There is evidently a different spirit among the Chinese now [during the Second Opium War of 1856 to 1858] to what they showed in the [first Opium] [W]ar of 1840 to 1842. Then, the people were quiet; they left the Emperor's soldiers to fight the invaders, and submitted after a defeat with Eastern fatalism to the power of the enemy. But now, at least in the southern provinces, to which the contest has so far been confined, the mass of the people take an active, nay, a fanatical part in the struggle against the foreigners. They poison the bread of the European community at Hong-kong by wholesale, and with the coolest premeditation.[...] They go with hidden arms on board trading steamers, and, when on the journey, massacre the crew and European passengers and seize the boat.
They kidnap and kill every foreigner within reach. The very coolies emigrating to foreign countries rise in mutiny, and as if by concert, on board every emigrant ship, and fight for its possession, and, rather than surrender, go down to the bottom with it, or perish in its flames.The piratical policy of the British Government has caused this universal outbreak of all Chinese against all foreigners, and marked it as a war of extermination.
What is an army to do against a people resorting to such means of warfare?.... Civilization-mongers who threw hot shell on a defenseless city and add rape to murder, may call the system cowardly, barbarous, atrocious; but what matters is it to the Chinese if it be only successful? Since the British treat them as barbarians, they cannot deny to them the full benefit of their barbarism. If theft kidnappings, surprises, midnight massacres are what we call cowardly, the civilization-mongers should not forget that according to their own showing they could not stand against European means of destruction with their ordinary means of warfare.
—Friedrich Engels, "Persia and China," New York Daily Tribune, June 5, 1857
