The Rise of China π¨π³π | How an Ancient Civilization Became a Global Power | Boring History for Sleep
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How did the opium trade spark the First Opium War and the opening of China?
Hey there, history hunters. The early eighteen hundreds. China is the biggest richest country on the planet, around fourteen and a half million square kilometres, roughly four hundred fifty million people, about one in every three humans alive, sitting on a third of all the wealth on Earth. The Qing Emperors rule what they casually call everything under heaven, and they let foreign traders into exactly one port. One, like the richest mansion on the street cracking the door open just to slide pizza through, then 1839 hits and the whole thing comes crashing down. Wars, a nationwide addiction problem, one humiliating defeat after another, and neighbors carving up the map like a holiday roast. The mighty giant
except a little over a century later, this same broke, battered country claws its way back to become the second largest economy on the planet. How does a total collapse turn into the fastest comeback in human history? That is the entire series, and tonight we light the fuse. But first smash that like button and tell me down in the comments. What city are you watching from, and what time is it where you are right now? Let's roll. So how does the richest mansion on the street end up broke, battered, and renamed the Sick Man of Asia? It does not happen overnight, and it does not start with armies pouring over the border. It starts with something far smaller and far sneakier, tidy wooden chests packed with a sticky brown paste shipped in by the boatload from British controlled India.
The paste was opium, and it was about to do what no foreign general had managed for centuries. The setup was almost comically lopsided, at least at first. European traders desperately wanted what China was making tea, silk, porcelain, all the things that made a fashionable London drawing room look expensive. China, on the other hand, wanted almost nothing Europe had to offer. The Qing Court took the position that the celestial empire already contained everything a civilized person could possibly need, which, when you ran a third of the planet's wealth, was not an entirely unreasonable assumption. The catch was that foreigners had to pay in silver, and silver was draining out of British vaults at an alarming rate.
Naturally, somebody eventually had the bright idea to sell the Chinese something they would keep coming back for, no matter the cost. Unfortunately for everyone involved, that something turned out to be a powerful narcotic. By the eighteen thirties the trade had ballooned into a full blown public health disaster. Millions of people across the Empire were hooked, officials were getting bribed to look the other way, and that precious silver was now flowing out of China instead of in. The Emperor, understandably, was not thrilled. He appointed a famously incorruptible official named Lin Zexu to go down to the southern port and shut the whole operation down. Lin took his job seriously, which was rare enough to be noteworthy.
He confiscated more than a thousand tons of opium from foreign merchants, and had it destroyed by mixing it with salt and lime and flushing it into the sea, even writing what amounted to a stern open letter to Queen Victoria, asking how she would feel if someone did this to her own people. The letter for the record never reached her. The destroyed opium, however, was very much noticed in London, where merchants who had just watched their inventory dissolve into the tide were demanding compensation, and, ideally, a war. They got the war. What followed in 1839 was the first of the conflicts that would shatter the Empire's confidence, and it was not a fair fight. China had an enormous army on paper and a navy of wooden war junks.
Britain showed up with steam-powered iron gunboats that could sail up river against the current, fire from beyond the range of Chinese cannon, and generally treat the coastline like a shooting gallery. The most famous of these vessels could lob shells into a fort before the defenders could even reach it, which is a polite way of saying the technology gap was less of a gap and more of a canyon.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
How did the opium trade spark the First Opium War and the opening of China?
0:00β31:27
2
What were the Unequal Treaties and how did they reshape Chinaβs sovereignty?
31:27β50:18
3
Why did the Taiping Rebellion devastate the Qing Empire and fuel further unrest?
50:18β1:35:10
4
How did the Boxer Rebellion and foreign intervention lead to a new era of Chinese nationalism?
1:35:10β1:35:21
5
How did the new Chinese state restructure everyday life and extend its control over citizens?
1:35:21β3:22:07
Speakers
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