Book Review : Waging a Newspaper War Amid China’s Opium Wars

An Insular Possession by Timothy Mo (Random House: $19.95)

“An Insular Possession” is a fictionalized account of the 1830s’ opium wars in China. With the events taking place in Canton and Macao as a backdrop, the book follows the lives of two American traders opposed to the flourishing drug business but caught up in the trade triangle of tea, silver and opium.

Both men work for the Meridian & Co. trading house and are at odds with their European colleagues over opium as a trading commodity. The Americans, it seems, find their business sufficiently profitable without resorting to trading in drugs.

The men become increasingly distraught over the escalating flow of opium into China and its effect on the natives. The crisis comes when Meridian announces that to survive economically, it too will have to trade in drugs.

Men Are Close

The men are very close. When the older one, Walter Eastman, decides to quit the trading house and set up his own newspaper, the younger, Gideon Chase (a character based on the real-life Prof. Gideon Chase, an early Sinologist and writer) eagerly joins him as editor. Their rival is The Monitor, the longtime voice of Canton, whose opinions and editorial slant they rarely agree with. The two base themselves in Macao where, with help from Harry O’Rourke (also based on a real-life character, Augustine Henry O’Rourke, an Irish artist who spent much of his life in India and China), they bring to life an ancient press and give birth to the Lin Tin Bulletin and River Bee.

From this point on, much of the story is told in the form of excerpts from the two competing papers--The Monitor and the Lin Tin Bulletin and River Bee--often reporting the same stories in total disagreement as to facts and conclusions drawn from the actions reported. Much of the book is devoted to descriptions of the numerous battles between the British and the Chinese after the Chinese lay siege to Canton and demand surrender of the opium stocks held there by the foreigners. These are finally turned over to a certain Commissioner Lin at a considerable loss to the foreign traders. The ensuing battles are, in part, an attempt to cover these losses and to reinstitute the foreigners’ major means of barter with the Chinese.

The strategies employed by the British, in particular those of Capt. Charles Elliott, are questioned in the narrative and the newspaper “excerpts.” He is deemed too lenient with the Chinese, to the displeasure of his men, the colonists and the home government, which ultimately sends in a replacement.

Gideon, who has been surreptitiously and quite successfully learning Chinese, is enlisted by the British to serve as translator for Capt. Elliott on his forays against the Chinese. Eastman, meanwhile, has all but given up on his former interest in art, under the tutelage of the old master O’Rourke, and has “invented” the camera!

When the Chinese finally rebel and oust all foreigners from Canton, the reader is treated to an account of the founding of the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong, whose harbor provides shelter for the refugees while the British regroup. Again, our two American heroes figure prominently. The recall of Capt. Elliott and the early days of the settling of Hong Kong form the backdrop for the conclusion of the novel.

Facts and History

“An Insular Possession” is full of facts and history and written in a rather archaic language. While the first half of the book deals mainly with character study and explores the social lives of its main characters, the latter half is devoted mainly to the struggles of the British in their battles with the Chinese over the opium trade, giving us only glimpses of the characters’ lives through these times, and then mainly through the newspaper stories and correspondence.

Though rich in detail to this point, the book leaves the outcome of the opium wars dangling in the reader’s mind, with no hint as to the significance of the settlement at Hong Kong. The book seems to require a sequel; and this reader, for one, wonders whether the sequel may not already be in the works.