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Typo posted:That's my point though: the Qing wasn't very oppressive towards -minorities-, they were an apartheid elite who were oppressive towards majorities. Uhhh, they were oppressive towards the majority and every minority that wasn't them.
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Aug 23, 2015 17:10
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Sucrose posted:By that you mean the abolition of the slave trade right? The importance of the sugar colonies to the British Empire (and even to the overall global production of sugar, which was shifting to sugar beets) had definitely declined by the 1830s, unless everything I've read about the subject has been wrong. The way I heard it, it was the inability to import more slaves after 1806 that seriously reduced profitability in the Caribbean, as that form of slavery basically required a steady new supply of slaves to replace dead ones, since slave populations on sugar cane plantations had negative growth rates. Yes. Solid poster handle post combination. The point is to claim that slavery was abolished because slaves (and the support system for them) were economically ineffective has been totally dismantled in historiography on the subject w/r/t to sugar colonies but also in the American example (where the system adapted to treat slaves much more like prime economic assets/precious work animals) and the slaves were generally fed enormously high protein diets and encouraged to reproduce at the biological limit of possibility, and where slaves were consistently more productive and innovative as well as more profitable than comparable free labour.
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Aug 23, 2015 17:42
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Disinterested posted:Yes. Any recommendations for up-to-date reading on this subject? I argued in favor of moral abolitionism in my undergrad dissertation but have forgotten all about it.
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Aug 23, 2015 19:45
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on the left posted:Whoa whoa whoa, selling drugs? Britain should be praised for forcing progressive policies of drug legalization on the Chinese. George W Bush hosed up, if he had pointed to Saddam's draconian anti-drug laws instead of imaginary WMDs, the liberals would have had to get on board with the war and America wouldn't have been stabbed in the back 
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Aug 24, 2015 01:11
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VitalSigns posted:George W Bush hosed up, if he had pointed to Saddam's draconian anti-drug laws instead of imaginary WMDs, the liberals would have had to get on board with the war and America wouldn't have been stabbed in the back The British saw the entire thing in terms of free trade ( ), and objected to the destruction of property and the imprisonment of merchants without trial. They especially objected to the raiding of vessels that weren't even in port, and the destruction of things that weren't even opium, also the denial of access to any diplomatic channels for foreigners. The Qing Dynasty weren't good at making friends.In hindsight, the Anglo-Chinese War got folded into the later aggressions against China by Britain and other imperial powers, and was painted in that way during the upsurge in Chinese nationalism in the early 20th century. John Quincy Adams, as an outside observer long prior to US involvement in the second conflict, said that "opium is a mere incident to the dispute, but no more the cause of the war than the throwing overboard of tea in Boston harbor was the cause of the North American revolution ... the cause of the war is the kowtow – the arrogant and insupportable retensions of China that she will hold commercial intercourse with the rest of mankind not upon terms of equal reciprocity, but upon the insulting and degrading forms of the relations between lord and vassal." The treaty from the first Anglo-Chinese War did not mention opium in a single word. The prohibitionist discourse from the Qing Court was used to keep agitating against the devious foreign devils, and later on the Christian missionaries decided that it was opium and liquor that was keeping the Chinese from Christ and picked up that line of thought, taking parts of it to stir the pot back home with in the form of Western prohibition movements. Again, in summary: Fojar38 posted:Also need to remember that Imperial China was crazy arrogant as gently caress and a clash at some point was probably inevitable simply due to that fact. There are volumes of examples of imperial dickery that can be leveled against the British Empire, including a lot of those later aggressions, but the phrasing of the First Anglo-Chinese War in terms of  is mostly an invention of Qing prohibitionists who used it as a channel of the Emperor's arrogance towards everyone that wasn't him (and his own minority aristocratic group) that has been co-opted by later prohibitionists for advancing their agenda.
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Aug 24, 2015 02:03
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Disinterested posted:Yes. Oh, I'm not trying to argue that it was unprofitable, just that, from what I've read, it was less profitable than it had been a half-century before, and even less important overall to the trade of the British empire. quote:Opium Wars I don't think you can go so far as to write this off as "not imperialism," though, after all the Chinese had the "right" to control their own trade, even if they acted like utter dicks about it.
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Aug 24, 2015 03:58
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Yeah, like, I don't think that "their rulers are jerks" is a sufficient justification for attacking another country in order to get them to trade with you, and especially not when you're conducting the biggest drug running operation in human history, causing untold harm and misery to the people of said country.
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Aug 24, 2015 10:04
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Cerebral Bore posted:Yeah, like, I don't think that "their rulers are jerks" is a sufficient justification for attacking another country in order to get them to trade with you, Cerebral Bore posted:and especially not when you're conducting the biggest drug running operation in human history, causing untold harm and misery to the people of said country. tl;dr: Qing Emperors huge manbabies. Prohibitionists lied, continue to lie, to make everything about them.
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Aug 24, 2015 13:03
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Guavanaut posted:There are volumes of examples of imperial dickery that can be leveled against the British Empire, including a lot of those later aggressions, but the phrasing of the First Anglo-Chinese War in terms of I'm sorry, are we complaining about the Qing emperor's arrogance toward people who refused to bow to him as per custom because they thought good old Britain was a way better empire than China could ever be? The lack of respect was absolutely mutual, and constant British attempts to circumvent Chinese trade restrictions were far more significant than the Qing Emperor calling Europeans "barbarians" and limiting trade. I agree that the circumstances of the Anglo-Chinese War are far more complicated than just "drugs" (although the fact that opium was illegal in not only China but the British mainland as well makes a great moral point), but Britain, of all countries, has historically hardly been in any position to complain about draconian inspection policies or confiscation of contraband under circumstances that violate international law. The root cause was that neither empire had any real respect for other countries' laws or customs due to their historical position of superiority, but only one of them was intent on projecting their supremacy across the entire world.
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Aug 24, 2015 17:34
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Main Paineframe posted:the fact that opium was illegal in not only China but the British mainland as well makes a great moral point Are you sure about this? I thought opium was legal in the UK until the 1920s.
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Aug 24, 2015 18:02
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Cerebral Bore posted:Yeah, like, I don't think that "their rulers are jerks" is a sufficient justification for attacking another country in order to get them to trade with you, and especially not when you're conducting the biggest drug running operation in human history, causing untold harm and misery to the people of said country. So basically this is also true America in Japan
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Aug 24, 2015 18:55
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Crashbee posted:Are you sure about this? I thought opium was legal in the UK until the 1920s. A lot of drugs were legal for the opening part of the 20th century but I am not sure if opium was one of them.
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Aug 24, 2015 18:56
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Anosmoman posted:Behind the royal castle in Brussels, the capital of the European Union, stands a statue of Leopold II, the great Builder King of Belgium. In his city you can buy chocolates in the shape of hands to commemorate when, a little over a century ago, Belgians mutilated their Congolese subjects for justice and greatness. It's may seem odd but then the United States still celebrates Columbus Day, monuments to Cortez and Pizarro stand proudly in Spain and across the continent countless other rulers and conquerors continue to remind us of our greatest achievements, perched atop their bronze horses. Something like this, for a start?
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Aug 24, 2015 19:15
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Crashbee posted:Are you sure about this? I thought opium was legal in the UK until the 1920s. Huh, that's a good question, actually, and I'm having a hard time finding the answer as sources are rather vague about it. It seems that while medicinal opium use as prescribed by a doctor was considered acceptable in Britain, recreational use was heavily frowned upon and opium was regulated in ways intended to prevent casual recreational use. However, opium addiction seems to have been viewed as a medical problem to be treated rather than the symbol of crime and degeneracy it later became, so it wasn't really singled out for special treatment - opium was just considered to be a mildly poisonous medicine with undesirable side effects, and was subject to about the same restrictions and regulations as arsenic (which was also sold at pharmacies in those days). Under the Pharmacy Act of 1868, opium was considered a restricted substance which could only be sold for medical purposes, could only be sold by licensed pharmacists, and had to be sold in a bottle which labeled it as a poison and either listed the name and address of the pharmacy that sold it or required the buyer to provide their name and address to the pharmacist (I'm not sure which). Controls gradually tightened over the decades, but addictive drugs didn't really enter a legal class of their own until the early 20th century, when a World War, a couple of high-profile female actresses overdosing on cocaine (which were, ironically, blamed on Chinese dealers who were punished harshly), and addiction became more of a problem worldwide. I can't find anything on opium regulation before 1868, except that powerful opium products like morphine couldn't really be made in large amounts until the 1830s, and I suspect it's likely that it was somewhat frowned upon but not actively restricted before 1868. So I guess I was wrong there. There appears to have been a perception among the contemporary Chinese court that opium was banned in Britain at the time of the First Opium War, and that's what I based my claim on, but it appears to have been untrue. quote: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. Since then you do not permit it to injure your own country, you ought not to have the injurious drug transferred to another country, and above all others, how much less to the Inner Land!
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Aug 24, 2015 20:16
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Main Paineframe posted:I'm sorry, are we complaining about the Qing emperor's arrogance toward people who refused to bow to him as per custom because they thought good old Britain was a way better empire than China could ever be? The lack of respect was absolutely mutual, and constant British attempts to circumvent Chinese trade restrictions were far more significant than the Qing Emperor calling Europeans "barbarians" and limiting trade. Going back to the original topic, it's interesting when it comes to British imperial revisionism that the Anglo-Chinese Wars are one of the few wars that empire loyalists don't whitewash or act proud of. They'll spin or sidestep slavery, colonialism, imperialism, and dragging half the world into lovely world wars, but not that. On the contrary, it's usually the Qing Empire who get whitewashed as nice peaceful Chinese people fighting those evil drug pushers. Main Paineframe posted:So I guess I was wrong there. There appears to have been a perception among the contemporary Chinese court that opium was banned in Britain at the time of the First Opium War, and that's what I based my claim on, but it appears to have been untrue.
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Aug 25, 2015 11:17
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QIng diplomacy was just hilariously bad, alongside economic polices and just basically everything outside of basic administration. They really were the equivalent of some Fedora wearing goon with a fixed view of some fantasy world that lives his life totally according to that and just cannot understand why all the peasants and retards living around him seem to be doing better than him and why no-one seems to like or appreciate his awesomeness. Of course this is more to do with the later Qing, as the dynasty calcified its traditions and worldviews while the world changed around it.
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Aug 25, 2015 15:36
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Guavanaut posted:No, we're more complaining about their imprisonment of foreigners without trial, making threats of violence against their families, and treating diplomats with the same disregard as they treated their own peasants. You can tu quoque about almost any awful thing when it comes to the British Empire, but it doesn't excuse the Qing. That's why it's significant that in the Second 'Opium' War it was literally an all-comers world powers team that opposed China, from France and Germany to Russia and the US and Japan. I guess you could say that the one diplomatically useful thing that they did was unite powers that normally hated one another to give them a kicking. Considering that the penalty for possessing opium was death, and that torture typically played a part in Qing trials, I'd say the merchants and diplomats got off quite a bit lighter than a Chinese peasant would have. Sure, it didn't match British standards of how British citizens were to be treated (though colonial subjects faced similar treatment for lawbreaking in many parts of the empire), but when you go to China you're subject to Chinese law, even if you think it's barbaric and undignified. The Second Opium War was solely Britain and France against China, unless you're lumping something else in with it. Germany and Japan had no involvement at all, Russia did not participate except to extort some bribes from China in exchange for staying out of it, and the US maintained strict neutrality - although, this being the Victorian era, that didn't stop individual American captains from ignoring their government's position to pick fights of their own or go help out the good civilized British chaps against those foreign barbarians. I don't see what's so hilarious about sending a letter to the Queen of England. Are you going to laugh at Native Americans demanding to meet with European explorers' chief next? Having a poor understanding of Britain's system of government is understandable, considering their virtually nonexistent diplomatic ties, the lack of constitutional monarchies in Asia, the Chinese Empire's near-total lack of interest in such distant lands, and the fact that the British themselves talked constantly about the goddamn royalty and hardly ever about Parliament. For example, the McCartney Embassy was sent on behalf of the king, delivered a letter from King George, suggested that a Chinese official should carry out ceremonial gestures of respect toward a portrait of King George to emphasize the equal status of the two monarchs, and so on. The official name of the Treaty of Nanking was "Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Commerce between Her Majesty the Queen of Great Britain and Ireland and the Emperor of China". Parliament may have been the true power in Britain, but you wouldn't know it from the words of the average Victorian adventurer. Seriously, there's plenty to laugh about when it comes to letters from China to Europe, primarily due to the fact that the Chinese Empire had been the big dog of Asia for so long that it was basically unable to comprehend the idea of a foreign nation that wasn't their subordinate or inferior, and thus openly talked down to the British as nothing more than a tributary nation seeking to be honored by the vast mercy and wealth of the supreme Celestial Empire. Yeah, that didn't work out well at all. But just because the Chinese were massive pricks doesn't mean Britain was in the right to start a war over compensation for the destruction of drug smugglers' illegal goods.
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Aug 25, 2015 16:16
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The Chinese addressed a letter wrong, welp no choice but to invade their country and impose our trade policies on them, what else are we supposed to do.
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Aug 25, 2015 16:27
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Main Paineframe posted:Considering that the penalty for possessing opium was death, and that torture typically played a part in Qing trials, I'd say the merchants and diplomats got off quite a bit lighter than a Chinese peasant would have. Sure, it didn't match British standards of how British citizens were to be treated (though colonial subjects faced similar treatment for lawbreaking in many parts of the empire), but when you go to China you're subject to Chinese law, even if you think it's barbaric and undignified. Main Paineframe posted:I don't see what's so hilarious about sending a letter to the Queen of England. Are you going to laugh at Native Americans demanding to meet with European explorers' chief next? Having a poor understanding of Britain's system of government is understandable, considering their virtually nonexistent diplomatic ties, the lack of constitutional monarchies in Asia, the Chinese Empire's near-total lack of interest in such distant lands, and the fact that the British themselves talked constantly about the goddamn royalty and hardly ever about Parliament. For example, the McCartney Embassy was sent on behalf of the king, delivered a letter from King George, suggested that a Chinese official should carry out ceremonial gestures of respect toward a portrait of King George to emphasize the equal status of the two monarchs, and so on. The official name of the Treaty of Nanking was "Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Commerce between Her Majesty the Queen of Great Britain and Ireland and the Emperor of China". Parliament may have been the true power in Britain, but you wouldn't know it from the words of the average Victorian adventurer.
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Aug 25, 2015 16:51
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I don't think that "these guys don't want to have proper diplomatic relations with us" is a real good justification to invade another country either. Especially a country that you're loving in the rear end by conducting the biggest drug running operation is human history. And to nip your bitching about Qing prohibitionists in the bud, the thing here isn't that the Qing somehow were innocent angels, it's that the Opium trade was causing massive harm and misery in China, and the blame for that is squarely on the British. Do you think that the people who had to see their loved ones turned into addicts were super happy that the British stick it to the Qing or what? To start a war because another country doesn't want to trade with you on your terms is wrong. To start a war because you think the other country's rulers are arrogant is also wrong. Drug running is also wrong. The fact that the only counterargument you can muster is arguing against something nobody has even said shows that you have no leg to stand on here.
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Aug 25, 2015 17:09
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Cerebral Bore posted:And to nip your bitching about Qing prohibitionists in the bud, the thing here isn't that the Qing somehow were innocent angels, it's that the Opium trade was causing massive harm and misery in China, and the blame for that is squarely on the British. Do you think that the people who had to see their loved ones turned into addicts were super happy that the British stick it to the Qing or what? China had known about opium since the 7th century, and had been growing it since the 10th. They weren't stupid (some of the court diplomats aside), so they could have figured out mass production of it if necessary, but there was no mass market for it until the 19th century. The way you're phrasing it, it's as if China was completely ignorant of opium until the evil British showed up and forced them to use it. So what created the demand? According to Xu Naiji and the anti-prohibition faction, it was the increasingly severe interdicts against it that did it, in much the same way that the modern drug war is thought to increase use. According to Harry Gelber's more recent study, the increasing stresses of living in the late Qing Dynasty may have caused it, and the increasing prohibitionism from the imperial court could hardly have lowered that. What's for certain is that you can't just take the standard Conservative approach and blame 'the drug dealers'.
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Aug 25, 2015 17:31
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Guavanaut posted:Chinese demand for opium was so high that the British couldn't even keep up. China was stepping up domestic production as well as importing from Malwa in the non-British controlled part of India to try to keep up with demand. The idea of the 'biggest drug running operation in history' and 'turning your loved ones into addicts' is mindless prohibitionist rhetoric, and makes no attempt to understand the root cause of the demand. If the British agents had bowed out, imports from Malwa and domestic production would just have stepped up, which is exactly what happened when Britain did stop later on, and continued to the point that both the Communist and Nationalist Chinese armies were getting significant amounts of their revenues through opium tax alone. So since the War on Drugs is bad, I suppose that the Mexican cartels running drugs into the US arent bad people at all? Like, really, this is literally the argument that you're making here: That any single drug runner isn't to blame because somebody else will pick up the slack as long as there is demand. That somebody else might fill the gap is trivial, but that doesn't excuse the current drug runner for destroying people's lives for profit.
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Aug 25, 2015 17:36
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That doesn't really address the fact that most of the Opium that was destroying people's lives in China was grown, produced and sold in China though. You really can't blame the British for the Opium problem in China, it would have been, they certainly contributed but the problem would have been there either way. Especially since prohibition didn't do much to deter it and that seemed to be the method the Qing court favoured (which hardly makes them unique). I mean, you can call the British out for engaging in (or as the government of the time saw, permitting semi-private citizens to legally engage in) a trade they saw as morally dubious at best as it was the area of trade that allowed Britain to get silver out of China. Even this particular economic issue was one that the Qing really didn't address well, they never looked for the causes of why it was so harmful (the issue of relative value of copper coins to silver and the taxation system) neither did they seek for trade opportunities to rectify the imbalance. The Qing were a superpower of their day who refused to engage with a changing world and were seemingly incapable of conceiving of it. This is despite being plugged into a global trade network, having ambassadors and a history of diplomacy all behind them. The comparison to Native Americans wanting to talk to a tribal chief is frankly insulting to those Native Americans, they were encountering a pretty radically new and different sort of society. It would be more like some ultra-orthodox community in a western city have the local authorities come in for some mistreatment of council workers and they demand to speak to the City Rabbinate to discuss these issues of law. Of course you would mock them for their ignorance because they clearly chose not to engage or learn anything about an outside world they are thoroughly enmeshed in and a part of because it didn't suit their lifestyle and they feel they're better than that. Edit: to add, I chose ultra-orthodox Jewish community not because I believe they engage in such behaviour but they're simply the most visible example of an isolationist group that are willing to live in the modern world while maintaining a strict separation. I don't think any of them are ignorant to that level of how the world works and I'd be open to a better example if anyone has one.
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Aug 25, 2015 17:44
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Cerebral Bore posted:So since the War on Drugs is bad, I suppose that the Mexican cartels running drugs into the US arent bad people at all? I don't dislike the Mexican cartels because they sell drugs, I dislike them because they murder and torture people. Why do you think they do that so much? (It's not because Mexicans are inherently violent psychopaths.) I don't like United Fruit either, but again that's because of the murders and not the bananas. You can find a many allegories to things that the Empire/East India Company have done that also involve a bunch of murder and torture, and that's also bad. Selling opium (or tobacco or tea) isn't on there though, except as far as it relates to their treatment of agricultural workers and land apportionment, which as I said elsewhere you could point to much better examples of Britain doing that in Ireland, Kenya, and Rhodesia to make those points. My interest is in how the narrative of the Anglo-Chinese Wars changed from one about failed diplomacy and illegal destruction of goods (and a fairly uninteresting conflict, you could find a dozen similar wars between the powers of Europe over destroyed boats or diplomats being dicks, it's only notable for the later impacts on opening up China) to one about the 'destroyed lives' and 'biggest drug running operation is human history' in its current narrative as the Opium Wars, and how that ties into the prohibitionist movements of the 20th century and their desire to construct a wider narrative. It's a case of imperial revisionism, as this thread is about, but one in the complete opposite direction to most British imperial revisionism of "well at least they built roads in their African death colonies."
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Aug 25, 2015 18:20
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Again, the fact that somebody else is doing it is no excuse for drug running. Just because somebody else is doing something wrong doesn't mean that you are justified in doing it too. This shouldn't be hard to grasp, we're literally talking the basics of being a decent human being here.Guavanaut posted:Where have I said that the British Empire wasn't bad? You keep saying that aiding and abetting the biggest drug running operation in history wasn't so bad. I really don't get why you keep doing this, btw. Are you unaware of what morphine addiction does to people or what? Cerebral Bore fucked around with this message at 18:23 on Aug 25, 2015 |
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Aug 25, 2015 18:21
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Cerebral Bore posted:Are you unaware of what morphine addiction does to people or what? The fact that 'someone else would just step in' is still relevant, because without it you can completely ignore the root causes and just keep blaming the drugs on the drug dealers, instead of the failed social policies that foster addiction in the first place.
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Aug 25, 2015 18:50
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Guavanaut posted:Constipation and lightheadedness in someone who is able to keep up with all their other health requirements. I don't deny that it can be awful for people without that luxury, but guess what force keeps drugs ridiculously expensive and makes sure that addicts are treated like scum (it's prohibitionism). people who are able to keep up all other health requirements: not 19th century chinese peasants
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Aug 25, 2015 18:53
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also talking about prohibitionism in this sense is seriously, seriously anachronistic
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Aug 25, 2015 18:54
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V. Illych L. posted:also talking about prohibitionism in this sense is seriously, seriously anachronistic I'd be more interested in what caused the spike in demand in the first place.
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Aug 25, 2015 19:02
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Guavanaut posted:Constipation and lightheadedness in someone who is able to keep up with all their other health requirements. I don't deny that it can be awful for people without that luxury, but guess what force keeps drugs ridiculously expensive and makes sure that addicts are treated like scum (it's prohibitionism). So you have no clue about the health effects of Opium addiction in China, then. This makes your position a bit more understandable, though not less dumb, as you seem to consistently miss the health effects that were caused by Opium use back in the day. Guavanaut posted:The fact that 'someone else would just step in' is still relevant, because without it you can completely ignore the root causes and just keep blaming the drugs on the drug dealers, instead of the failed social policies that foster addiction in the first place. It's not relevant if we're discussing the moral responsibility of the actors in the drug trade. Which we are.
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Aug 25, 2015 19:10
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Cerebral Bore posted:So you have no clue about the health effects of Opium addiction in China, then. This makes your position a bit more understandable, though not less dumb, as you seem to consistently miss the health effects that were caused by Opium use back in the day. Are you really saying you have a complete grasp on the health effects of opium addiction on the peasantry of nineteenth-century China? I doubt anyone does, since any reports would almost certainly have been made by prohibitionists with an interest in exaggerating them as much as possible.
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Aug 25, 2015 19:15
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Guavanaut posted:This is the imperial revisionism thread though, and I'm talking about how the modern day prohibitionists deliberately changed the narrative surrounding the Anglo-Chinese Wars from a conflict about diplomats and destroyed goods to one about 'drug running' in order to propagate their own worldview. Isn't that revisionism? Exactly what point did modern day prohibitionists deliberately change the narrative?
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Aug 25, 2015 19:39
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Guavanaut posted:No, we're more complaining about their imprisonment of foreigners without trial, making threats of violence against their families, and treating diplomats with the same disregard as they treated their own peasants. You can tu quoque about almost any awful thing when it comes to the British Empire, but it doesn't excuse the Qing. That's why it's significant that in the Second 'Opium' War it was literally an all-comers world powers team that opposed China, from France and Germany to Russia and the US and Japan. I guess you could say that the one diplomatically useful thing that they did was unite powers that normally hated one another to give them a kicking. Well, you know, the British could have just....stopped trading with the Qing in response to these insults, rather than using it as casus belli to start a war and seize territory from them. Imperialism is imperialism, even if any other European power would have acted similarly. Sucrose fucked around with this message at 19:50 on Aug 25, 2015 |
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Aug 25, 2015 19:48
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Guavanaut posted:Yup, I covered that in an earlier "why the prohibitionist faction of the Qing Court should have died in a ditch" post. Just because they treated another group even worse doesn't justify their actions. What's not justified about applying Chinese law to merchants trading in China? The official punishment for dealing in opium was execution (which, based on a cursory look at the Qing legal system, likely would have been preceded by torture), so the merchants in fact got off quite easy with just being detained until they surrendered their illegal goods and then being released. The Qing court treated British diplomats the same way they treated any other diplomats. This may have not met British standards, but like so much else about the Anglo-Chinese relationship, this was a case of the British demanding special treatment for themselves rather than the Qing court going out of their way to treat the British badly. Other countries that traded with China, faced the same restrictions and bore them with considerably more grace than the British (something that the Chinese pointed out repeatedly in diplomatic communications). Not that it matters, since the First Opium War had nothing to do with the treatment of diplomats - it was primarily caused by fundamental differences in trade policy that were extremely important to Britain, the unacceptable prestige loss of submitting to Chinese demands, and an array of angry merchants pushing the government for a reimbursement it had no intention of paying out of England's coffers. The first battle of the war, after all, was between British ships attacking British traders and Chinese ships protecting them. EDIT: To be clear, the morality of opium and drug prohibition in general is totally irrelevant to the First Opium War. It's a nice little add-on to the evil factor of it all, but even if the import in question was candy or something harmless like that, China still had the right to hold restrictive trade policies and punish British smugglers who defied those restrictions, and Britain still would have been in the wrong to start a war over those restrictions. Main Paineframe fucked around with this message at 20:25 on Aug 25, 2015 |
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Aug 25, 2015 20:18
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Main Paineframe posted:
Which, incidentally continued into the future with one of the Opium War treaties literally saying that you couldn't give any other country a better deal than Britain.
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Aug 25, 2015 20:20
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Cerebral Bore posted:So you have no clue about the health effects of Opium addiction in China, then. This makes your position a bit more understandable, though not less dumb, as you seem to consistently miss the health effects that were caused by Opium use back in the day. computer parts posted:Exactly what point did modern day prohibitionists deliberately change the narrative? Main Paineframe posted:What's not justified about applying Chinese law to merchants trading in China? Guavanaut fucked around with this message at 21:15 on Aug 25, 2015 |
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Aug 25, 2015 20:38
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Guavanaut posted:The Chinese law in this case was immoral and bad, not chiefly to the British, but mainly to their own citizens. Really the only people who came out of the whole thing looking good were people like Xu Naiji, who used the idea of 'tax and regulate' 200 years before the rest of us started thinking it might be a good idea. Wait, what? Why? Since when is it "immoral and bad" for a government to ban or restrict specific goods? What the hell is the moral reasoning for that, other than vague garbage about the evils of "prohibitionist"? Or is it only immoral to ban recreational drugs in particular?
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Aug 25, 2015 21:06
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Presumably the bit where the law mostly served to kill people addicted to opium.
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Aug 26, 2015 00:42
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Guavanaut posted:The Chinese law in this case was immoral and bad, not chiefly to the British, but mainly to their own citizens. Really the only people who came out of the whole thing looking good were people like Xu Naiji, who used the idea of 'tax and regulate' 200 years before the rest of us started thinking it might be a good idea. If only Portugal had the military might to invade the USA in a devastating war and impose unequal trade treaties on us to free us from our dastardly prohibitionist government
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Aug 26, 2015 01:21
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| # ? Apr 25, 2024 20:32 |
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plucky little Empire
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Aug 26, 2015 01:25
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