The production and export of tea, largely paid for by imports of silver, was a fundamental feature of the prosperity of Great Qing. The management of trade at Can¬ton/Guangzhou was a triumph of defensive statecraft and merchant conscientiousness. The growth of opium addiction in China and importation of the drug from India turned all this around. And new forms of Christianity interacted in new ways with Chinese folk religion in the great Taiping movement.
Paul A. Van Dyke, Port Canton (USC dissertation).
Wakeman, Strangers at the Gate
Polachek, The Inner Opium War
Brook and Wakabayashi, eds., Opium Regimes
Cambridge Hist. of China, Vol. 10.
Carl A. Trocki, Opium, Empire, and the Global Political Economy. London and New York: Routledge, 1999.
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