In 1839, Emperor Daoguang dispatched an official known for his uncompromisingly high moral standards to deal with the scourge. Commissioner Lin Zexu turned his sights away from Chinese drug dealers and addicts and trained them on the Western merchants. He proposed a barter deal, offering to swap tea for opium and a promise to end the traffic. When the Western merchants rejected it, on the afternoon of Monday, March 18, 1839, Lin ringed the foreign ghetto with Qing troops. Hand over all the opium, and legal commerce can resume, he said.
