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("Quid coniuratio est?")
THE FIRST OPIUM WAR
(Source for the following is Dope, Inc. by the Editors of Executive Intelligence Review. I neither necessarily agree nor disagree with all or portions of the following.)
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1601 -- Original Jesuit mission is established at Beijing, China. The Jesuits, having achieved positions of "unquestioned authority" at the Chinese royal court, hold the key to the opium trade. They are later followed by the Portuguese and then the Dutch.
1659 -- The Dutch now control the ancient dope trade routes. In exchange for taxes paid to the Mogul court, Dutch traders are allowed to force Indian peasants to produce dope for them.
1715 -- The British East India Company opens an office in Canton, China.
1750 -- By now the Dutch are shipping more than 100 tons of opium per year to Indonesia. Besides business advantages, the Dutch have discovered that opium is "a useful means for breaking the moral resistance of Indonesians who opposed the introduction of their semi-servile but increasingly profitable plantation system. They deliberately spread the drug habits from the ports... to the countryside."
(How were the drug habits "deliberately spread"? The book, Dope, Inc., does not exactly say. Nowadays, certain "rebellious" rock and roll songs serve as advertising jingles which help lure in potential consumers. Censorship, however, is not the answer. But be aware when you hear lyrics such as "Ritalin is in. Ritalin is in," that "somebody" might be trying to sell you something.)
1757 -- Military victories make Bengal a British colony.
1783 -- Lord Shelburne, who concluded peace negotiations with America after our Revolutionary War, is the power behind William Pitt the Younger, British Prime Minister. Shelburne is allied with the Jesuits, the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, and the East India Company.
Both the British Empire and the East India Company are bankrupt. Lord Shelburne and associates take over the East India Company, and makes it "the central instrument of loot for the maintenance of the British Empire." Shelburne proposes to use "free trade" as a cover for both subverting the United States and expanding the opium trade into the Far East.
Lord Shelburne is allied also with Francis Baring, an Anglo-Dutch banker.
1787 -- British Secretary of State Dundas has proposed that Britain force itself more into China so as to help augment the opium market there. The East India Company, acting in a manner reminiscent of our own American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), establishes "cut outs" -- intermediaries -- to handle the export of opium from India to China.
1830 -- Number of chests filled with opium being brought into China has increased fourfold since late 1700s: 18,956 chests.
1836 -- Number of chests filled with opium being brought into China: greater than 30,000 chests.
1839 -- China launches its own version of a "War on Drugs". Lin Tse-hsu is appointed drug czar. He cracks down on the "Society of Heaven and Earth," also known as The Triad Society, which had been recruited by the East India Company into the opium business in the early 1800s.
But Lin goes too far. He tries to arrest a British national connected to the dope trade. British warships intervene. Lin responds by holding British tea for ransom, until and unless merchants turn over their opium stockpiles. Britain's Lord Palmerston, backed by the powerful British Navy, demands (1) full legalization of opium trade into China; (2) compensation for opium stockpiles confiscated by Lin; and (3) British sovereignty over several offshore islands.
June 1840 -- The British fleet arrives in force and lays siege. Chinese forces are relatively weak, due partly to drug addiction within their Imperial Army. The Chinese Emperor asks for a peace treaty.
1842 -- The Treaty of Nanking, among other things, gives Hong Kong to the British. To this day Hong Kong is said to be the capital of British drug-running.
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