i'll be happy to see one t-shirt bearing 'British Empire Were Funded By Opium' one day.
British Empire Funded by Opium
Still, the real narco-republic in world history isn’t the United States, Mexico, Colombia or other transit points to the artificially created drug epidemic in the United States. This dubious honor actually goes to the British Empire, as their Bengal-to-China opium business during the time of Queen Victoria grew into the world’s largest commodity trade during the 19th century. Opium accounted for almost 20 percent of the Empire’s total revenue, yet opium was just the tip of the addictive trade.
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2012/09...f-conflict-anglo-american-and-chinesehistory/
It is time for non-white Briish Subjects in Singapore Chinese to show middle fingers to the British governor for opening drugging their own citizens with opium for 2000% profit from the opium products.
This part of sad Singapore history must be open for further discussion and bring the British to explain their atrocity against their own non-white British Subjects manly Chinese in Singapore and Borneo.
New Markets
As China tightened her borders, Britain pinned her hopes on her other Asian colonies. Opium production in the Straits Settlements (Singapore, Penang, Malacca, Labuan) rose from 353,938 pounds in 1916 to 370,688 pounds in 1920, in spite of Britain’s promise at the Hague Convention to limit opium sales. In 1918, 60% of Britain’s Asian income was derived from opium sales. In 1925, opium accounted for 48% of Singapore’s revenue, and 100% of North Borneo’s. At the 1923 Opium Conference, Mr. Campbell admitted that the British Indian government was determined to maintain high levels of both internal consumption and export, and that they,
“controlled the production, distribution, sale, possession – every possible practical question which could arise in connection with opium—in the strictest possible manner—They had built up a complicated and highly efficient administrative system which started from the time the poppy seed was put into the ground, and did not relinquish control of the drug until it was in the hands of the consumers, or till it was actually exported.”
Some wits noted wryly that the Crown did all but light the addicts’ pipes.
When Indians begged Britain to abandon the opium policy, Britain responded that her opium monopoly was a humanitarian service to India (as it had been to China), and that to end the trade would be “a mockery; to many millions it would be sheer inhumanity.”
History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives.
Abba Eban, Israeli politician
http://www.amoymagic.com/OpiumWar.htm
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2012/09...f-conflict-anglo-american-and-chinesehistory/