Lin Zexu

Lin Zexu was a Qing scholar-official appointed by the Daoguang Emperor to suppress the opium trade at Canton in 1839. He arrested Chinese dealers, pressured foreign merchants and destroyed more than twenty thousand chests of surrendered opium at Humen. Britain used the crisis as the immediate cause of the First Opium War. After early defeats Lin was dismissed and exiled, although he later returned to senior office and became a Chinese symbol of resistance to narcotics and imperial aggression.

Lin is a major historical character in Amitav Ghosh’s Ibis trilogy, especially River of Smoke and Flood of Fire. The novels place his campaign within a network of Indian production, Chinese consumption and British merchant power. Fiction often presents him as morally resolute, but it can also explore the administrative pressure, limited military information and internal Qing debates surrounding his actions.

In non-fiction, Lin Zexu is discussed in Stephen R. Platt’s Imperial Twilight. Stephen R. Platt’s Imperial Twilight approaches the subject through empire, conquest and resistance, exploration, travel and cultural encounter, and political ambition and government.