Reflections on 11/15/2011 Class

As I reviewed my notes from the 11/15/2011 class, I found myself intrigued by an American, Robert Bennet Forbes, who was intricately involved in the opium trade in China and had a role in the outbreak of the Opium War. So as I was taking a closer look at who Forbes really was, I ran across an article which had this descriptive caption about Forbes: "Captain, opium trader, and humanitarian." I laughed. Not so much because of the implicit irony, but because I knew I had a hook to get my students interested in finding out more about the Opium War. I could see it now, I would open the discussion by asking, "Are drug dealers, I mean drug traders, bad people?" I might even mention Pablo Escobar and the Medellin Cartel at this point to liven up the discussion. At an appropriate time I would ask, "Can drug dealers, I mean traders, be humanitarians?" After a bit of discussion on this point, I would introduce Robert Bennet Forbes to my students. I would start out by showing a photograph of the members of the Massachusetts Humane Society 1854, in which Forbes is clearly the centerpiece surrounded by other members. I would then discuss how Forbes was a partner in Russell & Company, which was described in excerpts from George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography by Webster G. Tarpley & Anton Chaitkin, Chapter 7 (Skull and Bones: The Racist Nightmare at Yale):

"Skull and Bones--the Russell Trust Association--was first established among the class graduating from Yale in 1833. Its founder was William Huntington Russell of Middletown, Connecticut. The Russell family was the master of incalculable wealth derived from the largest criminal organization of the nineteenth century: Russell and Company, the great opium syndicate...The background to Skull and Bones is a story of Opium and Empire, and a bitter struggle for political control over the new U.S. republic."

At this point, I would talk about how this struggle for Opium and Empire by Forbes and other members of Russell & Company led to the Opium Wars. I ran across a very interesting article which I would incorporate into the lesson and recommend to others. It is called "An Illustrated History of The China Trade and The Opium Wars," by William P. Litynski.