An All Consuming Need for Tea (Patreon)

At the turn of the nineteenth century the Qing Empire was the most populous nation on earth and reckoned to be the world’s second largest economy, and yet it remained completely closed to the outside world. Spare in thirteen buildings along the Pearl River just outside of Canton, no trade was allowed to take place. The British East India Company ran entirely on the profits from tea—only grown in China—and yet no European had ever even seen the tea fields. A constant outpouring of silver to the Qing Empire was quietly reversed when the East India Company discovered the one good they had that the Chinese would buy: opium.

From 1839 to 1842 Great Britain waged a war with the mighty Qing over what has been called ‘The Toxic Exchange’: silver for tea and opium for silver. A textbook case of ‘gunboat diplomacy’, the events of the First Opium War show both the technological and naval might of the British Empire at its peak, but also the economic fragility of that same empire as it propped up the East India Company long beyond its necessity and while it relied so heavily on the profit from contraband.  A hypocritical war for free trade while protecting the company’s own monopolies. 

Our story begins in the Thirteen Factories along the Pearl River with a group of independent traders led by Jardine & Matheson, and concludes with the birth of Hong Kong: a desolate rock which became the world’s seventh largest trading entity. 

An All Consuming Need for Tea 

Thank you for supporting the Fights Gone By podcast. I couldn't do it without your help. I slowly realised that I had bitten off too big a subject for this episode and had to cut it in half, will release the other half soon. Please let me know what you think of a pure history episode and what I can do better! In a couple of weeks we'll be back to the heavyweight championship with a young Cassius Clay.

Cheers,

Jack