he has seen of actual conditions on the ground and
the central government minister still doggedly determined to impose the will of the
throne on every locality in the empire no matter how distant. Lu was the first to call
formal attention to the Yun-Chuan problem in a memorial drafted on January 11,
1839:
While the opium in the northern and southern provinces all come
from overseas, that in the border areas of Sichuan and Guizhou mainly
comes from Yunnan, where the cultivation of poppy for the decoction
of opium has been going on for many years. Recent stringent search
and seizure operations carried out by the Governor and Governor-
General have made the populace somewhat afraid of the law, but, as
Yunnan abuts barbarian territory, local officialdom, while prohibiting
China proper from cultivating poppy, is unable to prohibit the
barbarians of the border from doing so.9 4
Lu went on to map out the smuggling routes used by "bandits," at least some
of whom belonged to the Guolu gangs of Sichuan. These routes ran throughout
western Yunnan starting in the southwestern prefectures of Shunning, Yongchang
and Puer and running into Yongbei Subprefecture, the Department of Wuding and
Dongchuan Prefecture, all of which formed Yunnan's north-central border with
Sichuan's southermost prefecture of Ningyuan. Connecting routes ran through the
prefectures of Jingdong and Dali. Merchant smugglers colluded with the bandit
gangs, who often outnumbered the isolated garrison outposts of the interprovincial
94YPZZ, DG 19/12/17, 1:774-775.
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292
borders and along the fringes of the native chieftainships, in order to enter barbarian
territory for the purchase of opium. They then "fought their way out through the
passes." "Evil Muslim youths" were also involved in the trade and were active from
Yunnan's northern prefectures along the Sichuanese border to Shunning prefecture in
the province's southwestern section.9 5
The immediate result of Lu's revelations was an imperial decree, issued on
January 25, 1840, that cited Lu's memorial and ordering the Yun-Gui governor-
general and the governor of Yunnan to cut off the opium flow from the barbarian
territories in southwestern Yunnan by intensifying their efforts to intercept the Han
traffickers moving back and forth between these areas and China proper. This decree
represented the court's acceptance of Lu's assertion that "to cut off the opium of
foreign barbarians, first cut off the traffickers of China proper; to prevent these
traffickers from colluding with the barbarians, first prevent the Sichuanese bandits
from entering Yunnan."9 6 It is interesting to note that the decree did not order
prohibition to be intensified in the native chieftainships of the region. This may be
because opium was being produced and sold in areas inhabited by "wild" groups of
indigenous peoples, who were under no one's administrative control.
This decree seems to have produced the arrest of one hundred bandits and
cultivators and an intensification of eradication operations among native
9 5 Junji diqin, 267:2, DG 19/12/17.
96YPZZ, DG 19/12/21, 1:784.
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293
chieftainships in Yunnan.9 7 From Sichuan, Governor-General Bao-xing responded
on March 12, 1840 with confirmation that Ningyuan was the terminus of Yunnanese
smuggling routes into his province. Bao-xing also promised to work with Yunnan
Governor Yan Botao to eliminate the cross-border traffic, but was not optimistic.9 8
This was probably in part because bandit smuggler activities were deliberately
conducted astride two jurisdictions that were not in constant communication with
one another.9 9
A subsequent memorial by Bao-xing dated August 4, 1840 shows that active
coordination had been initiated between the two provinces during the intervening
four months. During this period three separate bands of armed Sichuanese
merchant smugglers were discovered operating in barbarian territories in Yongchang
and Dali prefectures in western Yunnan, where they were purchasing opium for sale
back in their native province. The first group to be hauled in, comprised of sixteen
jade, silk and sundry merchants, were led by Xu Hongshun, who were operating in
Yongchang, where business was so bad they decided to speculate in opium, which
9 7 Gongzhongjinyan, DG 20/1/18.
9 8 Junji jinyan, #3194-#3195, DG 20/2/19.
"A memorial by Censor Chen Xi regarding this problem produced an imperial decree issued on
August 21, 1840 that discussed the Guolu bandits' linking up with their barbarian counterparts to raid
the Han regions of the border. The presence of these barbarians enabled local officials to avoid
responsibility for their suppression, possibly because they were considered the responsibility of native
chieftainships. The court considered this a major reason for the continuation of bandit activity along
the Yun-Chuan border and Bao-xing was ordered to step up enforcement; SYDD, DG 20/7/24, p. 243.
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2 9 4
brought a good price in Sichuan. The bought forty-five kilos of crude opium at about
nine silver taels per kilo from "a barbarian whose name they did not know."1 0 0
Around the same time a group of eighteen Sichuan silk merchants, led by
Chen Wanshun, had come to the same conclusion in the Midian barbarian region of
Dali Prefecture, just north of Yongchang.1 0 1 Chen and his fellows bought sixty-eight
kilos at what proved to be the bargain rate of eight silver taels per kilo from another
"barbarian whose name they did not know." Soon after this transaction, a third group
of four jade merchants, led by Dai Dabang, for much the same reasons as the first
two groups, bought eleven kilos of crude opium at the very bad rate of eleven silver
taels per kilo from an equally unidentifiable barbarian in the very same area where
109
Chen Wanshun had found a bargain.
Xu's and Chen's groups had run into each other in Dali and decided to
coordinate their attempts to cross back into Sichuan. In order to avoid detection by
official forces on alert for smuggling in Han-administered areas (neidi), Chen
suggested that each group cross through barbarian territory (yidi) and purchase arms
in case of attacks by the locals, hence their appearance as armed bandits. Both Xu's
1 0 0 Gongzhong jinyan, DG 20/7/28.
1 0 1 There is some confusion as to the exact administrative status of Midian, whose native chieftainship
seems not to have survived the Ming dynasty; Gong Yin, Zhongguo tusi zhidu, p. 481. The area had a
sub-district police office (xunsi) to maintain surveillance over a local pass, but this office was gone by
the beginning of the nineteenth century; Yitongzhi, 478:21a, 31:24447. It was probably a pass
between Yunnan proper and wild territory at the time the merchant smugglers happened along.
Whatever the region's exact status, it was definitely neither a native chieftainship nor part of the
regular jumcian administration. This case thus provides further evidence that "barbarian territory"
(yidi) refers to a third, wild zone of Yunnan in the prohibition documents.
l02YPZZ, DG 20/10/28, 2:548-551.
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and Dai's groups were apprehended by Sichuan officials in Ningyuan Prefecture,
while Chen's group remained at large. Although Bao-xing doubted that Chen had
played such a major role and also suspected that this was not the first time these
merchants had engaged in opium smuggling, he did not question their route or the
origin of their opium and duly notified Yan Botao of the incident.1 0 3
By January 5, 1841, this incident had become an armed insurrection, at least
in the mind of Metropolitan Censor Du Yanshi, who submitted a distorted echo of Lu
Yinggu's warnings two years previously:
Your servant has heard that in Yunnan's Yongchang Prefecture there
are bandit gangs who traffic in opium. They abruptly appear several
hundreds strong firearms in hand and each carrying a red banner
inscribed with the phrases: "Throw Your Means into Profit; Risk
Your Life for Wealth." They move back and forth between the
prefectures of Shunqing and Ningyuan in Sichuan committing all sorts
of outrages.
People of the border regions of Sichuan have long grown poppy for a
living, from which they decoct opium, whose name they have altered
"furong paste." Half those who traffic in it are traitorous subjects
from Sichuan who band together into bandit gangs. Local officials,
fearing their ferocity, do not dare to investigate or arrest them, and in
consequence, their ranks increase daily.1 0 4
Du expanded his conspiracy theory to include local officials in Yongchang, who he
said had excused a large number of bandit traffickers remanded there after their arrest
in Huili Zhou in Ningyuan. Du also managed to implicate Yun-Gui Governor-
General Yi-li-bu. Du stated that Yi-li-bu had responded to the imperial decree of
m YPZZ, DG 20/10/28, 2:548-551.
m YPZZ, DG 20/12/13, 2:699.
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January 25, 1840 by declaring that poppy cultivation had been eradicated in Yunnan.
The Yongchang incident now enabled Du to question Yi-li-bu's sincerity and he
charged both the Governor-General and Yunnan Governor Yan Botao with lax
enforcement and inaccurate reporting.1 0 5 An imperial decree ordering an
investigation of these charges was immediately issued and the actual investigation in
Yunnan was taken up by an entirely new group of senior provincial officials who had
already replaced the accused as part of the normal rotation of provincial officials
during the course of 1840.1 0 6
Unsurprisingly, Du's charges of laxity and mendacity were denied by the
senior officials of both provinces. Yun-Gui Governor-General Gui-liang (1785-
1862) rejected Du's views almost entirely, but did concede that there was a serious
trans-provincial traffic problem that was drawing locally produced opium in
barbarian areas of western Yunnan into Sichuan. He also provided more evidence in
this respect by claiming that seventy to eighty percent of trafficking cases handled in
Yunnan to date involved Sichuanese bandits. The bandit smugglers were adapting to
the intensification of prohibition in areas under direct official control by using
m YPZZ, DG 20/12/13, 2:699. I have not found Yi-li-bu's declaration that cultivation had been
eradicated in Yunnan, which would have been an extremely reckless statement given the degree of
official control in the countryside. Moreover, there is a figure for total offenses in Yunnan during
1840 and 1841 from the new Governor-General Gui-liang that includes cultivation offenses; YPZZ,
DG 21/4/27, 3:493-495. Du's assertion, however, seems equally reckless, but would account for the
absence of cultivation statistics among the extant documents on Yunnanese prohibition operations
from the late 1830's until Gui-liang's report, which was a direct response to Du's accusations. It
remains impossible to entirely dismiss even the more outlandish of Du's claims regarding banner
wielding opium smugglers as these same rumors were repeated to Li Xingyuan by Su Yanyu, Sichuan's
former Provincial Surveillance Commissioner; Li Xingyuan, Riji Li Xingyuan Riji, DG 20/9/14, 1:108.
m YPZZ, DG 20/12/30, 2:776-777.
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297
circuitous routes through the territories of the native chieftainships, which he said
were too vast for anyone to keep under effective surveillance, although he also said
that native chieftainships had reported that opium cultivation had been eradicated
• 107
within their jurisdictions.
Gui also detailed the apprehension of several small groups of Sichuanese
smugglers in the Department of Wuding on Yunnan's northern border. One group,
led by Huang Yingcai, alias "Three Hemp Seeds" Huang, had resisted arrest in
Yunnan, killed a soldier who had attempted to arrest them and fled to Huili Zhou in
Sichuan, where a combined effort between Yunnanese and Sichuanese official forces
apprehended them and remanded them back to Yunnan. Huang was sentenced to
immediate decapitation in accordance with the New Regulations statutes on
trafficking.1 0 8 Gui recounted the case in some detail probably because he felt that Du
was repeating some garbled version of it.
Sichuan Governor-General Bao-xing came to the same conclusion about a
different case that occurred within his jurisdiction, namely the one involving Xu
Hongshun, Dai Dabang and Chen Wanshun's merchant smuggling activities in
Yongchang and Dali. Bao-xing asserted that Du had heard a garbled version of Xu
Hongshun's and Dai Dabang's activities. Indeed, he said that the two merchant
smugglers had "clearly" invented these tales of huge gangs of heavily armed
insurgents to scare off any small-scale official inquiries. He nevertheless was
1 0 7 YPZZ, DG 21/4/27, 3:493-495.
1 0 8 Ib id .
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sending in officials to make sure there were no large insurrectionary bands in
southern Sichuan. Bao-xing again stressed the need to seal the Yun-Chuan border,
but this necessitated cooperation from the local officialdom on both sides, whose
opposition to the severity of the New Regulations he felt was resulting in lax
enforcement.1 0 9
There was clearly some attempt at coordination between Yunnan and
Sichuan. Bao-xing, for example, incidentally confirmed that "Three Hemp Seeds"
Huang had been arrested and extradited to Yunnan.1 1 0 Such cooperation between the
senior provincial officials of both provinces, however, apparently was no substitute
for the active support of prohibition operations by their respective subordinates. This
morale problem, also noticed by He Changling in Guizhou, was caused directly by
the expiration of the grace period and it seems that local officialdom had unilaterally
decided to veto Huang Jiezi's program of capital punishment for addicts.
VII: Chapter Conclusions
Opium prohibition in the southwest, unlike coastal prohibition, was hindered
by the limited extent of the junxian system in its fully developed form, which
included an established baojia system. While some indigenous populations were
ostensibly registered into baojia, particularly in select areas of Guizhou, even these
groups were not kept under very effective surveillance in practice as the registration
system was generally quite rudimentary in such regions. Southwestern officials,
m YPZZ, DG 21/1/25, 3:203-204.
1 1 0 Ib id .
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2 9 9
especially in regards to southwestern Yunnan, often referred to their limited or
nonexistent authority outside their junxian jurisdictions in native chieftainship and
wild zones as constituting a major limitation on their ability to stop cultivation and
trafficking in the southwest.
In light of the coastal experience the baojia system was in itself hardly a
solution to the opium problem and there certainly were cases of corruption and
collusion among baojia personnel. It is notable, however, that the few instances of
coastal cultivation initially discovered in 1830 were rapidly brought under control
and remained very limited in scale where they persisted. This is no doubt mainly due
to the enhanced degree of local control existing in coastal regions fully incorporated
into the junxian system and enjoying a fully functional baojia system of registration
as well as other stabilizing advantages. Moreover, local officials presiding over areas
of illicit cultivation in junxian areas could not complain of their limited authority or
reluctance to intervene in the affairs of an alien, hostile people. If the junxian system
did not prevent the corruption or incompetence of local officials, it did deprive them
of an excuse for inaction.
Junxian administration and its attendant baojia registration system also
helped to ensure that the most serious problem of the southwest, namely indigenous
production and trafficking of opium, would remain centered in unincorporated areas.
For, as Censor Shao Zhenghu's 1830 memorial on cultivation revealed, natural
conditions on the coast were conducive to opium cultivation. That such coastal
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cultivation never became a serious problem is largely due to the fact that there were
no areas of absolute inviolability to official surveillance as there were in the
southwest. Nevertheless, the trafficking problem of the coast was indeed intimately
linked to opium production in areas beyond the control of Qing officials.
The experience of both the southeast coast and the southwest interior suggest
that the common cause of the opium problem throughout the empire was a lack of
administrative control over crucial geographic spaces. In the southwest the native
chieftainships and wild zones constituted these crucial spaces; in the southeast the
absence of Qing control over its coastal waters was decisive. Xinjiang, due to the
extremely complex nature of its internal administrative apparatus and to the presence
of the Khanate of Kokand, suffered from problems akin to both those of the
southwest and those of the coast as its territorial administration failed to control both
its overland border checkpoints and the unincorporated hinterlands that lay just
behind them.
Unlike Xinjiang and the coast, however, the southwest was under no direct
threat from any foreign state capable of resisting the projection of Qing power into its
sphere of influence. Instead, problems manifested themselves exclusively in the
form of weaknesses in the structures of intra- and interprovincial local control.
These weaknesses arose directly from the contradictions of Qing ethnic policy, which
schizophrenically pursued policies of both quarantine and colonization that left large
regions of the southwest ostensibly incorporated but actually recalcitrant, as the
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301
massive uprisings of various ethnic minorities that rocked the southwest throughout
the second half of the nineteenth century amply demonstrate.1 1 1 The culture of
opium was not immune to the effects of this unstable structure, which was unaware
of the drug's existence in areas of indigenous habitation until Han subjects
penetrating into these regions began to traffic in it, thus spreading it to China proper.
Officials, however, were either powerless or reluctant to intervene in these very same
areas, where clashes and collusion between indigenous peoples and Han merchants
and settlers continuously occurred.
Southwestern opium, like its Xinjiang counterpart, did not remain in China
but began to flow westward into Burma, possibly as early as the 1830's.1 1 2 It also
continued to spread across southern China, as a May 1840 report from Guangxi
revealed. Governor Liang Zhangju (1775-1849) stated that more than a few
"traitorous subjects" from both Yunnan and Guizhou were surreptitiously entering
Guangxi to plant poppy along its borders.1 1 3 O f course, the spread of opium in
general was ultimately stimulated by the trafficking activities of another non-Han
group, the Euro-American traffickers on the coast. The southwest, however, unlike
most other regions of the empire, was predisposed to respond to the market they
created. This predisposition arose not only from natural conditions of soil and
climate but also from socio-economic conditions brought about by the nature of Qing
m This problem can also be seen in the Qing incorporation of Taiwan; Shepherd, Taiwan Frontier.
1 l2 Ilenry Yule, A Narrative o f the Mission to the Court o f Ava in 1855, (1885; reprint, Kuala Lumpur:
Oxford University Press, 1968), p. 148n.
li3Gongzhong jinyan, DG 20/4/10.
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302
incorporation of the region, which would become in the latter half of the nineteenth
century the source of sixty percent of all opium produced in China and would largely
replace the Indian imports of the drug.1 1 4
U 4 For statistics and overviews, see Owen, British opium policy, pp. 265-268; Lin Man-houng,
"Qingmo Shehui Liuxing Xishi Yapian Yanjiu," pp. 208-211; Su Zhiliang, Zhongguo dupin shi [A
history o f drugs in China], (Shanghai: Shanghai Renmin Chubanshe, 1997), pp. 182-195.
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303
C hapter 6.
Opium and Qing Expansionism
Intensified prohibition, despite an initial appearance of success, ultimately did
not succeed in eradicating opium from the southwest, Xinjiang or any other part of
the Qing domain. Failure is, perhaps, the single greatest reason why so little detailed
attention has been devoted to the internal dynamics of opium prohibition in China.
The presence of a simple, persuasive explanation for this failure, which is generally
attributed to the benighted incompetence and irrationality of an outmoded dynastic
system, only serves to contribute to scholarly complacency. Such an explanation fits
in all too easily with traditional narratives of dynastic decline, which are periodically
invoked to explain historical changes of all sorts. While the Qing system was
seriously plagued both by corruption and inefficiencies, an uncritical reliance on
these factors as causal explanations obscures the larger significance of the history of
Qing prohibition that reveals such factors to be effects at least as much as causes.
Systemic problems were more intimately related to the vast expansion of dynastic
territory, and consequently of the entity and concept, of "China," from the
seventeenth through the eighteenth centuries.
Ethno-geographic diversity, arising from this expansion, was a direct cause of
the empire's administrative decline that served to encourage administrative
corruption and inefficiency, both of which are rather relative and problematic terms.1
‘Nancy E. Park has called attention to the fluidity of the concept of corruption in eighteenth-century
China; "Corruption in Eighteenth-Century China," Journal o f Asian Studies 56, no. 4 (November
1997): 968, 975, 985. While relatively clearly delineated in the statute books, corruption in practice
was often difficult to distinguish from the collection of "customary fees" and other quasi-regularized
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Corruption can be viewed as an effect of the problem of how to centrally administer
diversity; it was an administrative response to contradictory dynastic demands, which
dictated that there be no increase in tax burden while expecting local administrations
to continue to extract enough revenue to cover increased costs of territorial
incorporation as well as those of regular administration. All this was to be done
without any major expansion of the bureaucracy, which would have further driven up
administrative costs.
The response of the central bureaucracy and the court to these challenges of
ethno-geographic diversity was, fiscally, a fatal increase in centralization. As a result
of Qing refinement of the Ming "single-whip" system of taxation, pursued most
intensely during the fiscal reforms of the Yongzheng reign, the center technically
gained control of all "legitimate income" derived from the three most important
regular sources of revenue, the land-tax, the head-tax and duties on salt, tea and
imports.2 These reforms deprived local governments of most o f the revenue upon
sources of official revenue at the local level (979, 983-985). As for questions of efficiency, while it is
easy to see the bureaucratic advantages of such measures as the conversion of various taxes in kind
and labor to silver payments as occurred under the single whip systems of the Ming and Qing, the
rational appeal of these schemes is less evident to a peasantry whose access to money of any kind was
quite limited in general and subject to exploitation where practicable. Inefficiencies in poor localities
caused by uniform enforcement of single-whip practices were numerous. For an example, see
Madeline Zelin, The Magistrate's Tael: Rationalizing Fiscal Reform in Eighteenth-Century Ch'ing
China, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), p. 40.
2 The work of Madeline Zelin on eighteenth-century dynastic fiscal policy has revealed the underlying
structural imperatives for corruption at the local level, which was deprived of revenue adequate for its
expenditures by the centralizing reforms of the Yongzheng period. The effect of these reforms was to
divert funds from the locality to the center, thus forcing the former to search for less conventional
methods of meeting its ever-increasing administrative obligations; Zelin, The Magistrate's Tael, pp. 4,
9, 42.
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which they had previously relied. It was this increase in centralization, more than
individual malfeasance, that created mortal deficits in sub-prefectural and even
provincial administration and encouraged local officials to rely on "informal
networks of funding," such as meltage and other extrastatutory "customary fees."
Much of this diverted revenue was used by the center to pay for the militarily
successful extension of Qing authority into Inner Asia against the Zhungars and into
the southwest against both the Three Feudatories and the region's indigenous native
chieftains. The very success of these operations helped to ensure the empire's
overextension when the Qing sought to consolidate its control through administrative
methods of territorial incorporation. Aside from its considerable limitations in
assimilating newly conquered territories, the state could not even enhance its control
over its old domains. The financial impossibility of an intensification of
incorporation in core areas already under junxian administration has long been noted
by scholars. G. William Skinner has estimated that in order to maintain the
population to administrative unit ratio prevailing circa 1730, when there were 1360
districts in place, the Qing goverment of 1850 would have had to have had to expand
this number to 8500, a figure that he concludes would be impossible for the
communications and control infrastructure of any agrarian bureaucracy to achieve.4
3 Zelin, The Magistrate's Tael, pp. 18, 26, 46-54. Zelin has in particular emphasized that the motive
behind many such informal networks was not simple greed, or corruption in a crude sense, but a
magistrate's response under general conditions of fiscal deficit to a structural imperative to alleviate a
pressing problem of local administration with funds set aside for another contingency; p. 70.
4 G. William Skinner, "Introduction: Urban Development in Imperial China," in The City in Late
Imperial China, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1977), pp. 19-20. Skinner also notes that the
average area of districts, which "should have declined over centuries," was gradually increasing so that
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306
In financial terms it has been estimated that this expansion would have necessitated
the expenditure of almost the whole of the land- and head-tax revenues, the two
primary sources of central government income, for the entire eighteenth century.5
The dynasty's administrative overextension was not solely due to a radical
increase in the empire's population, which undoubtedly increased instability.
Increases in both the empire's territorial extent and the diversity of its subjects played
equally important roles. The fact that major social upheavals for the most part
occurred in sparsely populated frontier or inter-provincial border areas, i.e. precisely
where administrative surveillance was weakest, rather than in densely populated core
regions is suggestive of the pivotal role played by expansionism, which both
detracted from the court's ability to maintain control in core areas and opened up new
zones of instability, in imperial destabilization. As Susan Naquin and Evelyn
Rawski have observed,
certain kinds of decline were actually associated first— and in the
eighteenth century almost exclusively— with the peripheries of regions
and not with the cores. It was in these regions, and especially those of
the newly colonized highlands of south and central China, that we
find disorder and rebellion, conditions caused not by a collapsing state
but by the inability of government and elite institutions to incorporate
new populations and new territory. The problems encountered by the
state bureaucracy as it tried to cope with a growing population and an
increasingly complex economy were quite different in the peripheries
"the total area incorporated within" the 1360 districts of 1730 "was far greater that that incorporated
within the 1235 counterpart units a millennium earlier;" p. 19.
5 Zelin, The Magistrate's Tael, p. 306. Zelin bases her estimate on Skinner's population to district ratio
figures quoted above.
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than in the cores. Not until the late Qing did breakdown and the
devolution of power in the cores become a serious problem6
Expansionism and its consequent administrative instability provided fertile
ground for the opium traffic, itself in part a consequence of Qing expansionism, in
several respects. The mere fact that the extension of the Qing imperial project into
several regions where opium was indigenously produced ensured that Han settlers,
when economically motivated by core demand, would eventually learn cultivation
techniques through contact with the natives and even become producers themselves.
This dynamic was especially clear in the southwest. Trafficking practices were also
transmitted to the Han in this manner in both Xinjiang and on the southeast coast via
Inner Asian and Euro-American traders respectively. Finally, Han traffickers became
vectors for the spread of the drug through the consolidation of imperial authority in
n
places like Tibet, Mongolia and Manchuria.
6Susan Naquin and Evelyn Rawski, Chinese Society in the Eighteenth Century, (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1987; reprint, Taibei: Southern Materials Center, 1989), p. 226. See also pages
223-224 for a re-evaluation of the expansion of Qing population as an explanation for instability.
7 See chapter three for brief treatments of the opium problem in Tibet and Mongolia; 128n and 129n,
respectively. There are at least nineteen documents extant concerning the Manchurian traffic, most of
which are dated circa 1838 and concern the smuggling activities of Shanxi traffickers, some of whom
were also involved in the illegal ginseng traffic, in the vicinity of the auxiliary capital of Fengtian. See
the Board of Punishments' report for an overview of what appears to have been the most important
case during this period; Junji jinyan, #1928-#1934; DG 18/2/7. For cases involving both opium and
ginseng smuggling, see Gongzhong DG, DG 18/11/12, 7:168b-170a, DG 18/12/19, 8:613b-614b. In
her brief discussion of opium in the northeast during the late 1830's Lin Man-houng does not explicitly
mention the activities of Shanxi traffickers nor their ginseng interests; "Qingmo Shehui Liuxing Xishi
Yapian Yanjiu," p. 75. She also cites the earliest report of opium trafficking as 1837, but several
incidents of smuggling had already occurred in late 1834; WJD, DG 14/9/5, pp. 22-23; DG 15/1/20,
pp. 71-72. A cursory examination of the documents that have come to light indicates that the court
found direct evidence of a relatively small-scale opium problem in Manchuria, although a smuggling
vessel was intercepted off Shandong carrying 506 kilos of opium reputed to be bound for the Fengtian
market late in 1838; WJD, DG 18/9/6, pp. 46-47. Lin cites the abbreviated entry in QSL (75). The
court was, nevertheless concerned about the appearance of the traffic in the original Manchu
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This basic stage of ethno-geographic diversification of opium soon developed
to a new level through the contradictions of dynastic revenue extraction policy,
which the opium traffic, as a superlative "informal network" of local funding, proved
well-suited to resolve.8 As recognized by Censor Guo Baiyin, an almost singular
voice among the official clamor of the late 1830's, large portions of the commonality
in western China were dependent on opium cultivation, which was more profitable in
many areas than conventional crops, because it enabled them to meet their heavy
financial obligations while retaining a portion for their own subsistence. The
evidence of coastal traffickers contracting with the local peasantry for the seasonal
opium crop provided by Guizhou Governor He Changling in early 1839 confirms
Guo's observations and reveals that cultivation had become regularized as part of the
quotidian social-economy connecting rural peasants and urban merchants.
Furthermore, resistance, documented in both Taiwan and especially in Zhejiang, also
confirmed Guo's fears concerning negative effects of precipitous eradication on the
peasant economy and attests to how important opium was to both peasants and small
merchants.
Guo's memorial also adumbrates an alternative model of prohibition that was
never seriously attempted on a large scale, but did address several important issues
ignored by the central government's prohibition program. The most salient point in
homeland, which eventually managed to produce over 10,000 kilos of indigenous opium in 1868;
Wang Gesheng, "Dongbei zhong yingsu," 124.
8 Zhang Pengyuan traces the development of these informal networks of opium production into
regularized forms of legitimate local administrative revenue in the southwest from the late Qing into
the Republican period; "Luohou diqu de ziben xingcheng," pp. 55-60.
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309
this regard was his suggestions regarding crop substitution, which seem to have been
seriously acted on only by Guizhou Governor He Changling. A sincere examination
of the merits of this suggestion by central policy-makers would almost certainly have
resulted in more regionally appropriate prohibition regulations in at least some areas.
Indeed, systematized implementation of appropriate crop substitution could have
helped to stimulate the local economies of many of the empire's underdeveloped
regions, many of which were particularly attracted to opium cultivation. As the case
of Zhu Yongding in Zhejiang demonstrated, peasants could be driven to opium
cultivation out of desperation when they could no longer make ends meet through the
cultivation of regular cereal crops.
Unfortunately, aside from requiring an unknown but probably large amount
of scarce resources, such a program was predicated on the assumption that the center
was genuinely interested in the economic well-being of all the localities under its
authority as an end rather than as a means to increase the court's own revenue. In
light of the fact that the court only made a full commitment to prohibition when it
became convinced that opium was the cause of the silver drain, i.e. was detracting
from its own revenue, such a sincere engagement with local economic development
seems unlikely. The impression of court indifference is only reinforced by the poor
implementation record of the Jiaqing reign, whose prohibition rhetoric entirely
revolved around the throne's putative concern for the physical well-being of its
subjects. The court's refusal or inability to deal with the opium problem in a
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310
comprehensive fashion commensurate with its socio-economic and ethno-geographic
variegation bound policy-makers to a rigid, narrow view of prohibition that restricted
them to a one-track strategy of penal escalation almost exclusively against the
empire's own Han majority. The bureaucratic mentality that produced this strategy,
by 110 means restricted to a Qing or Chinese society, was instrumental in the failure
of prohibition.
Legalization was simply another facet of this mentality rather than an
alternative to it for this policy was also unconcerned with the alleviation of economic
need in underdeveloped localities, but sought instead to exploit them for the benefit
of the central coffers, an approach to opium little different from that of the warlord
period. It is precisely this ultimate concern for the stabilization of central
government revenue at the expense of all other considerations that links dynastic
legalization and prohibition policies. Both policies failed to address the underlying
economic problems of which the opium traffic was a symptom, not a cause.
O f equally serious import was the fact that devotion to the economic benefits
of the poppy was not restricted to commoners. For all Guo's insight into the rural
dynamics of opium, he failed to fully articulate the relations that circumscribed and
motivated peasant action, as well as those that bound peasantry and local officialdom
to the center. In contrast to Guo’ s argument that clandestine opium cultivation
deprived the state of revenue from legitimate crops, Metropolitan Censor Lu Yinggu
and Xi'an Regional Defense Commander Tai-yong provided evidence that opium
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311
could not be eradicated precisely because of its contribution to state revenue
collection, significantly at the level of the district rather than of the center. The
accounts of both men provide evidence that by the end of the 1830's at the latest
southwestern opium cultivation had become an part of the network of informal
funding that had arisen since the 1720's to compensate for the diversion of revenue
from locality to center.9 On the coast Qi Zuncao's and Huang Juezi's investigation of
the Zhejiang cultivation problem also found evidence of official toleration of peasant
cultivators, who were said to be much more amenable to taxation than the average
farmer. Moreover, the illicit taxation of contraband opium for similar purposes had
been in place in select ports since at least latter half of the Qianlong reign and rumors
to this effect had been reaching the throne at least since the Jiaqing era.1 0 Opium
would continue to be a crucial source of local revenue. At least one twentieth-
century observer subsequently confirmed the fundamental connection between opium
and revenue in his reflections on the relatively effective implementation of empire-
wide prohibition in 1906: "the problem before officials, and more especially those of
9 The southwest was particularly prone to the use o f such networks as its revenues from the land- and
head-taxes were quite low, especially in Yunnan. As early as 1727, Yunnan had already formally
added to its regular tax collections a surcharge specifically intended to cover local government
operating expenses; .Zelin, The Magistrate's Tael, p. 48. Xinjiang, was, if anything, a more extreme
case due to the high costs of its military garrisons and its lack of a sufficiently large tax base to pay the
territory's bills. The result was an excessive reliance on transfer payments from other provinces and a
commensurate "fiscal vulnerability" for the Qing Central Asian empire; Millward, Beyond the Pass,
pp. 44-45, 235. Transfer payments did not, however, preclude a plethora o f schemes by local officials
to increase the territory's revenue; Millward, "Financing the New Dominion" and "Official Commerce
and Commercial Taxation in the Far West," chaps. 2 and 3 in Beyond the Pass.
W YPZZ, JQ 18/7/10, 1:7.
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the western provinces, is to find a source of revenue to take the place of that formerly
derived from opium."1 1
The revelations concerning the taxation of opium cultivators by local officials
in Yunnan and the levying of illicit customs duties on opium smugglers in
Guangdong, primarily in order to alleviate deficits in local administration, make a
fundamental contribution to a more precise articulation of the domestic reasons for
the failure of the Qing opium prohibitions. Just as the imperial system of penal exile
helped to spread the coastal opium problem to Xinjiang, so the state's contradictory
demands on its local officials and its common subjects provided the motivation for
officialdom and its charges to persist in the production, trafficking and consumption
of opium. An 1877 report by Board of War Senior Vice Minister Guo Songtao
(1818-1891) confirmed that illicit taxation remained a staple of local official revenue
in western China: "In Sichuan, Yunnan, Gansu and Shaanxi the primary motive for
cultivation is tax revenue. Your servant has heard that the produce of a single mou
of poppy fields is many times that of a field of conventional crops ....
Consequently, provinces, sub-prefectures and districts increase their [extra-statutory]
customary fees and thereby collect an illicit tax on crude opium that also is many
times greater than regular tax revenue. Both official and commoner profit thereby, so
12
opium spreads everywhere."
UE.H. Wilson, A Naturalist in Western China, 2 vols. (London: Methuen & Co., 1913; reprint, 2 vols.
in 1, London: Cadogan Books, 1986), 2:80
n Guangxu chao Donghua lu [The Donghua records of the Guangxu reign], 5 vols., ed. Zhu Shoupeng,
(1909; reprint, Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1958), GX 3:46, 1:394.
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313
Structures of indirect rule such as the beg and native chieftain systems did not
significantly enhance the ability of the center to impose prohibition, but did function
in a sufficiently equivocal fashion that served to create the impression of greater local
control than was warranted. Xinjiang's prohibition record is exemplary in this regard
as it provides a number of instances where begs were instrumental in effective
prohibition enforcement, but also demonstrates, as in the regulations for the Southern
March prohibition drafted by En-te-heng-e, that begs were not trusted by Qing
residents. Moreover, as demonstrated by the Gu Mengshen cultivation case from
Tarbagatai, begs were not very effective against resistance by Han settlers. The Qing
beg system, of course, was a direct product of the dynasty's westward expansion into
a region that was both spatially and ethnically distinct from the rest of the empire,
which made formulating and executing legislation intended for empire-wide
application, such as opium prohibitions, extremely complex and problematic.
A similar administrative problem existed in the southwest, where the ethno-
geographic diversity of the provinces of Sichuan, Yunnan and Guizhou created a
regional opium problem that was virtually self-sustaining. Native chieftainships
were spread throughout the region and beyond. These areas were entirely free from
direct Qing administrative surveillance and were often nexuses for commercial and
cultural interaction between indigenous peoples and Han merchants and colonists.
They were also, especially in southwestern Yunnan where poppies grew wild, havens
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314
for opium cultivation as shown in the 1828 Ma Wen case, the first opium offense that
appears in Yunnan's official record.
Both the beg and the native chieftain system, in conjunction with proximate
junxian structures, helped to obscure the fact that large areas of Xinjiang and the
southwest were impermeable to official surveillance or any sort of reliable control.
While some cultivators were fortuitously discovered in the Xinjiang wilderness or in
locations in or near southwestern junxian administrations, officials openly admitted
their limited abilities to project government power into rural or wilderness areas.
This is especially true of the wild zones of Yunnan, where it seems prohibition was
not even attempted. Indeed, the ethno-geographic legacy of these indigenous
enclaves would prove to be a physical barrier to twentieth century prohibition efforts
in Republican China, which found it difficult to enforce prohibition in areas where
Han administrative structures were weak or non-existent. Such areas, in
consequence became centers of opium trafficking, which was increasingly linked in
official eyes to minority peoples and their settlements.1 3
The administrative blindspots created by Qing systems of indirect rule or by
the dynasty's inability to impose even the most rudimentary administrative structures
tended to guarantee that any empire-wide prohibition policy would focus on coastal
urban trafficking under the assumption that if the coastal trade could be suppressed,
1 3 Kuang Haolin and Yang Liqiong, ""Jindai woguo shaoshu minzu diqu de yapien duhai wenti" [The
problem o f the opium scourge in China's ethnic minority areas during the modem period], Zhongguo
JingjiShi Yanjiu 4 (1986): 131-142.
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315
the interior demand upon which it thrived would be automatically starved out.
Instead, successful prohibition limited to the coast would have been just as likely to
eliminate a major competitor for either Xinjiang or the southwest, both of which
began to produce opium for mass consumption beyond their respective boundaries
during the latter half of the nineteenth century.
The structures of indirect rule arose due to the center's inability to effect full
and immediate incorporation of new territory and to the presence of large numbers of
non-Han peoples resident in these areas. Aside from necessitating the erection of
indirect rule, the existence of these peoples would complicate prohibition simply by
their participation in the traffic. An examination of the key roles played by Muslims,
both imperial subjects and foreigners, in the southwestern and Xinjiang traffics
reveal that the government prohibition tactics were substantially determined by
ethnicity. Many of the Xinjiang dispatches, and a few of those concerning the
southwest, exposed considerable Muslim participation in the opium traffic of those
regions. The Xinjiang record makes it abundantly clear that Muslims were the
primary source of opium for Han traffickers in the territory and that the Muslim state
of Kokand was the main geographic conduit for the flow of Central and South Asian
opium into Xinjiang.
In the southwest the evidence for the centrality of Muslim participation in the
traffic is less extensive, but is equally apparent. One fact that is suggestive, if not
unambiguous, is that the term "afurong," used throughout the southwest as a common
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316
reference to opium, is of Arab origin.1 4 More concrete evidence was offered by
Censor Lu Yinggu, who not only identified the center o f Yunnan's Muslim
trafficking operations, but also elucidated their central role in the inter-provincial
smuggling operations across the Yunnan-Sichuan border.
The dynasty appears to have been as hesitant to vigorously prosecute Muslim
offenders, who were instrumental in the rise and maintenance of the opium traffic in
the empire's western regions, as it was to punish coastal Euro-American traffickers.
In conjunction with the fact that the brunt of prohibition, even in its anti-trafficking
dimensions, fell almost entirely on Han offenders, the court's distinction suggests that
ethnicity was an important factor in the application of the prohibitions. This fact has
been obscured by narratives that portray technically superior Euro-Americans as the
only significant non-Han participants in the opium traffic and imply that this
superiority provided considerable immunity from prosecution. In fact the dynasty
largely avoided the stringent enforcement of opium prohibition on its own minority
subjects as well as on foreigners whether from Europe or Central Asia. There is little
doubt that this policy was a general one pursued in order to avoid inter-ethnic strife
between Han and non-Han throughout the empire, an objective specifically alluded to
in its Xinjiang context by both Yi-shan and by En-te-heng-e. It should come as no
surprise that Xinjiang administrators would be the ones to stress the importance of
ethnic differentiation of prohibition policy with the court, given the territory's
1 4 Yule and Burnell, Hobson Jobson, pp. 640b-642a.
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317
turbulent history of violent interaction between its indigenous peoples and their Qing
overlords.
Despite attempts to take the empire's ethno-geographic diversity into account
and what appear to be genuine efforts on the part of senior officials in many places,
the prohibition policies of the Daoguang period did not prove effective for long. In
Xinjiang efforts, En-te-heng-e's exemplary among them, to modify the prohibitions
to the territory's special conditions clearly failed to eradicate opium. A Russian
expedition in 1876-77, for example, reported that opium was actually being exported
to India from the Southern March administrative and trade center of Yarkand in
exchange for products from the subcontinent. During the period 1873-74, "700
horse-loads at 18 ducats" per load amounting to a total of 12,600 ducats was hauled
out of Yarkand by Indian merchants.1 5 There is also photographic evidence by
Francis Edward Chapman dated 1873 of indigenous consumption in Yarkand.1 6
During his reconquest of Xinjiang from Yakub Beg's indigenous regime in
1878, the famous Qing official Zuo Zongtang (1812-1885) claimed to have
reimplemented a more effective series of prohibitions throughout the territory, as he
had previously done during his administration of Gansu. In Xinjiang, this included
1 5 A.N. Kuropatkin, "Kashgaria, Historical and Geographical Sketch o f the Country; its Military
Strength, Industries and Trade," trans. Walter E. Gowan, (Calcutta: Thacker, Spink and Co., 1882), p.
88. Currently, opium, along with heroin and cannabis, is flowing back into Xinjiang, mainly from the
northern subcontinent and Central Asia. 24,958 kilos o f opium alone were confiscated in 1993; Xu
Xifa, "Xinjiang jindu wenti yanjiu" [A study o f the drug prohibition problem in Xinjiang], Xinjiang
Daxue Xuebao, zhexue shehui kexue ban, 25, no. 2 (1997): 14.
1 6 Trocki, Opium, Empire and the Global Political Economy, p. 168.
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318
the suppression of foreign smugglers as well as crop-substitution, mainly cotton, to
provide economically viable alternatives for local opium cultivators.1 7 An 1890
memorial on opium's tax revenue generating abilities concluded that they were
negligible as little was produced or bought by the East Turkestanis of the Southern
March, "who, being Muslims, customarily had no taste for it and did not cultivate it."
In the Northern March, where Han people "lived mixed together with Muslims,"
there was reportedly small-scale cultivation for personal use. This may explain why
there was so little demand for the official product.1 8 In light of the Russian textual
and British photographic evidence more research is required to re-evaluate these
claims.1 9 The regularization of this revenue system in Xinjiang, however
1 7 Zou Lihong, "Zuo Zongtang," 30. Whatever the immediate truth of Zuo's contentions, they did not
outlast the dynasty. Despite some effort to eradicate the drug in the first few years of the Republican
period, local officialdom, now transformed into warlords, remained financially tied to the traffic,
which persisted through the thirties (39-43). The drug problem has reemerged in Xinjiang, ostensibly
in the wake o f the PRC's economic reforms; Xu Xifa, "Xinjiang jindu wenti," 13-16. Ethnicity
remains an important component of the drug trade. I personally witnessed Uighur restaurateurs in
Xi'an selling hashish to consumers around Shaanxi Normal University in 1987 and as of 1999 it was
still possible to catch the occasional whiff of consumption near Uighur restaurants in Beijing. 1 have
heard "urban legends" from Han Chinese to the effect that hashish is an integral part of the Uighur
cuisine on offer at these eateries.
1 8 Junji zasui, frame #'s 1139-1141, GX 16/9/6. An 1891 financial report from Xinjiang Provincial
Governor Wei Guangdao (no dates) revealed that all opium revenue was being derived from drug
shipments entering Xinjiang from China proper as there was no taxable indigenous production; Junji
zasui, frame #'s 1771-1772, GX 17/12/21. This is strange given the extent of the Russian opium farms
of the northern march noted by Chinese scholars. It is possible that provincial officials were
submitting gross underestimates of opium revenues in an attempt to retain them for local use.
)9The Chinese scholarly consensus is that large-scale opium cultivation in Xinjiang only occurred as a
result of the Russian occupation of Ili after 1871, when a system of opium farms was established in the
occupied area of the Northern March; Zhongguo Shehui Kexue Yuan Jindai Shi Yanjiu Suo, ed., Shae
qin hua shi, p. :236; Zhang Zuoxi, "Shae dui Zhongguo de yapien maoyi," 142-143; Xinjiang Shehui
Kexue Yuan Lishi Yanjiu Suo, ed.,Xinjiangjianshi, 2:165-166. As the Kuropatkin report
demonstrates, however, there was also extensive trafficking in the Southern March of which the
Russians seem to have been unaware as late as 1876. It is, of course, possible that this export trade
was enabled only by the Russian-sponsored cultivation in the north, which ostensibly produced opium
for the Chinese mass market.
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319
rudimentary, is clear evidence that by the late nineteenth century the informal opium
network had become a regular source of official revenue.2 0
Yunnan and Sichuan proved to be exceptionally well-suited for the
establishment of an informal opium network and the ideal ground to effect Chinese
control of its domestic opium market. While large scale Muslim uprisings during the
Xianfeng reign (1851-1861) seem to have severely disrupted the region's opium
market, they also provided the immediate incentive for the taxation o f poppy by local
officialdom with the support of the central government. Yun-Gui Governor-General
Lao Chongguang (1802-1867) successfully proposed an opium tax to generate
revenue for provincial military expenses incurred during the Muslim uprisings. This
policy was continued in the wake of legalization and subsequently expanded empire-
wide under the Guangxu emperor (1875-1907) and was instrumental in the expansion
9 1
of the southwestern opium market.
Production for extra-regional mass consumption was the ultimate result in
these prime opium producing areas of southwestern China, which in the second half
of the nineteenth century surpassed the original production sites in India to make
99
China the largest producer of opium in the world. By the early twentieth century,
2 0 Informal funding networks were often quite systematized in their operations and this no doubt
encouraged the conversion of some of them into formal structures of official revenue; Zelin, The
Magistrate's Tael, p. 69.
2,Qin Heping, Yunnan yapian wenti, p. 22.
2 2 Guizhou and Yunnan emerged as major production sites of domestic opium in the 1830's and
Yunnan was the center o f China's production by 1869. It would be replaced by Sichuan in the 1870's.
By 1906 China produced 87% of the world's opium and consumed 93% of it; Lin Man-houng,
"Qingmo Shehui Liuxing Xishi Yapian Yanjiu," pp. 189, 192-193, 453.
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320
the economic preeminence of the drug was assured in provinces like Sichuan, where
it was asserted that "no other crop even remotely approximating the pecuniary value
of opium can take its place."2 3
Regional varieties of opium began to appear in Yunnan such as "horse turd"
(;mashi) produced in the southeast and southwest for the Guangdong market;
"dumplings" (baozi) produced in the west, including Gengma, for the Sichuan, Hubei
and Shanghai markets; "tall boys" (gezi) produced in the east for the Guizhou, Hunan
and Guangxi markets, and "lumps" (kuaizi) produced in the mid-west for the Wuhan
OA
and Guangxi markets. This was indicative of a highly refined domestic production
and distribution system that could supply a wide spectrum of taste across China.
Ironically, the sophistication of southwestern production enabled the Chinese
merchant traffickers to best their Euro-American counterparts. During the latter half
of the nineteenth century, Chinese producers and distributors were able to corner
their home market, which had become the world's largest. A similar process had
occurred in India as Bombay merchants edged Europeans out of the trade 2 5 The
trade had become "nativized."
Domestic dynamics, however significant they were to become, were not the
initial stimulus that engendered the cycle of opium in the Qing empire. The activism
2 3 Wilson, A Naturalist in Western China, 2:81.
2 4 Qin Heping, Yunnan yapian wenti, p. 15.
2> Farooqui, "Violence, Reversal of Policy and the Ascendancy of Bombay," chap. 6 in Smuggling as
subversion', Trocki, "In the Hands o f Jews and Armenians," chap. 6 in Opium, Empire and the Global
Political Economy.
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321
of foreign elements was the prerequisite for the establishment and development of
the Chinese opium market. This applies not only to the Euro-American traffickers,
whose sponsorship of the traffic is most evident, most extensive and most crucial,
but also to the South and Inner Asian traffickers. The links established by these
groups with various subjects, Han and otherwise, of the Qing empire provided these
subjects with a form of power, commodified opium, whose source was almost
entirely beyond the scope of the throne's control. The indirect quality of Qing rule,
especially in Xinjiang where it was of relatively recent establishment, made these
links particularly difficult, even dangerous to sever. As a result the khanate of
Kokand was able to impose its own system of extraterritoriality on the Qing in
southern Xinjiang and use it to conduct an opium traffic in defiance of Qing
prohibitions. This was accomplished, albeit on a scale smaller than that of the coast,
more through geographic proximity and cultural affinity than through any kind of
superiority in technology or organization as has been held to be the case on the coast.
Using different methods, both the British and the Kokandis succeeded in
establishing inviolate spaces on the borders of imperial territory from which they
could sustain their trafficking operations. Whether launching their operations from
“ Considerable evidence has been presented by scholars that reveals the construction of similar
inviolate spaces during the warlord period. This construction in many areas appears to have been
enabled largely or exclusively by opium. Studies include Gao Yanhong, "Xinan junfa yu yapien
maoyi" [Southwestern warlords and the opium trade], Xueshu Luntan 2 (1982); Li Longchang,
"Luetan Guizhou de yanhuo" [A brief discussion of Guizhou's drug disaster], Guizhou Wenshi
Congkan 2 (1983); Yang Kaiyu, "Jindai Guizhou de yapien liudu" [The flowing poison o f opium in
Guizhou during the Republican period], Guiyang Shiyuan Xuebao, sheke ban 1 (1984); Lin Shourong
and Long Dai, "Sichuan Junfa yu Yapianyan" [Sichuan warlords and opium], Sichuan Daxue Xuebao
3 (1984); Wu Xiaogao, "Zhengshou Yapien Teshui de Neimu" [The real story behind the special
opium tax levy], Guizhou Wenshi Ziliao Xuanji 15 (1984). In English, see Lucien Bianco, "The
Response of Opium Growers to Eradication Campaigns and the Poppy Tax, 1907-1949," in Opium
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322
the town of Andijan or from Lintin Island, smugglers were able to coopt or evade
Qing security apparatuses. That criminal groups from two very different states were
able to establish much the same trafficking systems implies that both were exploiting
the same weakness of their intended target, the Qing empire. Despite appearances,
however, this weakness, while manifesting itself in a uniquely Qing way, was not
unique to the Qing, but seems to be characteristic of the bureaucratic structures of
this period, especially when faced with the challenge of a commodified drug food.
As the record of the East India Company shows, to say nothing of
contemporary experience, opium prohibition was as unrealistic for the preeminent
modem industrial state of the nineteenth century as it was for an over-extended
agrarian monarchy like China. The failure of imperial Britain to prohibit the
production, transport and sale of Malwa in its Indian domain was attributable to
factors generally similar to those that caused the failure of total prohibition in Qing
China insofar as conditions of ethno-geographic proximity and the administrative
reaction to these conditions are concerned. The Malwa-producing native states of
western India were immune to British control through the empire's own structures of
indirect rule and also close in both culture and location to the Raj's territories where
it vainly strove to maintain the Patna monopoly. Britain lacked the ability in the
early nineteenth century to impose an administrative uniformity throughout the
Indian sub-continent sufficient to gain full control of the entire process of opium
Regimes, China, Britain and Japan, 1839-1952, ed. Timothy Brook and Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi,
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), pp. 293-294.
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323
production, distribution and consumption. The consequent dynamics that arose from
this ungovernable diversity rendered prohibition "irrational," from an economic and
political if not from an ethical perspective, in both the British and Chinese cases.
Yet the root of this conditional irrationality was the psycho-physical response
of people throughout the British and Qing empires, and beyond their confines, to the
power of opium rather than any inherent lack of modem rationality in the Qing
practice of diplomacy, economics, technology or politics. This power was not
restricted to the aspect of mere physical addiction, although it did arise from it for
opium's ability to create and sustain a mass market addicted to its ingestion. Opium's
addictive character enabled producers to transmute this character into political and
economic power over other groups of people whether or not they consumed opium.
In this sense opium, in the form of economic and political power, was as
psychologically compelling to merchant-capitalists, bureaucrats and politicians as it
was physically compelling to dmg consumers. Producer, consumer and all the
beneficiaries of the relationship between the two were in this way united in their
"addiction" to power.
Under such conditions it is not surprising that prohibition was a failure for
both the Qing and for Britain. The response of these respective states to their
common failure was, however, radically dissimilar. This is mainly because Britain
was able to shift the cost of its failure over to the Qing through a deliberate
expansion o f the Chinese drug market. Britain enjoyed a significantly superior
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324
position in the drug relations it maintained with China and India by virtue of its
position as absentee producer and direct distributor. This position, a result of British
imperialism in India, enabled Britain to avoid many of the negative consequences of
domestic production, such as coerced cultivation, had it taken place in Britain
97 •
itself. It simultaneously allowed Britain, which directly or indirectly controlled the
primary means of the transport of industrial quantities of opium to China, to benefit
from any expansion in the Chinese market no matter where the ultimate production
source of opium lay in India. Finally, the most disruptive consequences of opium
consumption were generally externalized and confined to the Chinese market.2 8
Reflecting on the legacy of the Daoguang reign's opium problem in 1877, Senior
Vice Minster Guo Songtao noted that the flood of opium during the middle years of
the Daoguang Emperor's reign caused a general social decline resulting in long-term
banditry and other calamities, all of which fed on each other. Guo concluded that
2 7 Farooqui provides evidence for extensive coercion of the Indian peasantry into opium cultivation,
which was not a very profitable enterprise for them. He also notes that the rural economy was
structured in such a way as to isolate peasants from direct access to markets and, hence, to the more
modem remunerati ve aspects of commodified opium production, which harnessed peasant's labor for
mass market production without freeing them from traditional forms o f servitude; Smuggling as
subversion, pp. 66-71.
2 8 0pium smoking, which was the best way to maximize the drag's psycho-physical effects, was racially
stigmatized in Britain as a practice mainly indulged in by degenerate Chinese sailors who sprawled
about, stupefied yet sinister, in that realm of unspeakable perversions, the opium den. Smoking was,
consequently, generally viewed as the least appealing and most unhealthy form of consumption. The
metaphor of the opium den was extensively employed by Britain's considerable anti-opium movement
to inspire public opposition to opium consumption in general and in the view of Berridge and Edwards
remains "the most obvious public legacy o f the anti-opium movement."; Berridge and Edwards, "The
Myth of the Opium Den in Late Victorian England," chap. 15 in Opium and the People.
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325
opium was not only harmful to the health and wealth of the populace, but that it was
"the decisive factor for the stability or disruption of the state."2 9
As direct producer and primary consumer respectively neither India nor China
was in a position to adequately shield themselves from the effects of the traffic,
which included varying degrees of imperialist domination. Indeed, China's status as
the ultimate destination for the overwhelming bulk of the opium produced in India
ensured that the Qing state could not simply ignore or placidly accept the
consequences of its indirect and incomplete control of its own territory, or to turn
these weaknesses into profit as Britain and, to a lesser extent India, had done. This is
mainly because the profit would be extracted from the bodies of its own people and,
more importantly, from the Qing privy purse. Furthermore, the Qing as a sovereign
state would also pay a political price when the limits on its territorial control were
exposed to both its contumacious subjects and ravenous neighbors on the frontiers.
It was no doubt in part an imperative towards omnicompetence experienced by any
state asserting sovereignty over an area that both prompted the initial efforts at
prohibition and sustained their continuation even after their impotence, which was
equated with the general impotence of the Qing, had been demonstrated.
The significance of the Qing opium problem cannot be limited to Qing
history just as the consequences of the power of opium as a commodity could not
limited to the drug's immediate producers and consumers. The obsession with the
stabilization of revenue indifferently extracted from a uniform populace of pliant
Z 9 Guangxu chao Donghua lu, GX 3:49, 1:397.
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326
subjects was common to both the Qing and British imperial administrative
bureaucracies. It was their addiction to an idealized exercise of power that gave
opium a transcendent appeal and ensured its persistence into the twentieth century.
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327
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Appendix A: Translation of Shanxi Taiyu District Magistrate Chen Lihe's "Opium
Prohibition Pledge" Stele
The court established officials to govern the people, with every prefecture,
subprefecture, department and district possessing its own offices. There is,
moreover, an order to the worship of the spirits and it is commanded that these
offices offer seasonal sacrifices, paying their respects on the first and fifteenth of
each month. This is done in order that they may avail themselves of the mystical
sense for upright conduct that is possessed by the spirits. From the depths of the
netherworld, good is rewarded and evil punished and nothing can match this
netherworld in assisting officialdom in its punishment for crimes.
Thus, among the people of every department and district, those who act as
traitors and transgress the law, bringing generations of harm to their localities, will
doubtless be detected by the eyes and ears of the spirits.
Opium is produced beyond the seas, but its poison flows into China. Those
who buy it and consume it break their families, harm their own lives and violate the
law. Treachery, licentiousness, robbery and brigandage all arise from it. Both the
young and vigorous and the old and weak die from it. Wealthy and luxurious houses
are impoverished by it. Brave and bright sons and younger brothers are made stupid
and unfilial by it. People who dwell in peace in their houses well-stocked with
delicacies feel the heavy blows of the bamboo and the weight of the cangue because
of it; they also suffer strangulation, exile and banishment at the hands of the law
because of it.
As for its injurious effect on custom, opium destroys the five natural
relationships and its harmful effect on individual character is even more unspeakable.
When [Chen] Lihe, came here as an official, he sought to preserve what was
beneficial to the region and get rid of what was harmful to it. Last year before he had
arrived at his post, he heard rumors of local fools who liked to consume opium and
become full of hidden sorrows and disquiets therefrom. After two months here,
although no incidents have been substantiated, inquiries still must be made. As a
shepherd of the people, going about making surprise arrests without having first
made the prohibitions known is something I, Lihe, cannot bear to do.
To eradicate a great scourge, its source must first be cleansed. If the district
were without traffickers, from where would my people buy opium? If there were no
traffickers outside its boundaries, from where would my district buy opium? This is
why the prohibition of trafficking is the first task in eradicating the source of opium.
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339
That which has already come in is difficult to pursue, but in future it will be
necessary to abstain from bringing it in. We will use this house of self-cleansing and
vegetarianism to gather the people to pray to the spirits. Henceforward, all
merchants in the district who go to Fujian, Guangdong, Jiangsu or Zhejiang to buy
goods must pledge that they will not bring a single fragment of opium back to Taiyu
for sale, to the great harm of its populace. If they render respectful adherence to their
oaths of abstinence, the spirits will surely reward them. If they resume trafficking,
the officials will certainly punish them! And if official law cannot reach them, the
spirits will surely lend assistance.
If any officials take bribes or connive to conceal trafficking, the spirits will
surely punish them and beset them with calamity in the same way that they will do to
traffickers and consumers! Ah! The people cannot possibly be harmed because the
spirits cannot possibly be deceived.
Those of my merchants who travel to Fujian, Guangdong, Jiangsu and
Zhejiang on the sea desire that there be neither wind nor waves; those who travel on
land desire that there be neither narrow passes nor dangerous defiles. When they are
at peace, what profit can they not seek to gain? Must they for such a thing as opium
violate the laws of the state and rouse the wrath of the spirits!
If some say that the Way of the Spirits is obscure and incredible, that they
will not know if merchants violate the law and will not ask if officials bend the
regulations, that the mystical sense for upright conduct will not manifest itself, let all
merchants respectfully give ear to me and together pray for the spirits mystical
intelligence to shine forth!
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Appendix B: Opium Confiscations in Xinjiang, December 1839-January 1841
Location Seizures/Handovers Total Confiscations
(seizures/handovers’ )
Aksu* 5/0 1500/0
Ili 7/47 356 ?
Kashgar 7/40 400/3136
Khotan 0/3 0/5372
Tarbagatai 2/0 11,900/0
Turfan 3/0 figures unavailable
Urumqi 37/3 figures unavailable
Yarkand* 4/7 26,662/97,980
Total Seizures: 41482tls. (1529 kgs; approximately 24 chests)
Total Handovers: 106,487 tls. (4026 kgs.; approximately 63 chests)
Indeterminate: 356 tls. (13.5 kgs.; approximately .2 chests)
T37.8 grams/tael; 1 chest = 140 lbs. = 64 kgs]
*Other cases mentioned, but no details
Statistics compiled from: Junji minzu, #1030-#1034, DG 20/8/24, #1391-1393, DG 20/12/29, #1394-
1395, DG 20/4/20; Junji jinyan, #3082-3085, DG 19/11/21, #3104-3108, DG 19/11/18, #3109-3112,
DG 19/11/24; Gongzfrong jinyan, DG 19/12/19 [Section 11], DG 20/1/27, DG 20/2/19; YPZZ, DG
19/12/13, 1:772-774, DG 20/1/16, 2:3-7.
Notes: Where possible, amounts of seized opium have been calculated from that purchased, rather
than sold, by traffickers as the original quantity was subdivided and resold many times in a number of
places across Xinjiang. This is especially true of the Rong Jixiang trafficking ring case, where the
opium was purchased in Yarkand, but sold in Khotan and Turfan, where it was often locally re-sold.
This resulted in complicated chains of dozens of small cases that are not counted in the table above,
which notes amounts confiscated in individual cases only when they were unusually large.
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341
Appendix C: Table of Opium Offenses in Yunnan, March 1832-February 1836
LOCATION CULTIVATION/ TRAFFICKING/ CONSUMPTION
Baoning District* 1/1
Baoshan District 1/0/0
Chenggong District* 2/2
Chuxiong District 0/ 1/0
Dayao District 1/0/0
Fumin District* 0/2
Guangxi Department 0/ 1/0
Kunming District 0/7/15
Kunyang Department* 0/2
Lufeng District 0/ 1/0
Luliang Department 3/0/0
Luquan District* 1/1
Luoping Department 0/ 1/0
Menghua Subprefecture 2/0/0
Nanning District 0/ 1/0
Puning* Department 0/1
Shizong District 4/0/0
Songming* Department 1/1
Wenshan District 0/ 1/1
Wuding Department 3/0/0
Xundian Department 0/ 1/0
Yiliang District 0/0/1
Yongbei Subprefecture* 0/2
Yun Department 1/0/0
Yunnan District 1/0/0
Yunnan Prefecture* 0/1
Zhanyi Department 0/0/1
Zhao Department 3/0/0
Zhennan* Department 0/1
Total cultivation/trafficking/consumption offenses: 24/14/18
Indistinct offenses (both trafficking and consumption): 14
*No clear distinction made in report between trafficking and consumption offenses; figure to the left
of the slash represents cultivation offenses.
Statistics derived from: Junji jinyan, DG 12/2/9, DG 14/11/28; Junji, #062372, DG 12/12/8,
#069912, DG 15/12/19.
R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission.
342
Appendix D: Table of Trafficking & Cultivation Offenses in Guizhou ca. February
1833
LOCATION TRAFFICKING & CULTIVATION
Anshun Prefecture (13)
Qingzhen District 8
Puding District 5
Dading Prefecture (19)
Qianxi Department 11
Huajie District 4
Weining Department 4
Guiyang Prefecture 6(23)
Guizhu District 12
Xiuwen District 3
Dingfan Department 2
Puan Subprefecture* 10
Shiqian Prefecture
(2)
Longquan District 2
Xingyi Prefecture 6(7 )
Xingyi District 1
Zhenyuan Prefecture* 2
Total offenses: 76
*No district or department subtotals provided in original report for these units
Statistics compiled from: Junji, # 062220, DG 12/12/16.
Notes: No distinction was made between trafficking and cultivation offenses in the original report.
The table is divided into prefecture-sized administrative units, which further are subdivided into
departments and districts where possible. Parenthesized figures give total offenses from multiple
locales within a prefecture-sized unit. Unparenthesized figures represent offense statistics from a
single administrative unit, either a prefectural seat or a sub-unit. Finally, I have no explanation for the
discrepency between the total number o f eighty-nine offenses noted in the original report and the mere
seventy-six that are specifically enumerated in the same document.
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343
Appendix E: Table of Opium Offenses & Amnesties in Guizhou, late 1838-February
1839
LOCALE OFFENSES SEIZURES AMNESTIES HANDOVERS
Anshun Prefecture
Qingzhen Dist. 1/2 2/0 41 13/0
Puding Dist. 1344/0 3 393/10
Anping Dist. 436/0
Guihua Sub. 12/4 20/4 338 54/17
Zhenning Dept. 21 52/0
Langdai Dept. 52
Dading Prefecture 0/3 6 0/320
Qianxi Dept. 100/0 200/13
Huajie Dist. 30 0/21
Weining Dept. 2/2 0/17 206 418/0
Pingyuan Dept. 32
Duyun Prefecture 3
Duyun Dist. 2
Libo Dist. 35/18
Dujiang Sub. 15 5/0
Maha Dept. 3 0/2
Bazhai Sub. 22
Dushan Dept. 2
Guiyang Prefecture
Guizhu Dist. 25/8 19,211/16
Kai Dept. 1/4 5/1 13
Guiding Dist. 2 20/0
Longli Dist. 1/0 10/0 12 10/0
Dingfan Dist. 23 512/2
Guangxun Dept. 0/1 20
Liping Prefecture 121 500/30
Kaitai Dist. 4
Guzhou Sub. 1/6 40/0 38 700/200
Xiajiang Sub. 6/4
Pingyue Department* 0/2 6 104/3
Meize Dist. 0/3 0/38 8 254/0
Yuqing Dist. 0/2
Wengan Dist. 2/1 350/0 7 100/4
Renhuai Sub
prefecture* 1/5 164/42 1 13/0
Shiqian Prefecture 0/3 40
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344
LOCALE OFFENSES SEIZURES AMNESTIES HANDOVERS
Sinan Prefecture 19 6/11
Yubing Dist. 1/1 8/0 43 37/22
Wuchuan Dist.
26/5
Songtao Sub
prefecture* 15
Tongren Prefecture 100/100
Tongren Dist. 0/121
Xingyi Prefecture 1/4 20/4 20 54/27
Xingyi Dist. 1 63/31
Annan Dist. 80/0
Zhenfeng Dept. 3
Puan Dist. 3/33 88/0 15 35/0
Ceheng Dept. 65 30/0
Zhenyuan Prefecture
Zhenyuan Dist. 0/2 20/8 40 231/32
Shibing Dist. 0/4 20/10 53 70/0
Taigong Sub. 1/4
Huangping Dept. 2/0 47/0 142 2980/176
Zunyi Prefecture
Zhengan Dept. 11 80/0
Huanyang Dist. 4/0 8/0 2
Totals 62/90 21,457/140 1488 6680/1169
(in kilos) 811/6 252/44
*Prefecture-sized administrative unit
Statistics derived from: Gongzhong DG, DG 18/10/28, 7:4850b, DG 18/12/18, 30:568a-569b; Junji
jinyan, #2321-2326, DG 18/12/18.
Notes: All figures for opium given are in taels (37.8 grams/tael). The category of "offenses" is divided
between trafficking/consumption. Figures for opium seizures and handovers are split between crude
opium/opium paste. Textual ambiguities have been left out. This accounts for most of the
discrepencies between figures given in Appendix E and the original reports used to compile the table.
R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission.
345
Appendix F: Table of Opium Confiscations in Yunnan, December 1838- April 1840
LOCALE SEIZURES
Chuxiong Prefecture 7495 paste
Chuxiong District 13,440 both
Dali Prefecture
Dengchuan Department 3100
Zhao Department 5430
Taihe District 2460 both
Guangnan Prefecture 3510 both
Guangxi Department* 13,580 both
Shizong District+ 10,410
Jingdong Subprefecture* 22,570
Kaihua Prefecture 3125
Wenshan District 2080
Lijiang Prefecture
Lijiang District 4106
Jiaoqing Department 9387
Lin'an Prefecture
Jianshui District 2120
Shiping Department 1520
Menghua Subprefecture* 43,900
Zhanyi Department 1050
Quqing Prefecture
Pingyi District 1090
Shunning Prefecture
Shunning District+ 14,860
Yun Department+ 6800
Mianning Subprefecture 3320
Gengma NC 10,300 both
Mengmeng NC 2416
Tengyue Subprefecture* 4196
Wuding Department*
Yuanmou District 5560
Yongbei Subprefecture*+ 12,140
Langqu NC 10,252
Yongchang Prefecture
Zhenkang & Wandian NC 8025
Baoshan District 4106
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346
LOCALE SEIZURES
Yunnan Prefecture
Zhaotong Prefecture
Multiple Locales**
Military Regions
11,080 both
11,000 both
59,843
22,803
T o ta l: 337,074 taels (12,741 kilos)
♦Prefecture-sized administrative unit
♦♦General confiscation statistics from 89 locales
+Figures probably include relatively small amounts from unspecified environs
NC: Native Chieftainship
Statistics derived from: Junji jinyan, #2460-2461, DG 19/3/3 and #2603-2604, DG 19/4/29 and #2787-
2788, DG 19/4/28; Gongzhong jinyan, DG 20/4/19 and DG 20/4/19 [enclosure]. YPZZ, DG 21/4/27, 3:493-
495.
Note: Figures are in taels (37.8 grams/tael). Type of opium is unspecified unless otherwise noted. Due to
textual ambiguities and gaps in the documentary record, the amounts listed for each location in the table
above do not amount to the 387,290 taels (14,639 kgs.), declared confiscated by Yan Botai throughout
Yunnan between December 1838 and April 1840; Gongzhong jinyan, DG 20/4/19. Another set o f statistics
was submitted by Yun-Gui Governor-General Gui-liang in June 1841 covering confiscations all the way
back to February 1840, which partially overlaps the period covered by Appendix F above. Gui-liang
declared that a total o f 48,500 taels (1833 kgs.) had been seized from over 500 offenders involved in 330
opium violations of various types; YPZZ, DG 21/4/27, 3:493-495. It is probable that the bulk o f these
confiscations dated from the early 1840's and are, consequently, already included in the Appendix F figures.
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347
Appendix G: Table of Opium Offenses, Amnesties & Confiscations in Guizhou,
January 1838-September 1842
Locale Offenses Opium Seized Plots Seized Amnesties All Handovers
Anshun Prefecture 1/ 1/0 6/4
Qingzhen Dist. 1/2/10 4 233/5 0/0/1
Puding Dist. 2/8/1 4/2 1 2/0
Anping Dist. 1/3/2 4/0 18/0
Guihua Sub. 6/3/1 20/0 25/25/0
Zhenning Dept. 0/5/2 1 4/0 8/0/0
Langdai Dept. 0/5/6 10/1
[14]
Yongning Dept. 10/0
Dading Prefecture 8/14/10 88/2 4 [10] 255/14 373/0/0
Qianxi Dept. 3/15/9 37/1 2 [7] 27/0 10/0/0
Huajie Dist. 0/14/0 2/1 3/10 0/24/0
Weining Dept. 5/12/0 11/7 0/3 0/0/3
Pingyuan Dept. 1/4/10 10/0 [19] 45/0
Shuicheng Sub. 0/ 1/0 1/0 65/8 f 250/0/13
Duyun Prefecture
Duyun Dist. 1/5/0 2/0 2/0
Libo Dist. 1/2/0
Dujiang Sub. 1/5/0
Maha Dept. 5/0 7/4/0
Bazhai Sub. 1/0
Dushan Dept. 0/0/1 3/0
Qingping Dist. 0/0/2
Danjiang Sub. 1/ 1/0
Guiyang Prefecture 2/22/0
Guizhu Dist. 45/82/7 26,755/387 7 5/0 300/0/0
Kai Dept. 1/4/0 9/0 2 0/0/2
Guiding Dist. 3/5/0 12/5 2/0
Longli Dist. 0/0/1 0/1 1/0
Dingfan Dist. 1/4/1 6/1 0/2 0/0/2
Guangxun Dept. 0/ 1/1 1
Luohu Dept. 0/0/1 1
Changzhai Sub. 0/0/1 2
Xiuwen Dist. 2/ 1/0 6/0 1/0
Guangshun Dept. 3/2/0 153 ? 2/0
Datang Dept. 0/0/1 2
Liping Prefecture 3/7/2 0/5 1/0 8/5/0
Kaitai Dist. 1/3/0 5/2 1/0
Guzhou Sub. 0/5/0
Xiajiang Sub. 2/ 1/0 2/0 2/0
Yongcong Dist. 0/5/0
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348
Locale Offenses Opium Seized Plots Seized Amnesties All Handovers
Pingyue Department* 0/0/1
Meize Dist. 2/2/0
Yuqing Dist. 0/ 1/0
Wengan Dist. 1/2/0 150/1 0/4 0/0/4
Puan Subprefecture*
Puan Sub. 1/7/142
144**
40/0/0
Renhuai Sub
prefecture* 2/0/0
Renhuai Sub. 10/48/5 435/2 5 2/4 132/0/4
Shiqian Prefecture 0/0/1 1 1/1 4/0/1
Longquan Dist. 0/0/7 7 1/6 8/0/6
Sichou Prefecture 0/0/1 28/0 0/ 12/0
Sinan Prefecture 3/8/12 2/3 1 0/ 1/0
Yubing Dist. 11/0
Wuchuan Dist. 0/3
Yinjiang Dist. 1/10/3 0/1 3
Anhua Dist. 3/2/0 1/0
Songtao Sub
prefecture*
Songtao Sub 3/1/0 26/0
Tongren Prefecture 10/2/4 127/0 4 0/22 0/0/22
Tongren Dist. 0/ 1/0 3/0
Xingyi Prefecture 0/2/2 1/0
Xingyi Dist. 1/6/32 60/0 2 1/0
Annan Dist. 2/7/12 3/0 1/0
Zhenfeng Dept. 0/4/1 10/2
Puan Dist. 0/0/31 8 0/30 0/0/47
Ceheng Dept. 1/5/5
Zhenyuan Prefecture
Zhenyuan Dist. 4/27/0 26/7 9/0
Shibing Dist. 3/0/0 1/0
Taigong Sub. 4/0 2/0
Huangping Dept. 2/13/0 1/0
Qingjiang Sub. 0/0/1
Tianzhu Dist. 16/4/0
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349
Locale Offenses O pium Seized Plots Seized Am nesties All H andovers
Zunyi Prefecture
Zunyi Dist. 1/14/5 46/5 1/16 f 0/0/17
Zhengan Dept. 1/5/9 [3]
9/1 0/01
Huanyang Dist. 5/5/3 8/0 3 11/1 0/0/1
Tongzi Dist. 1/5/1 48/7 3 0/2 0/0/2
Table Totals 152/345/327 27,930/450
(1056kgs/l 7)
208 [53] 777/41
(24 f)
1244/75/58
(47kgs./3/2)
Official Totals over 900
all types+
49,000+ both
(1852 kgs.)
?
2064/124 1,500/1280/?
(435kgs./48)
*Prefecture-sized administrative unit
** Fifteen of these plots, totaling eleven mu, were seized from fourteen tenant farmers on native
chieftanship land,
f: families
+Figure includes 372 cultivators.
Statistics derived from Junji jinyan, #2589-#2591, DG 19/4/29 and #2592-#2596, DG 19/4/29 and
#2770-#2772, DG 19/6/18 and #2900-#2901, DG 19/7/24 and #2902-#2903, DG 19/7/24 and #3019-
#3022, DG 19/11/2 and #3072-3073, DG 19/12/16 and #3190, DG 20/1/19 and #3331-3334, DG
20/4/22 and #3435-#3437, DG 20/9/15 and #34-36, DG 22/8/25; Gongzhong jinyan, DG 20/4/22;
Gongzhong DG, DG 19/5/16, pp. 422b-424a; YPZZ, DG 20/7/20, 2:286-289 and DG 21/1/18, 3:79-
81; Choubanyiwu shimo buyi, DG 22/1/22, #4/6-7.
Notes: "Offenses" are listed in the order: traffickers/consumers/cultivators. "Amnesties" are listed in
the order: traffickers & consumers/cultivator. "All Handovers" are listed in the order: crude
opium/paste/plots voluntarily converted to legitimate crops. Figures in brackets represent plot sizes in
mou (15 mou/hectare) All opium confiscation figures are in taels (37.8 grams/tael) unless otherwise
noted.
Due to ambiguities and gaps in the documentary record, the "Official Totals" for trafficking,
consumption and seizures o f raw opium and paste do not correspond to the figures given in the table,
but are based on He Changling's statement of the total opium seizures throughout Guizhou between
January, 1838 and October, 1840; Junji jinyan, #3433-3434, DG 20/9/15. The extant figures after the
latter date add one hundred eight traffickers and consumers; five cultivators and 14 kilos o f raw opium
and paste to the previous totals. The figures for the amnesty program are even more problematic, and
the total figures given above are based on those provided by He Changling on September 1, 1839;
Junji jinyan, #2898-2899, DG 19/7/24. All totals for cultivation have been derived from information
given in the table.
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350
Glossary
afurong f5J ^ #
Ai-long-a (n.d) g |H H
aiman 5
akhund p '5 J '/J|
Anchashi gy §
Annan District $ ft) M
Anping District
Anshun Prefecture 3^ llljf /fy p
aogao A ^
Ba County E $$
banshi dachen gr? If- Jz E 5
bao
baojia ^
Baoning District I f ^ ®|
Baoshan District |Jj H
baoshe
Bao-xing (1777-1848) f l
baozheng J£
baozi /eJ E
Bazhai Subprefecture A ffl f j
bazong I t
bian Miao § | e h
biantong H i i
Bi-chang (7-1854) H U
bithesiltfcA
bu g( 5
Bugurlp^fSI
bujin zichu 7(7 ^ ^
Bu-lan-tai (n.d.) A fit j A
Bu-yan-tai (1791-1880) A M #
canzan dachen
Cao Liuxing (n.d.) f y t ®
Cao Xuemin (n.d.) H | ! H
Ceheng Department JjtifE jH i
Chang-qing (7-1856) fk m
Changzhai Subprefecture A A l l
Chaozhou (f§ jJII
Chen Hongmou (1696-1771)
Chen Shen (n.d.) W. l?c
Chengde Prefecture IMUfitf
chenggao ( A #
Chengge (n.d.)
Chenggong District M M H
chengshou ying A H
chengshou ying dusi iA A § f|5 W J
chengshou ying qianzong ijfc § E |®
chijinpai
Chongqing Prefecture J t i f l h f
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chuantu J1 1
Chuxiong District
Chuxiong Prefecture )e 01 Iff
Dading Prefecture d ; Je If!
Daizuf#^
Dali Prefecture^: S |)ff
Danjiang Subprefecture
Danshui
Daoguang i l T t
Dayao District
deng
Deng Tingzhen (1775-1846) 1 1 5 f t If!
Dengchuan Department f[5 J1 1 f|'|
diantu f t j ;
dibao
difang guan f j 1 = 1
Dingfan Department T e # fH
Dongchuan Prefecture j^[ JI ||ff
Dujiang Subprefecture #15)111
Dushan D epartm ent$f ill ;H '|
dutong #|5 lit
Duyun District # 1 5 I f
Duyun Prefecture #(5 Iff
E-le-jin-tai (n.d.) H lijd f #
E-shan (1770-1838) f5 il|
En-te-heng-e (?-1842) ,§l f# Ip H
fan jie f i f f
FangBao (1668-1749) ffffg
fanmai IS I f
Fumin District J J E H |,l
furong, see "afurong"
Fuzhou Prefecture )§ fH /(I
gaitu guiliu i i f : M
ganjie-0-^
gao I f
ge sheng dufu )§- ^
Gengma Native Chieftainship H d ; r]
gezi f@ = i~
gonghang fy
Guangnan g | if]
Guangxi Department I t [5 )'H
Guangxun Department 0 llg f |> |
G ui-liang(1785-1862) |
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Guihua Subprefecture|f i t H
Guiyang Prefecture jl; (5§ Iff
Guizhu District | | #5®
Guo Baiyin (7-1884) f[5 fg pg
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352
Guo Songtao (1818-1891)
Guolu 0j8 H ||
Guzhou Subprefecture ^ ^ |'|||
haiguan jiandu : B gf | f
Haitan ?S±1
Han Keyun (1766-1840)
Hanmin bian Miao ea
Hanzhong Prefecture 'M ^
He Changling (1785-1848)
Huajie District § gp
Huang Lezhi (n.d.) f t ^
Huang Shujing (n.d.) fir
Huangping Department f f - -
Huanyang District WtM
hubao ganjie S f S W n
Hubei i t
hudaida Of tS H
Huifeng (? - 1851) H I
Hui-ji (7 -1 8 4 5 )« ^
Huili Zhou H fjl
Huitun 0
Ili Jiangjun j f y,-:-,
Ili Jiu Cheng
Indian (g
jasaglL H ^
jia ^
Jianshui District H 7 ^; H
Jiangsu tC I I
jiaoyan tg
Jiaqing J S H
Jingdong Subprefecture f j
Jingni Jiangjun ^
jitun J i H
juntun 5 1 %
junxian fjd
junzhang ^ jH
Kai Department |
Kaihua District |
kaishe yaokou Iff fx fg P
Kaitai District
kuaixie |g
kuaizi ff1
Kuang Deng (n.d.)
Kunming District H £
Kunyang Department H p
Langdai Department ]
Its®
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353
Langqu Native Chieftainship 3S 9S
Lao Chongguang (1802-1867)
Li Xingyuan (1797-1851) MH.17E
Li Zhiguo (n.d.)
Libo District gg, jg M
Lijiang District H jX M
Lijiang Prefecture H l l ff?
liang yuan § J i
Liangjiang pjj j i
liangwuting
lianhuan qiejie )|g f i #n
Lifan Yuan f l f t K
Lin Qing (1791-1846) §£)#
Lin Zexu (1785-1850)
Linan Prefecture $ I#
lingdui dachen p f l^
Liping Prefecture - jz IN :
Liu Guangsan (n.d.) -jt H
liuyu minren H K A
Longchuan River | | J1 1 ( I
Longli District f | M M
Longquan District f I H
L uK un (1772-1835)
LuY inbo (1760-1839) f i l l i p
LuYinggu (7-1857) m B M
Lufeng District jp f- § f |
L uliangP^jg j||
Luohu Department H M )‘ l'l
Luoping Department H M Jj j
lupiao 5 -g H
Luquan District jp f: fgj ® $
Maha Department f f p ^
M a o lia n /^ jg
mashi B|
Meize District )H #
Menghua Subprefecture m i t M
Menglian j g j g
menpai H )}$
Mengdian jg'H]
Mengding M aE
Mengmeng Native Chieftainship M; M
Mengzi R g
Mianning Subprefecture f® $ Jjl
Miaojiang g f | f
Miaozu ja % %
Midian ^ laj
Min-Zhe H 3 #/f
Mingshan (7-1834) 0fj[_L j
mou §!(
Mu-zhang-a (1782-1856) H t 'N '
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354
Na-yan-cheng (1764-1833) f|3
Nandian j^ 's ]
Nanning District j^j
neidi |*| ife
neidi zhi yi j*j ;£ %
Ningbo^’ ^
Ningqiang Zhou % jfl
Ningyuan S & jg
pai J{$
p a lo n g le fi
Peng Yusong (n.d.) B % tk&
pengmin f i g
Pingyi District g U f !
Pingyuan Department g f l i jfl
Pingyue Department f 2 - I I ifi I t j‘ N
Puan District jgf § |
Puan Subprefecture i f 5c I I
Puding District H /E f |
Puer Prefecture | f (If Iff
Puning Department H $ )f|
qiangtu f t ±
Qian Jie (1760-1812) f l f g
Qianxi Department i f f'|
Qianzhou jp
Qingbao (n.d.) jjjgf^
Qingjiang Subprefecture ?f (1.1?
Qingping District ' / f g f l
Qingzhen District (If fil I I
Quanzhou |j!
Qujing Prefecture f t if-Iff
Renhuai Subprefecture fZ ti'iiE # Iff
Ruan Yuan (1764-1849) PfcTC
Shaan-Gan |$5 f t
Shaan-Gan zongdu ^ f t $ f I f
Shangmin f t jft
Shaoxing M
Shenhu Guan f t fj| §1
sheng Miao f t g
Shengjing (i.e. Mukden; present-day Shenyang) (S fp
Shibing District JtS M H
shicha f t fjf
Shiping Department f t (p )i> |
Shiqian Prefecture f t |ft f t
Shisan Hang -j- f t f j
Shizong District grp Ik H
shu Miao ^ gf
Shuicheng Subprefecture 7R if tI l
shuli U f t
Shunning District III! lj£ H
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355
Shunning Prefecture III! 2® jfif
Sinan Prefecture ® jfj jftf
Sizhou Prefecture ;H 'I ffff
Song Yun (1754-183 5) $ %
Song-pu (7-1846)
Songming Department ^ j‘ |> |
Songtao Subprefecture
suiyu 7j< SF
Sun Erjun (1770-1832) M f f
Taigong Subprefecture
Taihe District A % Q
taipu si A f t
Tai-yong (n.d.) A F §
Taizhou o ' jj'l
Tanka H A
Tao Shu (1779-1839) W M
Tiandi Hui A A A
Tianshan A ill
Tianzhu District A fe
tongben )j| A
Tongren District id f T H
Tongren Prefecture § [s] fAftf
tongyou flf
tongzhi IH £Q
Tu-ming-e (7-1847) 0 B fj p trf
Tuan-duo-bu (n.d.)
tubian A
tuguan tusi zhidu ±_ 'g ’ A s) fjilj
tu jiazu ± ^ J^
tuman A H
tu m u ± @
tuntian A 03
tusi i f )
w aidizhi yi A iif e A il
Wandian Native Chieftainship (St'S]
wangdi chengwen A jI M
weijin xiahai jig ^ A $g
Weining Department fS cS S jijH 'l
wen na toushou |S B ® H
Wengan District A f l
Wenshan District A l l H
Wenzhou yJgj'H
Wuchuan District §c JI [ H
Wuding Department jEt/H H
Xiajiang Subprefecture A ( I j H
Xiamen jjfH
xiangbao |I|5
xiangyu$E>$J
xiaotu A A
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
356
xiedou 1 $ if-
xingfan f f
Xingyi Prefecture fif fj§
Xingyi District fS L Hi
Xinjiang nanlu ge cheng chajin yapian zhangcheng 0 f I S l^tf 1 = ? jlr I k M in ' -
xishi B$j|r
Xiuwen District fit? #
Xu Naiji (n.d.) f f 7 b : M
xun jjf
Xundian Department I f ID jfl
xunsi M
xuntai yushi
yan ©
yanbian zhi yi YnT§!t£.'lM
Yan Botao (7-1855) jHfEpfH
y a n g h a n g # f j
y a n g y a n # f f
Yang Yuchun (1761-1837) f§ ;
y a n jin f f il
Yanjin Pai mx m
Yanzhou f t jf|
yanju M M
yaokou P
yapian 5fJ§
yapian guan g§ f t H
yapian n i$ § J t$ g
yapian tun J | fH
yapian yan
Yarkand canzan dachen m f f 0 ® !£
ye I f
y e y i l f %
Y i #
Y i-li-bu(7-1843)
yidi||±llE
Yidong Dao jfe ^ f t
yifang j p #
Yiliang District ]l[ f |
Yin Peifen (n.d.) jp’ffplll
Yinfang Zhangjing Ep j i t # 5?
Yinhuang §M } ’ £
Yinjiang District E PfI!|^
Y in-lu( 1695-1767) j|L #
yinyan
Yi-shan (7-1878) ^ | l j
Yixi Dao Jfi g§ f l
Yongbei Subprefecture
Yu Jiao (n.d.) fu$3i
Yu-tai (1788-1851) f f
Yuanmo District
Yubing District 3£ §
Yun Department f f
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
357
Yunnan District ff T ^ D ff
Yunnan Prefecture f f fo H T
Yuqing District If If
Zhanxi County H (?fff
Zhanyi Department fl’ l
Zhao Department jig )j'|
Zhaotong Prefecture Hg M iff
Zhenfeng j | g ) > H
Zhengan Department ]£ ^ j'l'l
zhengjiao
Zhenkang Native Chieftainship i f f ?
Zhennan Department IM j'li
Zhenning Department f l | i jJ 'I 'l
Zhenxi Zhili Ting | i (5 j# f t $§
Zhenyuan District f l jit f f
Zhenyuan Prefecture
zhiqing shouji £0 I f f t
zhishang tanbing $5 _h JT
Zhou Xuejian (n.d.) JH f l f t
Zunyi District jig | | f f
Zunyi Prefecture j f | fH fjfp
zuo duyushi
ZuoZ ongtang(1812-1885)
R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission.
358
Abbreviations
Reian Titles
KX: Kangxi (1662-1722)
YZ: Yongzheng (1723-35)
QL: Qianlong (1736-95)
JQ: Jiaqing (1796-1820)
DG: Daoguang; (1821-50)
XF: Xianfeng (1851-61)
GX: Guangxu (1875-1908)
Books & Archives
Baxian dang'an Qingdai Qian-Jia-Dao Baxian dang'an xuanbian [Selection from the
archives of Ba County during the Qianlong, Jiaqing and Daoguang reign
periods of the Qing dynasty]. Edited by Sichuan Daxue Lishi Xi and the
Sichuan Sheng Dang'anguan. 2 vols. Chengdu: Sichuan Daxue
Chubanshe, 1996,
China III Irish University. China III Miscellaneous Papers 1809-1840.. Irish
University Press area studies series, British Parliamentary Papers: China.
London: House of Commons, 1840. Reprint, Irish University Press, 1977.
Gongzhong baojia Gongzhong dang, neizheng dalei, baojia [Palace Memorial archive, interior
ministry category, baojia]. Subject category of archival holdings in the First
Historical Archives of China.
Gongzhong DG Gongzhong dang Daoguang chao zouzhe [Palace memorials from the
Daoguang reign]. Compiled by Gugong Bowuyuan. Taibei: Gugong
Bowuyuan, 1995.
Gongzhong j inyan Gongzhong dang, falu dalei, jinyan [Palace Memorial archive, legal
category, opium prohibition]. Subject category of archival holdings in the
First Historical Archives of China.
Gongzhong shenban Gongzhong dang, falu dalei, shenban [Palace Memorial archive, legal
category, adjudication]. Subject category of archival holdings in the First
Historical Archives of China.
HDSL Qing Huidian Shili [Precedents for the collected statutes of the Qing
dynasty]. Guangxu Edition, 1899. 12 vols. Reprint, Beijing: Zhonghua
Shuju, 1991.
R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission.
359
Junji chajin
Junji diqin
Junji jinyan
Junji minzu
Junji zasui
Neige weijin
QSL
QSG
SYD
SYDD
WJD
YPZZ
ZZD
Junji Chu, lufu dang, chajin [Grand Council copy archive, investigations
and prohibitions]. Subject category o f archival holdings in the First
Historical Archives of China.
Junji Chu, lufu dang, diguozhuyi qinlue dalei, Diyi Yapien Zhanzheng
[Grand Council copy archive, imperialist aggression category, First Opium
War]. Subject category of archival holdings in the First Historical
Archives o f China.
Junji Chu, lufu dang, falu dalei, jinyan [Grand Council copy archive, legal
category, opium prohibition]. Subject category o f archival holdings in the
First Historical Archives of China.
Junji Chu lufu dang, minzushiwu dalei, Weiwuer [Grand Council copy
archive, minority affairs category, Uighurs], Subject category of archival
holdings in the First Historical Archives of China.
Junji chu, lufu dang, caizheng dalei, zasui [Grand Council copy archive,
government finance category, miscellaneous taxes]. Subject category
of archival holdings in the First Historical Archives of China.
Neige, xingke tiben, weijin lei (tongben/buben) [Grand Secretariat archive,
routine memorials for the Office of Scrutiny of the Board of Punishments,
prohibitions violations category (provincial/board) memorial]. Subject
category of archival holdings in the First Historical Archives of China.
Qing shilu [Veritable records of the Qing dynastyh 60 volumes. Beijing:
Zhonghua Shuju, 1986-87.
Qingshi gao [Draft official history of the Qing dynasty]. 48 volumes.
Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1977.
Shangyu dang [Record book of imperial edicts]. Subject category
of archival holdings in the First Historical Archives of China.
Shangyu dang, dong [Record book of imperial edicts, winter]. Subject
category o f archival holdings in the National Palace Museum, Taibei,
Taiwan.
Waiji dang [Outer Court record]. Subject category of archival holdings
in the National Palace Museum, Taibei, Taiwan.
Yapian Zhanzheng dang'an shiliao [Historical materials from the Opium
War archives]. Edited by Zhongguo Diyi Lishi Dang'anguan. 7 vols.
Tianjin: Tianjin Guji Chubanshe, 1992.
Zouzhe dang [Palace memorial record]. Subject category o f archival
holdings in the National Palace Museum, Taibei, Taiwan.
R eproduced with perm ission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Bello, David Anthony (author)

Core Title Opium and the limits of empire: The opium problem in the Chinese interior, 1729--1850

Contributor Digitized by ProQuest (provenance)

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program History

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag history, Asia, Australia and Oceania,OAI-PMH Harvest

Language English

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c16-99265

Unique identifier UC11338201

Identifier 3027694.pdf (filename),usctheses-c16-99265 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier 3027694.pdf

Dmrecord 99265

Document Type Dissertation

Rights Bello, David Anthony

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the au...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus, Los Angeles, California 90089, USA