Until the British infiltration of opium into China, the Chinese had “never doubted their place in the world.”1 As the country suffocated in fumes of a foreign narcotic, scholar-official Lin Zexiu responded to the crisis with a scathing letter to Queen Victoria in 1839. His “Letter to Queen Victoria,” as it has been denoted, demonstrated that his education was extensive but hindered by his limited worldview—in the eyes of a Western reader, at least. He was clueless to the fact that it could easily be dismissed by the British as a result. Thus, it made for an ineffective response despite its merits.

Lin Zexiu’s words hinted at China’s strict academic teachings in Confucian values, which influenced his narrow perspective. Well-articulated and poetic pieces of the letter, such as “extending its benevolence” and “the vice has spread far and wide,” show Zexiu’s intellectual ability;2 after all, government officials “had to be highly educated” in order to pass a series of rigorous tests to prove their knowledge before being officially inducted.3 His haughty language is a result of Confucian values, however. The emphasis on “social order and good government” and “li—proper conduct according to status” left Zexiu (and China) to believe his country was superior to others’. 4 China failed to look outside of its “Heavenly Court”;5 consequently, its inhabitants were naïve in regard to powerful, imperialist nations around the world. Consider the quote, “The goodness of our great Emperor is like Heaven.”6 In saying “our,” Zexiu implies that all people view the Emperor as the sole ruler, which was a preposterous claim, surely, in the eyes of a woman whose title was “Queen.” Therefore, the letter was an example of the oblivious yet intelligent mind.

His most powerful argument targeted Britain’s hypocritical nature. In Britain, “opium smoking [was] forbidden under severe penalties,”7 so Zexiu pointed called to attention that Britain was “careless of the lives of others”8 and essentially suggested that Queen Victoria “must be secretly ashamed”9 of the opium traffic. Zexiu built a logic here. Highlighting the hypocrisy of Britain’s actions was a biting blow. Another compelling argument aimed to find a common ground in human nature. “Men are alike in this all the world over,” Zexiu stated, “that they cherish life and hate what endangers life.”10 Humans from China and Britain share a common humanity, he is implying, and this is a difficult philosophy to refute. Queen Victoria, a human being like the rest, must understand the fear of endangerments to life, so it would be her moral duty to empathize with Chinese citizens who suffered from such a terror.

Alas, Zexiu’s moral arguments, while legitimate, were rendered ineffective by the last paragraph of the letter, where he threatened: “you will be the first to be harmed” by the Heavenly Court’s “superhuman powers.”11 A queen would not likely help a country that threatens her. To make matters worse, Zexiu stated in his final words: “do not say you have not been warned in time.”12 It seems a shame that his arguments were made null as a result of his ignorant standpoint, especially when his threats would come at a serious price to China.

As promised in the letter, the opium in China was burned. Britain soon retaliated by declaring war and slaughtering the Chinese in the First Opium War—a war that would begin a long period of humiliation for China.13 While Zexiu was not the singular cause for China’s decisive loss in the Opium Wars, and while his intentions were righteous, he sealed China’s grim fate in sending the faulty “Letter to Queen Victoria.”

Notes

1. June Grasso, Jay Corrin, and Michael Kort, Modernization and Revolution in China (New York: Routledge, 2018), p. 1.

2. Lin Zexiu, “Letter to Queen Victoria,” in June Grasso, Michael Kort, and William Tilchin, eds., Documents in Modern Russian and Chinese History (Boston: McGraw-Hill Education, 2014), p. 115.

3. Grasso et al., Modernization and Revolution in China, p. 8.

4. Grasso et al., Modernization and Revolution in China, p. 11.

5. Lin Zexiu, “Letter to Queen Victoria,” p. 115.

6. Lin Zexiu, “Letter to Queen Victoria,” p. 115.

7. Lin Zexiu, “Letter to Queen Victoria,” p. 115.

8. Lin Zexiu, “Letter to Queen Victoria,” p. 116.

9. Grasso et al., Modernization and Revolution in China, p. 24.

10. Lin Zexiu, “Letter to Queen Victoria,” p. 115.

11. Lin Zexiu, “Letter to Queen Victoria,” p. 116.

12. Lin Zexiu, “Letter to Queen Victoria,” p. 116.

13. Grasso et al., Modernization and Revolution in China, p. 24.