Tea Advisor
Aspects of Tea Production
The changed status of the East India Company had serious repercussions in Canton. When the Company's monopoly expired, the British government decided that, instead of the British merchants handling their own relations with the Chinese, it would appoint a Superintendent of Trade, Lord Napier. He had instructions from the Foreign Secretary, Lord Palmerston, to present his credentials to the Governor-General of Canton.
Napier arrived in July 1834. His official letter was rejected, and the Governor-General ordered him to leave for Macao. When Napier refused, the Chinese blockaded the factories. Napier summoned two British frigates, but the Chinese blocked the river and assembled sixty-eight war junks. Napier left in ingnominy on 21 September 1834, an died of fever in Macao the next month. Trade returned to normal.
As opium abuse became worse, different advice was tendered to the Emperor in Peking. Some officials, worried more about the threat to the currency than the degeneration of some of the population, wanted to legalize the drug; others wanted to take effective action to enforce the ban. The Emperor decided in favour of the latter. These advocated the death sentence for addicts (but with a year's grace to enable them to attempt a cure), and ruthless action against all opium sellers, including foreign merchants. On the last day of 1838 the leading advocate of the moral path, Lin Tse-hsu, was appointed Imperial Commissioner to 'sever the trunk from the roots."
Tea | By Roy Moxham
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