Doomed to Fail - Ep 110 - Smoke 'em if you got 'em!: The Opium Wars

Episode Date: June 3, 2024

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/9780345803023https://www.historyhit.com/  Join our Founders Club on Patreon to get ad-free episodes for life! patreon.com/DoomedtoFailPodWe would love to hear from you! Please follow along! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail] 

In a matter of the people of the state of California versus Hortonthal James Simpson, case number B.A.019. 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. For my. Boo-hoo.

Nice. Oh, in your classy children's cup again. I literally was like almost grabbed a red wine glass. was like, how dare I? And I grabbed a white wine glass, so I wasn't 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 thousand percent. 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 De Nara. That is not a wine glass in any way, shape, or form.

If Blair hears this, she will have 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 own a house get dishes but who am I so so the next time you're here I'm going to take you to this place again Donata is just like the most pleasant fun great vibe Mexican restaurant and every marguerity 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 rosé out of it now I love it thank you good for you um so welcome uh sorry okay uh welcome

with doom to fail I'm Fars joined here by Taylor we are doing a podcast which is twice week around topics that we want to discuss sometimes are relevant to the topic of doom to fail sometimes or 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 felony convictions, which is insane. The second is Chad Daybell, 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, fucking kill that guy. He's the worst. And like, that's what I feel about Chad Daybell. Two children. Yes. Like, that man. I mean, and I also, the same way I also feel like, yes, I probably. be more more torturous 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 and then he was like jesus like fuck that guy and then do you know the end of the earth 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 picton died yeah he got you hear how he died he got stabbed to get shipped so apparently somebody broke a broom and when they broke the broom the very sharp part of it they rammed up his nose

into his brain 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 preserved yeah

Yeah, well, deserve. I mean, nobody's, nobody's feeling remorse. No, one's crying. Nobody's crying. Wow. Yeah, I heard that, like, hurt him. That wasn't the thing that killed him. Like, he died not, not instantly. Oh. Yeah, that's the crazy wild news this week.

That's wild. And we don't know. Lori Valo hasn't been sentenced, has she? I think she was sentenced. I'm not, it's up. Yeah, yeah. She got life, life without. Yeah.

here's a thing doesn't she deserve it too it was her kids she let this guy kill her it's got to be easier and 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 anybody anybody if you have thoughts please write to us even if I'll pottajumel email.com. I was wondering which one's worse, him or Chad?

She's pretty bad. Yeah, they're both so bad. Trash. Trash humans doing trash. The worst. Anyways, you said you have some news? Oh, no, I was sort of a stupid story to tell you. While I was so dumb, but while I was waiting, or not waiting for you, you were like,

oh, I'll be a 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 an un-thissolved tide pod. That is. I can see that being terrified. To your credit, I can see that being terrifying.

That would be terrifying. I was just laughing at myself. So I was like, what is coming out of me? What is happening? That would be scary though. Yeah, I listened to a podcast recently where the guest was a comedian And all he would do was talk about how he has a tapeworm inside of him And it was like he was playing it off as though it was like a real thing

And he would just 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 Did he pull out of his throat? No, he just pulled out of his butt. Not even worse.

So things, long as short, Tide pods are bad. There could be worse things in there. I didn't eat it. It just was in my Andes. Yeah, yeah. Sweet, well, let's go ahead and dive right in. If I, if memory stores me, frankly,

you are the, you're the person today. I am going to 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 bigger one. And now that I have it, I'm like, ooh, this thing isn't that easy to actually have on it 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 that made me send it back which was annoying because it was really old anyway and then the job before that I let me keep it and that one died and I was pissed because 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 no i got it when we started doing this because i didn't want to do this my work laptop yeah and nicole worked at the apple store at that time so i got her discount oh yeah yeah i i'd get the same thing i got a i got a friend's discount no i i was doing this on my own macbook but my own macbook was from 2018 and when i would 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 three minutes because the thing was just freeze. It couldn't handle that much processing. I was like, I'm totally done doing this. And so also, before I get started, based on speaking of performance, we're going to get fiber internet tomorrow. It's huge. It's huge.

Then we're going to be able to record this video all the time. I can do it while downloading something where it's so exciting. So yeah, my life is going to change. Yeah, that's awesome. Thank you. You're stepping the right direction. I know.

I think they're 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 solar parents. Do you say not to do it? Yes. Why?

Because the value, the savings of it are only, it was a long time ago, let's do it, but it was something of the effect of 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, yes, I totally get that, but also I think it's going to save us like a thousand dollars a year. Like not a ton, but like a little bit. But because, but that's that, that's that that's that that that's that that's that. That's, that's, that's, that's, that, that's, that's that. That's, like August our bill is like eight hundred dollars 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 that just pays your electric I think okay please let's find when we're done I'll find it and send it to you because a story about somebody who did that exact same thing in California and they were like I'm screwed and And also, I can't sell my house because this lease thing is attached to the solar panel. It's, it turned to a whole thing. And so anyways, I'll send it to you. I'll find it.

And after this one, I'll send it to you. Okay. I'm just like saying, like, just whatever other things you want to get. That'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 a lot.

I think the most I've had my bill come to is somewhere on $4 or $450. Yeah. in the in the debt of summer yeah that's 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 talking about you're getting like a first aid kit oh yeah 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 we look looks very trashy from the outside but inside I think it's working my parents also installed a fan in their attic that apparently helped tremendously I don't know interesting I'm sure it's like also we could get a duct ducts clean anyway anyways uh I know that people don't like to hear our banter so we'll stop um some people some people love it um cool okay well let's talk about let's talk about drugs I'll talk about drugs with me I have a drug story let's do drugs it is a war about drugs but not the Reagan kind you got it not hers no um there's an older one okay i'm kind of making you guess it's in china yeah opium opium yeah so let's talk about the opium wars there were two i listened to a book called

imperial twilight by stephen 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 September 4th, 1839 to August 29th, 1842. And the second one is from October 8th, 1856 to October 24th, 1860. And 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 because boats started to be really um you know much better during this time and they've like ever been before so the 1800s if you're in china today is like a chinese student it will be taught to you as the century of humiliation. And it's something that 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.

Obviously, people have been trading with China for centuries across the Silk Road, which was like three. through China. You can picture that. My mind directly went to that onion website. It's like a fake onion? Like a fake website? Sorry, it's like tour.

It was like a tour of a road. Oh, sure, sure, sure. A Silk Road and you could buy all kinds of things. Well, exactly that. That's what the Silk Road was. Yes. It was like, you know, go through China, get their shit.

But it was hard because we 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 fucking love doing that for some reason. And today, 2% of China is Christian. So they didn't do that great job.

I will say it. 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 to go through it. Where's like, why are you going around trying to force people to be? I mean, Islam does the same thing, I guess.

So they go around front of force people to be, well, I might less than Christians. They do it, I feel like the most. Well, Islam did it, or Muslims did it through the sword of like converter die, which is like probably worse. Yeah, and I feel like I guess, I think I'm missing obviously that like true believer part of me where like maybe if I really believe far as 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 but I don't want you to burn for eternity 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 the old saying of like would you rather go to hell all the cool people were in hell yeah 100% I haven't done it but

anyway neither exist so there is a story of one missionary who like walked all the way through China and he like got to Tibet and he met the Dalai Lama the Dalai 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 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 england 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. So China isn't closed to trade. So 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 merchants come to Canton for a part of the year to conduct trade. 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 Macau, which is owned by Portugal. So it's hard to like, you can't stay there and you 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 Citizen, they've always wanted to do population control Yeah, yeah 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 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 is 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 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 vice versa. You know, so like 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, I'm sure there are outliers, of course, but one of the first people from Britain is a little boy named James Flint. 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 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 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 Benjamin Franklin discovering tofu, like being like this is incredible. I don't know what to do. And now I can only picture him as Michael Douglas from the show.

So I'm like, it would be great. It would be a delight. He would love it. So another person involved in learning Chinese and trading is a man named George Thomas Staunton. He's also going to work for the East India Company. 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 Chinese. He would get to China via Tenerife. He sailed to Tenerife to Rio and then down to China.

So it takes a while together. But he did that. He's in that of the story. The first person to write in Chinese English, was named Herbert Allen Giles and it was like hundreds of pages because obviously 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 I didn't think that it could be translated you know but we all have like the same thoughts and ideas right you all have the same

they're not saying something in Chinese it's impossible to say in English yeah I guess I have noticed like when I think in Farsi it is a little bit different than when I think in English because the language is different. Like the layers and the motions that are associated with that are different, I guess. Interesting. Anyways. No, it's interesting. Cool. So that's the prelude to what's happening. The East India Company is always there. I'm trying to expand trade in that area. Obviously in India is 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, 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 Qing dynasty. It's spelled Q I N-G, but pronounced Qing. Q-U-I-G. Q-U-I-G. Q-I-N-G. Q-I-N-G But pronounce Ching And do you remember When the internet first started

And there were those videos Of that guy pronouncing things incorrectly No No I don't remember the day The internet started Taylor I don't know what you were doing that day But

I feel like one of the first things Was like a guy Like pronouncing words wrong Like hyperbole He'd be like hyperbiboodoo You know And it was funny But now I feel like

Whenever I go find a A pronunciation thing I'm like Not sure if it's real or not by this is the story is going to be the end of the Qing dynasty is that point um there's some folks who never ever 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 and there's a really cool story of a woman named she yang who was a lady pirate but at one point commands like 70,000 people on like all these ships and they like

never ever stop on land and they're just always trading back and forth on their ships but they actually get folded into Chinese society all of them so we're going to give them amnesty and let them live on land so there's like uprisings happening in China

also 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 going to have to fight like

a ton of wars at the same time and that's what Britain has going on 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. 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 in people's minds. In an 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 sort of an 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

because it was a hellbop you know like they all kill themselves and I know I do think it could be fun to not know what an eclipse was and be there be wandering an eclipse and just be like

what the fuck is going on so scary like oh my god like that and then like if someone was inside they would never believe you so fun but so all it's happening China is huge but it does have a small navy but their

boats are nothing like the English boats like they cannot compete with them in maritime battle during the Qing dynasty the emperor's emperor Dua Guang at this point. And it's definitely within the imperial palace and the emperor's 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, I guess, 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 it's off. So that's what's happening in China.

And on the English side, it's Queen Victoria. It's the Victorian era 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 of tea? No, it's a cultural thing. It's an Iranian thing. So everyone, Iranian I know has tea every morning, afternoon, and evening.

There's actually a drawer in my house, which is my mom's like just never go in this drawer. And it's just all of her tea stuff. But when they visit, they can have their tea. But I never, I never got into it. That's amazing. So we, we've both been drinking tea for thousands of years as well. But it came over to like England and the, in the Europe area. in like the 1600s, and they started to like it because 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 on coffee and something else so they can drink. And all of a sudden they can't fucking 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, the chamelea sinesis. Did you know that? No. So green tea, black tea, white tea, oolong tea, and then another one called Priya tea is 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. That's to stop them from oxidizing. Those are the leaves that you use for green tea and for macha. They dry them and then grind them. And then black tea is fully oxidized, which means they like let it dry in a certain way, which makes it really dark. And then white tea has like minimal processing. Ulong is a 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. That's where it started there. You don't drink tea, do you? Um, I like sometimes at night I'll have a little bit of tea. But like, it kind of makes me, it gives me a headache. Like I take 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. like I'm doing something, even though I'm probably not, but that's the only time I, yeah, I'm not a tea guy. Yeah, me, I like coffee. Yeah, me too. Me too. 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 U.S. around like tea being taxed because we wanted a tea also, but all the tea is coming from China. Or it's coming from China from Britain to America. Like, 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 it 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 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?

Probably Afghanistan I could probably go in Afghanistan no I mean like where does it derive from like what'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 dry if they scrape the dried bits off or something right yeah that's exactly right so they take like the pot it's almost like i'm a opium manufacturer so i mean this is another one of those things you're like how about

did you figure that out? But you take like 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 that 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 shit. like that's how we got here yeah we could probably do 50 episodes on how do we find this out yeah so the puppies are right in warm climates um but for our story the puppies

that are part of the opium wars are grown in india so they're not grown in china they're grown in india and brought over to china so yeah this is that how you make it you get morphine coding heroin all come from the same um the same thing laudanum which is like a very very Victorian thing. I feel like in Victorian movies are always like taking a dropper of laudanum. Yeah, the Winchester house. That's like I was doing. Remember that?

Oh, yeah, yeah, 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. It was one of the things that was used for was a cough suppressant, but really it was like made you pass out so you woke off anymore.

Works. It's effective. Like, 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, 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 isn't 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 rich more rich people have and people like want silver that's like the big thing there so this will destroy the economy 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 wreak 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 not having the silver and the opium's coming in it is legal 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 started by two men called Jardine Matheson. 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 Holdings Limited. It's a Hong Kong-based Bermuda Domic, British multinational conglomerate. It's a very business, business, business.

this place and it still exists today what does it do today i have no idea that's what it says it's a british multinational conglomerate i don't i couldn't figure it out weird it's just like the whole they like own a lot of stuff like trade of it i'm sure someone knows but i couldn't figure it 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 warren delano who's fjr'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 Kerry's great great grandpa so a lot of like American dynasties come out of this so it just kind of goes to show that like the chips are kind of stacked against yeah it's like it's 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, you know, instead of being a Roosevelt. Yeah, totally. And they're not bringing in like a little bit of opium. They're bringing in hundreds of thousands of crates of opium. And so the emperor, uh, Duo Guang, 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 they kind of teeter back and forth on it. And they several times they officially make it illegal. But, you know, the fact that they had to keep doing it means that no one was right listening. You know, so people don't really care. They just want it. 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 addicts into groups of like 10. And he's like, stop doing opium right now. If one of you does it, I'm going 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, like, try to stop people from doing it. If it was me in that group, I would just do the opium immediately. So I'm like, one of these other addicts is going to do it. And then I'm going to get killed for it. So might as well be high when it happens. That's what I think the presidential dilemma is.

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. Lynn Saxu, he seizes the fort in Canton that a lot of these American and British traders are at. Delano is

there. It sounds kind of hilarious because it's a bunch of rich white guys without their servants. So the Chinese servants aren't there. So these guys have to figure out how to cook. So like Warren Delano 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 get their clothes ready. They have ever taken care of themselves before. So now they'll have 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 fort. That's one thing is happening. And while they're there, there's this dude.

And this is kind of this dude's fault. His name's Charles Elliott. He was in charge of regulating the transatlantic 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 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 trying 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 traitors and

they have all this opium and they're like pissed that 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 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 deals great. Like I don't have to sell it anymore. You'll just buy it for 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 going to 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 shit ton of the money because they've been counting on this bringing it in. So why don't I just pay them all for it will destroy the opium and then it'll be over. No more opium. No opium in China.

They have their money. Chinese doesn't have opium. Everyone's happy. Except the addicts. Well, except the addicts, sure. But mostly it's the British monarchy who's like, we're not going to fucking pay for that. Are you on drugs? 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 it like burned it and like a very special pit and then like sunk it in the ocean. Like they got rid of it. So. Then there's like a little bit of back and forth between the British like merchants and Charles Elliott and the Chinese government. where they're like, someone has to pay for this. And so the first opium war 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 though 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 it also was 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 coasts 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 probably can go back which is super sad and it ends up with after like four years of war it ends up with their Treaty of Nan King. So Nan King also called Nanjing. 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 Nanjing. And that's because it is very important, it's on a very important tributary that

leads to the Yangtze 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. Yeah, probably. Yeah, probably. And someone with the Japanese taking it over in that anyways. Yeah. Yeah. It's all in our fact.

Because it's like a place where it's all, yeah, it's all in that area. And it's like a really important city. So the treaty of Nanking sucks for the for China. They owe all the money back to Britain. The British are no longer under Chinese law so they can do whatever they wanted to. They lose Hong Kong to the British and they won't, Hong Kong will be British until 1997. Yeah. This is the story.

Yeah. Yeah. And all the ports need to be open to, or at least like, I think it's like 10 more ports need to be open to the British and they can like bring their families and stuff. So China gets the shit 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, 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 at the ship. got seized. And other people join this time, France, France, Russia, the United States. The United States comes, but they're like kind of hanging out to see who wins. They don't like really help either side. And when it's over, they will go to the Chinese like emperor and they will bring instead of like goods because you 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, in hindsight, probably not the best thing to do, but... Which we continue to do. So there isn't like in everything I read, like the actual wars itself, it's just like little

fighting cities are being, little cities on the coast of being destroyed, 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're going to. They've been fighting all over the world. They've learned a shit ton in the Napoleonic Wars. They've been all over. So there's a lot of that they can do. One thing that they do that is a real bummer is 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 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 jenghis khan series he talks about

when the mongols come and sack parts of china and the mongols will wear these like beautiful chinese silks until they rot off their bodies they just like steal them and like never shower and 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 Elgin's son. Do you know the Elgin Marbles? You know what those are? They're in the British Museum, of course, but they're from Greece

and they belong to Greece. And Lord Elgin 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 one of those things. What is it art? no they're there it's a marble 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 think if you think of like the acropolis it's not the front of the crop lips i don't know it might be but the acropolis pillars and then it has like the kind of half triangle at the top full of uh sculptures so that's what belgium oh oh okay yeah yeah i'm not one of them

So his son is going to be there sacking these the summer palace in the forbidden city and so they also steal these Pekingese dogs these like Chinese dogs and they give one to Queen Victoria and she names it

looty because it's loot from looting these palaces and she loves it so much it's like in paintings. Like what the fuck? I love all dogs but those are particularly ugly dogs. She named it looty to remind her that they looted the Chinese imperial palace to get it.

I mean, it's not great. I think that's wild. I wrote, what the fuck, Vicky? Like, that's crazy. So after this is over, there will be a couple more treaties. And the Chinese will lose parts of Manchari or Russia. They'll lose more of the south part of China. And they will lose like 10 more ports.

Like, they will, it's not good for them. This is part of their, you know, century of humiliation. And the last emperor of the Qing dynasty will be, Huang Tong 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 and a lot of it is happening because of like the inevitable globalization of China because of like boats and communication and all those things and trade and Britain's like desire to own the world. And 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 there was a revolution and 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 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 of documentaries where they show you like a little bit in 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. Even those documentaries, they don't show you the people that live there. They only show you like the government sanctioned tours and you just have to infer what that life must be like. That's what I'm curious about. Like, what's the person's life like that's like living there? That's going 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 had go underground probably in, like, a minute. Because either for, like, nuclear war or for, like, other things. Is that, is that real? 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 Taylor am 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 U.S. 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 write a great book about

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 like it's actually how that like is good for Africa because 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 well just all these things that are like high-tech 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 yeah 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. Yeah, I don't know. Weird. But yeah, but this is,

but I was, but 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 is one of the,

one of the places I, 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 we first were dating

and he was like every single thing I did and I was like Taylor would hate this like what go see just like I feel like I don't 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 you know but if I go to like a really authentic Dmsom restaurant

I don't like it it's not for me yeah right before the lockdowns happened and when I left our last I mean we worked together at I went and visited the Schmidt in San Francisco

and they took me into a very authentic like Cantonese restaurant and yeah that's just not flavors that I'm used to and that's fine you know also because like when I was in Japan like Morgan my friend Morgan someone that she's with with on the tour

would eat and excel as sandwich from 7-11 every day because you 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. And you'd be like, you knew you were going to hate this. Why did you come here? You know? Well, or you learned to adapt, right?

I mean, I hated it. The first time I had beer, I hated that. The first couple of 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 so you get my point. I remember in college, I bought a bottle of bourbon and I was like, I'm going to like this. I think we're in a day. Yeah, fair point.

So we figured it out. And that's why you have the fan. Oh, yeah, this is a Japanese fan that I bought at 7-Eleven in Japan. Yeah, I know, I've just been holding it out of my desk because it gets hot. So I've been doing this. All right. And it's nice. Goes with the vibes.

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