251. Victorian Narcos: Flooding China With Indian Opium (Ep 5)

Empire

Jack Davenport

History

4.6 • 4.1K Ratings

🗓️ 30 April 2025

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Who were Jardine and Matheson? What was life like for workers growing opium in India? How does George Orwell relate to the East India Company opium trade? William and Anita explore how William Jardine and James Matheson accumulated immense power and wealth by becoming international drug dealers in the 1830s… Empire Club: Become a member of the Empire Club to receive early access to miniseries, ad-free listening, early access to live show tickets, bonus episodes, book discounts, our exclusive newsletter, and access to our members’ chatroom on Discord! Head to empirepoduk.com to sign up. For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to www.goalhanger.com. Email: [email protected] Instagram: @empirepoduk Blue Sky: @empirepoduk X: @empirepoduk Assistant Producer: Becki Hills Producer: Anouska Lewis Senior Producer: Callum Hill Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community.
0:06.7	Discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast, add free listening and a weekly newsletter,
0:12.5	sign up to Empire Club at www.mpower.mptuuk.com.
0:19.1	Ready to launch your business? Get started with the commerce platform made for entrepreneurs.
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0:28.7	customizable themes that let you build your brand, marketing tools that get your products
0:33.0	out there. Integrated shipping solutions that actually save you time. From startups to scale-ups, online, in-person and on the go.
0:41.1	Shopify is made for entrepreneurs like you.
0:43.5	Sign up for your $1 a-month trial at Shopify.com slash setup. Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnhann.
1:03.7	And me, William Durimple.
1:06.0	We left you with one of my favourite episodes, which is when diplomacy goes bad.
1:12.6	And it really went very, very badly with the McCartney mission that should have been fab.
1:17.8	Like, you know, not even a quarter of the fab for a full, four quarters of fabulousness,
1:22.4	with Lord McCartney going over to the Chinese and wooing them for their trade, their friendship, diamond-studded
1:31.5	mulberry suit.
1:35.4	It's just which we found preposterous from beginning to end.
1:41.2	His diving bell, his hot air balloon.
1:43.4	I mean, he'd done so much homework.
1:44.9	He did try. He did try. But like everything that could have gone wrong went wrong for him.
1:50.4	But instead at the end of that episode, we left you with a situation where that balance of payments,
1:55.8	which was so in favour of China, because all English silver was going towards China for the tea, the insatiable
2:03.0	appetite for tea. But it starts to balance out, not because they've got a trade deal, but
	...

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