Opium, Opium, Opium

The opium trade between Britain and China flipped the tables of global power. Before opium was introduced the the international trading market, China had control. They exported more goods and had more power, and for a while they were impossible to take down. However, China did not have an Industrial Revolution, and soon their ability to help themselves started to crumble, thus making Britain's introduction of opium toxic. The exportation of opium soon earned more money than all of the Chinese exports. Not only did this export beat China's exports economically, but opium had already started to spread throughout China and ruin everything that had previously worked well. Opium is a highly addicted drug, and soon, everyone in China had their hands on it. Formerly good leaders fell under the spell of opium addiction, as did many other people in high power positions. Opium was consequently outlawed, but the damage had already been done. Britain took advantage of the weaken China state and declared war for making their most powerful export illegal. Each one of the Opium Wars severely lowered the amount of power that China had on the rest of the world. With just the exportation of one addicting good, China lost control of the global economy and fell to the hands of a nation they once called barbarians.