2/1/2024 History of when the british used warships to force china to open it's borders to tradeRead Now![]() ![]() ![]() However, early in the 19th century, the British East India Company hit upon a second form of payment that was illegal, yet acceptable to the Chinese traders: opium from British India. In half a century, Britain managed to sell just £9m worth of British goods to the Chinese, in exchange for £27m in Chinese imports. By the end of the 18th century, the UK imported more than 6 tons of Chinese tea annually. The growing British thirst for tea, in particular, made the trade imbalance increasingly desperate. The Qing required payment in cold, hard cash - in this case, silver.īritain soon faced a serious trade deficit with China, as it had no domestic silver supply and had to buy all of its silver from Mexico or from European powers with colonial silver mines. ![]() Worst of all, European consumers were crazy for Chinese silks, porcelain, and tea, but China wanted nothing to do with any European manufactured goods. China limited them to the commercial port of Canton, did not allow them to learn Chinese, and also threatened harsh penalties for any European who tried to leave the port city and enter China proper. The European traders had a couple of problems, however. European joint-stock trading companies, such as the British East India Company and the Dutch East India Company (VOC), were eager to elbow their way in on this ancient exchange system. For well over a thousand years, China had been the eastern endpoint of the Silk Road, and the source of fabulous luxury items. In the 1700s, European nations such as Britain, the Netherlands, and France sought to expand their Asian trade networks by connecting with one of the major sources of desirable finished products - the powerful Qing Empire in China. British East India Company and Qing Chinese army uniforms from the Opium Wars in China. ![]()
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