it's ultimately a story about a vast and historical drug war that no one seems to talk about anymore the china-britain relationship is interesting but i find the early groping toward drug policy much more compelling
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china is currently trying to balance domestic policy with a drug wave against a balance of trade issue exacerbated by currency controls
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britain is trying very hard to respect china's sovereignty and actually making them angry in the process britain doesnt want to act like theyre enforcing british law in a chinese territory (for british traders), china wants them to for the love of god come get your boys
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local british campaigns against opium on social justice grounds came after the slave trade was abolished and the contemporary SJWs had to find something else to do
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people havent figured up drug policy yet but they REALLY didnt have it figured out back then the smart chinese minister wants to legalize and tax opium his opponent wants to kill addicts as deterrance, because "that worked even for the British" (brits did not do this)
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oooh, the emperor just demoted the guy who advocated legalization its on
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jesus chinese drug czar gets pissed at the smugglers and decides to send a message by executing a chinese drug smuggler in front of the British quarter this sparks in a riot, british are besieged until rescued by chinese police
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the british and chinese governments are both against the drug trade the extremely rich anglo smugglers have a goodbye dinner for a guy who's retiring. the guy gives a speech about how the governments are the real smugglers, man
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chinese get fed up with intransigence and literally brick up the british in their housing british trade representative loses it decides to offer to BUY THE DRUGS from the smugglers and give them to the chinese its unclear whether he has the power to make this purchase
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queen victoria briefly becomes the largest opium owner in the world
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loooool the smugglers knew he didnt have authority to make the purchase but they signed it away anyway expecting to be able to sue the government into doing it anyway
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british trade rep has absolutely Cracked after exceeding his authority but basically resolving the crisis with the opium purchase, he writes an insane letter to the foreign office asking them to Destroy China
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british government gets the letter and sees how much the trade rep promised to pay for, apprently it is absolutely breathtaking they decide it would be cheaper to just go to war
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lol british in canton start firing at war junks months before parliament even meets to discuss it this shortly after the drug czar gets permission to kill everyone involved in opium and cuts off water to the english things are escalating quickly
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british SJWs opposing the war lionize the drug czar as a symbol of Progress, activists go on at length about how china is really powerful and the british would be fools to fight such a mighty enemy
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britains parliament drudges up its resident China Expert, everyone expects him to speak against war, he just yeets out and says "naw fuck them chinese" hes mad about the threats of executing smugglers
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what an incredibly stupid mess the six month round trip for messages probably made this possible
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there was an initial attempt at a peace treaty by chinese and british representatives, neither of whom really wanted a war it was FURIOUSLY rejected by both emperor of china and lord palmerston, british foreign secretary, both of whom saw it as too weak for their side sigh
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chinese emperor did not think it was worth a major effort to fight the war and didnt do any large-scale mobilization what on earth was he thinking
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british just absolutely ruin the coasts the war is depressing, demoralizing to the royal navy sailors who mostly find it pathetic and sad to blow up defenseless chinese coastal cities
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eventually the war is won after the whigs are driven from power and the exasperated conservative ministry orders the royal navy to sail up the yangtze and threaten to bombard Nanjing, at which point the Qing capitulate everyone is depressed, mortified about the entire affair
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hilariously and i imagine this is often missed, the war was not fought to make sure they could keep selling china opium they didnt even really expect the trade to survive the smugglers certainly didnt want it legalized in china would cut into their comparative advantage
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meanwhile in the united states the sjws were comparing opium to slavery, while the south was pointing to opium to demonstrate that in comparison slavery wasnt bad at all
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also we completely ate britains trade during the opium war and everyone in china was pissed at them about blowing up their country so the US advantage continued after as a consequence we won without lifting a finger
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afterward we won favorable terms just by bringing some military technology which they had become more interested in but i wonder if chinas weakness was due to not having a civilizational concept of a "technology level" (is this possible?)
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like maybe if you spend a lot of time with consistent technology maybe you don't really consider that other things are not just "different" but "qualitatively superior" i have no idea whether this is true
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apparently the western contemporary conception of the opium war as the west just forcing opium down chinas through was an early 20C chinese nationalist propaganda effort chinese writers didnt associate it with opium until 1910
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