Monday, January 11, 2010
Trade Between China and Britain
In the 19th century China and Britain's relationship weakened as the Chinese got more and more addicted to opium. The British saw this and they sent more opium to China and were able to get a lot of money from the Chinese. The Chinese couldn't live without the opium and the British manipulated this weakness. They exported 32 million spanish dollars worth of opium and cotton and other goods to china, while only importing 23 million spanish dollars of chinese goods. With this trend, the Chinese kept losing money to the British. This is sort of like the ottoman empire controlling trade near the Mediterranean. There really wasn't any other alternative so there was a dependence on trade with the ottomans to get what they wanted. In China, the people were so addicted to opium and there wasn't any other alternative but trade with the British. This is sort of like the US and Saudi Arabia because we are very dependent on foreign oil. The US gets a lot of oil from other countries, mainly Saudi Arabia, and without them, the US wouldn't be able to function like it does today.
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This is an awesome post with a lot of information in it. I agree that Britain's role in the opium trade was almost purposefully malicious. Either they were addicting the Chinese for their own ends, or they simply didn't care about how the opium would affect the Chinese people. I loved that you drew so many parallels from this situation to other times. It is wholly true that so many other international reltionships have similarly addictive qualities.
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