TIL Queen Victoria Was History's Top Drug Dealer
"Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who's the biggest drug dealer of them all?"
"You are, Queen Victoria."
She was a mighty kingpin of dope, the most profitable kind of dope: opium.
Great Britain exported opium from India and sold it to China to buy luxuries that westerners wanted, such as silk, porcelain, teas, spices, etc. They needed the cash inflow for the cash outflow, otherwise they would have gone bankrupt to sustain their appetites.
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Opium in China
That's a lot of opium use, but as the graph shows, it wasn't always used heavily at all.
Opium wasn't always desired, even when it was first introduced in the 7th century as a relief for pain or tension. Later, in the 17th century, did opium become used in larger quantities when tobacco use spread from North America to China and smoking opium was adopted to the practice. Opium addiction increased, and imports increased as a result.
After nearly a century of use, the problem grew to such an extent that the Yongzheng emperor prohibited the sale and smoking of Opium in 1729. The trade still continued. In 1796, the Jiaqing emperor outlawed opium important and cultivation. Still, the opium trade grew.
The Portuguese first found out about the middle man profit in selling Indian opium to China. Britain soon followed in 1773 and become the top supplier of opium to the Chinese market.
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The War
All the buying up of luxurious goods from China, required silver to be paid as the only accepted payment. Britain was running out of sterling, and this was inflating trading costs all around. Getting in on the highly profitable cheap drug trade ensured the British would have a steady inflow of money to poor back into China for buying luxury items. The Chinese were hooked on opium, and the British loved it. It was their cash cow. Without it, they would have no cash flow coming into to pay for all the things they were buying up.
The East India Company became a very rich enterprise, dealing the trades out to country traders that would not implicate the company directly in selling opium to China. This corporation, Britain's largest, was under the protection of the Crown, and could almost do anything it wanted.
China kept trying to get the West to stop selling opium, it knew who was behind all of this. The country was falling apart, with drug use running into government and military operations. The Qing dynasty tried to enforce more opium restrictions, and this led to two conflicts with the West known as the Opium Wars. All this exploitation, control, and war, just for money, luxury and wealth. At the end of the second war, losing again, the Chinese rulers were forced to legalize opium.
Not only did Britain want to dictate that another country allow them to flood their country with addictive drugs that destroy lives, but they had the added hypocrisy of having outlawed opium in in Britain. The only reason they were forcing China to allow opium, while they banned it themselves, was for money.
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A Chinese court official Lin Zexu even wrote to Queen Victoria and told her:
“By what principle of reason should foreigners send a poisonous drug, which involves in destruction those very natives of China? We have heard that in your own country opium is prohibited with the utmost strictness and severity – this is a strong proof that you know full well how hurtful it is to mankind.”
Turning people into junkies wasn't a reality the queen wanted other people to know about. And being called out on it made an enemy out of Lin Zexu.
Receiving no response, Lin Zexu burned up 20,000 chests equaling 1,400 tons of opium. The Queen responded by sending 16 battleships to sink China's old fleet, and sparked the beginning of the infamous Opium Wars. A pompous overly egoistic dominator just wanted things her way, and when things didn't go her way she waved her hand and ordered people to go murder others.
After the battle, and the trade legalized, Hong Kong was in the hands of the Brits. This is how Hong Kong stayed a British commonwealth state into the 1990s. It all traces back to the Opium Wars and the biggest drug dealer of them all: Queen Victoria. Taking the population size of China and the drug use at the time makes the Queen the largest drug dealer compared to those ratios now.
Conquering and dominating other people is so nasty, yet is such as huge part of the history of humanity. We are still stuck in this mindset. When are we going to grow up? When we seek truth and morality in our lives and learn more about their importance. The people continue to let themselves be led as pawns in a game, ready to be sacrificed in conflict after conflict.
Thank you for your time and attention! I appreciate the knowledge reaching more people. Take care. Peace.
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@krnel
2016-12-08, 5pm
From what I've read about good Queen Vicki...these might have been some of her better points! Great post!!!
Nice history lesson. Interestingly, the early history of LSD has some parallels. The CIA didn't profit from selling it, but they did push it hard when it was legal. One example: Ken Kesey, the founder of the Merry Pranksters, was "turned on" to LSD by participating in an MK-ULTRA experiment.
I'm not so sure they didn't find a way to profit from LSD...They had their fingers in several drug pies! It's how they financed their operations!
Good point...
Great post! I've thought about the opium wars often as I hear many working to remove all drug prohibitions. I lean way further towards the anarchist side of things and believe every rational individual should be in charge of their own bodies and what they put in them. Unfortunately, not everyone is a rational individual. I'm hopeful something like this couldn't happen today, but maybe that's wishful thinking. Maybe open access to any and all mind-altering substances isn't a good thing. Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
That said, it's not like government can stop this. I remember hearing the emperor was an opium addict even while he was making it illegal for others to use. Maybe instead of rulers trying to protect people from themselves, we can all level up and take personal responsibility. From there, we can hopefully help those who can't help themselves. Using the veil of ignorance, we can hopefully make moral decisions on how to do that in ways which we'll be thanked for later.
Hehe yup. Thanks for the feedback. Did you mean "level up" instead of "level of"? Or off?
Ah yes, level up. Edited. Thanks. :)
Great post! The Opium Wars also paved the way for the establishment of HSBC. I'm resteeming!
Grr... Every day the same happens. While I have a break at work I glance on steemit and break because I need to read every of your brilliant articles. Keep up the good work!
LOL! Thank you very much for the kind words! Glad I can captivate your attention and inject some knowledge. :)
This is how Bayer made a name for themselves. Awesome post.
Great points. It is interesting that so few people still don't know about the Opium wars.
Yup. History, the more we go forward, the more of it there is, and the less time people have to learn bout it... hehe.
Lol.
Thank you for this post. I was not aware of this, and this is good and useful information for some of my discussions. If I were to post a TIL today it would be because of this TIL you posted. So I can't rightly do that.
Good post. Thanks.
LOL! Sweet! I'm glad when people learn from info I put out :D Thanks for the feedback.
I often bring up Prohibition and how politicians learned how much money they could make by banning things. Kennedys made their wealth that way. So War on Drugs, Banning Guns, and Banning anything for that matter take on an entirely new perspective with such information.
Your TIL let's me go back to before Prohibition and while I am a big history buff I did never really dig into this so was unaware of it. Though I knew Opium was a big deal I never really dug into it.
I do know that once we invaded Afghanistan which is one of the largest producers of such things in the world they suddenly had record production. You would think if we were truly doing a War On Drugs it would have been reduced rather than INCREASED by the presence of our troops.
Check out the link to the Dope Inc. from @freebornangel. It deals a lot with the opium wars and power.
http://www.lyndonlarouche.org/dope1.pdf
I will... thanks.
A joke post would be TIAL tagged.... Today I ALSO Learned... :P
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Today smells like karma. "London property investment originating from Hong Kong and China has risen to US$2.5bln so far this year, according to property consultants JLL." Looks like the dragon's on a shopping spree.