El crepúsculo imperial: La guerra del Opio y el fin de la última edad de oro china

by Stephen R. Platt, Joan Eloi Roca (translator)

The definitive history of the Opium War--a vivid narrative of the earliest Western efforts to open China to trade and the resulting war that ensured the decline of imperial China.

When Britain declared war on China in 1839, it sealed the fate of what had been, for centuries, the wealthiest and most powerful empire in the world. But local corruption, popular uprisings, and dwindling finances had left the country much weaker than was commonly understood and the war set in motion the fall of the Qing dynasty which, in turn, would lead to the rise of nationalism and communism in the twentieth century. Imperial Twilight is the dramatic, epic story of the decades leading up to the war. Award-winning historian Stephen Platt recounts the first efforts by the British government to "open" China to trade--Western missionaries and traders venturing to the still mysterious empire while the Chinese emperor and officials struggled to manage their country's decline--and makes clear how the profits from opium ultimately lead to the war. Given the growing uncertainty in current relations between China and the West, the riveting history recounted in Imperial Twilight has important implications for the world today.

Genres: History, China, Nonfiction, Asia, Audiobook, War, World History

672 pages, Hardcover

First published May 15, 2018

About the author

Stephen R. Platt is an award-winning historian of China and the West whose newest book is The Raider (Knopf, 2025). His previous books include Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom (Knopf, 2012), which won the Cundill History Prize, and Imperial Twilight (Knopf, 2018), which was shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize. He teaches at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and holds a PhD in History from Yale. He lives with his family in Northampton, MA.

Reviews

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Although this early age of contact between China and the West has long been treated in retrospect as if it were somehow always destined to end in war, it was not. The Opium War did not result from an intractable clash of civilizations, as it would later be framed in the West. Neither did it represent the culmination of some grand imperial master plan, as it is generally understood in China. To nearly all parties concerned, including even the government ministers who launched it, the war was all but unthinkable until it actually began. The truth is that over the long term, the foreigners and the Chinese who came together at Canton found far more common ground than conflict…”
- Stephen R. Platt, Imperial Twilight: The Opium War and the End of China’s Last Golden Age

The rise of China to superpower status is one of the major storylines of the 21st Century. For many in the West, it has come as a surprise, appearing out of nowhere like a gigantic spy balloon floating above your house. This is because China has long been viewed as a helpless giant, bullied and exploited by Europe and Japan; as a place of starving peasants; and as a manufacturer of cheap goods churned out in sweatshop-like conditions.

Some of these perceptions are based on truth. The fallacy, though, is in thinking it has always been thus. China’s history stretches back thousands of years, but until recently, it has been judged on a single, roughly-hundred-year period.

The Chinese date the start of their so-called “Century of Humiliation” from the outbreak of the First Opium War. This uniquely-titled conflict is often described as a British attempt to force China to eat opium grown in India. Though this is not technically true, it is close enough that it probably doesn’t matter in your daily life. But if you want to know every detail of this long, complex tale, Stephen Platt’s Imperial Twilight has you covered.

In marvelous fashion, Platt first describes the glories of the Chinese Empire as it stood at the end of the 18th Century. He then explores the fissures that began to weaken that edifice. Finally, he describes how a variety of different political, economic, and legal factors combined with the personalities of fallible human decision-makers to form a volatile mixture waiting for ignition. By the time Platt has finished, you will not only be riveted by the storytelling, but have a new appreciation for China’s modern conception of itself.

***

From the first page, I knew I was going to like Imperial Twilight.

Platt opens with a vivid prologue that puts you on the streets of Canton at a time when the Qing Dynasty closely regulates foreign trade. In descriptive prose – utilizing the second person – he explains how foreigners are confined to factories; how they must do business with certain Chinese merchants; and how they are not allowed to move about freely. At this time, foreigners were even prohibited from learning the Chinese language, and any Chinese person who tried to teach an outsider put his liberty – and even his life – at risk.

I mention this prologue because it sets the tone for all that follows. Platt is an expert in this area – he holds a PhD and is a professor – but he writes accessibly. Unlike many academics, he knows how to create an interesting sentence, and he fills these pages with rich details, memorable characters, and an occasional touch of wit. Even though Platt probably knew that this subject is not the typical fodder of popular histories, he nevertheless presents this material in an inviting manner. Coming into this, I knew next to nothing about China’s Golden Age, yet Platt ensured I never got lost or bogged down. He answered my questions before I even thought to ask them.

***

This setup is important, because the road to the Opium War is a byproduct of the human need to push against boundaries, and to seek what you are not allowed to have. In other words, in 1792 – when Imperial Twilight begins – the British East India Company is attempting to gain more access to China in order to broaden its trade and open new markets. The Chinese, naturally enough, are resistant to these encroachments on their sovereign prerogatives.

The China that Platt describes is a major world power. Ruled by the Manchu-led Qing, many aspects of its culture – including its elaborate bureaucracy manned by Confucian-trained bureaucrats – are highly respected. The unequal treaties, extraterritorial jurisdiction, and outright colonialism were not even envisioned, much less a reality. Instead, the British, Dutch, American, and Portuguese traders huddled in their factories existed at the sufferance of the Chinese.

Yet, as the narrative unfolds, Platt reveals the insidious dynamics – both internal and external – that were working against China, and pushing it toward a collision with Great Britain.

***

With regard to domestic turmoil, China faced administrative challenges common to all empires. In order to rule over the Han Chinese majority, the Manchus established a vast, merit-based organization to execute the will of the emperor. Bureaucratic jobs became highly sought after. Because they were so good, no one ever wanted to leave. This stifled upward mobility. Unable to rise in the ranks, many officials turned corrupt.

This corruption was one cause of massive inequality. Unsurprisingly, the occasional uprising followed, including the bloody White Lotus Rebellion that Platt covers in depth.

***

From the outside, China was assailed by foreigners who wanted to unilaterally “open” its borders. Platt introduces us to many of these unwanted agents of change, including proselytizing missionaries, profit-seeking traders, and pompous British diplomats who consistently failed to improve international relations in their obstinate refusal to defer to Chinese customs, especially kowtowing to the emperor.

***

Nothing, however, had as detrimental an impact as opium. Then as now, the drug presented a tremendous health emergency. The Chinese took various actions to depress its effects, going so far as to execute users on occasion. They even explored the idea of legalization. Ultimately, the Daoguang Emperor appointed a man named Lin Zexu as viceroy. Acting aggressively, he demanded that foreign opium dealers hand over their wares, which were then burned.

As tensions rose, Lin Zexu responded by essentially shutting down all trade, and barricading foreigners in their enclave. This gave the British, and in particular, Lord Palmerstone, an excuse to do what they wanted to do already: force concessions on China at the mouth of a cannon.

***

One of the many things I appreciated about Imperial Twilight is its wonderful characterizations. We meet people from all different walks, and all different nationalities. Platt introduces us to Qing emperors, governmental functionaries, and ordinary Chinese merchants; he spends time with an Anglo-Scot missionary who translated the Bible into Chinese, and an American businessman whose friendship with Wu “Houqa” Bingjian – once the richest man in the world – provides a very humanistic throughline. He tries to give everyone humanity, and to envision the world from their perspectives, as it unfolded.

There are a lot of craven, greedy, shortsighted individuals here. Surprisingly, there were also many who tried to do the right thing, but found their voices muffled by the roar created by corporate capitalism when it reaches its highest, most unrestrained speeds.

***

Just about my only criticism of Imperial Twilight, which otherwise does everything nearly perfect, is the coverage of the war itself, which is practically nonexistent. The whole bloody mess is dealt with in a cursory chapter fittingly titled “Aftermath.” I understand that Platt is more interested in the leadup, and that he was already close to 500 pages of text, yet having built the thing up so much, I wanted to see it covered in more depth.

***

History is an incredibly imperfect guide to the future, and has only a limited ability to interpret the present. That said, Imperial Twilight feels like a window into the thinking of Chinese leaders from Mao to Xi Jinping. To see China’s fall in the early 19th Century is to understand their desire to rise in the 21st. They are not trying to claim a place for themselves; they are trying to reclaim it.

[Michael Perkins · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Chinese have long memories and they have not forgotten how the West exploited and humiliated them. They want revenge and to be THE world power in place of the U.S. They have the patience to make it happen.

===================

The First Opium War, fought in 1839–1842 between Great Britain and the Qing Dynasty, was triggered by the Qing’s crackdown on British Opium smugglers. The Second Opium War was fought between a Britain and France coalition against the Qing in 1856–1860. In each war, the European force's modern military technology led to an easy victory over the Qing forces, with the consequence that the government was compelled to grant favorable tariffs, trade concessions, and territory to the Europeans.

The Second Opium War was the most devastating. At the beginning of October 1860, the invading Western army occupied the Yuanmingyuan (圆明园), which for more than 150 years held a comprehensive Chinese architectural art achievement, gathered ancient and modern art treasures and books from previous generations, and had the world's rare magnificent palaces and gardens. After the looting, the invading army burned the place down.

The invaders then spent an entire year looting Beijing, Tianjin, and the surrounding countryside.

A new revised treaty imposed on China legalized both Christianity and Opium, and added Tianjin to the list of treaty ports, and fined the Chinese government eight million silver dollars in indemnities.

Only after the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1912 did historians in China begin to call this war “the Opium War” in Chinese. And only in the 1920s would propagandists finally transform it into its current incarnation as the bedrock of Chinese nationalism—as the war in which the British forced opium down China’s throat and began the shattering start to China’s century of victimhood and became the fuel of vengeance for building a new Chinese future in the face of Western imperialism in Year Zero of the modern age.

===========

from the Introduction....

The symbolic power of the Opium War is almost limitless. It has long stood as the point when China’s weakness was laid bare before the world, the opening of a “Century of Humiliation” in which Western (and later Japanese) predators would make war on China to bully it into granting territorial concessions and trading rights. It marked a sea change in relations with the West— the end of one era, when foreigners came to China as supplicants, and the dawn of another, when they would come as conquerors. And it carries especially strong power because China unquestionably had the moral high ground: as remembered since, and as charged by critics at the time, Great Britain unleashed its navy on a nearly defenseless China in order to advance the interests of its national drug dealers, who for years had been smuggling opium to China’s coast against the laws of the country. The shocking grounds of the war have provided the very foundation of modern Chinese nationalism— from the overthrow of the Qing dynasty in 1912 and the rise, first of the Republic, and then the People’s Republic of China, the Opium War has stood for the essence of everything modern China has tried to leave behind: weakness, victimhood, shame....

Through the twentieth century, China was a poor, vulnerable, and frequently chaotic nation that never seemed a contender for power. A third-world nation in the eyes of the wealthier countries, it was alternately a pariah or an object of sympathy. For that reason, the country’s worldly aspirations of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries— to play a leading role in the UN, to host the Olympics, to put a man on the moon— were initially viewed by outsiders almost with bemusement, as if it were an overly ambitious upstart forgetting its proper place. That bemusement has now given way to alarm in many quarters as China strengthens its naval power to unprecedented levels and lays claim to vast swaths of contested maritime territory, asserting its power in ways completely unknown to living memory.

But over the long term, China is anything but an upstart. And as its economic and military power today grow far beyond anything it seemed capable of in the twentieth century, it is coming to resemble far less the weak, bullied nation that suffered the Opium War than the confident and central empire that preceded it. If we take this war not as a beginning but as an ending, and shift our sights instead back into the era before it took place, back before that ostensible dividing line with the modern era, we find a China that was powerful, prosperous, dominant, and above all envied.

The memory of that lost era looms ever larger in China today, as a reminder of its potential (some would say rightful) place in the world, a nostalgic vision of what it could be once again.

[Dmitri · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was a bit hesitant about this book, although I enjoyed Stephen Platt's prior work on the late Taiping rebellion. That was primarily a military history while this is not. The Opium Wars have been viewed from a variety of political angles for over a century, and I was concerned about what another interpretation might yield. This turned out not to be a problem. It is a fresh look, unburdened by ideological baggage, but it still offers mainly a one sided picture of the period.

I'm not sure many Chinese primary sources were used in the research. From the notes much of the material seems to be from English sources or translations. Ironically perhaps, one focus of the book is on the Britons who began to translate from Chinese in the late 18th century. I am certain that the author reads Chinese, but it's clear that his intent was to concentrate on the role of the British. At very least you can consider this is a good view from the western side of the divide.

The result is a fairly standard but well crafted account of British merchant, missionary and military meddling in Qing China. It covers events from before Macartney's ill fated embassy and refusal to kowtow to the emperor (1793), through Palmerston's assault on the ports and the Treaty of Nanking (1842). The familiarity of these themes does not detract from their retelling. A major strength is the detailed analysis of British proponents and opponents to opium trade and war.

Qing dynasty responses to British diplomatic initiatives and naval incursions, as well as Chinese drug smuggling and addiction, are considered. Dramatis personae include the requisite emperors, corrupt officials, Cantonese merchants and Confucian reformers. The key players are sketched out but are not developed to the extent that the foreign community is. The main focus of the work lies in the lives of men and women who came across the oceans to seek their fortunes.

The author pursues and at times challenges the writing techniques of his former mentor and professor at Yale, Jonathan Spence. Character vignettes enliven the historical events and a narrative flair animates the proceedings. Turns of phrase are clever without feeling contrived. In certain ways this book complements Julia Lovell's recent account, which included the Second Opium War, Elgin's looting and arson of the Summer Palace, and the long term political aftermath.

[Marks54 · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a wonderful book on the Opium War between Britain and China in 1840. It takes the perspective of both Britain and China and shows the contingent and often unintended chains of events that led to the war, which is seen as so important 170+ years later. Platt follows some key characters along in the story but also shifts back and forth to the big picture and global politics effortlessly. This follows Ghosh’s recent trilogy of novels on the war and Ujifusa’s book on the Opium Clippers (Barons of the Sea). The writing is superb and the narrative and interpretations are thoughtful. Britain has not fared well in recent histories involving the Empire. That continues here to some degree, but the contingencies that muddy some interpretive waters are also present. Platt also covers the role of American traders in Canton. I did not expect such a fine and rich book.

I had not realized that this was a prequel to Platt’s book on the Taiping Rebellion. Now I want to read it soon.

[Camelia Rose · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 star round up.

I learned the Opium War in school many years ago. This is what I learned: In 1842, British imperialists, armed with gun boats and cannons, succeeded in forcing China to open its door. In the century followed, the history of China is a history of humiliation as well as a journey of modernization--first reluctantly, then deliberately. Which aspect, the humiliation or the modernization, dominates China's official narrative depends on the political climate.

Imperial Twilight: The Opium War and the End of China's Last Golden Age is a new take on the topic. The book covers the period from late 18th century until 1842 when the Nanjing Treaty was signed. Its focus is what had lead to the war. The actual war only takes up a single chapter. It includes narratives and analysis of the two failed British diplomatic missions to China (the 1792–1794 Lord Macartney's mission and the 1816 Lord Amherst mission), the Canton factories (the trading site between Qing empire and Western countries), the Hong merchants (广州十三行), the opium smuggling, British Eastern Indian Company and the end of Eastern Indian Company's monopoly in China trade. The book also paints a picture of the decline of Qing Empire: the corruptions, the inefficiency and inability of imperial management, the internal turmoils especially the White Lotus Rebellion (白莲教起义) and Ching Shih and her Red Flag Fleet (郑一嫂和红旗帮海盗).

I find the book informative. The author explains nicely what had caused the war. Was it because of the opium trade, the trade in general, or the imperial pride? In retrospect, the Opium War seemed inevitable, but according to Stephen Platt, it almost didn't happen. I never knew that just before the War, the opium trade was almost legalized by the Qing Emperor. It is fascinating to read the varieties of public opinions in Britain and the very close vote in the British parliament. Sir George Staunton, the first Western scholar on China, a long term criticizer of the opium trade and an opponent to the violence against China, voted for the War. According to the author, although British government continued to play a role in the opium trade after the War, the even more widespread opium abuse in China by the late 19th century, an image forever pinned China as the sick man of Asian, was more or less an interior problem.

The author explains the difference between the US and Britain (and later France) in their relationship to China. The US, a newcomer to the China trade, was friendlier, more practical and willing to help. To my knowledge, this is a widely accepted view among Chinese officials and many optioned thinkers. Even Chinese Communism Party viewed the US in the same light until after the WWII.

The book is well-written and easy to read. A lot of complex, colorful characters. To name a few:
-- Thomas Manning, a British explorer
-- Sir George Staunton, the boy who answered Emperor Qian Long in Chinese, and the translator of the Qing Law Code
-- Charles Elliott, an abolitionist and well-wisher, whose panic contributed to the start of the War
-- Robert Morrison, the first Protestant missionary to China, a translator and writer of the first bidirectional Chinese-English dictionary
-- Karl Gützlaff, a Protestant missionary, a linguistic genius and a Spy. His journey to Tibet makes a very interesting read.
-- Lord Palmerston, the British Foreign Minister, a cunning, cold-blooded strategist?

The two big bad guys directly involved in Canton trade and the War were William Jardine and James Matheson. Lord Napier was rather comical.

The players on the China side--the three emperors (乾隆、嘉靖、道光), Lin Zexu (林则徐), Deng Tingzhen (邓廷桢), Howqua(伍秉鑑) and the opinions among Chinese intellectuals--are covered but with less details. Is it because of the lack of original materials? The war was very much one-sided. Because of the very little coverage of the war itself in the book, the suffering of the ordinary citizens of China brought by the Opium War is skipped too. The author blames Lin Zexu for his inflexibility, which I disagree. In his opinion, cultural misunderstanding played an important role, which I agree.

Although the author has convinced me that the Opium War almost didn't happen, I still believe the clash between the Western countries and the China in the 19th century was inevitable. China would have been forced to open its door no matter what.

And do you know that John Murray Forbes, the famous American railroad magnate, merchant, philanthropist and abolitionist, became rich by investing the half million dollar entrusted to him by Howqua, the most important of the Hong merchants in the Thirteen Factories? (I wonder what happened to the money after Howqua died.) And Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy (Sir J J), the famous Indian merchant and philanthropist who turned Mumbai into a metropolis, got his fortune from the opium smuggling to China?

[Gerald McFarland · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Imperial Twilight" is an outstanding achievement, a superb analysis of the causes of the Opium War (1839-1842) between Britain and China. Platt devotes very little space to the war itself. Rather his focus is on the broad social, economic, and diplomatic developments that led to war. In addition to his probing account of the war's background, he also provides in-depth descriptions of individuals, both Chinese and British (and a few Americans too), who played major roles in the events leading to war. It may not have been Platt's intention, but when I completed my reading and closed the book, I was left with the feeling that had it not been for some extraordinarily stupid decisions by several British officials, the war would never have happened. But judge for yourself. Platt's research is impeccable, his prose fluid, and his judgments always astute.

[Taveri]

This got to be a tough slog. Usually I read two books a week but I couldn't even get half way in three weeks on this one . It had interesting information given in a drawn out format. I'd rate it a 2.5 but cannot justify rounding it up to 3 nor rounding down to a 2 so I am not rating it. I will end with a comment given on page 184:

"Napoleon thought it absurd that Amherst should have refused to kowtow... the reply was that the British had the Royal Navy to which Napoleo responded 'it would be the worst thing you have done for a number of years, to go to war with an immense empire like China ... You would doubtless at first succeed ... but you would teach them their own strength. They would be compelled to adopt measures to defend themselves against you; they would... build ships ... to render themselves equal ... and in the course of time, defeat you.' "

[Megan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Imperial Twilight is an impressively important piece of historical events that, to this day,has largely shaped geopolitics, especially in regard to China and their (very well-justified) indignation and disgust with western colonialism.

It had the potential to be quite boring, or dry, rather, as many historical narratives recounting events from around 200 years ago or so often turn out to be.

Platt, however, knows his Chinese history and knows it well enough to accurately explain the political and economic objectives which caused the Opium Wars - while simultaneously writing an engaging storyline that all readers can enjoy.

It’s amazing just how repulsive many of the attitudes of British diplomats were in those times. Rather than respect China’s desire to keep their country independent of foreign invaders and interference - and be happy with the massive amount of money Britain made through the lucrative trade deals in Canton - they instead always needed, demanded, more and more.

After illegally smuggling much opium into the country (with very little punishment for the British smugglers themselves by the emperor’s orders, yet death sentences for Chinese citizens caught helping these foreigners) it was obvious that much of the population would become dependent on the drug, ruining so many lives and families.

This, along with the other problems China was having to contend with, such as government corruption and undisciplined soldiers who were also often hooked on opium, only served to compound China’s economic and political crises.

Not that the British cared. At a time when they would have been horrified to have seen this epidemic spread throughout their own country (and did, indeed, back in that time punish anyone smuggling opium into Britain by death) they simply shrugged at the stories emerging about just how destructive and dangerous the drug was.

After all, somehow, even though they were the ones primarily bringing massive amounts of opium into the Chinese mainland, they still somehow viewed themselves as the far more cultured and superior nation and government, while, with little or zero knowledge at all, imagined China to be a barbaric country who blindly obeyed their emperor and weren’t able to create the same type of beautiful culture that the British prided themselves upon.

In reality, the Chinese had thousands of years of rich musical, literary, and other artistic traditions. They simply didn’t want to have Western ideals begin to dominate over their own. This was, of course, unacceptable to the British, who wanted more and more free trade and less restrictions on that trade.

So much so that they were willing to go to war over an epidemic they brought about, all on the pretext that the Chinese had insulted the ego of one particularly arrogant diplomat (I believe he was a Duke and therefore enjoyed a rather close relationship with the King, although his name evades my mind at the moment because I finished this book probably about two months ago).

There was the prevailing idea in Parliament that somehow the war had to be fought in order to restore Britain’s honor, which somehow the Chinese had egregiously insulted.

The reality was, the smugglers just wanted to make more money, be recompensed for their seized opium, while the government itself was all too willing to believe what turned out to be gross exaggeration on part of those “insulted” diplomats.

At most, it was really just a misunderstanding between the two cultures… not anything amounting to actual punishment or genuine humiliation inflicted on China by Britain. Again, many of these guys had no real understanding of Chinese culture and customs, so even when they blatantly insulted their hosts (the emperor and his court) it could definitely be said that the emperor was very lenient with them.

Of course, the Chinese empire wanted to avoid provoking Britain into any kind of violent conflict on the waterways between the countries, given Britain’s known reputation for having the world’s most advanced Navy (weaponry, soldiers, fleets) - and at that time, China had zero desire to fight an unwinnable war at sea.

Yet the British attacked anyway, and after wreaking the devastation which had been expected from such a war, went on (along with other countries such as Japan, France, and the US, among others) to continue inflicting hardship on the country, in what China collectively calls in its modern day history books “the one hundred years of humiliation.”

It’s little wonder after reading this devastating account that after British destruction, Japanese occupation, and other atrocities committed by opportunistic first-world nations, China elected the likes of Mao Zedong, along with other very questionable leaders, up to Xi Jinping today.

China is still (understandably) pissed off, and this book really gives you the details of where everything went so wrong - and why China is so determined to gain their rightful place on the world stage again today. One they once possessed for centuries.

I was thinking about a four star rating, but knowing and appreciating this history is too important. That being said, I’m going with five, and highly recommending this book for anyone interested in important events throughout history shaping hundreds of years of conflict/animosity, as well as for those with a general interest in Chinese history, and anyone curious as to why China harbors such a deep-seated hatred of the west.

[Ozymandias · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book covers the buildup to the First Opium War, a rather disgraceful incident in the mid-19th century where Britain forced China to open itself to the British opium that was devastating their land. It was not a period or place I have read much about before, and possibly for that reason it felt very fresh. But it was more than just a new place. The author is very good at making the whole book feel fresh and conversational. The descriptions of characters and settings plays out much like a novel would. And we get to meet a lot of characters here, from the various emperors to Manning the determined explorer, Morrison the missionary who gradually compromises, to George Staunton the ambitious linguist with one skill, to Charles Elliot a good man fatally out of his depth.

The subject of this book is economics and trade. These are not elements of history I find particularly fascinating. But that’s what makes the presentation of the material so good. The book is structured as a journey of discovery. We start off with the Macartney Embassy to Emperor Qianlong and its ignominious failure to leave any sort of impression. The Qing court seems so alien. We have no indication why anyone is doing what they do. They seem foreign and inscrutable. And then we switch to the next chapter and get the Chinese view and the whole episode is explained in a way that makes sense from their cultural viewpoint. And the chapters tend to alternate like this so that the two radically different but still comprehensible viewpoints feel distinct and independent of each other. The best part about this is that even colossal mistakes are explained in a way that the actors still seem reasonable. Well, most of the time. Napier was still a moron.

The book is basically a mystery, but the question isn’t who but why. Why did two countries who had no interests at stake and no desire for conflict end up in such a rash situation? It amazed me how sympathetic Parliament was to the Chinese opium situation. Rather than a cynical imperialist maneuver, the smuggling of opium was damaging to British control in the region. Had the two powers worked together (as the British were instructed to do if asked) the whole situation could have been defused. The lesson I take from it is that it is extremely dangerous to have relations with another country when you don’t have a formal treaty or ambassador on the spot to clear up messes and find solutions. But of course, the Chinese didn’t see things that way. They still had an isolationist and superior attitude about the outside world. Which isn’t to ignore that English merchants started the whole conflict, but that doesn’t explain everything.

The book is a fun and enjoyable read that really goes in depth into a lot of areas I’ve never seen, but there were some areas where our view seemed artificially restrictive. Most obviously the book ends with the start of the war. The big climax I was expecting turned out to be beyond the narrative of the book. But I also felt that the events at the center of the Chinese government could have been given more detail. After our two embassies we really don’t get any more than hints about what the emperors are thinking. And while that may help put us in the same place as the merchants in Canton, it’s one of the few places where narrative choices designed to tell a better story come at the expense of our understanding of events. We’re told that the Qing Dynasty has been in decline since Qianlong, but I didn’t have much sense of why that was or what it means. The White Lotus Rebellion was obviously a big deal, but the cause still feels rather murky and the way it describes corruption operating sounds awfully close to the moralizing Confucian worldview that sees disorder like this being due solely to unethical ministers.

This was an excellent book. It reads like a novel but tells a story that is entirely true. The gradual British uncovering of Chinese civilization was fascinating as was the slow buildup to war and the figures involved in it. Writing a work of popular history is very hard. Writing one on a topic that’s honestly pretty obscure and difficult to grasp is harder still. So even if there were some things I felt the book could have done better, it more than held my interest throughout.

[Jim Bogue · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book does what a history book, especially one about a somewhat obscure topic, should do. It provides the reader with a lot of background information. It looks at events through a variety of sources, many primary. It realizes that there are various viewpoints and strives to present them all, even the ones with which the author disagrees. And, in conclusion, it looks at the aftermath.
Mr. Platt is a very good writer who uses anecdotes and personal sketches to enliven the story. Though it is clear that he opposes the war, he explains carefully how the Chinese and British blundered into war and why the British won, to some extent.
New to me was the strong opposition in Britain not just to the war but to any military action against China. On the other side Platt emphasizes that the Chinese government was also divided on how to deal both with external trade at all and opium in particular. Add to this the delays in communication on both sides and a war neither side wanted took place.
My only, fairly minor, complaint is that the war itself is sort of an appendix to the book. But overall for writing, insight, and research it is a clear 5.

[Charles · Rating 4 out of 5]

Survey of Western penetration into Imperial China from the late 18th through mid-19th centuries, culminating in the Opening of China after the First Opium War (1839–42) .

The East India Company iron steamship Nemesis, commanded by Lieutenant W. H. Hall, with boats from the Sulphur, Calliope, Larne, and Starling, destroying Chinese war junks in Anson's Bay on 7 January 1841.

My printed edition was 556 pages with a 2018 U.S. copyright. It includes footnotes, illustrations, maps, a bibliography, and an index.

Stephen R. Platt is an American historian of China and author of four historical works. This was the first book I’ve read by him.

This is an intermediate-level history. It’s strongly recommended that readers have some background in 19th-century European colonialism and World history, particularly east asian. Familiarity with East Asian geography is also helpful.

TL;DR

Imperial Twilight is a cultural, economic, and diplomatic history of the conflict between the Anglo-American West—principally Imperial Great Britain—and the Chinese Imperial Qing dynasty from the 1760s to the 1840s. It traces the decline of the High Qing era through early British economic incursions, over the reigns of three emperors, and to the First Opium War. In the West, it explores how the Industrial Revolution and Early Victorianism accelerated the spread of Western culture in that part of the world.

It examines the evolution of the primarily British but increasingly multinational China Trade—beginning with tea and expanding to silk and porcelain—and the monopolistic dynamics of Mercantilism embodied by the East India Company and its Chinese counterpart, the Cohong, under the Canton System. The book shows how British merchants introduced inexpensive Indian opium to offset a massive trade deficit, destabilizing China’s economy and society and leading directly to war.

The narrative portrays the cultural and political collision between an expansionist West and a conservative, isolationist eastern empire, setting in motion the collapse of China’s millennia-old imperial system.

Biographical coverage of key Anglo-American and Chinese figures—political, commercial, and bureaucratic—is strong. The book illustrates how the China Trade became a multigenerational enterprise: sons and nephews often replaced fathers and uncles in trading houses, some rising to become Taipans. Under the Qing, Chinese merchant families mirrored this pattern. Three emperors ruled during the final half-century before China’s “Opening,” while thirteen British governments came and went. British/Chinese diplomacy oscillated dramatically before ending in war. Many politicians, diplomats, and Mandarins rose and fell amid a cast of traders, clerics, missionaries, scholars, soldiers, sailors, pirates, and adventurers.

Very well written, this book offers valuable insights into British colonial policy and Chinese society that can be applied to explaining modern east/west behavior and attitudes.

The Review

“The truth of the Chinese empire is that it is inhabited by 350,000,000 of human beings, all directed by the will of one man, all speaking one language, all governed by one code of laws, all professing one religion, all actuated by the same feelings, of national pride and prejudice, tracing back their history not by centuries but by tens of centuries, transmitted to them in regular succession under a patriarchal government without interruption. ...” — Sir James Graham, 2nd Baronet, House of Commons, 7 April 1840. (The British European. population in 1840 was 27 million)

Platt describes China’s effort to preserve its status quo amid global Western expansion after the Napoleonic Wars, which was spurred by industrialization and early Victorian evangelical influence. The book is organized chronologically, centered on London, Beijing, Canton (modern Guangzhou), China’s southern coast, and New England, with British India playing a key supporting role. It frames the conflict more as a Clash of Cultures between Christian Imperial Britain and Confucian Imperial China than of empires, with the U.S. and several European powers also participating.

Platt’s prose is strong, free of noticeable errors, and pitched between an academic and popular history. His style, reminiscent of Rick Atkinson , blends scholarly detail with vivid narrative. His use of section breaks is thoughtful and aids readability.

Maps are helpful though limited—mostly they were line maps placed at the beginning. A map of China’s internal transportation routes would have improved context. Note that contemporary maps were not much help due to Chinese land use changes over the almost two centuries.

1853 map of China. Canton and Macao appear on the large bay in light-blue Kwangtung province in the lower-center of the map on the China Sea.

Illustrations are well chosen but few; no charts or graphs are included, though they would have helped in clarifying trade data. Footnotes are end-of-book, and the index adequate though not detailed by modern standards. The bibliography was extensive, with sources ranging from 1804 to 2016 in English and Hanyu Pinyin.

The book vividly recounts the early collision of British and Chinese civilizations. Initially ascendant, the Chinese viewed Westerners with disdain, enforcing isolationist policies that barred language instruction and limited trade with the west. Despite this, smuggling, missionary activity, and limited cultural exchange persisted.

After the Napoleonic Wars, the subsequent Industrial Revolution, and the political changes of the Victorian era, northern Europe and eastern North America achieved economic and military superiority over the traditional, millennia-old empires of the Middle east and Asia (Chinese, Ottoman, Persian, and Indian sub-continent).

By the late 18th century, a period of rampant corruption, internal unrest, and foreign pressure prompted a weakened Chinese government into the adoption of the Canton System port of entry. The British East India Company soon dominated other foreign traders through the Cohong intermediaries. Chinese chests of tea were paid for in silver specie. The taxation on tea became an important source of China's government revenue and paid in "hard" currency. The Spanish dollar was the standard for trade. China remained largely self-sufficient, exporting tea in exchange for silver, which caused a severe trade imbalance since Britain produced little silver itself.

The resulting deficit led Britain to turn to opium from India, reversing the flow of silver and creating a devastating Chinese addiction crisis that culminated in the First Opium War. Opium was a East India Company monopoly in India. It should be noted that Opium usage was criminalized in European Great Britain.

Opium, long a luxury good in China but out of reach of peasants, became a mass addiction after British smuggling began and expanded. Opium was paid for by Chinese distributors in silver on heavily armed western depot ships off the Chinese coast. Those silver payments financed British tea purchases, transforming a British trade deficit into a surplus. Eventually all European and American traders became involved in the Opium trade whose supply chain became intertwined with the tea trade. Official Chinese bans failed, and a desperate and draconian crackdown in Canton that directly involved the smuggler traders triggered war. Britain’s victory forced open Chinese ports and entrenched the opium trade.

Mutual cultural blindness always appeared to worsened Anglo-Chinese diplomacy. Few Britons understood China, and few Chinese took Western envoys seriously. Mandarins were professionally educated, trained, and adept at working the Imperial court. Mandarins could be executed for diplomatic failure; British diplomats were chosen for breeding and allegiance to the current government. For a mistake, they simply retired to their country estate and an eventual country seat in parliament. Chinese, particularly the Court version of Chinese, was not spoken or readable to many westerners during the period. Miscommunication, ignorance, and arrogance on both sides made war inevitable.

Platt introduces readers to a wide range of figures—emperors, mandarins, taipans, merchants, missionaries, pirates, and military officers—their stories humanize this geopolitical transformation. However, only the life of traders in Canton were exposed. The lives of native Chinese were not as well documented. Life in the China Trade for an Anglo-American was insular but lucrative. Young men served long apprenticeships before rising to become traders or Taipans, often retiring wealthy to Britain or New England. Many of them went on to become well-known names in business, industry, and politics.

Platt does well in describing the technology, organization, and evolution of the tea Supply Chain during this period. In addition, communications between London, New York and Canton piggybacked on this stream of commerce. The long European British and North American trade routes to China were very different. British trade originated in London, Liverpool and Bristol went around Africa's Cape of Good Hope, across the Indian Ocean to British India, before continuing to China. A round trip was between 9-14 months. American trade originated in New England and later New York went around South America's Cape Horn and then trans-Pacific. A round trip was 10-13 months. The British route was more natural and strategic, the American route was paradoxically on average faster, although longer. Sailing ship technology, was pushed to its extreme for the China Trade with the design of Clipper Ships , before they were superseded by merchant steam ships in the 1870's.

Platt also analyzes the inner workings of the Chinese court. The Qing bureaucracy was ancient yet efficient and slowly adaptive, even incorporating New World crops like peanuts and firearms and cannon into the military. However, its operation, and adherence to "oriental" traditions were often opaque and unnatural to westerners.

British diplomacy in China was largely shaped in London, often policy was executed by unqualified envoys influenced by vested mercantile interests. It could also take a year or more for a round-trip communication. Direction from London always lagged far behind circumstances in China. The East India Company’s priorities in India extended naturally to China, though many British diplomats were, as Platt notes, “the wrong man in the right place.”

Summary

This is a history of cultures, organizations, and individuals in collision. It documents the early stages of Western ascendancy in East Asia and the westward shift of global wealth and power at the expense of the ancient Chinese Empire. Combining trade theory, maritime history, and biography, it is an exceptionally well-written account of how British mercantilism reshaped China.

A worthwhile read for anyone versed in economic and world history seeking to understand the origins of China’s “Century of Humiliation,” the period of Western and Japanese domination from the First Opium War through the mid-20th century.

[Aidan · Rating 5 out of 5]

An approachable, excellent, and thorough accounting of China's opium crisis.

[Josh Friedlander · Rating 4 out of 5]

In 1793 the British Empire sent a mission to China with the goal of petitioning for freer trade between the two powers. Hoping to impress the Chinese with the advanced state of Western science, the diplomats brought

a gigantic planetarium that had taken thirty years to build and was deemed "the most wonderful piece of mechanism ever emanating from human hands." There were giant lenses of every description. There were globes of the stars and earth, two carriages even more ornate than the king’s own (one for the emperor’s use in summer and the other for winter), "chemical and philosophical apparatuses," several brass field guns, a sampling of muskets and swords, howitzer mortars, two "magnificent" lustres (elaborate chandeliers that could illuminate a room) packed in fourteen cases, vases, clocks, an air pump, Wedgwood china, artwork depicting everyday life in England, paintings of military battles on land and sea, portraits of the royal family

as well as a hot-air balloon, all accompanied by a letter from King George III, respectful to the point of fawning ("the Supreme Emperor of China...worthy to live tens of thousands and tens of thousands thousand years"). Alas, none of this made much impression on the Qianlong Emperor:

"As the Greatness and Splendor of the Chinese Empire have spread its Fame far and wide, and as foreign Nations, from a thousand Parts of the World, crowd hither over mountains and Seas, to pay us their Homage, and to bring us the rarest and most precious offerings, what is it that we can want here?" In words that would sting the British for a generation, he added, "Strange and costly objects, sufficient to amuse children, do not interest me...We possess all things. I set no value on objects strange or ingenious, and have no use for your country’s manufactures."

Amazingly, this was a feint, directly following the playbook - the millennia-old Book of Documents, which advises "When he does not look on foreign things as precious, foreigners will come to him". In secret the Emperor collected English clocks, wrote poems about telescopes, and advised his courtiers to observe the planetarium's assembly so that they could reproduce it afterwards.

Stephen Platt's history of the First Opium War is really about the politics of trade between Europe and China in the mid-1700s, and how they went wrong, and very little about the war itself, which was brief and one-sided. The Chinese had previously existed in two primary forms in the Western imagination: as a self-important, xenophobic and somewhat creepy empire; and (after the Enlightenment philosophes) as a model of wise, scientific, secular and meritocratic rule. Western traders were restricted to a small area in the port of Canton (Guangzhou), where a community of all men (wives were not allowed) existed as a subculture with its own jargon (hoppo, taipan, supercargo [from Spanish sobrecargo]). The Portuguese were allowed to lease Macao (until 1887 when they took over it outright.) The White Lotus rebellion, a peasant revolt/religious movement that lasted almost a decade, drained the empire's finances and threatened its stability, mostly because of the corruption of the Qianlong Emperor's favourite Heshen. The empire was also beset by pirates (we encounter them fighting the British Captain Frances Austen, less famous brother of Jane). But one of the biggest issues of the period was opium.

In de Quincy's Confessions, opium is portrayed as flowing out of China, but in fact it was mainly grown in the subcontinent and sold in China (against Chinese law) by the East India Company - which by the early nineteenth century would not have been profitable without it. The Company held a monopoly on trade in European goods, to the frustration of British traders and free trade evangelists. Goods from India were the exception to this rule, although the EIC dominated the trade by ramping up supply. There is a Chinese narrative whereby opium was forced into the country against its will, which is not quite true - Chinese production and consumption of opium predated the EIC, but the European product was more popular, a type of luxury good. In contrast to the British habit of "eating" opium, the Chinese would smoke it, leading to a much less intense high than that experienced by Coleridge when he wrote Kubla Khan. (Despite that famous inspiration, Coleridge's opium addiction ultimately destroyed his career.) Missionaries, who had finally gotten the Bible translated into Cantonese and now sought ways to sneak it into the country - were mostly critical of the trade: one said

those two terrible trades [opium and slavery] had in common that no matter how abhorrent they were in the eyes of God, even the most respectable of Britain’s trading houses did not hesitate to engage in them.

Napoleon, imprisoned on St Helena, mentioned to his Irish doctor that the British should have made more of an effort to respect the customs of the Chinese (in the wake of the failed Amherst mission). The doctor replied that

it didn’t matter if the British had the friendship of the Chinese. They had the Royal Navy.

Napoleon’s eyes turned dark. "It would be the worst thing you have done for a number of years, to go to war with an immense empire like China," he said. "You would doubtless, at first, succeed, but you would teach them their own strength. They would be compelled to adopt measures to defend themselves against you; they would consider, and say, ‘we must try to make ourselves equal to this nation. Why should we suffer a people, so far away, to do as they please to us? We must build ships, we must put guns into them, we must render ourselves equal to them.’ They would get artificers, and ship builders, from France, and America, and even from London; they would build a fleet," he said, "and, in the course of time, defeat you."

At the time that Britain was considering going to war to defend the opium trade, the future four-time Prime Minister Gladstone (whose sister was an opium addict) gave an impassioned speech against it, saying, "a war more unjust in its origin, more calculated in its progress to cover this country with permanent disgrace, I do not know, and have not read of". In his personal diary he wrote "I am in dread of the judgements of God upon England for our national iniquity towards China". But with the support of Lord Palmerston and the Duke of Wellington, it was prosecuted without much fuss. (Despite the intense debate and general international condemnation of Britain, it is somewhat surprising that there was a second war just fourteen years later, although the book doesn't cover it.)

It is possible to read this as an origin story of Sino-Western relations, the onset of China's Century of humiliation and modern conception of itself. But equally, it can be read as a guide to the geopolitical power of drugs, and different approaches to enforcement. The statue of Li Zexu (a key figure in the book) in NYC's Chinatown is labelled "Pioneer in the war against drugs". But the Qing war on drugs was won by drugs (as the old joke goes). In the 1870s, China shifted to de facto legalisation which made things even worse (but did at least bring in tax revenue). The job was finally basically done by Mao, with characteristic brute force. Opium production then moved to the golden triangle, where American soldiers would pick it up en masse in Vietnam.

[Iver Band · Rating 5 out of 5]

Informative and Compelling

One of the best history books I have ever read. It built on my knowledge of the opium trade from Amitav Ghosh's Ibis Trilogy. Very clear and exciting, with a focus on the key people and their actions leading up to the war. Not a military history, but more of a economic and social one that invests the reader in people and their experiences. If you like histories that are both educational and hard to put down, this is for you!

[Alexandru · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had a massive problem with this book. According to the title and the blurb this books is about the Opium War. Except it's actually not, the book is about the events that led to the breaking out of the Opium War. The war itself is merely an afterthought covered only in the last few pages despite the fact that it actually lasted for a few years.

The bulk of the book retells in way too much detail all of the numerous embassies and attempts at opening China to the world from the 1700s to the early 1800s, tells the life story of the first English pioneers that learned Chinese and lived in Canton and finally explains the growth of the Opium Trade via the East India Company.

The story is told almost exclusively from the British perspective. There are very few instances where the focus is on the Chinese Emperor and his representatives.

The lack of a narrative about the actual war was so disappointing I had to actually check online if my book was missing chapters. That is because the story jumps from the breakout of the war straight to the aftermath. I still don't know much about the war except that the British used their superior technology to crush the Chinese who were using cannons that were from the 1600s.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

A highly readable and informative story of the opium wars (a term I was familiar with but with no sense of the history) and China itself in the early 19th century. In the introduction the author provides the overarching story and delivers the particulars in the chapters that follow.

From the introduction:

Highlight (Yellow) | Page xxiii
"No event casts a longer shadow over China’s modern history than the Opium War. Sparked by an
explosive series of events that took place in the Canton factory compound in 1839, the war would end in 1842 with China’s humiliating defeat and a treaty all but dictated by the British aggressors, setting a disastrous pattern for the century to come. Textbooks in China on “modern” history, as a rule, take the Opium War as their starting point, the moment when China left its traditional past behind and was dragged forcibly into the world of European imperialism. The war occupies that place not because it was so destructive; in fact, it was relatively small and contained. It caused none of the large-scale social dislocation that China’s major internal wars of the nineteenth century like the Taiping Rebellion did. It did not topple the ruling dynasty or even remotely threaten to do so. There weren’t even that many battles fought.

"But the symbolic power of the Opium War is almost limitless. It has long stood as the point when China’s weakness was laid bare before the world, the opening of a “Century of Humiliation” in which Western (and later Japanese) predators would make war on China to bully it into granting territorial concessions and trading rights. It marked a sea change in relations with the West—the end of one era, when foreigners came to China as supplicants, and the dawn of another, when they would come as conquerors. And it carries especially strong power because China unquestionably had the moral high ground: as remembered since, and as charged by critics at the time, Great Britain unleashed its navy on a nearly defenseless China in order to advance the interests of its national drug dealers, who for years had been smuggling opium to China’s coast against the laws of the country. The shocking grounds of the war have provided the very foundation of modern Chinese nationalism—from the overthrow of the Qing dynasty in 1912 and the rise, first of the Republic, and then the People’s Republic of China, the Opium War has stood for the essence of everything modern China has tried to leave behind: weakness, victimhood, shame.

"Because we live in a world so heavily shadowed by this memory, it has been easy for westerners of more recent generations to imagine that this was always the case—that weakness and victimhood were somehow inherent to China’s nature. Through the twentieth century, China was a poor, vulnerable, and frequently chaotic nation that never seemed a contender for power. A third-world nation in the eyes of the wealthier countries, it was alternately a pariah or an object of sympathy. For that reason, the country’s worldly aspirations of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries—to play a leading role in the UN, to host the Olympics, to put a man on the moon—were initially viewed by outsiders almost with bemusement, as if it were an overly ambitious upstart forgetting its proper place. That bemusement has now given way to alarm in many quarters as China strengthens its naval power to unprecedented levels and lays claim to vast swaths of contested maritime territory, asserting its power in ways completely unknown to living memory.

"But over the long term, China is anything but an upstart. And as its economic and military power today grow far beyond anything it seemed capable of in the twentieth century, it is coming to resemble far less the weak, bullied nation that suffered the Opium War than the confident and central empire that preceded it. If we take this war not as a beginning but as an ending, and shift our sights instead back into the era before it took place, back before that ostensible dividing line with the modern era, we find a China that was powerful, prosperous, dominant, and above all envied. The memory of that lost era looms ever larger in China today, as a reminder of its potential (some would say rightful) place in the world, a nostalgic vision of what it could be once again.

"This is a book about how the Opium War came to be—that is, how China declined from its eighteenth century grandeur and how Britain became sufficiently emboldened to take advantage of that decline. The central question of the war, as I see it, is not how Britain won, for that was never in serious doubt— in military terms the Opium War pitted the most advanced naval power in the world against an empire with a long and vulnerable coastline that had not needed a seagoing navy in more than a hundred years and so did not have one. Rather, the central question is a moral one: how Britain could have come to fight such a war in China in the first place—against, it should be noted, savage criticism both at home and abroad."

If this interests you I'd strongly recommend the book.

And here's a piece from the book that had a very familiar ring to 2025 America:

"Bao Shichen had long been hawkish on foreign trade—as early as 1801, when he was still in his
twenties, he advocated closing down the entire coastal import-export trade and expelling foreign
merchants permanently from Canton. He also recommended at that time that foreign products like
British textiles and clocks should all be banned and any Chinese who continued to import them should be beheaded."

Hopefully the 2025 and future American nativist movement won't become this extreme but there are warning signs that it's possible.

[William · Rating 5 out of 5]

book along with audio (I do not recommend audio alone)
Great foundational history that one should know while engaging in the present current events involving China on the global stage. I recommend that any one planning on living past 2020 to get motivated and choose a side; China has,. China is now 50 years into it's plan of regional hegemony funded, and technologically supported, by it's foolish enemies.

[Tony · Rating 4 out of 5]

Imperial Twilight is a well written and engaging book about the Canton system of trade, early attempts to further open China to Western merchants, and internal factors that lead to the weakening of China's central government. It is filled with colorful characters and vignettes, but also captures the bigger picture of how Western merchants gained wide access to China.

[Barry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Matt (as usual) wrote a great review so I can forego the effort of an attempt.

This history is primarily helpful as a window into 19th century China and its relationship with the burgeoning imperial power of Britain. The story is nearly all about the set up and the reasons for this rather ridiculous conflict. The “war” itself, such as it was, is given short shrift in this account. The first shots are not fired until page 412. Despite lasting for three years, the entire war is then sketched out in just 13 pages. It seems like the author found the carnage of these lopsided battles just too depressing and shameful to describe in detail.

Most readers will surely come away with more respect for the China of that era, and less for Great Britain.

[Yi Zhou · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book was well-researched. Platt systematically illustrated two sides of the issue and viewpoints and concluded with his own point of view on the Opium War (1839-1842,) a war he considered could have been avoided, a point he repeatedly emphasized. Yet throughout the 556 pages, he missed the most crucial point by not probing the fundamental question: “Was the Opium War a just war?”
Despite illustrating all the different views expressed from the two countries, this very question was ignored. Instead he ended his last numerous pages criticizing the Chinese Imperial Commissioner Lin Zexu for not giving Elliot, the British Superintendent in Canton, a chance to prevent the war. In his view, Elliot had tried to avoid a war (in my view, a war should not even have been raised in the first place.) And Lin was painted as the cause of an avoidable war—for confiscating a massive quantity of contraband opium, threatening to execute the British smugglers and the shutting down the trade at length. In fact, Lin Zexu was dutifully enforcing the laws of the very land where the Indian opium was trafficked by the British in a frightful quantity—according to Platt, it reached 18,956 chests in the early 1830’s. (It’s no different from how Pablo Escobar was put behind bars and eventually killed for smuggling Colombian cocaine into the United States. What if the Colombian government had backed Escobar instead and had invaded the United States? Would we look for excuses to justify the Colombian government’s action?) This made Lin Zexu truly “the pioneer in the war against drugs” as was inscribed on the pedestal of his granite statue in New York’s Chinatown. But in Platt’s conclusion, Lin was the cause of "an avoidable Opium war"; in the end, it sounded like the Chinese were to blame. And Platt was cautious, cleverly quoting words from a Chinese scholar to prove his point.
I do not agree with Platt’s “If Only” theory of history. I don’t believe the war could have been avoided. Even if the British had not invaded China in 1939, they would eventually have found other excuses, like how they launched the second Opium War in 1860 and later another war in 1899.
As for the name of the war—the Chinese have called it the “Opium War” since the Republic revolution in 1911, a name that couldn’t be more appropriate. But I rarely saw this name being used in most English language history books until the seventies. It took Western historians more than a century to use its rightful name—Opium War. I noticed, thankfully, that Platt not only used it in the sub-title of his book, but also throughout the text.

[Abhi Gupte · Rating 4 out of 5]

Imperial Twilight starts as a collection of recollections. A third through the book and you might be wondering why the stories of insignificant-sounding traders and aristocrats matter at all. But Platt constructs this book of non-fiction, slowly and deliberately with clearly fleshed out characters, so that when the guns are drawn and the violence explodes, we can still see through the smoke of history that clouds any precipitous event.

I was especially impressed with Platt's build up of an obsequious British attitude, only to bring it crashing down as the country waged war on the giant that even Napoleon dared not to stoke. The rhetorical callisthenics of the British Government in favor of the war, both prove and disprove the notion that a rapacious West was bound to plunder the dignity and wealth of the East.

The Opium War is said to have begun a century of tears in China, when it's preponderance in the world was shattered and a glorious civilization was reduced to destitution. If one is wary of the Chinese threat today, one needs to understand not just the threat but the mindset behind it. And the Opium War is behind it all.

[Sivasothi N. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this over two months when waiting for a bus, having lunch in the canteen or just before sleeping. This is from my start of year WW2 reading arc, which proved to be much wider this year, reaching into China and Malaya.

Stephen Platt, a professor of Chinese history, deconstructs the events leading up to the Opium Wars. He demonstrates its not “us versus them” but instead the contributing individuals, actions, motivations and environments are revealed – the historical patterns and their relevance to existing events are fascinating!

The Kindle version has linked footnotes which is useful to the reader wanting to peek at contributing sources.

[Julian Douglass · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well detailed and thorough account of the Opium war and the decline of Imperial China. A great story that kept me interested to the end. A cool piece of history that still shapes the world that we live in today.

[Randall Wallace · Rating 3 out of 5]

In the 1830’s, Opium was legal in the US and Britain at the time and used for toddler coughs and even baby teething pain (one labelled Mother Bailey’s Quieting Syrup). Coleridge had a “crippling dependence” on opium. Opium is first known to be smoked in 17th century Java. The Dutch took it then to Taiwan. Laudanum was a mix of opium and wine. If you went by ship to Canton, your packing list would include “at least seventy-two changes of underwear, since clothes couldn’t be cleaned properly in salt water.”

18 acres of Canton was where all the formal trade with China had to happen. If you wanted to trade with the biggest empire on the planet, you dealt with those restrictions. The British went nuts for Chinese silk, but soon realized it was more addicted to Chinese tea. The Qianlong Emperor didn’t want British products for trade (the only thing China wanted was silver - since the 1600’s the Chinese were the net importer of silver) and wrote back King George saying, “The products of our empire are abundant and there is nothing we don’t have.” That’s like telling Ted Bundy you don’t like his shirt.

Since the British didn’t like being told no by anyone it noticed that China had no navy and to save money used amnesty and embargoes to deal with conflicts instead. Meanwhile, Britain had just doubled the size of its Royal Navy and by 1820, it controlled ¼ of the world’s population. Catholics at time demanded that converts only read the Bible in Latin – you know, the language Jesus never spoke. The King James Bible took 54 translators working at the same time. In 1812, printing Christian texts in China was punishable by death. To properly kowtow, you need to touch your head to the ground nine times. Anyway, back to the main story.

Opium poppies were growing nicely in British controlled Patna (India) and by 1833 the British were secretly smuggling Indian opium into China to keep the East India Company afloat with needed silver. The British had huge warehouses in Patna with 40+ foot ceilings stacked with opium on shelves. The lithograph of Patna’s opium storage rooms makes a Walmart look like a closet. By 1830, the British were illegally pumping 2,500,000 pounds of opium annually into China. In China, opium was worth 3,000 times the same weight in rice. Robbers targeted those who had opium and opium syndicates were more respected/feared than the state.

The British planned to turn China into another India. They just needed their puppet on the throne. By 1834, Britain lost its monopoly on opium, and it had just abolished slavery so going to war to support opium traffickers in China seemed like a nice change of pace. This leads to the First Opium War (1839-1842) which is won by England, lost by China and will begin its “Century of Humiliation”. Under the resultant Treaty of Nanking, Britain gets Hong Kong as a permanent colony, $21 million, and five ports in china are opened to trade. Soon after this, the US signed its own Treaty with China (Wangha) in 1844, and gets the spoils without the bloodshed, time and money.

Silly me, I thought when I read this book, I was going to be learning about when the Western Powers had way more control over China and could live in Shanghai protected from Chinese laws. Turns out that was way after the events of this book take place. Anyway, a good book.

[peebee · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ll write a proper review for this at some point but just wanna say this was THRILLING

[Mainichi66 · Rating 4 out of 5]

i should have given this book a five-star, only if the author could have written this book in a less leftistish proneness. nevertheless, it is extrordinarilly good. so enriched with research materials and concrete references. the author must have given a labour no less than Robert Morrison compiling the groundbreaking first chinese-english dictionary.

[Logan B. · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Imperial Twilight” by Stephen Platt masterfully tells the story of one of the most important yet forgotten conflicts in modern history. The Opium War, fought between Great Britain and China, destabilized Chinese politics for the next century leading to rebellions, civil wars, and the eventual communist revolution while, on the other side, Britain saw the greatest century of prosperity in its history. What then, was this war between great powers fought over? Was it a war of imperial conquest over great swathes of land? Was it fought to bring about progress or social change? No, this war was prosecuted by Britain to preserve drug trafficking, plain and simple. It was not a war that was defensible on moral grounds, purely economic ones and opened the gates for other countries to impose demands on China by force of arms for the next century of its history.

The opium trade of the 19th century was the first major international drug trade in history, and one that made British merchants, particularly those of the British East India Company, fabulously wealthy. The destination of this trade was China then ruled by the Imperial Qing dynasty. The Qing held a stance that trade with the West should be highly regulated which gave rise to a proliferation of illegal smuggling. When the Qing cracked down on this illegal trade, rather than back down or respect China’s national sovereignty, Britain, under the guise of protecting national honor, chose to violently defend its right to traffic narcotics.

This book was revelatory in so many respects and puts into context the modern relations between China and the Western nations of Europe and North America. Despite the inclusion of “war” in the subtitle, this is not a military history but rather a social and economic one. The cultural and monetary exchange between British and American traders with Chinese merchants takes center stage with the associated diplomatic missions, imperial edicts, and tense showdowns that make up the history of the era. The author shows how what was once a peaceful and prosperous mutual trade became tainted by narcotics which eventually resulted in the failure of diplomacy to resolve the differences between Britain and China. Imperial Twilight is a fascinating read and one I would highly recommend for anyone looking to learn more about Chinese history and how it relates to western civilization.

[Tanner Nelson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. It was recommended to me by a co-worker and I decided to try it even though it appears to be outside my typical genre. I’m glad I accepted the recommendation. The prose was engaging and it was obviously very well-researched.

I learned a great deal about early relations between China and the UK from this book. Every page worked to shape my understanding of just how avoidable the Opium Wars were. Cultural and social blunders plagued Chinese and British efforts to stabilize relations, but intervening merchants, smugglers, politicians, and envoys unraveled any hope of resolving the issue peacefully. It is a testament to the power of commerce and business.

This book and its subject were sufficiently interesting that I will likely look more into Asian history and it’s cross-section with European history in the future.

[Pete · Rating 4 out of 5]

audiobooked this one while doing yardwork and house chores - you will be shocked, shocked to learn that early 19th century british elites had lunatic ideas about race, capitalism, and empire, and were amoral when it suited them. more interesting was the stuff about how early 19th century chinese elites were also lunatics. some outsized characters in here -- esp the german missionary who particpated in large-scale dope smuggling on the grounds that it helped spread the gospel. not quite as gripping as platt's "autumn in the heavenly kingdom" but rich history written capably if you have several years worth of pecans to get out of your backyard

[Paige · Rating 5 out of 5]

After reading RF Kuang's book Babel, I decided to find out more about the history she was revising. I found this book interesting, well-written, and (seemingly - what do I know?) well-balanced in sympathy towards the Chinese and the West. Although the book doesn't discuss the long-term legacy of the Opium War, it's been a fruitful thing for me to think about. Many things about the global illegal drug business as well as China/West political dynamics started here and are absolutely in play today. If you're interested in China and don't mind a rather sad ending, I highly recommend.