Thursday, October 9, 2008

Violence and the Rule of Law in China, 1856-1858

Advancement of Western capital and culture into China impossible without the favorable treaties following their military victories. The treaties were part of a larger Western imperial process of tearing down older networks of power and establishing newer ones. The destruction of the Qing hegenomy over Eastern China began with the illicit opium importation and the circumvention of its established buffers to foreign contact and influence.

Market forces drove Western investors into Chinese ports in the early 19th century as the benefits of exporting Opium to the Chinese exceeded all other costs. The trade brought Chinese tea, silk, and porcelain into a London-centered economy that linked Great Britain, India, and the China coast. Opium completely reordered commercial relations between China and Europe while encouraging smuggling and piracy, completely upsetting older commercial patterns. As silver drained from Chinese markets led to inflation as peasant poverty, official corruption, and a displaced population sent shockwaves to the Qing dynasty as market forces out of their control impact their authority. When the Chinese government tried to stop the trade, the West won a war and concessions in Chinese port cities allowed even greater Western penetration, destroying the Qing's control over the economy. The lines between British and Chinese enterprises blurred as well. Chinese society, like European ones, was reoriented toward transnational market places that establish the universal character of addiction.

Military advancement abetted the British as speed and rapid deployment helped lessen Chinese home advantage. This, coupled with gunboat bombardment, quickly brought the opposition into submission. The enemy learns it cannot defeat it, thus its function inscribed a visible sign of loss as well as imparted a lesson as the Chinese military would need to be reordered.

The British sought to impose upon the Chinese a universal form of language and meaning that would lower the transaction costs to the former and which they hoped would improve the behavior of the latter by making them more amenable to reason. Access to Chinese archives reinforced British perceptions that the Chinese were backwards and arrogant and provided a rational for striping the Qing of its power, which included the authority of its language. The process completely disrupted traditional Chinese bureaucratic procedure while legitimizing the historical record in favor of the Europeans by cloaking it in terms of righteous conquest and universal benefit.

The British also sought to impose tradition bourgeois standards upon diplomatic protocol. Doing so satisfied the manliness constructions of the Europeans while undermining the traditional authority of the Emperor. It also served to display the distinction between real power and ceremonial, that is the power of modernity and that of the ancient, with a clear bias in favor of the former.

This all laid the ground for the right of physical presence and residence for Euroamericans in China: the right to buy and own property, purchase dwellings, and have them protected. Treaties created a new tariff protocol constructed a new series of paperwork and bureaucracies that expanded the zone of contact between Chinese and Europeans that was reordered and disciplined conforming to the latter's standards.

No comments: