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Well, hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnholm.

And me, William Durimpool.

So previously, if you're just joining us, and you know, if you've heard this before, it was a very odd story.

Okay, so what you have is a situation in China where you have a man called Charles Elliott, who is in charge of trade with China, but really not really in charge at all, because the main trade that is going on is the opium trade.

And the opium trade is run by these couple of Scottish ruffians called Jardine and Matheson, who pretty much laugh into their

sleeves at anything Elliot has to say. He's a weak chinted Elliot sitting in Macau,

who just doesn't really like conflict, who's very conflict-averse. He's a good man. He's a,

he's a nice man. He's been freeing slaves in West Africa.

He's a nice man.

And he's just not the kind of person to square up to Jardine and Mathes.

And they have these sort of gangs of brigands.

They're fully talled up.

They don't really listen to him.

They are the Pablo Escobar of 19th century China, yeah.

But they're doing it from the British factory in Canton, which is, you know, supposedly

is sort of British soil, although it isn't because the Chinese don't let Britain buy the

soil that they put their factory on. It still belongs to China. All the people working in there

for the British boiling their eggs and starching their collars. They're to China. All the people working in there for the British

boiling their eggs and starching their collars. They're all Chinese. All the guards around it,

...