‘White Peril’ in the East

Abstract

Although western traders and evangelists had been banished from Japan and China in earlier centuries, the people of East Asia deceived themselves in believing that western expansion in the Orient had been halted. In the eighteenth century western traders continued to demand the right to trade where they wished and on equal terms (an idea inconceivable to the Chinese mind). Britain was determined to obtain commercial access to the Chinese market, come what may. The traditional Chinese view that China was superior to the other nations of the world should no longer be tolerated. China should not be allowed to refuse the civilizing medium of western trade, western diplomacy and western religion. Certainly, it should not be allowed to exclude Britain’s manufactures or British opium — one of the leading and most profitable exports of British India. It was purposeless for the Chinese to point out that the use of opium was outlawed in China, and that they needed nothing from the West except to be left alone. In the Opium War¹ the British used cannon and gunpowder (Chinese inventions) to impose their will on China.