252. Victorian Narcos: Selling Drugs To The Queen (Ep 6)

Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnon. And me, William DeRimple. And we continue our Victorian Narcos series with Well, the last episode, the opium crisis was in full swing. We were talking about Jardine and Matheson, two men who really have cornered the market on opium sales.

And, you know, the whole thing, just give us a quick, in a nutshell, recap of what the state of China is with these two men pumping in the opium into the country. Both these men continue to operate centre stage. I've I've been reading, in a sense, several episodes ahead. And they continue to be at the center of things in a way that I had forgotten from my reading. They are these two Scotsmen, one a self-made man, one a down-at-heels aristocrat and clan chief, who come together along with their brilliant Parsi partner.

And they almost single-handedly A, create the crisis which resolves in the Opium War, but also are the kind of cheerleaders for the war. They are cheering on for conflict with the Chinese. They come out with a whole range of incredibly, to our ears, completely racist statements about what the Chinese are, how um they're not creating this problem of opium addiction, they're merely servicing a demand. and talking about how the British need to get serious with the Chinese.

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