opium trade
Colonial narcotic exchange
The opium trade refers to the historical commerce in opium, particularly the 19th-century traffic between British India and China.
British merchants exported Indian opium to China despite Chinese prohibition, creating widespread addiction and triggering the Opium Wars (1839–1842, 1856–1860).
The term now encompasses any large-scale trafficking in opium or its derivatives: The opium trade funds insurgencies in the Golden Triangle.
- Treaty of Nanking1842 Anglo-Chinese peace accord
- British EmpireVast colonial domain
- smugglingIllegal covert transport
- drug smugglingIllegal transport of narcotics
- British East India CompanyColonial trading monopoly
open ports · colonial era · laudanum · morphine · Qing dynasty · extraterritoriality · colonialism · black market · smoking pipe · Hong Kong · Canton System · imperialism · silver · cash crop · economic exploitation · prohibition laws · commodity exchange · contraband
- Victorianaseances, Dickens, spiritualism, Sherlock Holmes, phrenology
- economic historystock market crash, Industrial Revolution, Great Depression, gold standard, Silk Road
- trade historycommerce, merchant, traders, colonial economy, trader
- 1800s AsiaQing dynasty, Boxer Rebellion, British Raj, Emperor Meiji, Tokugawa Shogunate
- ancient tradeSilk Road, caravan routes, sea routes, river routes, maritime routes
- Asian ColonialismBritish Raj, British India, Dutch East Indies, French Indochina, East India Company
opium tradefair trade
Equitable exchange between parties
humanitarian aid · philanthropy · development aid · free trade · mutual exchange
opium tradehumanitarian aid
Crisis relief for sufferers
medical relief · famine relief · public health initiatives · drug rehabilitation · temperance movement