The Opium War. 1842. British gold medal minted from silver sycees forced upon Qing Dynasty, China by the British after their defeat in the 1st Opium War. 16.1mm 1.97g. In what was one of history's worst case of drug trafficking, the British introduced and smuggled opium to China resulting in mass addiction across the population as a trade commodity in exchange of valuable assets such as silk and tea from China. As China demanded payment in silver for their goods, the British brought in opium instead to limit the inflow of silver to China. When China embarked on a national ban and destroyed large quantities of opium, tensions escalated quickly when large quantities of opium was forced to be handed over to Commisioner Lin Zexu and burned in Canton. British Merchants lobbied for compensations and eventually escalated into full war when a skirmish by a group of intoxicated British merchant sailors beat a villager to death in Kowloon. The British refused to handover the sailors to the authorities as per Chinese law. Events eventually happened leading to the First Opium War with China with western allies thus initiating the first opium war which saw China's humiliating defeat. This marked the beginning and eventual downfall of the Qing Dynasty as well as almost a century of unrest and chaos through the Chinese civil war. This also saw Hong Kong being ceded to the British from China. Amongst one of the conditions of China's defeat was huge compensation to the British in silver. So much was paid that the mint managed to extract enough gold from the silver paid to mint extremely limited numbers of these miniature medals. As silver sycees are very high in Silver purity, the amount of gold extractable is not only extremely small but very costly. Hence not only is this gold medal extremely important and valuable from a historical perspective and lesson, they are also exceedingly rare.
That's a super interesting story behind the medal! Thanks for sharing. I've never heard of using a large amount of silver to produce gold. Is there any estimates on how much silver was taken from the Chinese? And is there a mintage count on these coins?
Thanks.. An article I saw from CNG for another specimen like this around 4 years ago mentioned 21 million dollars in silver. Since the Chinese only traded in silver sycees, it would be worth it's weight in silver. Unfortunately the mintage count for these were not release. So far to my knowledge only 2 specimens were ever offered for auction for the past 5 years at least.
Ah.. I know you.. glad to see you here.. I was pretty active here before I moved to IG. I still do post a copy of my write ups here as well. I love this forum also.
