253. Victorian Narcos: Drug Dealers Lead Britain to War (Ep 7)

Well, hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnim. And me, William Duriple. So previously, if you're just joining us, and you know, if you've you heard this before, It was a very odd story. Okay, so what you have is a situation in China where you have a man called Charles Eliot who is in charge of trade with China, but really not really in charge at all because the main trade that is going on is the opium trade.

And the opium trade is run by this couple of Scottish ruffians called Jardine and Matheson who pretty much laugh into their sleeves at anything Elliot has to say. Sort of wheat-chinned Elliot sitting in Macau, who just doesn't really like conflict, who's very conflict averse. He's a good man. He's a being freeing slaves in West Africa. He's a nice man and he's just not the kind of person to, you know, square up to Jardine and Matheson.

You know, and they have these sort of gangs of brigands. They're fully tooled up. They don't really listen to him. They are the Pablo Escobar of 19th century China, yeah. But they're doing it from the British

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