War FOR Drugs
Racist mercantilism at its finest. Don't tell The Colonies.
this post was submitted on 21 Apr 2025
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Joining the war on drugs, on the side of drugs
Explanation: In the mid-19th century, the British addiction to the dangerous drug known as 'tea' created a massive trade imbalance with Qing China. No, really. British taste for tea (and porcelain, and silk) caused an immense amount of silver to flow into China. Like any good merchant, the British simply figured out what good Qing China desired in turn in order to rectify this trade imbalance! Unfortunately, China had little interest in allowing British consumer goods into their markets, and Chinese elites had little taste for British artisan goods.
Luckily, the British stumbled on opium as a desirable trade good! And with their control over India, the Brits set to growing opium in massive amounts and flooding China's markets with it!
For obvious reasons, when it became apparent that Britain was becoming the trashiest world empire and basing their trade relations on drug dealing, Qing China was not pleased, and restricted imports to destroy the opium trade, the abundance of which had caused opium addiction to become widespread by the drastic drop in price by the increased supply.
Britain did not like this, and decided war was an acceptable solution to keep drug dealing to the Chinese. They won. Twice. And extorted some exorbitant concessions in addition to guarantees for their drug trade.
yeah, classy pivot that:
brits pioneer and innovate the slave trade to build a world spanning economic engine, then oh, hey, this is kinda repugnant, let's wash our hands of it and PUSH OPIUM BY THE FUCKING SHIPLOAD INSTEAD
goddamn.
rates up there with the word soccer when it comes to silly stupid shit the brits did then bitched about everyone else doing lol
The Brits also spread the imperial measurement system then no thanks, and now they live in a world where they horsepower, stone, and BTU while acting like they make fun of the Yanks for not being on the metric system.
yep.
middle east adventurism too. it's like some bad 80s PSA
FUCK, DAD, WE LEARNED IT BY WATCHING YOU