The situation begs the question of what kind of political and social community Qing China was, that a bloody struggle against foreign invaders should for so many become an unmissable opportunity to fleece the government and to dispatch ignorant, untrained members of the populace to almost certain deaths. ‘The whole system of Chinese policy’, noted Pottinger in late November 1841, ‘shows that whatever may be the feelings of the emperor towards his subjects, the mandarins and all the government officers are indifferent to their affairs, further than suits their own purposes.’7
