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In all fairness, I should've known about the forum features earlier, but I completely messed up, so here it is. @GulMacet @volksmarschall @Yakman
I apologize if I wasn't direct or clear enough, but I meant to ask the above forum users the same question that I had addressed at the beginning of this thread here. Also, I for those who are confused about my post in one of my recent threads, I meant to ask how I was supposed to delete the thread, not the History Forum, my bad.
I apologize if I wasn't direct or clear enough, but I meant to ask the above forum users the same question that I had addressed at the beginning of this thread here. Also, I for those who are confused about my post in one of my recent threads, I meant to ask how I was supposed to delete the thread, not the History Forum, my bad.
The Grafin wasn't confused, she was just messing with you.
The Grafin wasn't confused, she was just messing with you.
Erm, I am not Graf Zeppelin.
This was not bad at all, it was one of the better and fun explanations of the Opium War that I have seen in a long time
Thanks. I can honestly say that I never thought I'd be making Mesoamerican allegories for the history of Macau when I joined this forum.
Might be related to the encroaching specter of liberalism, perhaps?
We've already seen that (assuming most of the audience has already watched that series), but that's not detailed now, and however devoted they be to historical accuracy, it's still deficient in terms of historical details and very broad in its definition, as well as leaves some parts out, such as why Qianlong refused to let the British trade, because they were already trading down in Canton, and that the tributary system was just a system that co-opted the Qing Empire's aggressive interest in foreign lands and part of its conquest.
We've already seen that (assuming most of the audience has already watched that series), but that's not detailed now, and however devoted they be to historical accuracy, it's still deficient in terms of historical details and very broad in its definition, as well as leaves some parts out, such as why Qianlong refused to let the British trade, because they were already trading down in Canton, and that the tributary system was just a system that co-opted the Qing Empire's aggressive interest in foreign lands and part of its conquest.
So in other words it's just another youtube history vid?
We've already seen that (assuming most of the audience has already watched that series), but that's not detailed now, and however devoted they be to historical accuracy, it's still deficient in terms of historical details and very broad in its definition, as well as leaves some parts out, such as why Qianlong refused to let the British trade, because they were already trading down in Canton, and that the tributary system was just a system that co-opted the Qing Empire's aggressive interest in foreign lands and part of its conquest.
The tributary system predates the Qing. The Chinese were fine with the British trading... anything that wasn't opium.
I take it he means to say that the video didn't sufficiently explain why Qianlong refused to open up Ningbo to British trade. To be fair to him, the role that Ningbo played in Chinese foreign policy as a trade/piracy hub is rather interesting, but probably beyond the scope of a eight-minute youtube video.
Well if we really want to get into why China lost the war we have to go back a bit and realize that the Chinese refused to conquer small foreign countries, the Chinese have records of them asking to Africa and all over the African/Asia coast and it was haunted by the emperor at the time because an act of god happens and he believes that it is a sign from the heavens not specifically Christianity but just the heavens that they shouldn’t be traveling to these places but instead that the noble thing to do is to open there gates to all countries that wish to find them and not seek them out. This part right here is accredited with being the mistake that could have changed history as we know it because this doesn’t allow them to expand the empire and a law was implemented hat China would not accept foreign objects for trade unless it was silver so again another mistake because now people can buy gunpowder and when the west goes through the industrial revolution China believes all these machines and weapons to be nothing more then toys, now the British expand and take all these colonies and then the war breaks out because Britain can’t afford to buy gunpowder and tea and silk with only silver anymore because they have almost run out and they decided to sell opium for tea and silver China tries to put a bunch of things like old versions of anti drug propaganda and started to try and find ways to get addicts off of it but after so many years and it getting worse they send a force to India and that’s where it all goes to shot because Britain is using steam powered warships with cannons that can hit the Chinese wooden boats before Chinese cannons are in range so that decimates here baby and then the Chinese never expected that ships would be able to go up river and so there forts were designed to be protected with massive cannons from sea and the British attacked from the rivers which when you honk about it is genius but also ends up in a slaughter for the Chinese. There was a propaganda story that the British used to tell that said they killed 20000 and only lost 1 man due to a rifle malfunction and after that defeat the Chinese government/ hierarchy surrendered realizing that it was out gunned by technology
That’s actually not true he Chinese emperor viewed foreign goods as not worth it or in the case of machines and technologies they viewed them as nothing but toys and so the made a law that only silver would be accepted and they actually did a huge operation that moved all the people away from the coast because they New the population would be fine with trading for other goods so Britain bent over for a while but eventually ran out of silver to buy tea and gunpowder and coal tea was the also growing to extreme numbers in the colonies so Britain needed a lot and at the time China kept the production of tea gunpowder and silk worms almost under a lock and key system
I find the opium wars interesting for their economic tendencies
I've encountered people saying that you shouldn't be afraid of trade by saying "if you buy a sandwhich of someone then you've both have an equal exchange in value"
but when I eat that sandwhich then I don't have anything anymore and the person I bough it from still has my money
theory says that that person (or another person that's in a buying/selling chain somehow connected to me) then has to buy something that I produce for a similar value as I paid
what if that doesn't happen though? what if that person doesn't want any of the goods the people I sell to produce but I still want their goods?
what if they get enough of domestic products so they sell more to foreigners then they have to import?
is there anything to do but slowly implode? should we also attempt to make due with our domestic production? should we attempt to find a product that the foreign market wants in exchange for our goods, no matter how illegal it might be? should we make my craving for foreign made sandwhiches illegal?
frankly I don't know, and I frankly don't really want to know anyway but it's a question I think we'll have to solve within our lifetime, what do we do about the sandwhichmaker that doesn't need us?
I've encountered people saying that you shouldn't be afraid of trade by saying "if you buy a sandwhich of someone then you've both have an equal exchange in value"
but when I eat that sandwhich then I don't have anything anymore and the person I bough it from still has my money
theory says that that person (or another person that's in a buying/selling chain somehow connected to me) then has to buy something that I produce for a similar value as I paid
what if that doesn't happen though? what if that person doesn't want any of the goods the people I sell to produce but I still want their goods?
what if they get enough of domestic products so they sell more to foreigners then they have to import?
is there anything to do but slowly implode? should we also attempt to make due with our domestic production? should we attempt to find a product that the foreign market wants in exchange for our goods, no matter how illegal it might be? should we make my craving for foreign made sandwhiches illegal?
frankly I don't know, and I frankly don't really want to know anyway but it's a question I think we'll have to solve within our lifetime, what do we do about the sandwhichmaker that doesn't need us?