The Divide: Global Inequality from Conquest to Free Markets

by Jason Hickel

Defeated on the diplomatic front, Britain turned to drugs. Desperate to finance their growing trade deficit, they started selling opium – grown in colonial India – on China’s black market. And when Chinese authorities clamped down on this illicit trade, as any sovereign country has the right to do, the British retaliated with a military invasion. Thus began the Opium Wars, fought by the British between 1839 and 1842, and by an Anglo-French alliance from 1856 to 1860. China, unprepared for naval combat, was brutally defeated. But Britain and France refused to relent until China agreed to abolish restrictions on European access and hand large chunks of territory over to European control. The treaties that followed granted sweeping trade privileges to Europe but conceded nothing to China in return. According to these ‘unequal treaties’, as they came to be called, Europeans could sell their manufactured goods on China’s markets while protecting their own markets against Chinese competitors. The consequences were devastating. China’s share of the world economy dwindled from 35 per cent before the Opium Wars to an all-time low of just 7 per cent. What is more, China’s loss of control over its grain markets led in part to the famines that China suffered during the same droughts that hit India. And, as in India, 30 million people in China perished needlessly of starvation during the late 19th century, after having been integrated into the London-centred world economy.