Comment by bsanr2 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bsanr2 | Hacker News Reader

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>growing opium in India, moving that to China

I think, in understating socioeconomic dynamics of this portion of the trade, you overstate the impressiveness of the rest. The British forcefully drugged an entire country and then compelled it in this weakened state towards its model of an economic monoculture. They didn't so much build their own advantage as tear down China's. In that light, one has to wonder the character of the trade in terms of its benefits for the populations involved and civilization as a whole. The imperialist regard for trade and diplomacy alike lead directly to multiple devastating wars, and the distortion of the economic model in vassal states arguable retarded resource cultivation (outside if what was useful for Europe) and encouraged bloody revolutions that further warped society in these regions.

Taking the long view, it's possible that these "marvels" of global trade were actually examples of colossal mismanagement of resources on a grand scale.

All of that ignores the dynastic decline and corruption at the same time by the Qing. One could argue that the west made China weak, but it was also more likely that the west was taking advantage of a weak China.

Also, the Chinese invented opium and the British didn’t introduce the opium dens, they used that a a a vector to massively increase supply that the Qing restricted before. That doesn’t by any means absolve they west, but it doesn’t absolve the Qing dynasty either, Empress Cixi was quite the villain in China’s decline herself.

"The British forcefully drugged an entire country"

It may be comforting to think in such simplistic black and white terms, but they weren't giving it away for free! Chinese traders gladly swapped tea for opium since there was huge Chinese demand. In fact opium production in China during this time skyrocketed, becoming far larger than imports by the end of the century. You may argue that it was immoral for the British to sell opium into China and I won't disagree, but the real reason Chinese authorities wanted to stop opium imports was simply protectionism (even though it was technically illicit). They wanted to protect the prices of opium produced internally and they were very happy for their own people to be drugged on their own supply.

I think the feedback is generally fair — the comment as a whole was definitely lacking a lot of nuance and did not explain itself well in context.

The key thesis for me is that this was the local optimum for British control of the tea trade, and I would say Asia writ large. Controlling the source of opium in a local-ish way gave them an easier time moving it to China, while also allowing them to extract additional wealth from their previous conquests in Asia. In a meta sense, it may be very inefficient, but I’m less convinced that from a British perspective it was at all sub-optimal. Their input costs were primarily capitalistic: Ships, guns, bribes.

This is where the marvel comes from, the magnitude with which Europe successfully extracted grand value out of Asia (Just as it had previously done with Africa, South America, and North America to varying degrees). Upon reflection, it is so extractive that it seems slightly misleading to even levy it in discussion as trade.

>Upon reflection, it is so extractive that it seems slightly misleading to even levy it in discussion as trade.

I think my contention is that how narrowly scoped this extraction is belies the alternative, of broader-based capital development which might have produced greater value in the long run. It seems impressive, because it fed the imperial machine in an extremely lucrative manner for the empire; however, what happens when you factor in the value extracted from Britain by the 20th century's wars, resulting in a rapid decline to present circumstances? The British Empire was incredibly short-lived compared to its predecessors, depending on how you look at it. Is this part of a trend? Possibly. But there's room to conceptualize the situation as one of optimizing towards catastrophe, of the entire enterprise being wrongheaded on balance, and of an alternative approach - one which doesn't strip mine non-European civilization, leaving existing structures not to collapse so violently, with ramifications to the present day - being "better" because the knock-on effects might have been less destructive.

Would Mao's purge of intellectuals have happened in a world where Britain's appetite for wealth extraction had been less voracious or narrowly-focused? Would we today be reaping the rewards of Chinese academia emerging from the mid-century intact?

I mean, in a sense, it's impressive what the modern war "trade" bankrolls. 200-300 years from now, will we characterize the military-industrial complex as eliciting the same sort of sense of awe, in its complexity but basic effectiveness in maintaining hegemony and access to resources crucial for the unprecedented build-up of global wealth since the 1950s?

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