the war on drugs War,on,drugs

　　How people remember the past can often be more important than what actually happened. From America’s celebration of the“first Thanksgiving” to China’s lambasting of the “oppressive landlord” during the Communist revolution, societies often manipulate their messy and conflicting experiences into a clean, readily-understood story.
　　It is therefore fitting that historian Julia Lovell devoted her new book, “The Opium War: Drugs, Dreams and the Making of China,” to chronicling both the 19th century conflict and how it is remembered. Lovell breezily narrates how a handful of forces from the farflung British Isles brought the Celestial Empire to its knees, and how the war’s legacy was later used and abused by Nationalists, Communists and others. China-watchers will be surprised at how profoundly the story’s themes still reverberate.
　　Trade wars
　　The root of this well-known conflict lay in Britain’s massive trade deficit with China. While Britons imported as much Chinese silk and tea as they could get their hands on, Chinese traders were far less keen on products from the British Empire– that is, until the British hit on one irresistible product. Cultivated in British India, opium was shipped to eager consumers in China in exchange for tea and silk.
　　This systematic doping of the Chinese people did not sit well with the ruling Qing Dynasty. When a handful of officials began cracking down on the narcotic, British traders started pressuring the government back home to pursue morally dubious actions under the banner of “free trade.”The British government eventually relented, and deployed a small force to Canton, in southern China, beginning the first Opium War.
　　This story has always been dramatic, but Lovell’s arresting descriptions of the characters who led their countries down the warpath makes it even more so.
　　She depicts Charles Elliot, the initial commander of the British forces in China, as a “harassed government functionary” dealing with “a fractious gaggle of foreign smugglers.” In another time and place, Elliot’s instinct for compromise and reason might have won him plaudits. In 19th century China, however, he was hopelessly overtaken by events, and despite his initial opposition to opium he was remembered in the media as a sell-out to British interests. By contrast, his replacement Henry Pottinger was a dyed-in-the-wool military grunt who saw every diplomatic problem as a nail to be hammered with a few gunboats.
　　Their Chinese counterpart in Canton, Lin Zexu, climbed the greasy Qing pole by diligently acing every Confucian exam that came his way. At heart, he was a “careful bureaucrat with a passion for freight management.” Charged with ridding the empire of pesky “sea barbarians” before he could move on to his dream job in Jiangsu province, Lin did what he did best: played strictly by the Qing book, to disastrous results.