The Evil Trade that Opened China to the West (original) (raw)

When the Barbarians Meet: The Clash of Two Great Civilizations in the Second Opium War

This investigation focuses on the relationship between the Chinese empire and the Western world, starting from Lord Macartney’s visit to China in 1793 and ending with the conclusion of the Second Opium War in 1860. The negotiations, battles, and remarks made during the Second Opium War from 1856 to 1860 are viewed in detail to determine how each side was changing its opinion of the other. The question driving the investigation stands as: How Did the Second Opium War Shape the Sino-Western Relationship? The sources used in this investigation included both primary and secondary sources acquired from Western and Chinese publications. Instead of focusing on the long-term effects of the Second Opium War, the study depicts the immediate shifts in opinions following the battles and the changes in the Chinese world order after the war. Additionally, the investigation describes interactions between the British and the Chinese prior to the Second Opium War, recounting events that increased tensions between the nations. Both viewing the other party as barbaric before the war, the Westerners and the Chinese came to acknowledge the strengths of the other nation and adopt foreign techniques that would promote economic and intellectual productivity. Additionally, the Second Opium War stands as one of the events that opened up China to the outside world, as the Chinese emperor had previously lacked a respect for foreign sovereigns. The Self-Strengthening Movement of the Chinese was largely focused to bolster foreign affairs, as the government set up schools to train students to be fluent in many languages.

Exchanges of Threats: The Opium Wars

China: Promise or Threat?, 2017

China: Promise or Threat? compares China and the West, demonstrating that China has a strong private realm of family life but acts unreliably in matters of government and the law, while the reverse is true in the West.

The opium wars, opium legalization and opium consumption in China

The effect of drug prohibition on drug consumption is a critical issue in debates over drug policy. One episode that provides information on the consumption-reducing efffect of drug prohibition is the Chinese legalization of opium in 1858. In this paper we examine the impact of China's opium legalization on the quantity and price of British opium exports from India to China during the nineteenth century. We find little evidence that legalization increased exports or decreased price. Thus, the evidence suggests China's opium prohibition had a minimal impact on opium consumption.

From free trade to prohibition: A critical history of the modern Asian opium trade

Fordham Urb. LJ, 2000

The article begins by exploring America's current war on drugs and how it represents a misuse of its power and misperception of the global narcotics trade. It continues and puts forth that Asia's opium production may soon increase to levels that will defeat the war on drugs now being waged by the United State and United Nations and goes into the the extent of Opium production in Asia. It then looks at a history of Opium trade, including the era which began prohibition and then the cold war, which began the expansion of the Asian opium trade. The article then discusses bilateral suppression. In 1972, President Nixon began the war on drugs, which actually stimulated the global market. Opium trade and production increased through the 1980's and 1990's. The article concludes by stating that production of drugs responds in unforeseen ways to reform, and before starting such reform, anti-narcotics agencies need to consider the full range of outcomes.