Chasing the Dragon: The British Empire, India & China.
The British Empire was infamously the most vast in history. By 1920 it governed 24% of the Earth's total landmass and a quarter of all people alive. Principally, the thing existed to ensure trade, make money, secure territory with access to certain commodities or natural ports.
In the 1600s tea arrived in Europe, a flavourful alternative to dangerous unboiled water, or alcohol. Britain secured numerous Caribbean colonies to produce sugar for the nation and between 1720 and 1750 black tea imports through the East India Company quadrupled. Business was booming, but there was a problem.
The public were demanding vast quantities of tea from the East India Company, which it procured from China, where there was little interest in European exports. The only acceptable currency was silver bullion, which faced a dangerous voyage from Britain, going around Africa through notoriously bad waters. Whether the silver got there or not, a deficit was building, with China profiting from Britain’s demand for tea.
In China opium use had been on the rise, something the Dutch East Indies Trading Co. encouraged. With the Battle of Plassey in 1757, Britain annexed the Bengal Presidency to its empire, securing east India. Accordingly, the East India Company inherited a monopoly on opium production. With the company £28 million in debt, as a result of the Indian war and British tea demands, they began auctions of opium in Calcutta - now Kolkata. As indigenous production of opium began to emerge in Malwa, west India, the East India Company’s monopoly was threatened, so Britain took control of India entire.
Chinese law banned the import of opium, forcing the East India Company to get creative. British merchants would buy tea in Canton (now Guangzhou) - China - on credit, then go back to India and sell Opium in Calcutta, then back to China to pay off their debts. British ships would smuggle opium into China where local merchants sold it on. The trade grew quickly and over time the East India Company became less subtle as the distant Qing government in Beijing held little authority.
More and more annoyed, the Qing government ultimately sent forces to destroy stocks of foreign opium firms in their factories. British traders demanded compensation from their home government, so British authorities sent expeditionary forces from India and forced a settlement. Chinese tariffs were fixed at a low rate, Hong Kong was ceded to Britain and the East India Company gained effective monopoly on the Chinese opium trade.
All sounds well, but Britain was now paying enormous sums to administrate in India, Singapore and Hong Kong, it was still importing huge quantities of tea and all was being offset only by the opium trade, which had prompted two wars. Opinion began to change in British politics by the 1800s, through humanitarian and financial logic. All told, the whole thing was still operating at a deficit, and they’d created an enduring social problem for China.
Britain had brought India into the Empire, hoping the sale of opium would offset the cost of her hunger for tea. They’d been wrong, in opium they were chasing the dragon.