Editing First Opium War (section)

===Question of inevitability===
Historians have often pondered whether the war could have been avoided.<ref>Glenn Paul Melancon, "Palmerston, Parliament and Peking: The Melbourne Ministry and the Opium Crisis, 1835–1840" (PhD LSU, 1994) pp. 222–239.</ref> One factor was that China rejected diplomatic relations with the British or anyone else, as seen in the rejection of the Macartney mission in 1793. As a result, diplomatic mechanisms for negotiation and resolution were missing.<ref>Spence, ''The Search for Modern China''  (1990) pp. 122–123.</ref> Michael Greenberg locates the inevitable cause in the momentum for more and more overseas trade in Britain's expanding modern economy.<ref>Michael Greenberg, ''British Trade and the Opening of China, 1800–1842'' (1951), p. 215.</ref> On the other hand, the economic forces inside Britain that were war hawks, Radicals in Parliament and northern merchants
and manufacturers, were a political minority and needed allies, especially Palmerston, before they could get their war.<ref>Peter J. Cain, and Anthony G. Hopkins. ''British Imperialism: Innovation and Expansion 1688–1914'' (1993) p. 40.</ref> In Parliament, the Melbourne government faced a host of complex international threats including the [[Chartism|Chartist]] riots at home, bothersome budget deficits, unrest in Ireland, rebellions in Canada and Jamaica, war in Afghanistan, and French threats to British business interests in Mexico and Argentina. The opposition demanded more aggressive answers, and it was Foreign Minister Palmerston who set up an easy war to solve the political crisis.<ref>Jasper Ridley, ''Lord Palmerston'' (1970) pp. 248–260.</ref> It was not economics, opium sales or expanding trade that caused the British to go to war, Melancon argues, but it was more a matter of upholding aristocratic standards of national honour sullied by Chinese insults.<ref>Glen Melancon,  "Honour in Opium? The British Declaration of War on China, 1839–1840." ''International History Review'' 21 (1999): 855–874 [https://www.jstor.org/stable/40109164 online].</ref>{{page range too broad|date=September 2021}}<ref>Glenn Melancon, ''Britain's China Policy and the Opium Crisis: Balancing Drugs, Violence and National Honour, 1833–1840'' (2003).</ref>{{page needed|date=September 2021}}

One historiographical problem is that the emphasis on the British causal factors tends to ignore the Chinese. The Manchu rulers were focused on internal unrest by Chinese elements and paid little attention to the minor issues happening in Guangzhou.<ref>Paul A. Cohen, ''Discovering History in China: American Writing on the Recent Chinese Past'' (1984), pp. 9–55, 97–147.</ref>{{page range too broad|date=September 2021}} The historian James
Polachek argues the reasons for trying to suppress the opium trade had to do with internal factionalism led by a purification-oriented group of literary scholars who paid no attention to the risk of international intervention by much more powerful military forces. Therefore, it was not a matter of inevitable conflict between contrasting worldviews.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Polachek |first=James M. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3-GILbpJUv0C&pg=PA74 |title=The Inner Opium War |publisher=Harvard University Asia Center |year=1992 |isbn=978-0674454460 |pages=73–76, 134–135}}</ref> Lin and the Daoguang Emperor, comments Spence, "seemed to have believed that the citizens of Guangzhou and the foreign traders there had simple, childlike natures that would respond to firm guidance and statements of moral principles set out in simple, clear terms." Neither considered the possibility that the British government would be committed to protecting the smugglers.{{sfn|Spence|1999|pp=152–158}} Polachek argues, based on records of court debate, that growing court awareness that opium addiction in the Guangdong military garrisons, caused by widespread collusion between British smugglers, Chinese smugglers and Chinese officials, had completely impaired their military effectiveness. That left the entire southern flank of the Qing exposed to military threats and was more important in generating opposition to the drug trade than economic reasons. Polachek shows that Lin Zexu and the hardliners (mistakenly) believed that by arresting drug abusers, confiscating the opium supplies and promising to allow the British to continue trading in other goods, they could persuade the British to give up the drug trade without a war.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Polachek |first=James M. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3-GILbpJUv0C&pg=PA74 |title=The Inner Opium War |publisher=Harvard University Asia Center |year=1992 |isbn=978-0674454460 |pages=109, 128–135}}</ref>