As someone that has never learned about the Opium wars, I really enjoyed reading the second exploration pack this week. I found myself being shocked by what I read even though Western imperialist bullying is fairly common in ‘modern’ history. Much of the history however that I have read, in the Australian schooling system, about such events has been more concentrated on America’s dominance. Reading such perspective as Tom Standage’s ‘A history of the world in 6 glasses’ and the excerpt from the ‘Opium and Tea’ Chapter I was stunned at just how duplicitous the British government were in their trade interactions with China.
More specifically in reading this chapter I was surprised at the truly Machiavellian nature of ‘The East Indian company’ and the British government in tandem in their setting up of the illicit opium trade. Although a smart idea to offset the rising price of silver with another valuable good, in opium, and to expand the production of it and put in place a network of bribery and intermediaries to support it; trying to understand how such a move by a government would be received today is wild.
Furthermore, as I continued my reading deeper into the chapter reading about the conditions that started the ‘Opium War’ I was shocked to realize that this is how Britain gained control over Hong Kong. This is something that really stuck out to me as my parents were in Hong Kong for the Chinese takeover and I had never realized that such corrupt actions by the British were what had given them control of Hong Kong in the first place. Learning this made me think of why it was that Britain was able to maintain control over Hong Kong for such a long period of time after these details of their involvement in China’s opium problems were so publicly known.
After reading this week’s exploration pack I have become much more interested in the imperialist behavior that Britain showed blatantly during these times. And reflecting now I find it hard to believe that I had overlooked so much of this as Britain had the largest empire that the world had ever seen and were the model from which much of this imperialist behavior, that modern history has seen, was set.
Sources:
Standage, Tom. A History of the World in 6 Glasses. New York: Walker & Co, 2005
