Opium Trade: Linking India, China and Britain

OPIUM INVESTIGATION

The opium trade was incorporated to the China culture into the global market. During that period the economies of India, China and Britain were connected to one another in a trade that was one of the most important connection as a role in the global market. The opium trade started in the 17 century the drug was just shipped from Portuguese Goa in Portuguese and British ships, the opium was held by a monopoly who was controlled by the Dutch. Taking the opium in EIC vessels was really criticized by the directors of the London Company, for incurring losses and putting in danger legal forms of the famous Sino-British trade, since this drug was illegal in China. The EAST INDIA COMPANY by regulating and restricting production,

These competition from those sources led to the East India Company to lower their prices increasing their exports from territories that were under their control as a strategy for winning a greater market expansion. The conditions to trade the opium at Canton had a big evolution. The western traders continued carrying opium to their own companies at the south of Canton, Whampoa to make the transfer to the Chinese buyers. After the Jiaqing imperial prohibition of 1796, the traders preferred to payed a bribe instead of paying the former custom duties. Opium had a really big global significance because opium was not a smuggling trade but it definitely had the biggest commerce of the time in any other single commodity. The opium had a really important role in the establishment of the western trading firms in Asia. The British victory in the opium war did not bring actually the legalization of opium because technically it remained illegal. In the arrow war, also known as the second war of opium, The Qing agreed to legalize the importation of the opium to China under the trade articles that were added to the treaty of 1858. Chinese domestic cultivation opium expanded a lot in those years after remaining illegal for three decades after 1860 until the domestically production was made legal