251. Victorian Narcos: Flooding China With Indian Opium (Ep 5)

Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnand. And me, William De Rumpel. We left you with one of my favourite episodes, which is When Diplomacy Goes Bad. And it really went very, very badly with the McCartney mission that should have been fab, like, you know, not even a quarter of the fab for, a full four quarters of fabulousness, uh, with Lord McCartney going over to the Chinese and wooing them for their trade, their friendship, diamond studded mulberry suit.

It's just Which is w which we found preposterous from beginning to end. His diving bell, his hot air balloon, I mean, he'd done so much homework. He'd he did try. He did try.

But like everything that could have gone wrong went wrong for for him. But instead at the end of that episode, we left you with a situation where that balance of payments, you know, which was so in favour of China, because all English silver was going towards China for the tea, the insatiable appetite for tea. But it starts to balance out, not because they've got a trade deal, but because very quietly and on the on the sly and on the quiet, the opium trade, which is being mastered by British people, um, you know, some private individuals who want to make their name have found out how to get opium into China.

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