Emperor Xianfeng
- sulla80
- Jun 15
- 5 min read
British Trade Deficit and Opium Smuggling
In the 18th century, British demand for Chinese tea, silk, and porcelain soared, but China demanded silver in exchange. This created a chronic trade deficit for Britain. To reverse the flow, British merchants — especially through the British East India Company — began smuggling opium from British-controlled India into China, where it was illegal. By the early 1800s, millions of Chinese were addicted, and silver was now flowing out of China, destabilizing its economy.
Crackdown on Opium & War
The Qing court viewed opium as a moral, social, and economic threat. In 1839, the emperor appointed Commissioner Lin Zexu (林则徐) to eradicate the trade. Lin arrested dealers, confiscated over 20,000 chests of opium (~1,200 tons), and publicly destroyed it at Humen.
Britain, citing loss of property and commercial rights, dispatched gunboats to the Chinese coast. This conflict escalated into the First Opium War (1839–1842) in which superior British naval power overwhelmed Chinese defenses.
Treaty of Nanjing (1842) and “Unequal Treaties”
China was forced to pay a large indemnity, cede Hong Kong to Britain, open five treaty ports, and grant extraterritorial rights to foreigners. These concessions were viewed as humiliating, fueling domestic unrest.
This was the context in which Emperor Xianfeng took the throne. He was almost 19 years old and faced a challenging time of war, famine, and rebellions. The Taiping rebellion that started a few months into his reign, and continued throughout.
Everyday Life during the Xianfeng Reign
China in the mid-19th century was primarily an agrarian economy, but it was embedded in complex systems of taxation, local markets, and informal finance. Most families were smallholder farmers, producing not just for survival but also for sale in local periodic markets (集市) to obtain salt, cloth, tools, or pay taxes. In prosperous regions like Jiangnan or Guangdong, specialized cash crops such as cotton, tea, or silk were cultivated for export or interregional trade. Artisans and merchant guilds (行会) operated in cities and market towns, crafting goods for domestic and, increasingly, foreign demand.
Daily life during the Xianfeng decade was unstable, often brutal, and defined by survival in a time of imperial crisis. For the average Chinese person, especially in the rural majority (about 80–90% of the population), life during the 1850s was one of profound hardship, punctuated by famine, war, displacement, and insecurity.
Peasant families typically practiced subsistence agriculture, growing rice, millet, sorghum, or sweet potatoes depending on the region. In wealthier areas, tenant farming predominated, with peasants owing rent in kind or silver.
During the Taiping and Nian rebellions, entire communities were uprooted or destroyed. Contemporary accounts describe whole towns burned and granaries looted, driving famine and disease. Natural disasters worsened the situation: the Yellow River flooded in 1855, shifting its course and displacing millions. In cities, craftsmen, porters, and vendors eked out livings amid rising food prices and collapsing currency values. Inflation caused by debased coinage and worthless paper notes (Da-Qing Baochao) meant that wages lost purchasing power rapidly.
A Coin from Aqsu
As a Western frontier town in the Tarim Basin, the Aqsu (from turkic for white water) Mint was thousands of kilometers west of the Taiping Rebellion and not involved directly. Its production of high-denomination 10 wén coins during the Xianfeng period was part of a Qing-wide emergency monetary policy driven by the rebellion’s economic impact.
China, copper 10 wen, Qing, Xian-feng, 1851-1861, Tong Bao, Aqsu, DH28.23 rarity level [8]
Obv: 咸豐通寶 - Xian Feng Tong Bao (cross reading)
Rev: (mint) Aqsu - Manchu ᠠᡴᠰᡠ aqsu (left) / Uighur اقسو aqsu (Turkic - right),, 當 十 Dang Shi (value 10) in Chinese - top and bottom
Ref: DH 28.23 (Qing Cash); Zeno 308378
The Taiping Rebellion
The Taiping Rebellion was the largest upheaval of Xianfeng’s reign and one of the bloodiest civil wars in world history. By mid-19th century, China’s population had outstripped the stagnating agrarian economy, leaving millions of peasants impoverished and discontent. Hong Xiuquan, a failed Confucian scholar who embraced a Christian-inspired creed and proclaimed himself the younger brother of Jesus emerged preaching egalitarian ideals. The “Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace” (Taiping Tianguo) promised land redistribution, communal wealth, and an end to Qing miss-rule. Hong galvanized frustrated peasants and ethnic Hakka followers into a large scale revolt against the Manchu Qing rulers.
Outrage at Qing corruption and the recent humiliation by foreign powers (after the Opium War) fueled the Taipings’ anti-Manchu, quasi-Christian movement. Once ignited in 1850-51, the rebellion spread rapidly. By 1853 Taiping forces had seized Nanjing, renaming it Tianjing (“Heavenly Capital”), and established a rival regime. The protracted civil war that ensued (1851-1864) devastated the Qing realm: contemporary estimates of war-related deaths range from 20 to 30 million people, and entire regions were laid waste.
The rebellion destabilized currency. Taiping control of rich southeastern provinces cut off the Qing court’s access to key tax revenues and mints, exacerbating the coin and bullion shortages. The Taiping themselves attempted to mint coins and print notes in areas they held, further muddling the monetary situation. Hyperinflation set in as Qing authorities, desperate to fund their armies, over-issued paper money and debased coin (as noted above).
The Emperor Xianfeng died on August 22, 1861, at the Chengde Mountain Resort (避暑山庄) not in Beijing. Tuberculosis, opium addiction, and the stress of the burning of the Yuanmingyuan (Old Summer Palace) by the Anglo-French forces in 1860 were all contributing factors. Although his 5 year old son suceeded him, it was his widow, Empress Dowager Cixi, who would control China for the next 50 years.
The Qing government eventually defeated the Taiping with great difficulty, relying on regional militia armies (notably Zeng Guofan’s Hunan Army and Li Hongzhang’s Anhui forces) equipped with Western-supplied arms. When Nanjing was recaptured in 1864, not long after the death of Hong Xiuquan, the Qing economy was deeply disarrayed - silver bullion had drained away, fiat notes had collapsed, and trust in cash coinage had declined.
References
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