The East India Company iron steam ship Nemesis, commanded by Lieutenant W. H. Hall, with boats from the Sulphur, Calliope, Larne and Starling, destroying the Chinese war junks in Anson’s Bay, on 7 January 1841 – painted by Edward Duncan on 30 May 1843

(20) OPIUM WARS

Two wars in which China got pawned by European powers – the first Opium War in 1839-1842 saw China defeated by Britain (resulting in Hong Kong being ceded to Britain among other things) and the second Opium War in 1859-1860 was slightly less humiliating for China as at least it got defeated by Britain and France rather than a solo British effort.

The nineteenth century was…not a good century for China, as the commencement of what later became known as the Century of Humiliation by foreign powers. The Qing dynasty, formerly one of the most powerful states in the world and used to styling itself as the Middle Kingdom of the world, now became the punching bag of the new European world powers. Qing China was humbled and humiliated as it was easily defeated by European modern military technology and techniques. Ultimately that dealt the death knell to the Qing dynasty, which crumbled amidst a revolution and civil war that spanned decades.

And it was all pretty sordid by the European powers as well, with the Opium Wars being fought by Britain for free trade – its free trade of opium to China, that is. The Opium Wars saw the first of the so-called Unequal Treaties between China and Western powers – as an impotent China was forced to concede territory, privileges, concessions and reparations to one European power after another in a form of de facto colonization.

De facto colonization, that is, because China was too big for actual colonization by any one European power, particularly as rival European powers were concerned with maintaining a balance between themselves in China. Indeed, the European powers were remarkably cooperative between themselves when it came to their common purpose of pawning China.

Ironically, it was a newly admitted Asian power to the European circle of world power that upset this balance and came closest to colonizing China in the twentieth century – Japan. Although of course this was the final straw of humiliation for China. It was one thing to be humbled by European powers with their new industrial and military technology. It was quite another to be humbled by an upstart smaller Asian neighbor, particularly a former tributary state.

The Opium Wars earn their special mention particularly for my fascination with the interconnection between drugs and war. It is the closest thing to a war fought over drugs like the modern stereotype of wars fought for oil – in this case, a war fought over Britain smuggling opium into China. Beyond that, it is fascinating to think how much of European colonialism (and slavery) was born from the plantation production of drugs – tobacco, coffee and tea. Even more so if you count sugar as a drug.

Of course, modern drug smugglers or cartels tend not to have the force of the world’s largest maritime empire behind them, but often play a role in more low-level war or insurgency as in Colombia. And notoriously, drug smuggling – particularly in cocaine and opium – has often laid beneath the surface of larger modern conflicts.

There is also the use of drugs in war. I’ve read that narcotics have been as much a part of war as bullets and bombs. While that appears to be an overstatement, historically drug use was often sanctioned and encouraged by militaries including alcohol and tobacco in troop rations. Of course, alcohol is something of a law of diminishing returns – what it adds in ‘Dutch courage’, it can often take away in effectiveness, famously as in the Russo-Japanese War on the Russian side.

Nazi Germany was also notorious for drug use in the Second World War, notably for amphetamine use by its armed forces, but also drug use by its leadership. However, stimulants such as cocaine and amphetamine were widely used by belligerents in both World Wars to increase alertness and suppress appetite. Drug use was also notorious in American forces in Vietnam – and has been a feature of other conflicts

And then you have the more trippy use of drugs – the Viking berserkers possibly as a result of agaric “magic” mushrooms, the Assassins named for hashish, even MK-Ultra by the CIA in the Cold War.

RATING: 4 STARS****
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Sadly not an Australian choking an emu with his bare hands – but instead holding an emu killed by Australian solders published by the Land Newspaper on 25 November 1932

(19) EMU WAR

The “war” the Australian army lost to flocks of flightless birds, since immortalised in meme. Although groups of emus are more commonly known as herds – or mobs.

The Australian army was the best in the world, man for man, as it had demonstrated in the First World War, and would demonstrate by stopping the German army at Tobruk and the Japanese army at Kokoda in the Second World War, but it lost to emus in 1932.

Of course, it wasn’t an actual war – the Emu War or Great Emu War was just the humorous tag given to it by the media – but a nuisance wildlife management military operation to curb the population of emus, apparently as many as 20,000, damaging farmland in Western Australia.

And there’s the rub, as the Australian army undertook a task it was not designed for, despite taking to it with machine guns – having seen their effectiveness in the First World War. Unfortunately, the emus didn’t charge at guns like the human soldiers of that war, but evaded or fled from fire.

Calling it a defeat, however, is unfair – the army did kill and wound a substantial number of emus, particularly as their skill at hunting them improved, such that by the end they were killing approximately 100 emus a week, ultimately killing almost 1,000 emus at the rate of ten rounds per confirmed kill, while also claiming 2,500 emus as wounded.

It just wasn’t economic – the emus were difficult to locate in substantial numbers and keep within range as well as scattering and evading pursuit. Even mounting a gun on a truck wasn’t effective – it wasn’t able to gain on fleeing emus and the roughness of ground prevented the gunner from firing.

And so the state and federal governments resisted further calls for military culls (in 1934, 1943 and 1948), resorting instead to the far more effective means of bounties to professional hunters.

So why the special mention amidst actual wars in history?

Well, because it does illustrate a number of themes, some of which are of note or interest for historical wars.

One is humanity’s hubris in waging war on nature, albeit more metaphorically rather than literally, not least in pest or nuisance wildlife management. Interestingly, Australia wasn’t the only nation to be “defeated” waging war against birds. Famously, China waged war against sparrows as part of its Four Pests Campaign to much more disastrous results – as the loss of crops to insects spared from sparrow predation was a contributing factor to the catastrophic famine of the Great Leap Forward.

Another is the military forces of humanity being humbled by the forces of nature in historical wars – most of all weather, which has swept away what have otherwise seemed overwhelming military forces, particularly in war at sea. It also applies to terrain – John Keegan in A History of Warfare notes how terrain (and climate) has been a limiting factor in wars throughout history, such that the majority of battles occur in surprisingly small or narrow territories on a global scale.

Occasionally, those forces of nature have included animals – with two of the most famous occurring in the Second World War, although unfortunately both are somewhat inflated and one almost so apocryphal as to be urban legend. The first involved sharks preying on the sailors from the cruiser Indianapolis when it was sunk by Japanese submarine in July 1945, made famous by iconic narration of it in the film Jaws.

The other involved crocodiles preying on Japanese soldiers trapped in mangroves by the British in the Battle of Ramree Island in Burma from January 1945 to February 1945. At one stage, they were reported to have killed all but twenty of a thousand Japanese soldiers, but sadly for fans of crocodile horror such as myself, this has been discounted to almost the reverse – at most they killed up to twenty soldiers, although they may also have scavenged on the bodies of Japanese soldiers killed by other causes.

Of course, the true unsung champions of animal destruction of human forces at war are insect vectors and the diseases they carry, which have been as effective as hostile weather in wiping out whole armies.

And then you have the theme of humanity’s use of animals in or for war or military operations. Of course, the horse is standout here, but war has seen a whole range of animals used in it – from more commonplace ones such as elephants, camels, donkeys or mules, oxen or cattle, dogs and pigeons, to more exotic animals such as pigs, moose, rats, dolphins, sea lions and others. And then you get to the truly bizarre, such as entomological warfare or animal-borne bombs – with my personal favorite as the American bat bomb project against the Japanese, taking my quip that the Americans fight wars like Batman to a literal extreme

To that you can add wars named for animals, of which there are a surprising number, albeit including similarly non-military conflicts such as the Cod Wars over fishing between the United Kingdom and Iceland, or border conflicts or near-war situations such as the Crab Wars or Pig War – with perhaps the Beaver Wars being the most intense actual wars named for animals.

And finally you have the military approximations from the Emu War itself, particularly for guerrilla war.

As one ornithologist observed, “The machine-gunners’ dreams of point blank fire into serried masses of Emus were soon dissipated. The Emu command had evidently ordered guerrilla tactics, and its unwieldy army soon split up into innumerable small units that made use of the military equipment uneconomic. A crestfallen field force therefore withdrew from the combat area after about a month”

And the commander of the operation, Major Meredith, observed after their withdrawal – ” If we had a military division with the bullet-carrying capacity of these birds it would face any army in the world … They can face machine guns with the invulnerability of tanks. They are like Zulus whom even dum-dum bullets could not stop”.

RATING: 4 STARS****
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