RED, WHITE AND BLUE OVER CHINA
In late November 1856 Commander Andrew Hull Foote of the U.S. Navy’s East India Squadron sat in his stateroom aboard the sloop-of-war USS Portsmouth, mulling over the deadly events of the previous week. He had personally led ashore a small but determined force of Marines and sailors against overwhelming odds, capturing four heavily defended enemy forts and fending off several vicious counterattacks. The fighting had been brutal, resulting in the deaths of 10 Americans and the wounding of 22 others. In the hard-won victory the Marines and sailors had acquitted themselves in the finest traditions of the U.S. armed forces, and they would be heralded as heroes both at home and abroad.
Yet they had intervened in a conflict in which they were not supposed to be involved. The United States had been a neutral bystander in a controversial war pitting the British and French against Qing dynasty China over the trade of a dangerous narcotic. So just how did Foote come to break his country’s neutral stance and become embroiled in a foreign war despite orders to the contrary?
Britain had initiated the 19th-century First and Second Opium Wars, as the name implies, in part to force Qing authorities to permit British merchants to trade in Indiangrown opium. For centuries the Chinese had used the drug for medicinal purposes. It had since become increasingly popular for recreational use, and countless Chinese had become addicts, resulting in widespread health issues and fueling an explosive growth of drug-related crime.
During this period the British obtained their beloved tea mainly from China rather than growers in India, and China was also the source of silk, porcelain and other exquisite goods hugely popular in Britain. But there was no real balance of legal trade, as Britain simply had nothing
