Dan Snow’s History Hit explores the deep history behind today’s headlines – giving you the context to understand what is going on today. Everything has a history, every challenge made easier by understanding its nature, its genesis. In a world of fast opinions, we put historians into the debate, women and men who bring real knowledge built over careers spent researching.
Victorian readers were captivated by descriptions of smoke-filled opium dens among backstreet brothels and pubs in London's East End in Oscar Wilde novels. Opium use in Britain in the 19th century was widespread, and while opium dens were scarce, Victorians could buy opium over the counter in chemists as treatments for headaches and coughs and even as a sleep aid for babies. Opium was important to the British Empire's health but more so to its imperial aims to control Asia from the Indian subcontinent to the eastern markets in China.
The British Empire aggressively pursued the opium trade well into the 19th century, fueling an addiction epidemic within China. The Qing government was determined to stamp out this destructive trade, leading to the First and Second Opium Wars. But the British Royal Navy was at its apogee, and re-exerted British control over the Chinese state. In the infamous final chapter of this story, British and French forces looted and destroyed the Imperial Summer Palace in Beijing stealing everything from priceless art to the Emperor's Pekinese dogs.
In this two-part mini-series Dan and I delve into the history of the Opium trade in the British Empire, how it brought crisis to China and started a war that still impacts China's relationship with the west today.
Produced by Mariana Des Forges and edited by Dougal Patmore