Let's head to China to talk about the two Opium Wars of the 1800s - China's 'Century of Humiliation' comes to a head when the East India Company gets pushback on their not-so-legal import of the drug Opium into China. Learn what tea is, how opium is made - and how The British pushed their way into a famously insular country.
Let's head to China to talk about the two Opium Wars of the 1800s - China's 'Century of Humiliation' comes to a head when the East India Company gets pushback on their not-so-legal import of the drug Opium into China.
Learn what tea is, how opium is made - and how The British pushed their way into a famously insular country.
Sources:
Imperial Twilight: The Opium War and the End of China's Last Golden Age - https://www.charisbooksandmore.com/book/9780345803023
https://www.historyhit.com/
Hi Friends! Our transcripts aren't perfect, but I wanted to make sure you had something - if you'd like an edited transcript, I'd be happy to prioritize one for you - please email doomedtofailpod@gmail.com - Thanks! - Taylor
[Music] in a matter of the people of State of California versus orthal James Simpson case number ba09 and so my fellow
Americans ask not what your country can do for you ask what you can do for your
country you're drinking wine I am so am I this Ros nice oh you're in your classy
children's cup again I literally was like almost grabbed a red wine glass and was like how dare I and I grabbed a
white wine glass so I was I'm even drinking I do have ice in it though but it's hot wait are you being serious
there's a difference between a white wine and a red wine glass a th% my husband always pours them wrong the
white wine one is smaller that's all really yeah so what is this that is
a children's cup a children's plastic cup from a restaurant called danata that is not a wine glass in any
way shape or form if Blair hears this she will appreciate this because I bet you Blair has like 20 of These Fine and
she also does not have wine glasses so she has like four mugs and that's it and I'm like oh my God you you own a house
get dishes but uh who am I so so that the next time you're here I'm gonna take
you to this place again denata it is just like the most Pleasant fun great
viby Mexican restaurant and every margar order comes in one of these and so when I've been there last time with friends I
ended up walking away with like six or seven of these things and so I have plenty and that's why I drink my Ros out
of it now I love it thank you um so welcome sorry okay welcome to Doom the
fail I'm fars joined here by Taylor we are doing a podcast which is twice a week around topics that we want to
discuss sometimes they're relevant to the topic of Doom to fail some sometimes they're not but this week has been a
pretty big week for Doom to fail news I think um there's three things that come
to mind one is obviously Trump's 34 felon convictions which ised insane
insane the second is Chad DeBell who I covered forever ago getting the death
sentence I know happy and I feel like that just reminded me of a conversation where we're like I'm definitely
anti-death penalty but like in some cases I'm like [ __ ] kill that guy
he's the worst and like that's what I feel about two children yes like that
man I mean and I also same the same way I also feel like yes it probably be more more tortur for him to live out his life
in prison but like he doesn't have any remorse he thought he was conning people for years telling them he was like Jesus
like [ __ ] that guy and then do you know the third one is uh no so the third one isn't one that
we've covered but it is a fan favorite um sort of uh oh I know Robert Pickton
died yeah he got did you hear how he died he got stabbed to get shived so
somebody broke a broom and when they broke the Broom the very sharp part of it they ramed up his nose into
his is that nuts whoa was he he was in Canada so he was
never he was in death penalty he was just like life in prison right yeah they don't have death penalty there yeah whoa
crazy deserved yeah yeah well deserved well deserved I mean nobody's nobody's feeling remorse for that crying nobody's
wow um yeah I heard that that like hurt him that wasn't the thing that killed him or like he he died not not instantly
oh yeah that's the crazy wild news this week that's wild and we don't know did
Lor Lori valow hasn't been sentenced has she I think she was
sentenced up she got life life without
yeah like here's the thing doesn't she deserve it too it was her kids she let
this guy kill her kid it's got to be easier to her ex-husband and she was
definitely involved in the murder of the wife it's gonna be easier to kill somebody else's kids than your own kids
wait right yeah yeah right any anybody
if you have thoughts please write to us do.com I was wondering which one's worse
him or Chad or her she's she's pretty bad yeah they're
both so bad trash trash humans doing trash the
worst um anyways you said you have some news oh no I just had a stupid story to
tell you while I was while was so dumb but while I was waiting or not waiting for you I you were like oh I'll be
second so I went to the restroom and then I looked down and there was something in my underwear and I was like I'm dying like what is this I thought I
was dying and it was like a un um dissolve tide
pod that is I can see that being terrifying to
your credit I can see that being terrifying that would be terrifying I
was just laughing at myself I was like what is coming out of me what is happening and um that would be scary
though that would be scary yeah listen to a podcast recently where where the guest was a comedian and
all he would do was talk about how he has a tapeworm inside of him and and it was like he was playing it
off as though it was like a real thing it come up every now and then and the podcast ended after like three hours and
he pulls out like a fake snake and throws it at the host he's like wait
this was all a bit you've been doing a bit for three hours about how you have a tapeworm in he pull out of his throat no
you just pull out of his butt even worse so than long story short hide pods
are bad there could be worse things in there I didn't eat it it just was in my yeah yeah yeah um sweet well let's go
ahead and Dive Right In um if I if memory stores me correctly you are the
you're the person today I am I'm gonna kick us off kick us off I wonder where
in my 700,000 tabs do I have this Taylor I by the way if anybody's listening so I
just bought a new computer and I haven't bought a new computer in like eight years and I just bought a new one and
it is so good nice what kind of computer did you get it's a MacBook Pro nice and
first off one thing I would say is that I got like the the bigger one and now that I have it I'm like H this thing
isn't that easy to actually have on as a laptop it's like a desktop it's like a pretty big computer but also if you
haven't used like a new laptop in the past couple years these things are like really good it's really nice I have mine
well I have mine from so my last job they made me send it back which was annoying cuz it was really old
anyway and then the job before that they let me keep it and that one died and it was I was pissed it was relatively new
but the one from the job where we worked together Florence has it still works Apple like they nailed it like
they really really nailed I love that yeah I got a new Mac maybe like a year and a half ago oh I got it when we
started doing this because I didn't want to do this on my work laptop yeah and Nicole worked at the Apple Store at that time so I got her
discount oh yeah yeah I I same thing I got a I gotta friends discount no I I I
was doing this on my own MacBook but the my own MacBook was from 2018 and when I
when I would edit it if I had to freeze it in a location on garage band to cut
the parts together I mean just pausing it and cutting it and bringing them together would be like 3 minutes because
the thing was just freeze it was it couldn't handle that much processing I was like I'm totally done doing this and
so um also before I get started based on speaking of performance we're going to
get internet tomorrow that's huge that's huge it's huge then we're going to be able to record this video all time I can
do it while downloading something where it's it's so exciting um so yeah my life is going to change tomor con that's
awesome thank you you in the right direction I know things are looking up we're also going to get solar panels
probably sign the contract tomorrow for them so that'll be good too can I tell
you to please listen to It's either stuff you should know or Freakonomics
episode about M buy it yes
why because the value the savings of it are
only it was a long time ago L's but it was it was something that the effective like the more people that do it on the
grid that you're on the less savings there are because there's more of a
surplus and it can't be stored and so it just gets burned off anyways and so but
I think yeah yes I totally get that but also I think it's going to save us like $1,000 a year like not a ton but like a
little bit but but but that's that not that's that's in our own bill not in the
buyback because in like August our bill is like $800 right now because it's so hot but then isn't
your wouldn't the installation all that be like 30 30 40 Grand no you just like
lease it for like 350 a month okay and that just pays your electric if
okay let's find when we're done I'll find it and send it to you because was a story about somebody who did that exact
same thing in California and they were like I'm screwed and also I can't sell
my house because this lease thing is attached to the solar panel it it's it
it turned into a whole thing and so anyways I'll send it to you I'll find it in after this we'll I'll send to you
okay say with I'm just like saying like just whatever other things you want get it's all totally no I think we're going
to do it because it's so expensive and I want to have the AC on all the time $800 is a lot I think the most I've had my bill come to is somewhere around 4 or
450 yeah um in the in the dead of Summer yeah this just so and then we also like
oh my God I'm so sorry everyone we also like need new windows you know all those things that like contribute to it you know like I just the house is actually
cooler because I in the living room I taped one of those metal emergency blankets to the windows you know what
I'm talking about you getting like a first aid kit put because it's so hot in there because that's where that window
has like the sun on it all day and it's getting to be like in the high 90s so I covered it with those things and that's actually helping the look looks very
trashy from the outside but inside I think it's working my parents also insult a fan in their attic that
apparently helped tremendously I don't know oh interesting I'm sure they also their duck ducts clean anyway anyways uh
I know that people don't like to hear our banter so we'll stop um some some people love it um okay well let's talk
about let's talk about drugs want to talk about drugs with me I have a drug story let's do drugs it is a war about
drugs but not the Reagan got it not hers no um there's an older one I'm kind of
making you guess it's in China yeah opium opium yeah okay so let's talk
about the Opium Wars there were two I listened to a book called Imperial Twilight by Steven R Platt and two
history hit episodes that I will link to in our show notes um so the Opium Wars
are right after the enlightenment so some of our friends from the enlightenment will be in this story but
the actual Wars itself are in the 1800s the first one is from SE September 4th
1839 to August 29th 1842 and the second one is from October 8th 1856 to October
24th 1860 as far as I can tell like not a lot of people died it was just kind of like
some battles and like taking over ports things like that but not like a ton of death which is good in the long run well
yeah it sounds like it wasn't about like people's ways of life it was just this one drug yes and it's also just about
money you know mostly money mostly like control of things um the British are
really picking up their East India Company colonialism all of that like they've always done but it's a lot in
the East because of boats cuz boats started to be really um you know much
better during this time than they've like ever been before so the 1800s if you're in China today as like a Chinese
student it will be taught to you as the century of humiliation and it's something that um contributed
contributes today still to Chinese nationalism and it talks about how the
Communist Party uses the century of humiliation as a way to talk about how China is better off without the rest of
the world so they learn about it in that way
um obviously people have been trading with China for centuries across the Silk Road which was
like through China you can picture that I can't my mind directly went to that
onion website is like a fake onion like a fake website sorry it's like tour is it was
like a tour a silk road and you could buy exactly that that's what the Silk Road
was yes it was like you know go through China get their get their [ __ ] but it was hard because you have to cross China
over land and it's huge and also there was always going to be missionaries trying to get into China trying to get
people to become Christian of course because they [ __ ] love doing that for some reason and today 2% of China is
Christian um so they didn't do that great of a job I will say there's one
thing that when it comes to conversions that I agree with 100% it's the way the Jews do it like nobody in Judaism is
like going around saying we need you to be Jewish it's like no you have to come to us and really want like go through it
where it's like why are you going around trying to force people to be I mean Islam does the same thing I guess they go around trying to force people to be
well probably less than Chris they do it less Christians do I feel like the most well Islam did it or Muslims did it
through the sword of like convert or die which is like yeah probably
worse yeah and I feel like I guess I think I well I'm missing obviously that like True Believer part of me where like
if maybe if I really believe fars that like you were going to burn an eternal damnation forever I would want to try to
save you because you're my friend and I care about you and I don't want you to burn for eternity but I don't think but
I don't believe that so I don't have that in me I'm not afraid of that for you you know also isn't that the old saying of like would you rather go to
hell all the cool people are in hell yeah 100% but sorry I totally neither exist
so um there is a story of One mission AR who like walked all the way through China um and he like got to Tibet and he
met the doy Lama um the do Lama at the time was like a four-year-old and he just had all these fun stories but like they've been trying to do that forever
um but there are going to be obviously some barriers so now it's like the late 1700s like during the Enlightenment time
there are bigger boats so they're able to get there via boat to start trading with China it's still a long way so even
like during the Opium Wars it still takes like a year to get a letter to to Eng you know which seems so hard to fight a
war when you can't communicate with anyone you know like you have your own people on your ship but you can't talk to the people in charge there's years
between communication and then so much changes between them too I don't know it sounds impossible um
so China isn't closed to trade so I I think we have this idea that China is
like this totally locked down country like they were trading with people for centuries
but it's very very like limited and they control a lot of it so there's a big the biggest Port is in Canton and they let
like British and French and Portuguese uh Merchants come to Canton for a part
of the year to conduct trade um they don't allow women or families because they don't want people to start to grow
roots in China they want them just to come to trade and that's it so the women and children have to live on maau which
is owned by by Portugal so it's hard to like you can't stay there and you can
also cannot learn the language it's illegal for a Chinese person during this time to teach someone how to speak Chinese so they want to keep that like
in their own stuff so they've always wanted to do population control yeah
yeah that and it's population control and like idea control you know like they don't want like a a bunch of like
British guys to come in and like start their own town and start like talking to people you know yeah makes sense they
don't want them to be able to communicate with like the average Chinese person and they're not able to um because a lot of people don't nobody
really speaks Chinese none of the British or the French and they're not allowed to learn so that's where we get like this I thought this was interesting
like that like there's some things that are like a stereotypical if you imagine
someone pretending to be Chinese they say some they talk in like a a racist like Cadence you know what I mean but a
lot of that is because the Chinese Merchants were only allowed to say a couple words in
English and by vers you know so like one the one that I remember from the book is
like the phrase Chop Chop like that comes from the British and the English trying to talk to each other and trying
to make people go faster you know but they like aren't allowed to like really learn each other's languages so they cannot really communicate that is
fascinating and that's on purpose so a couple people do learn how to speak
Chinese one of the first I mean and of course they I'm sure there are outliers of course but one of the first people from Britain is a a little boy named
James Flint um he kind of gets dropped off when he's younger to go learn to speak the language and he learns
Cantonese but then quickly learns that like oh a big part of China speaks Mandarin so he can't even communicate
with them so he learns a little bit of it and um he ends up he always kind of
resents it because his dad just kind of like put him on this boat and made him go learn Chinese and he'll go back and forth to China his whole life and he'll
start working for the East India Company so a lot of people in the story work for the East India Company um doing trade
with them and I don't know if I'm going to mention James Flint again but he did
go back to Europe in the 1770s and he ended up teaching Ben Franklin how to
make tofu which is super fun weird weird right but
fun is that his contribution to society is I like love the idea of V Franklin
discovering tofu like being like this is incredible I don't know what to do and and now I can only picture him as um
Michael Douglas from the show so I'm like yeah this is like it would be great it' be a delight he would love it um so
another person involved in learning Chinese and trading is a man named George Thomas daunton he's also going to
work for the East India Company um I'm only mentioning him he's like a big background in the story one of the people who was really trying to get
others to learn um Chinese he would get to China via tene he he sold he sailed
from to tenie to Rio and then down to China so takes a while to get together but he's he did that he's in and out of
the story um the first person to write in Chinese English dictionary was named Herbert Allen Giles and it was like
hundreds of pages because obviously China Chinese is like a really complicated language that has hundreds
of characters so he was the first person to try to like write it down because before then people that kind of didn't think that it could be
translated you know but we all have like the same thoughts and ideas right we all
have the same they're not saying something in Chinese it's impossible to say in English yeah I guess I guess I I I have noticed
like when I think in farsy it is a little bit different than when I think in English because the language is
different so like the layers And the emotions that are associated with it are different I guess
interesting anyways no it's interesting cool um so that's kind that's the
Prelude to to what's happening um the East India Company is always there I'm trying to like expand trade in that area
obviously in India just in the whole South Asia Asia area there's other cool things that happened before the Opium
Wars there are Chinese Pirates there are people who are like outside of is it it's a Chinese Imperial government and
this is actually going to be like the end of the empire for um for
the Chang Chang Dynasty oh my God I messed it up and I wrote down the Ching Dynasty it's it's spelled q i n g but
pronounced Ching Q UI Qi G q i n G q i n
g okay but pronounce ching and do you remember when the internet first started and there were those videos of that guy
pronouncing things incorrectly oh no I don't remember the day the internet started tailor I don't know what you
were doing that day but I feel like one of the first things playing outside was like a guy like pronouncing words wrong
like hyperbole he'd be like hyper you know it was funny but now I can't now I feel like whenever I go find a trans a
pronunciation thing I'm like not sure if real or not but this is the story is going to be the end
of the Ching Dynasty is my point um there's some folks who NE never want to be a part of Chinese society and they
always live on the water and they're these like Chinese Pirates Who go around ports there's a really cool story of a
woman named xiyang who was a lady pirate who at one point commands like 70,000 people on like all these ships and they
like never ever stop on land they're just always um trading back and forth on their ships but they actually get um
folded into Chinese Society all of them so we're going to give them amnesty and like let them live on land so there's
like uprisings happening in China also by the by the way during this whole entire time you know Britain's fighting the Revolutionary War with the United
States it's fighting the Napoleonic Wars like there's all sorts of stuff going on which you know if you want to be a world
Empire I guess you're gonna have to fight like a ton of Wars at the same time that's what Britain has going on um
there is a rebellion in at the very end of the 18th century
called The White Lotus Rebellion where a religious sect thought that Buddha was going to be returning so they wanted to
take over the Empire um a lot of people died in that one it took eight years to crush that Rebellion some of them you
know got into the Imperial Palace tried to kill the emperor there's all sorts of stuff happening with that so that rebellion was like fresh people's minds
and in 1811 there was a comet that freaked everybody out so like people are kind of on edge because of all of the
trading and people are trying to get into China and China's having its own rebellions and so of
inevitable you know globalization is going to inevitably get into Chinese culture and this is the beginning of it
like for real I wonder where the whole like a comet is the symbol of things
changing started with h you know like they they all killed themselves
and I know I do think it'd be fun to not know what an eclipse was and like
be there be rering an eclipse and just be like what the [ __ ] is going on so
scary like oh my God like that and then like if someone was inside they would never believe you just so
fun um but so all is happening China is huge but it does have a has a small Navy
but their boats are nothing like the English boats like they they cannot compete with them in in Maritime battle
um during the uh Ching Dynasty the emperor is Emperor da Guang at this
point and it's definitely within the Imperial Palace and the emperor Circle it's a culture of like they don't tell
him what to do and they don't really make suggestions sort of like a yes sir we agree with you so even when people
start to have good ideas and like have their own ideas of where the government should do they don't tell the emperor
they'll be like oh hey I saw this letter that my friend wrote and like it's dumb do you want to read it anyway and then like he would read it and the emperor
would be like oh kind of like it he'd be like oh really okay well I thought some parts weren't dumb you know what I mean just like you wouldn't get your head
chopped off right you would like be like oh this is an idea that I saw so um
that's what's happening in in China and on the English side it's Queen Victoria she it's a Victorian era um in England
and the East India Company again has been trading with China for a long time
and legally the things that they are trading are spices silks and tea do you
drink a lot te no it's a cultural thing um it's an Iranian thing so every
Iranian I has tea every morning afternoon and evening um there's
actually a drawer at my house which is my mom's like just never go in the drawer and it's just all of her tea
stuff a so when they visit they can have their tea but I never I never got into
it that's amazing so tea people have been drinking tea for
thousands of years as well but it came over to like England and in the Europe area in like the 1600s and they started
to like it cuz people were before that they were drinking like you know beer all the time and like gross water so they're trying to figure out coffee and
something else they can drink and all of a sudden they can't [ __ ] live without it you know and it starts to get more
and more expensive so besides herbal teas all other tea is made from the same
plant um the chamelia senis did you know that no so green tea black tea white tea
oong tea and then another one called Pua tea it's all made from the same plant the green tea they take the leaves off
when they're green and they quickly oxidize them by like steaming them or or pan frying them um that's to stop them
from oxidizing and those are the leaves that they use for green tea and for matcha they they dry them and then grind
them and then black tea is fully oxidize oxidized which means they like let it
dry in a certain way um which makes it really dark and then white tea has like minimal processing oolong is more more
oxidized so it's all the same plant that gets tea and that plant is like really easy to grow in in Asia and that's why a
lot of tea comes from there where it started there you don't drink tea do you um I like sometimes I night I'll have a
little bit of tea but like it kind of makes me gives me a headache like I I will a vitamin there's
moments when I like if I get sick and I'm trying to do the herbal thing
I'll have some tea and it feels like I'm doing something even though I'm probably
not but that's the only time I yeah I'm not a te guy coffee guy I like coffee
yeah me too me too um so that's what England wants England wants the tea
mostly and you know you'll remember there was like all the stuff in the US around like tea being taxed because we
wanted the tea also but all the tea is coming from China whether it's coming from China from Britain to America like it's it's all coming from China and
China doesn't need a lot of stuff like China is huge and it has most of the stuff that needs anything that's going
to trade other countries for is kind of like a nice to have like it doesn't need anything it doesn't need it doesn't need the UK as much as the UK needs China all
of a sudden there's something that China needs and that thing is opium so do you
know where opium comes from uh probably
Afghanistan uh it could probably go in Afghanistan um no I mean like where is it derived from like where's it made
from oh it's a poppy plant it's a poppy do you know how it is
made so they take the um the middle part
of it whatever that's called out and then they cut it and then it seeps out
dries they scrape the dried bits off or something right yeah exactly right so they take like the the PO it's almost
like I'm I'm a opium manufacturer so I don't I mean this is another one of those things you're like how the [ __ ] did you figure that out but you take
like the the poppy pod that is like the size of like a tennis ball and they
slice it with a knife and then the it oozes out while the seeds inside are still white so not like the black seeds
you put on a bagel like the white ones while they're still white and then it has a sap and they scrape the sap off
and that sap is the Opium they like do some other things to it and like that's that's it so I feel like someone like
accidentally cut a poppy pod and then licked it and was like holy [ __ ] like that's how we got here yeah there we
could probably do 50 episodes on how we find this out yeah discoveries so the
poppies are you're right in warm climates um but for our story The poppies that are part of the Opium Wars
are grown in India so they're not grown in China they're grown in IND India and brought over to
China so yeah this exact how you make it you get morphine Codine heroin all come from
the same um the same thing lenum which is like a very Victorian thing I feel like in Victorian movies they're always
like taking a dropper of latinam yeah the Winchester House that's that guy was doing remember that oh yeah yeah so that
is that is opium mixed with ethanol alcohol and like maybe a little bit of flavor but it's like rough but it's
going to make you feel super high you're going to pass out obviously it's one of those things that was like used as like a prescription drug for I mean yes
obviously opiates but also like the Victorian era um it was one of the things it was used for was a cough suppressant but really it just like made
you pass out so you won't cough anymore works it's effective what it works so
China is people are starting to get addicted to Opium in China because the British are bringing so much in and
another thing that China wants besides the Opium that it like
illegally wants but it doesn't have a lot a lot that it wants from the UK but it does want silver so China is like a
two metal system right now where like most people they have copper coins and then there's silver coins that the like
the more rich people have people like want silver that's like the big thing there so this will destroy the economy
in like a very classic economic way well they will get all of the silver like most of the silver in the world will end
up in China during this time and that will like tank the value of silver and that will R havoc on on the economy the
British are in this Loop where they are like until they ban the transatlantic
slave trade which they will like in the 1800s but before that they are enslaving people bringing them to South America
also enslaving South Americans there to dig up silver to bring to China to give to the Chinese to get their stuff so
it's like a whole worldwide chain that they have going on and a lot of it is based on Silver as like a metal there's
that Happ with the silver and the opium's coming in it is illegal and but people are using it more and more as it
gets cheaper and as there's a lot more of it coming in the people who are going to get rich are these like British and American middlemen there's a company uh
started by two men called Jardine mat it was started as an opium Trader In 1832
today it is one of the top 200 publicly traded companies in the world and has over 400,000 employees it's officially
called A A Holdings Limited it's a it's a Hong Kong based Bermuda domiciled British
multinational conglomerate I it's a very business business business place and it still exist today what does it do today
I have no idea that's what it says it's a British multinational glomerate I don't I I couldn't figure it out weird
it's just like they hold they like own a lot of stuff and like trade a bit I'm sure someone knows but I couldn't figured out really so like that company
still exists they got their money from the illegal opium trade another person who will be there getting making his
fortune is waren Delano who's FDR's Grandpa he makes his money from opium
and another man named Francis Blackwell Forbes he's not the Forbes of like the magazine but he is John ky's great great
grandpa so a lot of like American dynasties come out of this so it kind of goes to show that like the
chips are kind of stacked against like yeah it's like it's like like if you
weren't selling opium to China in the 1800s you know yeah I don't know like
sorry my grandparents weren't doing this and now we're here yeah you know instead of being a Ros Vault um yeah totally and
they're not bringing in like a little bit of OPM they're bringing in hundreds of thousands of crates of opium and so
the emperor uh dagang is trying to figure out what to do some people are like you should Legalize It you know
which is like a very common thing that people think when there's a drug problem you should legalize it so you can tax it so you can monitor it you know all of
the things that that we know and but nobody will really say that so they're trying to like suggest it to the emperor
but like they kind of like Teeter back and forth on it and they they several times they officially make it illegal
but you know the fact that that keep doing it means that no one was right listening you know so people don't really care they just want it um there's
a governor general governor general Lynn zexu is in charge of figuring out what
to do next he's one of the top people in the government so he writes an open letter to Queen Victoria and he's like
hey can you stop this can you stop this opium coming into my country and hurting the people here but she never gets it but it does go to the London times and
it goes in the paper so like I'm sure she saw it or whatever he also does a
thing where he's like everybody has to stop doing this drug right now so he brings opium adct opium
addicts into groups of like 10 and he's like stop doing OPM right now if one of you does it I'm G to kill all of you so
they created that was a pretty good incentive for people never to do it again so they created like little communities of people not doing opium
because if one person did it they would all die so try to stop people from doing it
if it was me in that group I would just do the Opium immediately because I'm like one of these other rcts is going to do
it and I'm gonna get killed for it so might as well be high when it happens that's what I feel like the pris Dilemma
is like just do the Opium just do the Opium but they're trying to do that one
big thing that happens to start the first Opium War is uh Lin zxu he seizes
the fort in Canton that a lot of these like American British Traders are at Delano is there it sounds kind of
hilarious because it's it's a bunch of like rich white guys without their servants so they like the Chinese
servants aren't there so these guys have to like figure out how to cook you know so like Warren Delano fig figures out
how to make like a rice pudding from a cookbook but other than that they're like burning their food they don't know how to make their beds they don't know
how to like get their clothes ready they have never taken care of themselves before so they're now that in The Siege but they have plenty of stuff they're
not being starved out but they can't leave and they can't trade and they're stuck in this spt that's one thing that's happening and while they're there
there's this dude and this is kind of this dude's fault his name is Charles Elliott he was in charge of regulating the transatlantic Atlantic slave trade
when they stopped it so Britain banned it way before the United States did so he was someone in South America trying
to stop like all the residual effects of that happening and then his next job was
to stop to figure out the Opium situation and they just like sent him to China to do this and he was like way
over his head he didn't know what to do and so he's in this Siege and there's all these Traders and they have all this
open op and they're like pissed they can't move it they're pissed that they're stuck there there's no women you know all the things and then Charles
Elliott is like okay I have an idea he's like for all the Opium chests that you
give me and each chest is like you know so many pounds of opium the British uh
the British Monarchy will pay you what they're worth right now later so just give it to me and we'll pay you later
and everybody's like that Deal's great like I don't have to sell it anymore like you'll just buy it from me right
now wait so hold on so he just created like a distribution
Network he's not going to distribute it he's going to get it destroyed so he's like we're gonna stop
this because the Chinese don't want us to have opium in there anymore but the problem is all these Traders have all this opium that they want to bring into
China and they're going to lose a [ __ ] ton of money because theyve been counting on this bringing it in so why don't I just pay them all for it we'll
destroy the Opium and then be over no more opium no opium in China they have
their money chines doesn't have opium everyone's happy except the
adct well except the adct sure but mostly it's the British Monarchy who's like we're not gonna [ __ ] pay for that are you under right right right
yeah like are you on opium Charles Elliott so by the time that that news gets back to Britain it got back because
the Traders came back and they're like hey give us our money and they were like no like he had no authority to do that
you shouldn't have done that and the way they got rid of it is they like burned it and like a very special pit and then like sunk it in the ocean like they got
rid of it so um then there's like a little bit of
back and forth between the British um like merchants and Charles Elliott and
the Chinese government where they're like someone has to pay for this and so the first opium MO is essentially trying
to get China to pay for all the Opium that was destroyed and they're blaming it on them because they had had all the
people under siege in the fort in Canton even know Charles Elliott is the one who really got it all destroyed and made
that promise that they couldn't keep right also two drunk guys two drunk
British guys kill a Chinese man and Elliot won't surrender them to the Imperial government and that also is a
problem so that's going to start the first war some people so the UK the British come with all of their fleets
and they want the money back from China for the Opium that was destroyed so they start to attack like Villages along the coast in some cases villagers who have
always lived on the coast of the Sea Coast of these rivers in the middle of China they make them leave their
Villages like the Chinese government is like leave your village there's nothing to pillage and they make them leave and they have to leave for like 50 years
before they can go back which is super sad and it ends up with after like four years of war it ends up with the treaty
of Nan King so Nan King also called Nan Jing you know we that was a big thing in
World War II as well like Prelude to World War II when the Japanese came in and they attacked attacked n Jing and
that's because it is very important it's on a very important tributary that leads
to the yangi river which leads to most of China so that city is always getting sacked like throughout history I think
that was part of my story about that Forbidden City the packed some the
Japanese taking it over and then anyways yeah yeah it's all interconnect because it's like a place where it's it's all
yeah it's all in that area and it's like a really important city um so the Treaty of n King sucks for the for for China
they owe all the money back to the Britain the British are no longer under Chinese law so they can do whatever they
want to do they lose Hong Kong to the British and they won't Hong Kong will be British until 197 yeah this this is the
story yeah yeah and all the ports need to be open to or at least like I think like 10 more ports need to be open to
the British and they can like bring their families and stuff so try to get the [ __ ] end of this treaty 10 years later the second war
starts with the seizing of the ship the arrow so it's a British ship that gets
seized by by Chinese um like Fighters trying to like protect their ports it's
a very like remember the main thing like some people will call it the arrow War because people are so mad that the ship
got got seized and other people join this time France France Russia the United States um the United States comes
but they're like kind of hanging out to see who wins they don't like really help be their side and when it's over um they
will go to the Chinese like Emperor and they will bring instead of like Goods
because they know that's not what China wants or like sympathy or like whatever they bring plans to build better boats
so they bring like the logistics to make a better military to China as like a peace
offering which will help China's military grow I mean mindsight probably not the best thing to do but which we
continue to do so um so there isn't like in everything I read like the actual
Wars itself it's just like little fightings cities are being little cities on the on the coast are being destroyed
and they're destroying boats and goods not a ton of people died but they are trying to like prove their might to the
Chinese and they're doing that because the British Navy is always going to you know at this time beat the Chinese Navy
they's going to there like they've been fighting all over the world they've learned a [ __ ] ton in the Napoleonic Wars you know they've been all over so
there's a lot that they can do um one thing that they do that is uh a real
bummer is they the British sack this is kind of the end of the second Opium War they sack the old Summer Palace and the
Forbidden City so like the two big places where the emperor's family would live get destroyed by the British they
do things like steal all the stuff you know there's like British guys like wearing the like holding like all these
pots and like wearing all these silks and just like taking everything from these places and it reminded me of um in
Dan Carlin's jask Khan series he talks about when the Mongols um come and Sack
parts of China and the Mongols will wear these like beautiful Chinese silks until they're rot off their bodies they just
like steal them and like never shower never do anything so just like wear them forever um so a lot of this again is going to be destroyed during this war
another guy that is there of course is Lord elen's son do you know the the Elgen marbles you know what those are no
they're in the British Museum of course but they're from Greece and they belong to Greece and Lord Elgen stole them and
brought them to the UK and it's something they're still in the British museum but I know like George Clooney's
wife was a lawyer trying to get them to go back to Greece like they don't belong to the UK they're in the British museum
another was it art uh no they're they're it's a mar it's a um what's it called
like the top of a building all of the marble statues that are kind of like half in half out of the
wall okay so like if you thinking if you think of like theop it's not they from the cpse I don't know it might be
theopolis pillars and then it has like the kind of half triangle up the top full full of uh sculptures so that's
what Bel oh oh okay you know yeah I'm looking at them so his son is going to
be there sacking these um the Summer Palace in the Forbidden City and so they
also steal these pinese dogs these like Chinese dogs and they give one to Queen
Victoria and she names it Ludy cuz it's loot from looting these palaces and she
loves it so much it's like in paintings like what the [ __ ] um I love all dogs
but those are particularly ugly dogs she named it Ludy to remind her
that they looted the Chinese Imperial Palace to get it I mean it's not great I think that's a wild I wrote what
the [ __ ] Vicki like that's crazy um so as is over there will be a couple more treaties and the Chinese will lose parts
of manuia to Russia they'll lose more of the South part China um and they will lose like 10 more ports like they will
it'll it's not good for them this is part of their you know Century of humiliation and the last emperor of the
Ching Dynasty will be Wong and he'll Reign until 1912 and after that is a
Chinese Revolution and then China becomes a republic so this is really like the end of Imperial China um and a
lot of it is happening because of like the inevitable globalization of China
because of like boats and iation and and all those things and trade and and
Britain's like desire to own the world and um that will contribute to it and
just not being able to like keep up with the changes and trying to keep your people really secluded and that's what
they were trying to do and like that didn't work and now they're trying to like you know then then there was a revolution I don't know a ton about but
then it sounds like you know today in China you know they're obviously trying to keep people from knowing about the rest of the world in different ways um
trying to go back to that idea where like we are we are our own enclosed people we don't need anyone else it's so
crazy because in it just it's just so antithetical to
human nature to try to keep someone from reality yeah like whether that's like a
society in the government or parents and kids it's just like
reality is going to come crashing into you one way or another yeah at some point you're going to like see other
people it's it's really really wild because if you think about like the
people in China and the people in like North Korea and then everybody else are living in a totally different world it's
crazy like I can't I've seen a couple like documentaries where they show you like a little bit of North Korea you know but like they just
don't know what the rest of the world is like like you wouldn't know a thousand years ago you know like those
documentaries they don't show you the people that there they only show you like the government sanctioned tours and
you just have to infer what that life must be like but like that's what I'm curious about like what's the person's
life like that's like living there it's got to be crazy yeah it's so it's so
it's so interesting I don't know and like I always think about those tunnels that they have like everybody in North
Korea go underground probably in like a minute because either
for like nuclear war or for like other things is that is that real that I think so like a lot of it could be underground
like it's just like it's wild and like you know a thousand years ago sure you didn't know anything that was happening around the world but now you can and I
don't know for better or worse I guess I'm I'm overwhelmed but it seems fine am
I crazy for being like I mean realistically In Our Lifetime it probably won't matter but I
do think that China is like probably like the US is probably on
its way out in terms of being kind of like a global superpower and that China's probably the next up on the
ladder I mean yeah I WR a great book about um it was about data and like looking at
the history of the world and a lot of it was like you know the economy in China is
moving up so like things like super cheap labor not that it doesn't still happen in China obviously but it's like
moving to Africa and it's actually how that like is good for Africa cuz that's their next step in like their economic
Revolution but then like you know who gets it after that to be able to like move up and do like the next thing
um I don't know but I agree that America's on the way out like we're
not all these things that are like Hightech patents that are just like
handed over to China and they're I mean the old saying of like you can see
further when you are on the uh shoulders of giants you know like but imagine if
like you get all the shoulders all at once without any of your own actual R&D in investment and it's
like God you can go so much further yeah it feels like yeah I don't
know weird I know time but yeah but this is but I but I was I'm I was excited to
learn a little bit about this because I just don't know a lot about Chinese history for many reasons but this was
interesting to read about yeah yeah that that is one of the one of the places internationally that I do want to visit
China it does seem interesting I don't know my husband was there Juan was there many years ago
when he first were dating and he was like every single thing I did I was like Taylor would hate this like what see just like I feel like
I don't um like I just don't love like I don't love like really traditional
Chinese food which is like fine you can't love everything I like fake American Chinese food know but if I go
to like a really authentic DM some restaurant I don't like it it's not for me yeah when um right before the
lockdowns happened and when I left our last compan we work together at um I went and visited the Schmidts in San
Francisco and they took me to a very authentic like canes restaurant and
um uh yeah that's just not flavors that are I'm I'm used to and that's fine you
know also cuz like when I was in Japan like Morgan my friend Morgan someone that she with with on the tour would eat
an egg salid sandwich from 7-Eleven every day because she don't want to eat Japanese food and they're like why did you come here you know so I feel like if
I went to China I'd be like I hate this you'd be like you knew you were going to hate this why didn't you come here you know well or you learn to adapt right I
mean I I hated the first time I had beer I hated it the first couple times I had beer I hated it but then just like you
know you try not that traditional cultural food in China is the same as drinking beer but still you get my point
I remember in college I botle bottle of bourbon and I was like I'm gonna like this and here we are today
yeah fair point so we figured it out and that's why you're you have the fan oh
yeah this is this is a Japanese fan that I bought at 7-Eleven in Japan um yeah no I've just been holding
it my desk because like gets hot so I've been doing this all right it's ni goes
with the Vibes yeah um sweet anything to announce before we hop off uh no but
thanks friends for listening we're at Doom tood at all the socials send us an email um at Doom tood
gmail.com our patreon just surpass $50,000 a month we can't thank you enough oh my God could you [ __ ]
imagine stop no I actually can't stop it
um uh yeah right to us Doom toil gmail.com uh tell your friends so your
family and your yeah that's it um sweet
else cool that's it sweet I'm going to go ahead and cut us off and we are out don't know where the new things
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