This page was created by Peter Thilly.
Mapping the coastal opium trade
One of the first conclusions I reached from reading the British and Chinese sources together is that the scope of the opium trade described by the Fujian Governor in The Case Against Shi Hou is severely underplayed. "Big and Little Li," also known as Thomas and John Rees, could sell twenty-seven chests of opium in Shenhu Bay on a slow afternoon. In contrast to the Qing memorial, which claims that "Big and Little Li" sold just 27 chests of opium total in their stay in Shenhu Bay, we have evidence from the Jardine-Matheson archive like a report from Captain Jauncey of the Jardine-Matheson barque Austen about selling 320 chests of Malwa opium at $610/chest in just one day while stationed in Shenhu Bay during August of 1835, several months before Shi Hou supposedly lured Big and Little Li up from Macao.*
Meanwhile, Shi Hou was also not the pioneer he was made out to be in the Qing memorial. The Yakou Shi were ultimately just one of many coastal lineages involved in the trade, and Shenhu Bay was but one of several important anchorages for the British opium traders. Dozens of coastal lineages along the Zhangzhou-Quanzhou coastline in southern Fujian during the 1830s were able to marshal the boats, people, and money necessary to make it big in the opium trade. Indeed, the region became China’s second most important opium market during the 1830s. The above map is based on a 1940 investigation by two censors sent to Fujian from Beijing, and it indicates the location of large lineages (including the Yakou Shi) who were known to collude with foreigners in the smuggling of opium in Jinjiang County. This small slice is indicative of a much larger reality: Tongan, Longxi, Hui’an, and the other coastal counties each had their own cadre of lineages, ship-owners, and smugglers.**
*JM B2.7, Reel 496, No. 56, 12 August 1835.
**Peter Thilly, "Opium and the Origins of Treason: The View from Fujian," Late Imperial China 38, No. 1, 2017, (155-197) 175-176.
