China. The British East India Company had been flooding China with opium for years as payment for Chinese goods, opium that was smoked by the Chinese, often mixed with tobacco. In 1800, the Qing Emperor took action and banned the import and production of opium, but it was too late. In 1813, prohibition extended to opium consumption. Then, in 1839, Lin Zexu, the High Commissioner for Drugs, wrote to the British Crown to ask for understanding, but the opium trade was too lucrative, and among other things, it brought back to England tons of silver used by the Chinese to pay for opium (silver that had previously been used by the English to pay for silk, tea, and porcelain). This would culminate in the Opium War, with the first English ships setting sail in 1840, and would end with the Treaty of Nanking in 1842. A Second Opium War would follow from 1856 to 1860, after which the whole of China would become a land of commercial conquest for foreign powers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
China. The British East India Company had been flooding China with opium for years as…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-619812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-vg-en"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n