Foreign Mud History

by Collis, Maurice

• ISBN13: 9780811215060
• ISBN10: 0811215067
• Edition: 00
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-06-17
• Publisher: New Directions

Summary

Another enduring work by the brilliant historian Maurice Collis. First published in 1946 and long out of print, Foreign Mud is a marvelous historical reconstruction of the events surrounding the illegal trade of opium in Canton during the 1830s and the Opium Wars between Britain and China that followed. Based largely on voluminous documents written by British doctors, missionaries, merchants, and government officials, Collis's tale, far from being a dry assemblage of dates and facts, is a fascinating example of twentieth-century Orientalist literature: "...you must picture the broad river puckered with little waves, the green sweep of the rice, on the horizon blue hills; you must conjure the many sorts of passing craft, the Mandarin house-boats, dainty and lacquered, the streamers and lanterns of passenger boats, the high tilted junks with demon-painted sterns; and you must plunge these images into a light more intense than we know in these countries, into a warmer wind and an air, purer and more scented than we can sniff except in dreams." Collis describes, in all its complexities, a moment in time when China is forced, after more than two thousand years of self-contained sufficiency, to open its doors to the culture, commerce, and evangelization of the Westthe casus belli, foreign mud: the opium the British grew and shipped from India. Interspersed with various maps, plans, and illustrations, Foreign Mud is a historical narrative the reader will find more entertaining than any Spielberg film.

Table of Contents

Introductory	11	(8)
Mise-En-Scene	19	(86)
Macao
First sight of the drug traffic
The Bogue
The River People
The Factories
The official system of trading to China
The unofficial system of trading to China
The drug traffic in operation
The Dragon memorializes Heaven
The Misadventures of a Barbarian Eye	105	(80)
Review of prospects in 1833
The head authorities at Canton
The appointment of Lord Napier
The palaver at the gate
Laboriously Vile
Napier is ordered to go
Napier becomes heated
The victory of the chairs
The Viceroy acts
The battle of the Bogue
The frigates are trapped
Napier's discomfiture and death
What the Dragon said
Conclusions from the misadventures
Foreign Mud	185	(54)
British opinion of the Chinese armed forces
The affair of the strangling
Captain Elliot's dilemmas
Lin demands the surrender of all opium
Lin increases the pressure
Captain Elliot to the rescue
Lin succeeds in frightening Elliot
Elliot surrenders the opium
Lin destroys the opium
Lin admonishes Queen Victoria
Sliding Into War	239	(48)
Lin's decent upon Macao
The fight with the junks
The battle of Chuenpee
The commons debate
War	287	(24)
A smuggler's Sea fight
Lin is dismissed and succeeded by Kishen
Elliot and Kishen are dismissed
Sequel
Authorities	311	(2)
Index	313