Despite Niall Ferguson’s efforts in 2003 to partially rehabilitate British imperialism in his bestselling Empire the subject still provokes angry debate. The recent revelations concerning the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s obliteration of archives dealing with British brutality in 1950s Africa and Malaya drew the Empire’s attackers and admirers into open combat. George Monbiot in the Guardian lambasted defenders of the imperial legacy, while Lawrence James in the Daily Mail argued that ‘the Empire was a dynamic force for the regeneration of the world’. The Opium Wars of 1839-42 and 1856-60 between Qing-dynasty China and Britain are a perfect case study of the international divergence of opinion that the Empire continues to generate. In China the conflicts – the first between it and a western nation – are a national wound: the start of a western conspiracy to destroy China with drugs and gunboats. In Britain the wars barely seem to register in public memory. It is perhaps in its attempt to provide a strong intellectual rationale for the Opium Wars that Leslie Marchant’s 2002 article most clearly shows its age. It begins with a discussion of the ideological differences between the two sides: the British attachment to free trade and progress jibing with the traditional Confucian bias against merchants and commerce. Many earlier western commentators tried to play down opium as the casus belli, asserting instead that a clash of economic and political cultures lay behind the conflicts. They sought a moral justification for wars that were essentially about protecting an illegal, profitable drugs trade. Audio: Listen to Julia Lovell talking about the Opium Wars These days historians may prefer to focus on the amoral pounds, shillings and pence logic of the wars, arguing that they were about opium and the drug’s unique ability to balance the books, rather than a more intellectually respectable ‘collision of civilisations’. John Wong’s 1998 study of Britain’s second Opium War with China, Deadly Dreams, made clear Lord Palmerston’s dependency on opium revenues throughout the middle decades of the 19th century. In light of the British addiction to Chinese exports (silk, ceramics and tea), opium was the only commodity that saved the British balance of payments with Asia from ruinous deficit. Marchant argues that mid-century British merchants in China believed that a ‘just war’ should be fought to defend progress. In reality the British leaders of the opium trade through the 1830s and 1840s were far more interested in protecting their drug sales in order to fund lucrative retirement packages (one of their number, James Matheson, used such profits to buy a seat in Parliament and the Outer Hebridean island of Lewis). Marchant also portrays opium as an absolute blight on 19th-century China. Over the past decade, however, Frank Dikötter, Lars Laaman and Zhou Xun have enhanced our understanding of late-imperial China’s opium culture. They have moved away from the idea that opium turned any casual smoker into a pathetic victim and have instead portrayed with increasing subtlety the economic, social and cultural realities of its use in China. Yet there is much in Marchant’s article that remains relevant. He captures nicely the childish blitheness of the young Queen Victoria to the war in China (‘Albert is so amused at my having got the Island of Hong Kong’). He makes an important point, too, about the over-reliance of some earlier Anglophone historians on western sources and paradigms to interpret Chinese history and their neglect of internal Chinese factors. Until surprisingly recently, this remained a significant issue in Chinese studies. As late as 1984 an influential sinologist called Paul Cohen felt the need to call for a ‘China-centred’ history: one that relied on careful work in Chinese archives and examined Chinese history on its own terms. As a result we have seen an impressive body of works emerge that have re-examined a succession of Sino-western encounters through sources from both sides. In the case of the Opium War the examination of Chinese materials has highlighted how split the court was on the question of an anti-opium crackdown; how chaotic and absent-minded the Qing’s military and diplomatic response was; and how politically complex ordinary Chinese reactions were to the British and the war. As doing research in China becomes easier and more archives open their collections to foreigners (although many materials from the 1960s and 1970s remain out of reach) the old bias towards western sources that Marchant acutely noted is happily becoming the stuff of history. Read the full text of Leslie Marchant's article. Julia Lovell is Senior Lecturer in Chinese History at Birbeck, University of London and is the author of The Opium War: Drugs, Dreams and the Making of China (Picador, 2011).

Julia Lovell says the Opium War still leaves a lasting mark and casts a shadow on China even today. The 36-year-old China historian, who has just written a book on the 19th century conflict between Britain and China, Opium War, Drugs, Dreams and the Making of China, says the war certainly teaches those in modern China of the dangers of falling behind the West. "If you talk to many Chinese about the Opium War, a phrase you will quickly hear is luo hou jiu yao ai da, which literally means that if you are backward you will take a beating," she says. "So the events of the Opium War are still held up as a tragic reminder of what happens if China shuts its doors to the outside world." Lovell, who is perched in the junior common room at Queen's College, Cambridge, surrounded by dark 18th century portraits, believes much of the impetus behind China's transformation in recent years comes from the fear of falling behind again. "They have very strong echoes in the present day in a China which in the past 30 years has very energetically embarked on a process of ... opening itself out to political, economic and cultural global influences," she says. The war, which is largely forgotten in Britain and elsewhere, remains a seminal moment in Chinese history. Britain, controversially, even at the time, used its then state-of-the-art navy against primitive Chinese warships to secure trade passages into China for its lucrative opium trade. The conflict eventually led to most of China's major ports being ceded to foreign powers.

By Kelly Chung Dawson ( China Daily )A US author examines China's trade with his homeland from the time of colonial America. Kelly Chung Dawson reports in New York. After the colonists of New Netherland introduced tea to what would eventually become New York, the import spread quickly through the American colonies. By the 1770s, Americans were estimated to have been drinking up to 1.3 billion cups a year. Special: Mo Yan On otters, opium and tea A burgeoning trade relationship with China helped feed that demand, which - along with a Chinese desire for sea otter pelts and sandalwood - fueled further exploration and trade between the two cultures. In When America First Met China, author Eric Jay Dolin traces the history of that relationship, which began when the Empress of China set sail on Feb 22, 1784, with a crew of 42 men under captain John Green. In the century that followed, trade with China was vital to US economic growth, Dolin argues. "It helped create the nation's first millionaires, instilled confidence in Americans in their ability to compete on the world's stage and spurred an explosion in shipbuilding that led to the construction of the ultimate sailing vessels - the graceful and exceedingly fast clipper ships," Dolin writes. In those years, the United States bought tea, silk, porcelain and other exotic items from China. The Chinese wanted sea cucumbers, furs and, strangely, a less potent (and less expensive) form of ginseng grown in New England's mountains and forests. In response to China's increasing visibility today, the author set out to write a thorough history to provide context for what he views to be the most important relationship in US foreign policy, he says. "Our relationship with China did not begin 40 years ago," Dolin says. "It goes back to the origins of our country. It has been a long relationship and, in most ways, a positive one. We should understand that this fixation on China was in the beginning an exclusively economic interest - we looked at them as a way to pump up our economy and to get the goods that we wanted. "I find that fascinating because, despite the greater connections we have now, those economic ties are still, to some extent, what the relationship is defined by. We had a trade deficit back then, and we have it now. The US' long-held dream about China becoming this enormous marketplace for American goods still remains unrealized." A fundamental problem that still exists, he argues, is that China was largely self-sufficient. Despite encouraging trade, it has remained less dependent on US goods than vice versa, he says. And until the British introduction of opium to the Chinese market, that power dynamic defined early US-China interactions. "The Chinese looked down on foreigners as uncivilized barbarians," he writes. "That didn't mean, however, the Chinese eschewed contact with foreigners. In fact, they welcomed it and encouraged it. But that contact had to take place within the larger context of Chinese exceptionalism. In other words, the barbarians had to know their place, which was well beneath that of the Chinese." This led to a series of clashes between the two cultures on Chinese territory in the early years of the relationship. But the growth of the opium trade, and the subsequent Opium Wars of 1839-42 and 1856-60, which resulted in the Treaty of Nanking and the ceding of Hong Kong to Britain, fundamentally changed the balance of power, he writes. "China was for thousands of years the premier country or empire in the world, but by the end of the 1700s and the early 1800s, that imperial structure began to crumble," he says. "When the Americans went over, they didn't witness the highest level of imperial Chinese splendor. They had a jaundiced and condescending view of the country." Dolin first became interested in the history of US-China trade while researching his 2011 book Fur, Fortune and Empire: The Epic History of the Fur Trade in America. That history included details of early business transactions between Native Americans and American traders, who sold seal and sea otter pelts to eager buyers in China's Canton (now Guangdong's provincial capital Guangzhou). "That was my first inkling that there was something interesting about trade relations between China and the US," he says. "Whenever I write a book, I almost always pick a topic that I don't know a lot about. I want to remain interested and excited, so that not only is the reader surprised by the material, but so that I am also continually surprised." What startled him most was the history of American involvement in the Opium Wars, he says. The details of those wars are common knowledge in China, and yet the average American knows "next to nothing" about that history, he says. "Americans were very involved in nurturing the drug trade and were in the thick of it during the wars," he says. "But here in the US, we don't learn about them. That was just a total surprise to me and one of the most dramatic parts of the book to write because it's a very dramatic story." And it's one that he feels bears lessons for Westerners in dealing with China, he says. "It's important that we acknowledge that this traumatic period of history took place," he says. "Modern China does not have amnesia when it comes to the 1800s. I am not Chinese, but I've heard several people make the argument that when Westerners are very aggressive in their relations with the Chinese, Chinese might, to some extent, view those actions through the lens of the Opium War. "It's a painful history for China, so the Chinese might be particularly sensitive to being bullied or pushed around by the West. It's important to understand that. How a businessman or politician might internalize that to make decisions is up to them. "My objective is only to illuminate history so that people today can take that background and put it in their own framework to better understand the people they're dealing with today." Dolin's research was drawn from hundreds of books, articles and archives that were often available online. In the closing chapter of the book, Dolin writes: "Although America and China still often view each other unfavorably, and many issues still profoundly divide the two nations, perhaps a respective (and respectful) backward glance over our historic shoulders to see where we have been will enable us to focus more clearly on how far we have come since we first met - and to travel more hopefully into the future." Although some might write that sentiment off as "Pollyanna gobbledygook", his intentions are earnest, he says. "We're going to be dependent on each other for many years to come, and I'm genuinely hopeful that we will be partners in the future."