OPIUM WARS

The story of the Opium Wars provides an astonishing look at the power of addiction to corrupt a society, to debilitate its finances and natural resources, even to enslave entire empires to each another. To slate Britain's insatiable thirst for tea, the government sought to pay for this habit by feeding the crippling Chinese opium addiction. Equally arrogant in their own moral, ethical and material superiority, the British and Chinese had clashed for years over trading rights, so when China tried to close its ports to opium, the British fought back, starting two of the most bizarre wars in history. This detailed and thoroughly engrossing dramatic narrative of cultural confrontation, greed, frailty and stupidity, reveals the devastating extent of imperial domination and its political legacy.