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鴉片事略

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Text ID
KR4k0270
Date
1876–1876
Dynasty
清

Yāpiàn Shì Lüè 鴉片事略

A Brief Account of Opium Affairs by 李圭

About the work

Yāpiàn Shì Lüè 鴉片事略 is a historical and political tract in two juàn 卷 (upper and lower), authored by 李圭 (Lǐ Guī, 1842–1903; CBDB 77016), courtesy name Xiǎochí 小池, a native of Jiāngnán 江南 (Jiāngnán 江寧, modern Nánjīng). It surveys the three-hundred-year history of the opium trade in China, from its earliest introduction to the controversies of the late Qīng period. The work compiles information from diverse sources — personal observation, other published books, and newspaper reports (yóubào 郵報) — and appends foreign diplomatic correspondence (wàiguó wǎnglái wéndú 外國往來文牘). Though categorised in the Kanripo corpus under KR4k (fiction), the Yāpiàn Shì Lüè is in fact a work of contemporary history and social commentary, not a narrative novel.

Tiyao

No tiyao found in source.

Abstract

The text opens with a programmatic statement of purpose: while the harm of opium is universally known, the full historical record of its spread through Chinese counties, the alternating cycles of prohibition and toleration, and the role of British commercial and military interests in sustaining the trade — “三百年來之事” (three centuries of history) — is not. Lǐ Guī undertakes to compile this record from the sources available to him.

Juàn shàng (Upper Volume) traces the history of the opium poppy from its origins in India (Yìndù 印度, identified with the Han-dynasty Shēndú 身毒 and Tiānzhú 天竺), the establishment of British dominance in India through the East India Company (Yìndù Gōngsī 印度公司), and the systematic export of Indian opium to China. The author provides a detailed geopolitical survey of India and describes the British administrative apparatus, drawing on translated English-language sources. The lower volume (juàn xià) appears to contain the documentary appendices, including translations of British-Chinese diplomatic correspondence on the opium question.

李圭 was a customs secretary (wénshū 文書) at Níngbō 寧波 from the age of twenty-three, working under the British Inspector-General of Customs Robert Hart (赫德). In 1876 he was sent by Hart to represent China at the American Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, after which he traveled home via Europe. He recorded this journey in Huányóu Dìqiú Xīnlù 環遊地球新錄 (4 juàn, preface dated 1877), which Wilkinson (Chinese History: A New Manual, §66.4.3.5) lists alongside the travel diaries of Guō Sōngtāo 郭嵩燾, Zēng Jìzé 曾紀澤, Lǐ Shūcháng 黎庶昌, and Xuē Fúchéng 薛福成 as a notable Qīng diplomatic travel diary. Wilkinson further notes (§15.1) that Lǐ Guī was the first to propose the usage of “Jiù Jīnshān 舊金山” (Old Mountain of Gold) for San Francisco, as distinct from “Xīn Jīnshān 新金山” (New Mountain of Gold) for Melbourne.

The Yāpiàn Shì Lüè was likely composed around or shortly before 1876, during the period of heightened debate about legalizing and taxing Chinese domestic opium cultivation — a policy issue on which Lǐ Guī’s closing argument is cautious: he warns that allowing Chinese domestic cultivation will eventually displace tea agriculture, with long-term damage to both Chinese exports and the opium trade itself. This makes the work a significant piece of late-Qīng reformist discourse on the opium question.

Translations and research

  • Desnoyers, Charles. A Journey to the East: Li Gui’s A New Account of a Trip Around the Globe. University of Michigan Press, 2004. (Translation and study of Lǐ Guī’s Huányóu Dìqiú Xīnlù; the most accessible English-language introduction to the author.)
  • Wilkinson, Endymion. Chinese History: A New Manual, §66.4.3.5 (brief reference to Lǐ Guī’s diplomatic travel diary).

Other points of interest

Lǐ Guī is known as a pioneer in promoting the Chinese postal service: his account of the American postal system in the Huányóu Dìqiú Xīnlù influenced Lǐ Hóngzhāng 李鴻章’s postal reform proposals, and Lǐ Guī later translated the Hong Kong Postal Guide (1885) into Chinese, also drafting regulations for a Chinese postal bureau.

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