Opium "Treaty"

Before the opium was introduced to China, the emperor and people of China was not dependant on anybody because they had all the resources they needed. After everybody got hooked on opium and there was more demand for it, China actually relied on Britain more than Britain was looking at China for technology and resources. Since opium trading was illegal in the first place, Britain and China were both ignoring the law and when the Chinese realized that everybody, in their once thought as “perfect” kingdom, became addicts and were bringing their economy down. Because it was illegal, many officials of China were corrupt and the imbalance of silver and the amount of opium rushing through China caused major economic problems. With hundreds of addicts and serious economic problems, British saw China was an open target for an invasion. With the Treaty of Nanjing, British instilled many restrictions on the Chinese, which basically made Britain superior in technology (with Industrial Revolution) and power. This story reminds me of how in France, the government was at its top with the monarchy, then in a matter of a few years, hundreds of people were being murdered on the street and the country was tearing itself apart. It relates to China because when it was superior over all the other countries in the world, the small incident of opium overflowing in their state destroyed China while numerous countries all over the world were overwhelming it. This case definitely occurred many times with other countries around the world where one thinks that they are at the top of the world, then taken down in one quick swoop.