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The British East India Company, the largest drug trading organization of the 19th century, is to be blamed for most of modern drug trade. It is very likely tha

The British East India Company, the largest drug trading organization of the 19th century, is to be blamed for most of modern drug trade. It is very likely that the opium poppies in modern Mexico are direct descendants of the ones planted by the British. After the British lost their colonies in the Americas, they tried to fix their economy by selling opium to China. A few decades later, many Chinese workers moved to the Americas, among them, opium poppy planters. Few decades later, the US passed the Chinese Exclusion Act and many of them moved to Mexico. Total death toll? millions of people. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgQahGsYokU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgQahGsYokU (animated explanation)

matthewwiese 8y ago
Fascinating. I've always had an amateur historian bent when it comes to drug history, especially that of Papaver somniferum. From writing about laudanum label designs in my design history class to reading Steven Martin's Opium Fiend novel detailing his addiction to smoking opium like they did in the 19th century, I've had a peculiar fascination with this substance's history despite my only actual experience being with morphine before an appendectomy surgery. You seem knowledgeable about the history in this case. Any suggestions for further reading?
- partycoder 8y ago
  I just casually history-related articles online. In this case, deep historic knowledge is not required to arrive to this conclusion. In my case, questions such as: "what happened to the British empire after losing the American revolutionary war?" eventually led me to learn about that.
NeedMoreTea 8y ago
Don't forget to mention that the independent USA tried to compete in the Opium Wars selling middle eastern opium to China.
pbhjpbhj 8y ago
I get that the trade imbalance meant that BEIC/Britain looked for something other than silver to trade. But wasn't Qing (?) China closed? AIUI they traded with Chinese merchants at designated ports, trading opium to get tea. The Chinese then traded the drugs on. Three things that don't make sense to me in the "traditional" telling of "Britain purposefully created opium _addiction_ across China". * One, that opium addiction was a new idea, opium was widely used in Britain. * Two, how did merchants at the ports create demand in the interior, surely they met demand outcompeting local sources on cost and so widening the market. * Three, after Britain was shut out of the trade China seemingly already had a massive local supply. These things tend to make me think that in some measure the Chinese closed the ports in order to prevent cheaper product from supplying an already established and widespread market. And yet, I've read, once that BEIC supply was stopped the Chinese maintained the market with local supply. Are their letters/papers where controllers of BEIC talk about addiction? Did they 'just' look for a large market that they could undercut? It seems more like a tale of amoral merchants (of many nationalities), rather than evil Britain. But I'm from the UK (which does and has done plenty of evil things, selling weapons to the Saudis when we know they're using then to kill civilians, for example). [banter] Of course the British are still addicted to tea, but we diversified our supply somewhat. Having comestibles disposed of in the sea seems like a repeating theme - perhaps the Dutch will sink our potato shipments after Brexit.[/banter]
- stephenhuey 8y ago
  When the emperor banned opium, the British sold it to smugglers. When the Chinese seized 20,000 chests of trafficked opium to stop it from being sold, the British attacked China and made them sign an agreement to buy tons of stuff from the British, including opium. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-36781368 http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-36781368
  - pbhjpbhj 8y ago
    So Britain stopped trading, and traded legally with Chinese people who themselves smuggled the opium ... see to me that sounds like the smugglers are doing the worst thing there? The Chinese seized and destroyed opium from merchants from several countries, Britain sent forces to release merchants, ships, goods and was demanding compensation for the destroyed opium, which compensation they then fought to acquire. If the Emperor/Lin Xehu(sp?) at any time ordered that selling tea to foreigners was illegal(?), then it looks much worse for the outside forces; if not then it looks like balance of trade was a prime motivation on both sides, rather than (im)moral considerations. (https://www.nam.ac.uk/explore/opium-war-1839-1842 https://www.nam.ac.uk/explore/opium-war-1839-1842 https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6304d1/what_caused_the_first_opium_war_ive_read_several/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6304d1/what_... based on other tertiary sources I've read seem like good synopses.)
agumonkey 8y ago
Similar tiny bit of history but in france organized crime, based on the few articles that I've read, it seems that it's old mafias in sicilia then south france that pushed for hashish importation (probably because bank jobs stopped being profitable) and then sold to the nascent urban market in Paris or similar cities. Lots of half educated young immigrants to sell to. side effect: northern africans are now stigamtized for this. ps: the video above is part of this 4 part series https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhyKYa0YJ_5CfNx__nBNXi_0Kl6aFA2Dl https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhyKYa0YJ_5CfNx__nBNX...
megaman22 8y ago
This is all tied together even more closely than that. Consider that from the beginning of the European China trade, the only reliable good that westerners could exchange for silk, tea, porcelain, etc was silver. An enormous fraction of the silver mined in Potosi and Mexico wound up in the hands of Cantonese merchants and Manchu officials eventually, by way of Manilla, Macao and Hong Kong. While Britain lost her colonies in the new world, Spain was facing her own troubles with her colonies, and many of the long productive mines started playing out in addition. So the silver specie supply grew tighter in the 19th century, and more expensive to sustain. Conversely, in China, all this influx of Mexican dollars was distorting the currency - there was a bimetallic system where ordinary coinage was used everyday, but silver bullion or ingots were used for larger transactions, like taxes, set in so many ounces of silver. The cash price of silver floated on the market rate, and farmers changed cash or produce for silver to pay taxes. All that silver made silver cheap, right until the start of the opium trade. Then the flows reversed, and China became an exporter of silver. Tax rates set in silver remained the same, however, while the exchange rate became increasingly expensive. This impoverished many Chinese small farmers, and Manchu banner garrisons, and contributed to the waves of revolt that nearly tore the Qing state apart, most notably the Taiping Rebellion.

matthewwiese 8y ago

Fascinating. I've always had an amateur historian bent when it comes to drug history, especially that of Papaver somniferum. From writing about laudanum label designs in my design history class to reading Steven Martin's Opium Fiend novel detailing his addiction to smoking opium like they did in the 19th century, I've had a peculiar fascination with this substance's history despite my only actual experience being with morphine before an appendectomy surgery. You seem knowledgeable about the history in this case. Any suggestions for further reading?

partycoder 8y ago
I just casually history-related articles online. In this case, deep historic knowledge is not required to arrive to this conclusion. In my case, questions such as: "what happened to the British empire after losing the American revolutionary war?" eventually led me to learn about that.

NeedMoreTea 8y ago

Don't forget to mention that the independent USA tried to compete in the Opium Wars selling middle eastern opium to China.

pbhjpbhj 8y ago

I get that the trade imbalance meant that BEIC/Britain looked for something other than silver to trade. But wasn't Qing (?) China closed? AIUI they traded with Chinese merchants at designated ports, trading opium to get tea. The Chinese then traded the drugs on. Three things that don't make sense to me in the "traditional" telling of "Britain purposefully created opium _addiction_ across China". * One, that opium addiction was a new idea, opium was widely used in Britain. * Two, how did merchants at the ports create demand in the interior, surely they met demand outcompeting local sources on cost and so widening the market. * Three, after Britain was shut out of the trade China seemingly already had a massive local supply. These things tend to make me think that in some measure the Chinese closed the ports in order to prevent cheaper product from supplying an already established and widespread market. And yet, I've read, once that BEIC supply was stopped the Chinese maintained the market with local supply. Are their letters/papers where controllers of BEIC talk about addiction? Did they 'just' look for a large market that they could undercut? It seems more like a tale of amoral merchants (of many nationalities), rather than evil Britain. But I'm from the UK (which does and has done plenty of evil things, selling weapons to the Saudis when we know they're using then to kill civilians, for example). [banter] Of course the British are still addicted to tea, but we diversified our supply somewhat. Having comestibles disposed of in the sea seems like a repeating theme - perhaps the Dutch will sink our potato shipments after Brexit.[/banter]

stephenhuey 8y ago
When the emperor banned opium, the British sold it to smugglers. When the Chinese seized 20,000 chests of trafficked opium to stop it from being sold, the British attacked China and made them sign an agreement to buy tons of stuff from the British, including opium. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-36781368 http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-36781368
- pbhjpbhj 8y ago
  So Britain stopped trading, and traded legally with Chinese people who themselves smuggled the opium ... see to me that sounds like the smugglers are doing the worst thing there? The Chinese seized and destroyed opium from merchants from several countries, Britain sent forces to release merchants, ships, goods and was demanding compensation for the destroyed opium, which compensation they then fought to acquire. If the Emperor/Lin Xehu(sp?) at any time ordered that selling tea to foreigners was illegal(?), then it looks much worse for the outside forces; if not then it looks like balance of trade was a prime motivation on both sides, rather than (im)moral considerations. (https://www.nam.ac.uk/explore/opium-war-1839-1842 https://www.nam.ac.uk/explore/opium-war-1839-1842 https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6304d1/what_caused_the_first_opium_war_ive_read_several/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6304d1/what_... based on other tertiary sources I've read seem like good synopses.)

agumonkey 8y ago

Similar tiny bit of history but in france organized crime, based on the few articles that I've read, it seems that it's old mafias in sicilia then south france that pushed for hashish importation (probably because bank jobs stopped being profitable) and then sold to the nascent urban market in Paris or similar cities. Lots of half educated young immigrants to sell to. side effect: northern africans are now stigamtized for this. ps: the video above is part of this 4 part series https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhyKYa0YJ_5CfNx__nBNXi_0Kl6aFA2Dl https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhyKYa0YJ_5CfNx__nBNX...

megaman22 8y ago

This is all tied together even more closely than that. Consider that from the beginning of the European China trade, the only reliable good that westerners could exchange for silk, tea, porcelain, etc was silver. An enormous fraction of the silver mined in Potosi and Mexico wound up in the hands of Cantonese merchants and Manchu officials eventually, by way of Manilla, Macao and Hong Kong. While Britain lost her colonies in the new world, Spain was facing her own troubles with her colonies, and many of the long productive mines started playing out in addition. So the silver specie supply grew tighter in the 19th century, and more expensive to sustain. Conversely, in China, all this influx of Mexican dollars was distorting the currency - there was a bimetallic system where ordinary coinage was used everyday, but silver bullion or ingots were used for larger transactions, like taxes, set in so many ounces of silver. The cash price of silver floated on the market rate, and farmers changed cash or produce for silver to pay taxes. All that silver made silver cheap, right until the start of the opium trade. Then the flows reversed, and China became an exporter of silver. Tax rates set in silver remained the same, however, while the exchange rate became increasingly expensive. This impoverished many Chinese small farmers, and Manchu banner garrisons, and contributed to the waves of revolt that nearly tore the Qing state apart, most notably the Taiping Rebellion.