Just Napoleon. They'd only recently gotten enough of a stake in India to worry about it.
History questions not worth their own thread
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I had a conversation with my step-brother who said that opium was not a big factor in Europeans taking control of Chinese land, and that it was not a major problem for the Chinese in general. He went on to say that this was actually just exaggerated for the 'drugs-are-bad' crowd. I'm not so convinced, what does CFC say?
That your step-brother has clearly been smoking too much opium. The Opium Wars were decisive in opening China to European trade, as was the product itself. I've read that at one time over half of the adult male population of certain areas was addicted to opium.
Cheezy the Wiz
Socialist In A Hurry
Your step brother has probably never opened a history book in his life.
This is the potted story: -
English like tea.
English pay silver
English don't have that much silver, desperately need something to fix deficit
English find opium
English sells opium
Opium becomes a problem
Emperor tells his man to clean it up
Man cleans it up
English become angry
English bring gunboats
China loses
China signs unequal treaty
Other powers go medieval on China's arse
So I'm quite sure the First Opium War was fought because the opium trade was banned.
It also opened the floodgates for Europe and the US to get China to sign off unequal treaties.
LightSpectra
me autem minui
I'm sure this is a colossally complicated issue so I won't expect any sort of in-depth answer, but a brief one if possible; I was wondering why it is the case that Japan was the only non-Western nation to become a great power in the 19th/early 20th centuries. I think only a handful of countries attempted modernization, and it was only Japan where it succeeded immensely well. Why is that?
The primary reason is that Japan successfully centralised their administration and bureaucracy, enabling them to meet the challenge of Westernisation and modernisation effectively. Other countries which attempted this, most notably China, didn't do a good enough job of bringing provincials into line with the central government, nor of stopping corruption from sapping away the funds they tried to use for the purpose of modernising.
Other people could explain it far better than me, but basically Japan got their crap together and turned themselves around, whereas other nations tended to be too concerned with petty power struggles and looking out for number one than the national interest. This was certainly the case in China before the Boxer's Rebellion made Ci Xi take note.
flyingchicken
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My limited reading of the story of Japan was that quite a few people had an idea how to make Japan great. It just so happened that the people with the most number of right ideas got the the guts to raise themselves to a position of power by eliminating political opponents (at first through good old civil warring and then through election manipulation). Now, the alliance between the powers that had the most number of right ideas was respected to such a point that it became ridiculous, and they weren't willing to sacrifice enough of their own powers to think about the really long term, so when those first few guys who brought Japan high up were gone nobody was really sure who was in charge. This would have been fine for a while, I guess, if it wasn't for the dire economic times fostering all that radical jingoism.
As for comparing with other countries, I suppose it's because when a group knows what the right ideas are (and as a consequence we never do find out if they would have the right ideas) they don't have the political will and/or firepower to make those ideas reality, both or either horizontally (against other groups with different ideas) or vertically (say, corrupt local politicians or even the constituents themselves); plus, whenever a group achieves that kind of political control and has that kind of power their ideas tended to be wrong and damaging.
Japan's rise was very pragmatic. Internally it sacrificed the good of the farmers, especially the traditional subsistence farmers, in order to feed the industry which it believed would bring it to world-power levels of wealth and strength. I guess, i.e. pulling out of my ass, if an industrializing country can't keep its farmers in check, either because it fears that the farmers would rebel or the landowners (who tended to be rich) would not cooperate, then it really can't establish industrialization and stuff that accompanied that. Actually, looking back it helped that the Japanese leaders were able to exploit the good fortunes of winning a civil war and using the leverage they got in the aftermath to institute reforms that would otherwise be massively unpopular with many levels of society.
No, actually it all boils down to: the people with the right ideas having enough guns and bodies to throw at people who didn't agree.
As for comparing with other countries, I suppose it's because when a group knows what the right ideas are (and as a consequence we never do find out if they would have the right ideas) they don't have the political will and/or firepower to make those ideas reality, both or either horizontally (against other groups with different ideas) or vertically (say, corrupt local politicians or even the constituents themselves); plus, whenever a group achieves that kind of political control and has that kind of power their ideas tended to be wrong and damaging.
Japan's rise was very pragmatic. Internally it sacrificed the good of the farmers, especially the traditional subsistence farmers, in order to feed the industry which it believed would bring it to world-power levels of wealth and strength. I guess, i.e. pulling out of my ass, if an industrializing country can't keep its farmers in check, either because it fears that the farmers would rebel or the landowners (who tended to be rich) would not cooperate, then it really can't establish industrialization and stuff that accompanied that. Actually, looking back it helped that the Japanese leaders were able to exploit the good fortunes of winning a civil war and using the leverage they got in the aftermath to institute reforms that would otherwise be massively unpopular with many levels of society.
No, actually it all boils down to: the people with the right ideas having enough guns and bodies to throw at people who didn't agree.
GinandTonic
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China insists that europeans can only trade with the Cohong, a goverment monopoly.
The Cohong refuse to buy any significant european goods, accepting only silver.
As the trade grows there is simply not enough silver. Opium can however be sold to smugglers for silver, which can be used to buy Opium from the Cohong.
Japan also had as LB said earlier fairly centralized government administration during the Edo Period. The internal economy of Japan was very dynamic as well. Its high literacy rate also helped. Japan was also fairly isolated and far enough from where all the attention was (China, Ottoman Empire, Egypt, India) to have the time it needed to reform. Japan was at the very edge of the Eurocentric world map - other countries weren't so lucky.
Verbose
Deity
Key to the UK being able to acquire quantities of opium significant enough to make a difference was its new control of India, where the stuff could be produced in bulk to be shipped to China.
Verbose
Deity
Yeah, since the drive to modernise came from the "outer lords", the out-group in relation to the Shogunate (provinces of Choshu, Satsuma, Ise and a few others). I.e. the impetus for reform came from those parts of Japan where the feudal lords had been allowed to pretty much run their province on their own, with little interference from the Shogunate. And since they were also excluded from all office in the Shogunate, these people kept polishing their little provinces.
This includes military activities against the westerners, with attacks on both British and French naval units, leading to a massive western response, really bringing home the message of western military superiority as they later surveyed the ruins of the fortifications and gun emplacements. Next stop was building a western style military at the control of these "outer lords" (Satsuma going navy after a clobbering by the RN, and Choshu going army), with which they eventually marched on Edo and deposed the Shogunate with.
That's politics, abbreviated. Socially I'd say Japan was fortunate in having a largely literate population already, very high level of craft competence, and in fact an entire smorgasbord of inventive administrative and economic conditions. The centre of trade was Osaka, and the merchants of Sakai, with the national "rice-exchange". (It was said that if the merchants of Sakai sneeze, the Shogunate in Edo develops a fever.) They guy who founded Japan's first private commercial bank was a rice trader from there, who ended up in New York, took a gander at the Wall Street stock exchange, concluded it worked just like the Osaka rice-exchange, and proceeded to make a fortune in NY, later used in Japan. The province of Choshu, which put up most of the forces defeating the Shogunate, also invented the balanced budget and deficit spending a century or so ahead of J.M. Keynes.
I.e. on balance I'd say Japan started already closer to the westerners than most non-European nations making a bid for modernisation. (Not being of the somewhat unwieldly size of China, otherwise a prime candidate, might have helped I guess.)
There are other things, like the amazing trust in the new Imperial government and its minders shown by investors. The govt. would start western-style industries, sell them to private operators, who then were prepared to run them even at a deficit up to a decade, before they really picked up. The later mega-corporations of Japan, the "zaibatsu" (Mitsui, Mitsubishi, Sumitomo, Yasuda), got in on this. Otoh for the longest time (it might still persists afaik) Japan got this weird business structure with a few huuuge corporations at the top (zaibatsu, later keiretsu), and oodles of little mom'n'pop shops at the bottom, but relatively fewer mid-size companies in between than other industrialised nations.
GinandTonic
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Indeed. There had long been some opium trade into china, which was of rather nebulous legality. Essentially so long as it was confined to the elite it was in general tolerated to a greater or lesser extent, but when the proles were too wasted to work it became a crisis. The problem is that when the Chinese authorities decided that since the barbarians could not by definition have anything worth buying and that therefore would not be allowed to trade they created a huge imbalance. Essentially lots of silver floating around the ports and lots of European traders desperate for silver. Hell, the world value of silver was shifting because of the Chinese policy. The existing opium smuggling trade became absurdly profitable.
A trade circuit developed of europe > southern india (european goods for opium) - southern india > northern india (opium for silver) - northern india > china (silver for tea/ silk/ china) > europe.
The influx of opium into china became a problem for the chinese. As was mentioned, it was no longer restricted to the elite. By the time China decided to ban the importation of opium the whole china/ india/ europe trade was dependent on that link. It was worth a fortune, well rather it was worth thousands of fortunes every year.
Therefore the opium war, the formalisation of the trade and it's expansion by an order of magnitude.
The chinese defeat in the first opium war leads to the Tai Ping rebellion (how could the barbarians have bested us etc). Then the second opium war exploits china's division, china kidnaps and tortures those under the flag of parley. Elgin goes medieval and orders the complete destruction of the old summer palace. The russians, who were not significantly involved AFAIK annex a million km2 from china by treaty, the yanks and the rest of the euro's go into a feeding frenzy of "OMG china signed that. China's pooping it, she'll sign bloody anything" and get into the unequal treaty game.
Burning of old summer palace and emperor having to leg it completely undermine mythos of superiority. Million km of land lost to russia. Barbarians now allowed to wander the country at will flogging opium. Not only is china's sovereignty over it's trade lost, but the gov has lost any significant agency whatsoever. How anyone could argue that was not a major problem for the chinese in general is beyond me.
ParkCungHee
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Also Japan had a number of notable advantages over some of their neighbors. Korea was pretty far afield (actually both the French and Americans tried invading it still, both failed) but it was hopelesslessly backwards even compared to Japan. Japan at least had a fairly modern system of currency IIRC, and also didn't have tax exempt nobles.
Louis XXIV
Le Roi Soleil
Is there another source than Plutarch? That's his story. He writes for particular reasons, but I don't know if we can contradict him.
Louis XXIV
Le Roi Soleil
It's quite possible Plutarch probably used Diodoros as a source.
Was the Apollo Moon Landing shown on Soviet television or reported in their news? I doubt they could hide that it took place by that point so I'd think it'd be better for them just to admit it happened but I don't really know their reaction to it within the country.
Actually there already was a significant opium production inside China (long before the opium wars). So part of the wars was simply about control of the opium trade.
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