When Trade Wars Turned Bloody: The Opium War with Stephen Platt
ChinaTalk
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The Importance of Opium in the Imperial Period
Some students took up smoking opium because they had heard that it would sharpen their faculties and make them smarter. The jury is still out on how much of a role the opium trade actually played in the silver shortages that occurred in 1830s China. As silver became more scarce in China, it became more and more expensive. And so effectively the tax rates on peasants started skyrocketing in some places for no apparent reason.
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