“Almost all the great popular sports of the world come from Britain. But what Britain has not been able to export is the amateur ethos of the game. Most foreigners, and now many Britons, want to win at any cost within the rules; and they keep to the rules only because a game without rules is war.” – John Fowles, The Aristos, 9:68
Did China come to England to force tea to the British? Silver and gold back then were the medium as was the barter system. England didn’t have anything to offer back then other than gold and silver. Cotton was not of good quality either. So British didnt have any for barter either
In addition Britain didn’t cultivate opium . It forced Bengal farmers to switch to opium,
Britain came to do business . China didn’t invite them.
May be Britain should allow Taliban to buy coal,north sea gas,Buckingham marbles and gold in exchange of opium . At least opium is produced by Afghanistan. Tit for tat.
The Maharaja that bought all those rolls royces and used them for garbage collection did so because the Royce company previously sold him a lemon and he didn’t get satisfaction from them. So he showed them by his actions!
Well, let’s start at the beginning.
Q. Why did the British want to make opium addicts out of the Chinese?
A. Because the Chinese, as addicts, had to buy opium from the British for which the British would accept only Silver as payment.
Q. Why would the British accept only Silver as payment for Opium?
A. Because the British were running a huge trade deficit with China and were themselves running out of Silver reserves.
Q. Why were the British running out of Silver?
A. Because the Emperor of China had decreed that the British must pay for Tea with Silver and China had a monopoly on the production of Tea to which the British had become addicted and because the Emperor of China refused to open markets to the trade of anything else that could offset British import of Tea.
Conclusion; the British were playing tit for tat with the Emperor. If he would only accept Silver for Tea then they would only accept Silver for Opium.
Incidently, the Chinese monopoly on Tea was ruthlessly enforced by the Emperor, the death penalty given to anyone providing live plants to outsiders. Finally, the British managed to have a number of plants smuggled out which they then took to India and Ceylon where they were successfully propagated and thereby broke the Chinese monopoly.
Moral of the Story; history is far more interesting than the litany of oppression and exploitation that are standard fare of typical Marxist’s accounts.