sethnintendo said:
One thing I love about the British Empire was the Opium Wars. Chinese were like no we are done with this opium stop selling it to us. The British come in like a crazed drug dealer and say no your going to fucking keep buying this opium and your going to like it. Oh and we'll take Hong Kong.
"In the 17th and 18th centuries demand for Chinese goods (particularly silk, porcelain, and tea) in the European market created a trade imbalance between Qing Imperial China and Great Britain. European silver flowed into China when the Canton System, instituted in the mid-18th century, confined the sea trade to Canton and the Chinese merchants of the Thirteen Factories. The British East India Company sought to strengthen trading influence in Asia, and began to auction opium grown on its plantations in India to independent foreign traders in exchange for silver. The opium was then transported to the Chinese coast and sold to local middlemen who retailed the drug inside China. This reversed the flow of silver and increased the numbers of opium addicts in China, an outcome that worried Chinese officials." |
I remember telling a friend all about this a few years ago. Well, as much as I knew about it anyway. It was pretty high up on the evil scale, but a fascinating play.
- "If you have the heart of a true winner, you can always get more pissed off than some other asshole."
