It started off as the opium hub for the Brits into China after the first Opium War. When the Chinese tried to stop the opium trade a second time, the British started the second Opium War. A former governor general to Canada later led a battle in that second war, participated in the pillaging of the Old Summer Palace, and ordered its burning to the ground because the Chinese hesitated to sign a second opium deal.
The Brits were well acquainted with opium by the time the discovered the poppy fields near China.
c.3400 B.C.
The opium poppy is cultivated in lower Mesopotamia. The Sumerians refer to it as Hul Gil, the 'joy plant.' The Sumerians would soon pass along the plant and its euphoric effects to the Assyrians. The art of poppy-culling would continue from the Assyrians to the Babylonians who in turn would pass their knowledge onto the Egyptians.
c.1300 B.C.
In the capital city of Thebes, Egyptians begin cultivation of opium thebaicum,grown in their famous poppy fields.The opium trade flourishes during the reign of Thutmose IV, Akhenaton and King Tutankhamen. The trade route included the Phoenicians and Minoans who move the profitable item across the Mediterranean Sea into Greece, Carthage, and Europe.
c.1100 B.C.
On the island of Cyprus, the "Peoples of the Sea" craft surgical-quality culling knives to harvest opium, which they would cultivate, trade and smoke before the fall of Troy.
c. 460 B.C.
Hippocrates, "the father of medicine", dismisses the magical attributes of opium but acknowledges its usefulness as a narcotic and styptic in treating internal diseases, diseases of women and epidemics.
330 B.C.
Alexander the Great introduces opium to the people of Persia and India.
A.D. 400
Opium thebaicum, from the Egytpian fields at Thebes, is first introduced to China by Arab traders.
1300's
Opium disappears for two hundred years from European historical record. Opium had become a taboo subject for those in circles of learning during the Holy Inquisition. In the eyes of the Inquisition, anything from the East was linked to the Devil.
1500
The Portugese, while trading along the East China Sea, initiate the smoking ofopium. The effects were instantaneous as they discovered but it was a practice the Chinese considered barbaric and subversive.
China already knew the drug was addictive, the Brits bringing it in by the ship load was similar to giving infected blankets to the Indians in NA and the Blacks in South Africa.
And then we wonder how the Communist Party could have attracted so much support. We created that party however much we may want to deny it. Had it not been for the opium wars, China would probably have evolved into a prosperous constitutional monarchy today.
The 2 WW's and the sanctions in the last century replace the damage creating addicts did. It is a good primer of what happens everyplace the Brits move into. A sharp sort with little to zero morals. The Brits called their wars and the Jewish Banks financed them. After the English Stock Market crash of 1815 it was the Banks that were telling the Brits which wars to fight and which places needed colonies. Bringing as many European diseases along as possible turned out to be pretty effective 'first shot' in the the places they wanted all for themselves. The Brits did the rest of the killing and then forts with business men took over the conquest after that, again it was recorded enough times that there is a pattern to how it works. I/m wor5king on that but it is for a different thread.