On May 22, 12:38 pm, pgwk > wrote:
> The opium wars actually preceded the India tea industry -- the opium
> largely came from India. The issue was that China would accept payment
> for tea only in silver and would not buy British goods. At one point
> 35% of all the revenues coming into the Exchequer -- the UK equivalent
> of the Treasury Department -- came from the opium trade, which was
> largely led by the missionary families, including what became Jardine
> Mathieson (sp?) the first of the Hong Kong taipans. In the 1840s,
> Indian tea took over -- after decades of efforts to find native bushes
> and propogate them. Slavery had been abolished in the UK in several
> waves, with Earl Grey -- he of all the absurd fictions about "his" tea
> -- one of the great radical leaders of reform for 40 years, but
> mantained in India till, if I recall correctly, 1837. Not a glorious
> period in British history. Interestingly, just as the McCarthy period
> or red-baiting and the suspension of so many rights, including the
> Fifth Amendment, have been kind of airbrushed out of US historical
> memory, as a kid in the UK I never heard of the Opium Wars and I am
> fairly knowledgable about history. The geo-politics of tea are kinda
> interesting. The Opium Wars began the long humiliation of China which
> was at the time the largest economy in the world.

Great summary. The silver imbalance was I think due to tea, silk, and
porcelain going out and nothing going in. The causes of the war were
complex, and cannot be boiled down to British imperialism; again I
would recommend reading a whole book about it. I can't remember the
author of the one I read most recently.

Also I think it's unlikely that late Qing China had the largest
economy in the world on a dollar basis, and I'm not sure that the
Fifth Amendment has been "airbrushed out of US historical memory,"
whatever that means.