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Being poetic about it, silk was effectively wielded as an economic weapon against the British empire to the point they retaliated with opium (flooding a foreign
by jazzyjackson 2y ago
Being poetic about it, silk was effectively wielded as an economic weapon against the British empire to the point they retaliated with opium (flooding a foreign market with cheap drugs is surely an act of subterfuge if not war, so who's to say it has to have a pointy end to be a weapon?)
- Sabinus 2y agoReminds me of how the settled peoples of Europe, the Middle East and Asia eventually worked out the nomads would definitely raid you if you didn't make your settled-people-goods available for trade.
- wqaatwt 2y ago> silk was effectively wielded as an economic weapon Wasn’t most of the silk used in Europe produced in Italy and France, though? Added together they weren’t that far off from China (which also had a huge domestic market). India was also a major exporter so clearly Britain had the option to expand “domestic” production or buy more silk from Italy (importing from China was presumably just cheaper). European silk production collapsed in 1849 due to some still not well understood disease but that was quite some time after the first Opium War.