enth century Atlantic slave trade. The smuggling of opium turned a large British trading deficit with China into a substantial surplus, paying for British tea imports from China, for the export of British manufactured goods to India and for a substantial proportion of British administrative costs in India. The opium trade was "the hub of British commerce in the East."
Jonathan Spence, an historian whose comprehensive text titled The Search for Modern China offers a complete discussion of the Opium Wars, points out that the Chinese government and the Chinese emperor were well aware of the dangers posed by opium use and had, beginning in the 1720s, issued a series of edicts banning the use of this substance. Despite this, during the nineteenth century the practice of opium use spread in China, especially among the leisured classes seeking a means of social relaxation and among coolie laborers who used the drug to overcome the pain of their work. By the end of the nineteenth century many peasants also "became addicts, particularly those who themselv
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