Background Information
1. Opium's legality: In the 1830s, opium was illegal in the Qing empire, it was grown in India under British East India Company control and smuggled into South China by (primarily) British merchants, though Americans and British colonial subjects (especially the Parsee community of Bombay) were also involved.
2. Opium trading: Since at least the mid-1820s, the central location for opium transactions between British and Chinese merchants was on the island of Lintin near present-day Hong Kong. At the remote offshore island of Lintin, British firms permanently anchored large "receiving ships," which operated as floating warehouses. Chinese buyers would go to money-lending shops in Guangzhou (Canton) to make payment, then take a receipt out to a foreign receiving ship anchored near Lintin to receive their opium. In this way the British and Chinese merchants involved in the trade could keep their transactions out of the immediate surveillance of the high officials in Guangzhou.
3. Opium's northward migration: The Lintin system of offshore opium transactions expanded north from Guangdong province to Fujian province around 1834. This migration of the trade into Fujian is the primary subject of this module. The date 1834 is significant because this is when the British East India Company relinquished their monopoly over British trade in China, opening the door for new British firms like Jardine-Matheson and their competitor Dent &Co. to expand the trade into new markets.
