Ep. 140-14 | Tea and Opium
The China History Podcast
Laszlo Montgomery
4.8 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 23 January 2015
⏱️ 21 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Midway through the Qing Dynasty trouble is brewing, along with the tens of millions of pounds of tea annually exported to Britain. The Qianlong Emperor rebuffs Britain's envoy and puts a major damper on the prospects of China trade. Britain finds the perfect commodity to trade for tea, Patna Opium from India. This ultimately leads to conflict culminating in the Opium Wars.
Why this war is misnamed is also explained. This was the age of the China Clipper ships and imperialism at its worst. New black teas are also discussed, including Lapsang Souchong and the one black tea that local Chinese didn't turn their nose up at: Keemun 祁门茶.
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Transcript
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| 0:47.0 | Greetings everyone. Welcome back to the T-history podcast. |
| 0:50.3 | Lazzle Montgomery here with you once again this time with episode 14 more zaney |
| 0:56.4 | antics in the American colonies and with the British East India Company over on the |
| 1:02.1 | other side of the world when the future Americans |
| 1:04.2 | and their British masters were slugging it out in the colonies, the Chienlong |
| 1:08.5 | Emperor was in the middle of his long reign, some might argue, overly long reign. |
| 1:15.0 | You'll recall from episodes past that the first half of Shenlong's reign was good and the second half could have been better. |
| 1:22.0 | By the time he died 1799 same year but different month from George |
| 1:27.6 | Washington his 15th son the now jocching emperor he had the losing trifecta of the white lotus rebellion |
| 1:36.0 | meow rebellion and an empty treasury to deal with in 1793 the famous McCartney Mission is going to come and go without success. |
| 1:46.0 | And after attempting the soft sell, now Britain was going to have to force this trade on China the hard way. |
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