meeting now a fellow named Manning who studied math at Cambridge and was expelled for refusing to take tests. hangs out with Coleridge and Wordsworth he gets captured by Napoleon and escapes, having set his mind on exploring China for some reason. decides to smuggle himself in
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doing some side reading the Qianlong Emperor whose reign the author praises was known as an effective genocidist in Xinjiang and Tibet curious the author never mentions this very curious also apparently the Chinese state exterminating conquered asiatic peoples is lindypic.twitter.com/3j3Tt8hWww
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one thing I think about a lot that other people don't seem to is that genocide is actually something close to a human norm throughout history and maybe you should include that as a local tail risk
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lol the War of 1812 spilled over to Canton royal navy ships tried to capture american privateers who captured british merchant ships chinese did not find this amusing but the anglos didnt stop they liked the game too much
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just listened to the story of the disastrous Amherst mission to Peking it was quite painful everyone was so fucking bad at diplomacy, cringe the whole way through they actually ended up shooting at each other for no clear reason then were too embarrassed to mention it later
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meanwhile the americans who were not laboring under a needless monopoly were just eating the local trade and vibing
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uh also we were selling vast quantities of drugs
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author is giving an overview of chinas opium culture and so far hes inadvertently making a really good case against chinas ban on opium and against western culpability in any way regardless not sure whether this is deliberate
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and now women are Causing Troublehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harriet_Low …
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ok so basically the chinese banned western women from canton, and then the local director of the EIC brought his wife in and paraded her around in public everyone groaned they asked him to please for the love of god send her back to macau he threatened to land troops
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the EIC director eventually backed down but wrote back to England asking parliament to launch an invasion to avenge this slight to their credit parliament laughed his request out of its halls but still good god CALM DOWN DUDE
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