The Battle of Chuenpi Turns a Trade Dispute Into War
On November 3, 1839, British warships clashed with Chinese war junks near Humen at the mouth of the Pearl River. The short fight at Chuenpi helped push a dispute over the opium trade into the First Opium War.
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Opium and an Order to End It
By the 1830s British, and some American, merchants were selling large amounts of opium grown in India to buyers in China, where its import was illegal. The drug drained silver from the Chinese economy and spread addiction, and the Qing court sent a determined official, Lin Zexu, to Canton in 1839 to stop the trade. Lin forced foreign merchants to surrender their opium stocks, and thousands of chests were destroyed at Humen that summer. For Lin it was a moral and legal act; for many of the British merchants it was a seizure of property.
A Standoff at Canton
The British Superintendent of Trade, Charles Elliot, had promised the merchants that the British government would compensate them, and he withdrew the British community from Canton to ships and to the coast. Lin demanded that every foreign merchant sign a bond promising not to trade in opium on pain of death and agreeing to Chinese legal jurisdiction. Elliot opposed it. Tension rose after a Chinese villager was killed in a fight with British sailors near Kowloon in July, and Britain refused to hand over the sailors for Chinese trial.
The Clash on November 3
The immediate spark was a British merchant ship, the Royal Saxon, whose captain moved to sign the bond and trade at Canton despite Elliot’s ban. The British frigate HMS Volage, under Captain Henry Smith, fired a warning shot to stop it. A squadron of Chinese war junks under Admiral Guan Tianpei sailed out to protect the merchant ship. The Volage and the sloop HMS Hyacinth maneuvered and fired broadsides, damaging or sinking several junks. Elliot then ordered his ships to stop firing. Accounts of the numbers differ, but the engagement showed the superiority of British naval gunnery.
The War That Followed
The clash at Chuenpi did not itself start a war, but it ended hope of a quiet settlement. In 1840 the British government sent an expeditionary force, and the First Opium War lasted until 1842. By the Treaty of Nanjing, China ceded Hong Kong Island, opened five ports to foreign trade, and paid an indemnity. For many Chinese the treaty became the first of a series of unequal agreements. The events at Chuenpi are remembered as the first naval fight of a conflict that changed China’s relations with the world.
How the Fight Is Remembered
Chuenpi lay on the Pearl River below Canton, close to the forts at Humen, where Lin had destroyed the opium. British forces attacked the Chuenpi fort in a second battle in January 1841, and it fell to them. In China, the Opium War is taught as the beginning of what is called the century of humiliation, a period of foreign pressure and unequal treaties. A museum at Humen, opened in 1957, commemorates Lin Zexu and the war. For historians, the events at Chuenpi show how a quarrel over merchants, bonds, and jurisdiction grew into a conflict between two empires.
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