The Crazy Story of the Opium Wars

0:02 A sigh escapes as you open the doors

0:05 and a smell like honey and flowers creeps up your nostrils.

0:09 On low beds, men sprawl amidst cushions, smiling serenely through the haze.

0:15 A young woman hands you a tray with dimsum, tea and a pipe– your usual.

0:21 With the first hit of opium, the edges of your world soften

0:25 and your guilt evaporates in a warm weightless cloud.

0:30 Just today, foreign merchants bribed you smuggling

0:33 in the very stuff now curling through your lungs.

0:37 We’re in China around 1839 and this year,

0:41 40,000 chests of opium will flow through the port of Guangzhou,

0:46 making the dealers fabulously rich.

0:48 And you are a willing accomplice

0:51 to the world's biggest narco kingpin: the British Empire.

0:55 But how did Queen Victoria become the head of a drug cartel?

1:02 All the Tea in China It started innocently:

1:06 By the late 18th century, the British got hopelessly hooked on tea.

1:11 Within a century, demand for energizing leaf water exploded by 10,000%,

1:16 with tea taxes funding 10% of the entire treasury.

1:20 The problem is, the world’s only tea dealer at the time is China,

1:25 which sees itself as the center

1:27 of civilization and doesn’t care for equal partnerships.

1:30 Their negotiation partner couldn’t be more irritated:

1:33 it’s the British East India Company.

1:35 A huge joint stock company with a state-backed monopoly on trade in the Indian

1:41 Ocean and a private army twice as big as the British Empire’s.

1:45 For now, they are the ones being squeezed:

1:48 the Chinese demand silver for tea and don’t buy anything

1:52 themselves– a losing deal that drains the Crown's silver reserves.

1:57 So in 1793, London sends ambassadors,

2:01 hoping fancy words and gifts can nudge Beijing into buying British goods.

2:07 But the Qianlong Emperor tells them to get lost:

2:12 “Our Celestial Empire possesses all things in prolific abundance.

2:17 There is no need to import the manufactures of outside barbarians.” Desperately,

2:23 British officials look for something– anything– they can sell to China.

2:28 And they identify: opium.

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4:02 Poppy Economics If you slice a poppy seed pod,

4:06 it bleeds a milky goop packed with morphine and codeine– raw opium.

4:11 For millennia, it’s widespread in Europe,

4:13 the Middle East and Asia as a painkiller.

4:15 But in the 17th century, in southern Chinese ports,

4:18 people find that it hits different when smoked.

4:21 It becomes a social event for wealthy merchants and a pricey trading good.

4:26 Conveniently for the East India Company,

4:28 when they seize control of Bengal in India,

4:31 they stumble upon a local opium business, just waiting to be scaled.

4:37 In the late 1700s, they start forcing farmers to swap food crops for poppy,

4:42 fueling famines that kill millions.

4:44 Like any good cartel, they then launder the business and sell

4:49 the opium to private merchants in Calcutta, who smuggle it into China.

4:53 Trade runs like butter,

4:54 and Chinese silver starts running into British money chests so fast

4:59 that it becomes the Empire’s financial backbone within a few decades.

5:03 And in 1833, the floodgates open:

5:06 The British government ends the East India Company's China monopoly.

5:11 Ambitious British merchants turn into reckless

5:13 narco lords with armed smuggling boats,

5:16 who push the drug into a mass-market habit.

5:19 More and more people get high and many get addicted– although Chinese

5:23 officials might have overstated numbers to throw shade on this “foreign drug”.

5:28 Contrary to later myths, most users may have used it like many

5:33 Europeans use wine or beer– socially and in moderation.

5:37 To the Chinese government, it’s less a public health than an economic crisis.

5:42 They’re bleeding more silver out through opium and other

5:45 imports than tea and the like bring in.

5:48 As recession grips the empire, officials use opium as a scapegoat for fading

5:53 morals and fortitude and decide to crush the trade.

5:57 And the stage for this showdown is Guangzhou,

6:01 the heart of the drug hustle, known to Europeans as Canton.

6:08 The Untouchable It’s spring 1839 in the buzzing port city,

6:13 and you’re on your way to get high with your merchant pals again.

6:17 You’re sweating as you stroll through the narrow streets that smell of incense,

6:22 tea, and frying food.

6:24 But as you reach the den, the doors have been smashed to splinters.

6:28 Soldiers are dragging the owner away while

6:31 others haul out armfuls of confiscated pipes.

6:34 As a middleman who’s been pocketing mountains of British silver,

6:37 you feel the noose tightening around your neck.

6:41 The man responsible rolled into town only a week ago:

6:44 Lin Zexu, the Emperor's hand-picked fixer for the opium crisis,

6:49 an elite-scholar known as "Clear-as-the-Heavens" for being

6:52 incorruptible in a system drowning in bribes.

6:56 From the outside, China’s huge army,

6:59 population and century-old dynasty look like a massive porcelain vase:

7:04 pristine and imposing.

7:05 But it is just as delicate if hit hard.

7:09 A population boom has outpaced food supply and bureaucracy,

7:12 the economy is in freefall, and rebellions are simmering.

7:17 But to Lin, China remains civilization's eternal center:

7:20 self-sufficient and morally superior.

7:22 And in that view, a merchant like you,

7:26 getting rich off bribes from barbarians, is the absolute worst.

7:31 You see Lin's decree pinned to every wall:

7:34 ditch the habit in about a year or prepare for the executioner.

7:38 And you hear whispers of what Lin said when the biggest Chinese opium trader–

7:42 one of the richest men in the world– tried to bribe him with a fortune:

7:47 “The Great Minister does not want your money.

7:50 I want your head.” And Lin isn’t stopping here.

7:55 He turns to the source of the opium flood: the foreign traders.

8:00 They live on a narrow strip outside Guangzhou’s walls known as the “factories”:

8:04 a mix of offices, warehouses, and living quarters they leased from China,

8:08 and the only place in the empire where foreigners can legally live and trade,

8:12 designed to keep them under control.

8:14 The British operation is overseen by Superintendent Charles Eliott,

8:18 a dutiful servant to the crown.

8:20 He personally finds the opium smuggling a bit distasteful,

8:24 but gets its economic necessity and lacks the legal authority to stop it anyway.

8:30 Lin sends them an ultimatum:

8:32 surrender all your opium and pledge never to trade it again– or else.

8:37 His soldiers brick up the doors,

8:39 march through the streets, and cut off food supplies.

8:43 This escalated quickly,

8:44 and with messages between China and London taking months,

8:48 Elliot panics and makes a fateful decision:

8:51 he orders the traders to hand over all 20,283 opium chests,

8:57 promising that the Crown will pay them back.

9:00 They can hardly believe their luck.

9:02 In one stroke, their entire stock is “sold”.

9:07 She might not know it yet,

9:09 but this makes Queen Victoria the biggest drug lord on the planet.

9:14 Elliot doesn't realize the world-altering debt he just created for her.

9:18 The opium is worth 4% of the entire British state budget.

9:23 Today that share would be about £55 billion, close to the UK's defense budget.

9:29 Lin, meanwhile, is riding high.

9:31 He alone stopped the crisis and seized the opium.

9:35 Chest after chest is hauled to huge trenches by the river,

9:38 dumped into brine, mixed with lime and flushed out to the sea.

9:45 The Bill, Please By August 1839,

9:49 the news reaches London and buries the Foreign Minister’s desk under a mountain

9:54 of letters from merchants all asking for the Queen to pay their IOUs.

10:00 The most powerful merchants launch

10:02 a lobbying campaign arguing that China's market

10:04 is a goldmine locked behind an annoying bureaucracy just waiting for liberation.

10:09 In October, the Cabinet decides to send warships to force the Chinese to pay,

10:14 seize ports and crack the country open like an oyster for British commerce.

10:18 This causes a moral backlash across Britain– but the fleet is

10:22 already off to declare war on one third of the world’s population.

10:28 Steel Ships meet Sabers In June 1840, fishing boats off Hong Kong start spotting

10:36 strange shapes on the horizon that slowly

10:39 grow into twenty-two warships and dozens of transports

10:43 carrying about 4000 British and Indian troops.

10:47 Lin Zexu isn’t impressed.

10:49 He's dismissed reports of an incoming fleet,

10:52 and tells the emperor it’s just a bunch of smugglers.

10:55 Charles Elliot knows better.

10:58 Forced out of Guangzhou months ago,

11:00 he's been fighting desperate naval skirmishes

11:02 for food and water along the coast, hoping for reinforcement.

11:06 He teams up with the admiral,

11:08 leaves a detachment to blockade Guangzhou, and sails the main force north.

11:14 In July, they reach the archipelago

11:16 of Zhoushan and start bombarding the main island.

11:19 Its army falls in just nine minutes and nearly a million people flee

11:24 in a panic– while the disgraced local governor drowns himself in a small pool.

11:29 While China has an army of 800,000,

11:32 it’s scattered across an empire larger than Europe,

11:35 and the technology gap is huge.

11:38 For centuries, the Qing had prioritized internal stability

11:41 while the world outside raced through industrial revolution.

11:45 So now they're still fighting with their great-great-grandfather's weapons:

11:49 cannons from the fifteen-hundreds,

11:51 rusty old flintlocks and literally bows and spears.

11:56 Still, the real mismatch is at sea.

11:58 Britain is a global naval superpower,

12:00 while the weak Qing navy has been neglected,

12:03 and years earlier had even struggled to crush local pirates,

12:07 like the armada of pirate queen Zheng Yi Sao.

12:10 By August, the British fleet is dangerously close to Beijing.

12:15 Terrified, Emperor Daoguang fires Lin Zexu,

12:19 blaming him for the crisis, and opens negotiations with Elliot.

12:23 But after months of back and forth, Elliot's patience snaps.

12:28 The British deploy the world’s first steam-powered iron warship, the Nemesis.

12:34 Like a tank at a cavalry battle,

12:36 it vaporizes eleven war junks in ninety minutes.

12:40 The horrified Chinese diplomat agrees to hand over Hong Kong

12:44 and a lot of money on top, to make it stop.

12:47 But neither side is happy with this result.

12:50 The Chinese negotiator is sentenced to death,

12:53 and Elliot fired for not demanding more.

12:56 In August 1841, a new commander arrives with reinforcements.

13:01 They go north again, dismantling the coastal defenses.

13:04 On July 21, 1842, in brutal heat,

13:07 thousands of British troops step off their ships,

13:10 and after a short, vicious fight,

13:13 they break in and enter the city of Zhenjiang– and walk into a nightmare:

13:18 people are cutting each other’s throats or drowning

13:21 themselves in garden pools to escape the barbarians.

13:24 The war machine pushes on for Nanjing and aims

13:27 their cannons at the heart of the ancient capital.

13:30 On August 29, 1842, Chinese officials board

13:34 a British warship to sign the Treaty of Nanjing.

13:38 China is forced to pay 6 million silver dollars for the destroyed opium,

13:42 and another $15 million for ransoms, debts, and to repair and refuel

13:47 the very ships that just slaughtered their people.

13:50 In total, it’s a fiscal shock worth about half of China's annual income.

13:55 Hong Kong is made a permanent colony,

13:58 and five ports are forced open, dismantling China’s control of foreign trade.

14:03 Absurdly, opium is not discussed at all and stays technically illegal,

14:08 because the British Crown wants to avoid looking like a Victorian Pablo Escobar.

14:13 But actions speak louder than words.

14:18 The Century of Humiliation After Nanjing, opium flooded China like a tsunami,

14:24 while Western merchants got their tea and profits.

14:28 In 1856, tensions boiled over into the Second Opium War,

14:33 ending with more unequal treaties that stripped China’s control over trade,

14:38 law, and land even further.

14:40 Opium was legalized and smoking spread more than ever.

14:44 But this is not the story of a bully and a helpless victim.

14:47 The Qing were rulers of a massive, expansionist empire themselves,

14:52 that took much of Asia by force including Tibet, Xinjiang and Taiwan.

14:57 The Opium Wars were more like two of the most powerful

15:01 empires on Earth facing off– for which ordinary people paid the price.

15:05 In 1912 the Qing Empire shattered,

15:08 ending two thousand years of dynastic rule and sparking decades

15:13 of civil war that only concluded with Mao taking power in 1949.

15:19 By then, both China and the West had their own version of the story.

15:24 In the West, opium was recast as an “Oriental”

15:27 drug that was consumed in seedy places by dangerous criminals.

15:32 In China, Opium became the foreign poison destroying the nation.

15:37 The Communist party turned this memory into the opening

15:40 chapter of the “Century of Humiliation,” fuelling nationalism

15:44 and presenting its own rise as the answer

15:47 to that suffering– stories that still impact global politics today.