Imperial Twilight Quotes

“And when those who sold it came back home, they did not”
― Stephen R. Platt, Imperial Twilight: The Opium War and the End of China's Last Golden Age

“And if the climate in New England might be too cold for the comfort of an elderly Chinese businessman who had spent his life in subtropical Canton, Forbes suggested he could look into buying property in Florida, or in the Caribbean, “where the climate is beautiful, and where for a small sum you could buy as much land as is covered by Canton.” Houqua could live there however he pleased; he would have his own Canton, on his own terms. John said he would relish the chance to sail down from Massachusetts to visit him. Maybe he would come every winter. Houqua died on September 4, 1843, never having gotten the letter.”
― Stephen R. Platt, Imperial Twilight

“The basic fact was that the opium poppy grew very well in British India, which otherwise was a spectacularly unprofitable colonial venture (and which, without the rich profits from the Canton tea trade to offset its losses and debts, would likely have bankrupted the East India Company).”
― Stephen R. Platt, Imperial Twilight

“speak of it.”
― Stephen R. Platt, Imperial Twilight: The Opium War and the End of China's Last Golden Age

“Nevertheless, such powerful and widely read depictions of opium’s power to consume a man and ruin his life did not impinge in any direct way on the brute fact of the foreign traffic at Canton, by which certain countrymen of the horrified readers of De Quincey’s accounts—respectable ones, no less—were by the early 1830s pouring that very same drug into China in amounts totaling more than two and a half million pounds by weight each year. But that was happening far away, halfway around the world.”
― Stephen R. Platt, Imperial Twilight: The Opium War and the End of China's Last Golden Age

“doyen”
― Stephen R. Platt, Imperial Twilight: The Opium War and the End of China's Last Golden Age

“Mercifully, he also reminded him not to let the carefree joys of youth slip by. “Enjoy them all while you may,” wrote Thomas in 1828, “for the time will come soon when they shall have passed away.”
― Stephen R. Platt, Imperial Twilight: The Opium War and the End of China's Last Golden Age

“pusillanimous”
― Stephen R. Platt, Imperial Twilight: The Opium War and the End of China's Last Golden Age

“sedition”
― Stephen R. Platt, Imperial Twilight: The Opium War and the End of China's Last Golden Age