Lin_Tse-Hsu

Q1 : Lin Tse-Hsu Letter to Queen Victoria The Opium Wars (1839-1842), were a result of Lin Tse-Hsu, a Chinese Commissioner, who was sent by the emperor to Canton, a major port for the East India Trading Co., to try and end the trade of opium. The Englishmen didn’t comply to their requests and immediately turned to military action; eventually the Chinese lost the fight. Before the wars began, Tse-Hsu tried writing a letter, on behalf of the Emperor, to the Queen of England requesting the end of opium trade. He began the letter by reminding the Queen of the good relations between the two countries and that the Emperor hoped to keep things that way. Unfortunately, there were English traders who were bringing mass amounts of opium into China simply for personal profit. The Emperor had decided that anyone in China found selling or using the drug was to be sentenced with the death penalty. To be fair, he agreed that even if caught, if the defendant admitted to his wrong doing and released his entire supply of opium he would be pardoned. Tse-Hsu reminded the Queen that even though the men who were selling these drugs might not be residents of China, while in the country they must obey their rules, which shouldn’t be so hard since in England opium was an illegal drug. To take it one step further to ensure that things like this didn’t happen again, Tse-Hsu also encouraged the Queen to shut down the production of opium. The drug was mainly produced in parts of India, the parts that were under British control. The Emperor assumed that now that this letter was sent there should be no more confusion as to the rules and regulations of opium trade, and again just to be fair he was willing to leave a grace period of six months to a year. In this grace period if anyone brought opium into China they too would not be punished if they simply confessed and released their supply of opium. The Emperor believed this to be a practical way to deal with the situation at hand and saw no reason for trouble since even without opium the British were still making a very large profit by trading with the Chinese.