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Olyphant and Opium: a Canton Merchant Who "Just Said 'No' "

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Olyphant and Opium: a Canton Merchant Who Olyphant and Opium: A Canton Merchant Who "Just Said 'No' " Robert Charles ,'. sk a Chinese what he calls Englishmen and he'll tell you so many evils among the people, and yet of so much gain to the fttheY're opium merchants. Ask the same about French­ merchants, that I utterly despair of saying anything on the subject men and he'll tell you they're missionaries. The former ruin his that will not be regarded with dislike. I cannot, however, but health at the expense of his finances, and the latter overturn his regard it as one of the many obstacles which hinder the moral ideas," charged Tcheng-Ki-Tong, military attache at the Chinese improvement of eastern India and China.,,6 embassy in Paris, in an article published in a French review in Most merchants-"under no control, subject to no law, 1 1884. except that of self-interest," as one explained-looked upon the Had the Chinese diplomat attempted to classify Americans opium trade as an economic necessity, and as such an entirely in China according to the same two stereotypes, he likely would honorable pursuit, for it at least gave them something to sell to have qualified them as honorary Frenchmen. Yet fifty years the self-sufficient Chinese." In the words of William Jardine to a earlier, American merchants, even if not to the extent of their potential investor back in England, the opium trade was "the British counterparts, were endangering the Chinese purse and safest and most gentlemanlike speculation I am aware of." Jardine health through what in 1839 was called "a trade which every publicly defended his character as the leading opium merchant friend of humanity must deplore," what an American contem­ by citing declarations of both Houses of Parliament, "with all porary of the Chinese diplomat deplored as "the darkest stain the bench of bishops at their backs," that it was financially inex­ pedient to abolish the trade." For Bostonian Robert Bennett Forbes, involvement in the opium trade was nothing more than a matter of following "the right example of England, the East India Ask a Chinese what he Company, the countries that cleared it for China, and the mer­ calls Englishmen, and he'll chants I had always been accustomed to look up to as the ex­ tell you that they are ponents of all that was honorable in trade.,~IO Up to 1839 the opium trade "had indeed been an easy and agreeable business opium merchants. for the foreign exile who shared in it at Canton," reminisced William Hunter in the 1880s. "His sales were pleasantness and his remittances were peace. Transactions seemed to partake of upon the Christianity of the nineteenth century," and which more the nature of the drug; they imparted a soothing frame of mind recently has been labeled as "surely one of the longest-con­ with three percent commission on sales, one percent on returns, tinued international crimes of modem times ... a classic symbol and no bad debts!" According to Hunter, "I myself, and I of Western commercial imperialism-foreign greed and violence think I may safely say the entire foreign community, rarely, if demoralizing and exploiting an inoffensive people.r" First im­ ever, saw anyone physically or mentally injured by it. ... As ported in small quantities as a medicine in 1767, then in increasing compared to the use of spirituous liquors in the United States amounts as a stupefacient, until in 1800 the Chinese government and England, and the evil consequences of it, that of opium was outlawed its importation, opium by the 1830s represented "no infinitesimal.,,11 hole-in-the-corner petty smuggling trade, but probably the largest This complacent, see-no-evil view did not command unan­ commerce of the time in any single commodity ... [and] the imity among the foreign community "in Canton, however. Prot­ economic foundation of the rise of the foreign merchant com­ estant missionaries generally dissociated themselves from the opium munity in China.,,3 trade, which they viewed as a blot on the name of the Christian For Chinese authorities, opium was "vile dirt," "a flow­ West and a curse visited upon the Chinese. "There is a great ing poison" wreaking economic and moral havoc upon the Ce­ trade in opium here, the Chinese having become excessively ad­ lestial Empire and its populace." those who smoked it were no dicted to it," Robert Morrison wrote to friends in Dublin in 1828. different than "reptiles, wild beasts, dogs, and swine," de­ "This poison depraves and corrupts the Heathen and yet clared Commissioner Lin in his first placard after arriving in Can­ Christians activated by the love of gold smuggle immense quan­ ton in March 1839 with a determination to put an end to the flow tities of it into China from our Indian Possessions annually.v" A of "foreign mud.?" The foreign community in Canton, how­ major exception, however, was Karl Gutzlaff, "whose declared ever, was of divided mind on whether to regard the illegal trade horror of the opium trade proved not so strong as his passion for as primarily a moral, or an economic issue. In an 1836 letter to proselytizing.v " Fluent in Cantonese and other dialects, he was The Chinese Repository in Canton, William Milne lamented: "The approached by the English firm of Jardine & Matheson to act as vast consumption of opium on this side of India, is the source of an interpreter for the Sylph, which sailed up the coast in October 1832. In a letter to Gutzlaff, William Jardine stated openly that "our principal reliance is on opium.... The more profitable Robert Charles served during 1980-88 with Mennonite Board of Missions in the expedition, the better we shall be able to place at your disposal Brussels, Belgium, asdirector of Brussels Mennonite Center andeditor ofNATO a sum that may hereafter be employed in furthering your mission, Watch newsletter. Currently he is a Ph.D. candidate in European diplomatic and for your success in which we feel deeply interested." Ac­ historyand international security studies at the Fletcher School of Lawand Di­ cording to Gutzlaff, "After much consultation with others and plomacy, Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts. a conflict in my own mind, I embarked on the Sylph." The expe­ 66 INTERN ATIONAL BULLETIN OF MISSIONARY RESEARCH dition was a success, as was a subsequent one that made a profit full agreement, both the commissioner and his American visitors of over £50,000. In a later book recounting his voyages and mission had reason to be satisfied with their encounter-Lin because up­ activities, Gutzlaff made no mention of the fact that the ships on right foreigners could vouchsafe that the opium was in fact being which he traveled carried opium. 14 destroyed and not saved for resale; King and Bridgman for being Yet just as this exception was to be found to the missionary allowed to witness this magnificent "rebuke administered by condemnation and avoidance of anything to do with the opium Pagan integrity to Christian degeneracy.v'" trade, so also was a nonconformist to the prevailing practice of King's petitions to Commissioner Lin show that Olyphant & his colleagues to be counted among the expatriate merchant com­ Company were clearly in Canton to engage in and prosper through munity. Lamented Morrison to his Dublin friends, "There is trade, an activity that King thought could be carried out only if only one Christian merchant in Canton who conscientiouslx de­ foreign merchants respected Chinese laws and if Chinese au­ clines dealing in the pernicious drug. He is an American." 5 thorities respected the foreigners' property at the Canton facto­ The unnamed American merchant in Morrison's letter who ries. 25 Thus King did not stand aloof from his fellow merchants alone refused the "soothing state of mind" offered by opium when, in November 1838, they drove away Chinese authorities dealing was D. W. C. Olyphant of the firm of Olyphant & Com­ who were preparing to execute a Chinese opium dealer at the pany of New York, who had come to Canton in the 1820s to enter foot of the American flagpole in the square in front of the foreign the tea market;" Under the direction of Olyphant, "a pious factories. The attempted execution was judged by the foreigners devoted servant of Christ and a friend of China" who had been converted during an evangelical revival in 1814, and of his "sober and intense young nephew" Charles W. King, Olyphant & Com­ pany represented a singular combination of scrupulous commerce King and Olyphant saw and Christian conviction;" Olyphant's principled nonparticipa­ tion in the opium trade, "almost the only branch of the China the opium trade as a cloud trade which produced a profit during a good part of the decade over the entire foreign of the 1820s," and his key role in the beginning of American Protestant missions in China "made him such an oddity in merchant community at the Canton environment that old-timers there called the Olyphant Canton. headquarters In. t he A mencan. fac t ory 'Z'Ion , s Corner. ' ,,18 Why did Olyphant & Company abstain from dealing in op­ ium? Foster Rhea Dulles suggests it was because "this firm "as a wanton interference with their rights to consider the alone looked on the opium question from any other than a purely foreign settlement private property." King participated in the commercial point of view.,,19 Rather than portraying Olyphant attack upon the executioners, despite Olyphant & Company's and King simply as virtuous saints willing to sacrifice profits for strong opposition to the opium traffic, which had bought about principles, however, one should recognize that the firm had solid this official Chinese reaction and which was hanging as a storm commercial and prudential grounds for avoiding what was, after cloud over the entire foreign merchant community at Canton.26 all, an illegal activity.
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