1857

[Pertinax]

Well I suppose this is not unreasonable:

http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_an...icle1882234.ece

I see the drug of choice is opium, freely available from the neighbourhood chemist at that time .

[miguel]

Well I suppose this is not unreasonable:

http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_an...icle1882234.ece

I see the drug of choice is opium, freely available from the neighbourhood chemist at that time .

 

Do you mean there is a problem with this sentence: "They, too, were a society riddled with drugs problems, though their sniff of choice was opium, freely available in dens all over London." ?

 

As far as I know the opium was exported from Britain India at that time. Opium is a resinous narcotic formed from the latex released by wounding the seed pods of opium poppies. Opium dens were widespread in many parts of the world in the 19th century.

 

As you mention about opium, I can't stop thinking about the Opium Wars. But it seems very few people know about it...how sad!

[Kosmo]

I have a reproduction of a comercial poster from 1930's with drugs for flu. Besides Aspirin was Heroin

 

Unlike 2007 Britain knew why it was fighting in places like Crimeea, India and China.

1857 was a year from a great period for Britain and most places in the world.

[Pertinax]

Opium was freely available in many "medicinal" forms in Britain (if you could afford it) ,the actual "enforced trade" was as Miguel says, that suffered by the Chinese.

This is an excellent Opium War read:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Chinese-Opium-Wars...7781&sr=8-2

Odd that we have such a cultural amnesia on this subject.

 

ps: Chloral Hydrate was big in Victorian times btw..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chloral_hydrate

 

pps: Rossetti the pre-raphaelite is a famous casualty of "laudunum" ie: opium in tincture

http://images.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=h...ficial%26sa%3DN

[miguel]

I wonder how non-Chinese people see the Opium Wars... For myself, without the wars, the environment that I born and grow would be utterly different. Were the wars, in fact, not important in world history, or people omit it for a reason? (Perhaps Britain realizes and is shamed into forcing the weak China to sign those treaties)

[Kosmo]

The Opium Wars were important for East Asia. Chinese defeat and Perry expedition prompted japonese Meiji reforms.

China failed to reform and fell in internal conflicts that lasted 100 years.

Chinese should have now better then to provoke Britain by disrupting trade.

Britain used force to gain advantages because it was in her benefit. This is not great for our moral standards but it was the way things were then and to some extent the way things will always be. Now politicians use more justifications.

The strong take advantage of the weak and China never had problems in using this.

At least Britain later defended China thru her Open Doors policy that prevented the division of the country in colonies.

[DecimusCaesar]

The Opium wars are still seen with some resentment by the Chinese to this day. I remember watching a clip of two Chinese men playing a shooting game at a Fair. It involved firing projectiles from a small cannon at some cardboard cut- outs of British ships.