How Did it Start?
Nothing in this world happens in a vaccum. Everything is related, especially when it comes to the desire for resources, and the desire to explore. The events in “An Exchange of Two Flowers,” are actually tied up in the need, and the desire for three plant-based resources. In the novella, I’m focused on two men — Lin Zexu, and Charles Elliot and two plants – tea and opium. But there was a third plant tied into the story. Cotton.
The British had planned to be able to pay for the tea they wanted from China with a trade in cotton, which they’d get from what was becoming their colony of India. But the Americans, with clipper ships and, yes, slave labor, could get American grown cotton to the English mills cheaper, and faster than the British could get it home from India. So, there was not enough profit to buy the tea in the quantities that the English public demanded.
This left the English in a quandry. And they were determined to solve it.
Enter the opium poppy…and so our story begins…
MORE RESOURCES:
Here’s an excellent overview of the history of what the English called “the China Trade” from MIT.
