If for some reason you want the context it's at https://ia800304.us.archive.org/14/items/thesonsofhan00upwauoft/thesonsofhan00upwauoft.pdf
"We wouldn't have gone to war if only they'd been more polite"
I rate this take two out of three nukes
:nuke: :nuke:
yeah well the chinese were incredibly narrow minded.
imagine this but flipped, with chinese envoys and traders in bristol or something. i'm 100% sure the brits would've gone along with chinese court/diplomatic etiquette. they wouldnt have insisted on the foreigners doing things the british way while in britain.
because brits are just that awesome and understanding.
And then they destroyed all our smuggled opium! And that was the last straw. (There were no previous straws)
"We all recognize the opium trade as evil"
OK, destroy all the opium you're importing to sell.
"Alas, war it is!"
What really happened was, a trader who had been up and down the China coast filed a report with the Crown that said, "Dude I've been all over the place and they've got NOTHING that can stop you. Hit them here and here and here and they'll fold faster than Superman on laundry day. And they're corrupt so they'll sue for peace as soon as you threaten their capital (and thus themselves). Just find any flimsy excuse you can for war and presto it's on." So the British did that shit with the opium and provoked a response they knew would come.
That viceroy is still a hero today in China for what he did. I saw an exhibition of the dissolving of the opium into the river at a museum in Hong Kong, it was righteous. Along with a demonstration of an opium warehouse - floor to 10 meter ceiling with giant 1 meter wide black balls of opium, going on and on down the hall.
“It’s not true that the war was only about opium. For example, they were very rude when they told our opium smugglers to hand over their illegal opium.”
well, you have to understand the inscrutable occidental mind. they are always terrified of what they call "losing face", so when the chinese were not sufficiently polite to them, that necessitated war.
I believe that the average modern day anglo islander would have an identical take (anglos are perpetually ignorant)
Hilariously, today's anglo island is in their qing era of imperial decline
If you want to be better than that, folks, consider choosing an identity more specific than “white”.
The Queen of England, as a vassal of China, was commanded to obey the viceroy !
:gigachad:
so I shouted RULE BRITANNIA then I kicked him down a well and then everyone clapped
