When Trade Wars Turned Bloody: The Opium War with Stephen Platt
ChinaTalk
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The Importance of Opium in the UK
The East India Company has this fascinatingly perverse relationship with the opium trade. They produce it under a monopoly in their territories of India, then they sell it at auction to private merchants who then carry it to China and take the risk of finding a market for it outside Canton. The users of opium in China are wealthy people because it's an expensive foreign imported luxury good.
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