The Opium War Quotes

“Since the establishment of the Han dynasty in 206 bc (when the Confucian Lu Jia thought aloud to the dynasty’s militantly anti-intellectual founder, ‘You have vanquished the empire on horseback; but can you rule it on horseback?’),”
― Julia Lovell, The Opium War: Drugs, Dreams and the Making of China

“This culture of pressure and rivalry tended to produce two, highly contrasted species of official: the creatively corrupt libertine, and the puritan. And it was the tension between the two that helped produce the Opium War, with all its unfortunate consequences.”
― Julia Lovell, The Opium War: Drugs, Dreams, and the Making of Modern China

“Almost wherever Chinese communities went, they were accused of vice, violence and mutiny, of being a secretive, alien, xenophobic community that refused to integrate with Anglo-Saxon society.”
― Julia Lovell, The Opium War: Drugs, Dreams and the Making of China

“The opium trade produced a rationale for the Christian presence in China, turning the country into a depraved mass of opium sots to be disciplined and improved by salvation-hungry missionaries.”
― Julia Lovell, The Opium War: Drugs, Dreams and the Making of China

“War guilt can lead to ever more militant acts of self-justification. Once blood has been shed in dubious circumstances, those involved often try to brazen it out: first, through blaming the injured party for forcing them to act thus; and second, through affirming the validity of their violence by persisting with it.”
― Julia Lovell, The Opium War: Drugs, Dreams and the Making of China