Foreign Mud

Foreign Mud (1946) is Maurice Collis’s vivid historical account of the opium crisis at Canton in the 1830s and the conflict that became the First Opium War (1839-1842). Drawing on official correspondence and contemporary records, Collis reconstructs the mounting tensions between British merchants, the East India Company’s interests, and Qing imperial authorities determined to suppress the destructive opium trade.

Central to the narrative is the clash between Commissioner Lin Zexu’s moral campaign against opium and Britain’s insistence on commercial rights and diplomatic recognition. Collis portrays the cultural misunderstandings, economic pressures, and political arrogance that propelled the two powers toward war.

Written with clarity and restrained irony, the book criticizes imperial policy while maintaining narrative drive. Foreign Mud remains an influential mid-twentieth-century study of the origins of Anglo-Chinese conflict and the wider consequences of the opium trade.