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Strategies & Market Trends : Booms, Busts, and Recoveries

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To: Maurice Winn who wrote (64356)5/27/2005 6:54:20 PM
From: Slagle  Read Replies (2) of 74559
 
Maurice Re: "opium" You might be on shaky ground with this one, Maurice, even on libertarian principles. The opium trade was a project of British Crown, among others, conducted in the "treaty ports" under the protective cannon of the Royal Navy. Not hardly the free market.

The Spaniards managed to conduct a "China trade" for over 300 years and to do it without using any opium at all. That was the singular purpose for their Philippine colony. Chinese traders were able to smuggle porcelain , tea and other China products to Manila, Iloilo or Cebu, where they were exchanged for European goods or Mexican gold and silver. Twice or more a year a galleon would arrive from Acapulco with a new supply of mostly silver to feed the trade. Much of the "black" gold and silver in Asia supposedly arrived by this route. The pious Spaniards conducted their China trade relatively "cleanly" and I don't think they have been given the credit they deserve for their upright conduct.

The British Crown was playing some early "geopolitics" with the opium trade and trying to destroy a rival empire and make some money at the same time. JMO <g>
Slagle
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