Economic Suicide

The Opium Wars: “There is Nothing You Have That We Want” – China:

In studying economic violence, tastes interests and values, a cursory discussion on the Opium Wars is extremely important. Please note that major wars occur due to the addictions of Europeans. Today, there is a war in Iraq, due to the European addiction to oil. In the 19th century, the Opium wars between Britain and China were due to the British addiction to tea. The Chinese have an ancient tradition of drinking tea as part of their daily ritual. The British developed this custom due to the travels of many European "explorers" (invaders) who successfully made it over to Asia. By the 19th century, tea became a staple of the British, particularly the middle class and ruling class. The British imported all of their tea from China. In a short amount of time, there was a huge trade imbalance between Britain and China in favor of China. The British paid China for their tea with gold. Soon, the British became nervous as their gold reserves were being depleted. However, the British population's taste for tea was insatiable and there would have been riots if the British population were deprived of their tea. In response to the economic violence, that Britain was suffering at the hands of China. British leaders arranged a meeting with Chinese leaders. The British wanted to stop trading tea for gold. They told the Chinese that they would trade anything else that Britain produced for the Chinese tea. The Chinese response was laughter as the Chinese retorted, "There is nothing that you have that we want!"

The British were stunned and they took this as an offense to their way of life and their plans to keep their gold. They went back to Britain and decided to pump opium into China. The opium was to be traded for gold in China, thereby getting the gold back into British hands. In addition, the British took lands from the Indian subcontinent for two purposes: (1) for growing the poppy plant for opium to facilitate their drug trade and (2) for growing various other plants for tea so that trading tea with China would be obsolete. In fact, today one of the most famous tea names is Ceylon tea. Ceylon is the former British colonial name for the country in the Indian sub-continent now named Sri Lanka. In 1839, the Chinese seized a ship off its shores containing tons of opium. The Chinese rightfully seized the ship as opium was illegal in China and anyone caught with opium was given the death penalty. The British declared the Chinese seizure of their ship as an act of war; hence, the initiation of the Opium wars from 1839-1842 and 1856-1860 between Britain and China. The Chinese have never forgotten the economic war with Europeans and the implications are felt today. Consequently, the Chinese have developed nuclear weapons, and have the largest standing army in the world and Europe and America as debtors in trade. Their major strength has been maintaining their own tastes, interests and values and the ability to look at Europeans in the face and say,"There is nothing that you have that we want!"

Black people, can we say the same? The reason why we have been in trouble as a race for so long is our unrelenting taste for things European. Remember, African prisoners of war (slaves) were traded for white commodities like European processed rum, spare parts and European textiles. Have you committed economic violence today?