ABSTRACT
The English public had been aware of China as a country that refused to recognise foreign monarchs as equal to the Chinese Emperor since Lord Macartney’s refusal to kow-tow.1 From then on pretensions to Chinese eminence were lampooned. In 1839 reports began to appear in London newspapers mocking the Chinese authorities’ campaign against the opium traffic. The Emperor had appointed Governor Lin Zexu (1785-1850) to put an end to it and he had begun by writing a letter to Queen Victoria:
After a long period of commercial intercourse, there appear among the crowd of barbarians both good persons and bad … there are those who smuggle opium to seduce the Chinese people and so cause the spread of poison to all provinces. Such persons who only care to profit themselves, and disregard their harm to others … are unanimously hated by human beings. Having established new regulations, we presume that the ruler of your honourable country … must be able to instruct the various barbarians to obey the law.2
