Xie Jin's The Opium War, was released to coincide with the end of colonial rule in Hong Kong.
British forces raised the Union Jack over Possession Point in 1841 during the First Opium War, fought to protect the Queen's trade of the narcotic.
In 1839, the first Opium War between China and Britain began when British frigates blew up several Chinese junks off Canton after coming under attack.
Just ask Jardine Matheson, the oldest of Hong Kong's British-owned trading houses and still held reponsible for the 1839-42 opium war which won Hong Kong for Britain.
Another obstacle to the opium war in Badakhshan is the fact the West has given authorities only 10 tractors with which to eradicate nearly 5, 000 acres of poppies.
As Mr. Platt notes, the Second Opium War (1858-60), which culminated in British and French forces winning important diplomatic concessions from the dynasty, took place alongside the Taiping Uprising.
Coming upon this scene, as I did in one valley, it was easy to believe a latter day Opium War was underway though the big guns stayed silent in the end.
' But now that 'opium war' is over.
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The Taliban are also able to fund their war with opium, a product that will always be in demand.
People know the horrific history of the Opium Wars (a war that was fought to allow the British to continue drug trafficking), the subsequent colonization of Hong Kong, and the atrocities of the Rape of Nanking.
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There is disunity not only on the opium problem but on how to fight the war.
It is almost 125 years since authorities in San Francisco launched an early salvo in the western war on drugs by clamping down on opium use among the growing population of Chinese labourers.
But he claimed to be fighting a war to liberate them from the Burmese, and told the world they grew opium only to pay for clothes and rice.
Unlike Afghanistan, which has opium (and Iraq which has oil), the Horn has little of economic value to fuel a war: its frontline, after all, can barely keep a cow alive.
This is bad news for an obvious reason: as a part of the broader War on Drugs, the U.S. and its UN allies have been striving to suppress opium production since the mid-2000s.
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But U.S. officials insist they can win this war especially with the help of provincial governors like the one in Badakhshan, a province where opium cultivation has plummeted.
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