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History of the Opium War: 1840-1842

History of the Opium War: 1840-1842

Opium War is mainly about the trade triangle of Great Britain, India, and China. The book goes in great detail on how opium was extracted, produced, and traded to china from India. Great Britain was in control of India as a colony. Using its villages as opium plants, India traded the drug to china for tea. Tea was consumed by the English heavily. Therefore trade to the Chinese was important for economic and social circumstances. It also had a political element in it. This is because opium allowed to open china up for its resources. Thus political powers can influence its power onto the East gaining significant commerical privileges and territory

The book goes into the geography of china and India. It describes how India’s villages cultivated the poppy seed which later opium was extracted. From there it was prepared for overseas trade to China. Then book explains the western powers saw china as the pearl of the world because of its vast amount of natural resources, but thought the Chinese as barbarians. So to managed them, the East Indian Company established a monopoly of opium. By doing so a market was created through addiction. Next the opium traffic was described. It was traded freely in the markets of china, but later it had to be smuggled. This is because china didn’t want a drugged society, so it was not tolerated anymore. Then later, the East Indian Company, sponsored by the British, lost its monopoly because China closed its doors to the outsiders “evil“ . However the need of opium was to great to be ignored economically, and to the addicts of china.

Christ and opium is the next part of the book explores. It goes into how an Englishman, Napier, was assigned to open china’s ports and diplomatic relationships back through any necessary means. He was not welcome though, so he “died“. However the missionary had more success. The Protestants and Catholics tried to “civilize” the barbarians through the word of God. Yet the government of China saw that its people were still consuming vast amounts of the drug. Peking decided to eradicate it through severe punishments, but had limited success because the addiction was so great. Next Lin and twenty thousand chests of opium was known worldwide. Lin took away the opium traffic in china harbors of twenty thousand chest which the...

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