Ashik Kabir

It was 1800 to1949, when the global economy was recognized by European led industrialization. This period is also known as intensive colonization activities era. Many European countries started competing each other in industrial production and also in colonization. Colonization era was focused on much of Asia, the Middle East and Africa. As a result many of these non-Western countries lost their sovereignty as well as the opportunity to have economical development. Only China, Thailand and Japan in Asia, Ethiopia in Africa and Afghanistan , Iran and Turkey in the Middle East were able to keep at least nominal independence.
The pre-1949 global economic environment offered enormous opportunities for the non-western countries who remained independent to economically develop. There were international markets for many non- western commodities and products, such as tea and silk and Western industrial and military technology was available to independent non- Western countries that had the desire and financial resources to purchase industrial technology. But it is essential for becoming successful to have sovereignty to keep control of a country’s economy and foreign trade and a leadership to formulate a plan for economic development .Whenever the non-Western countries used to make a plan for economic development, most of the time it was becoming ‘Defensive modernization’, to keep away the threatened country to become a colony. Of the few non-western countries who have achieved economical development from 1880’s until world war two, were Meiji Japan and Ottoman Turkey (to some extent). Qing China tried to carry out economic development but because of some obstacles they were deprived of achieving such economic development.
Imperial China had for many years permitted international trade to be carried out in the city of Canton ( Guangzhou), allowing foreigners to buy tea, silk, ceramics and other Chinese products that enjoyed high international demand. Chinese authorities didn’t regulate the foreign trade strictly and lightly taxed the foreign trade in Chinese goods. Until the 1800’s , foreign products commanded little market demand in China.
In the early 1800’s the British East India Company merchants found that opium , mostly grown in British-controlled India, had a high demand in China. Great Britain found that the Opium trade had the fortunate outcomes both of creating high levels of tax revenue for the British colonial government in India and of balancing the large and growing British and European demand for Chinese tea and silk.
Qing China authorities became increasingly alarmed at the tremendous human cost of hundreds of thousands of Chinese Opium addicts , at the corruption of Chinese officials and merchants involved in the Opium trade. In 1839, the Chinese emperor , as head of a sovereign state responsible for the welfare of its people, sent Chinese commissioner Lin Zexu to canton to stop Opium trade. Commissioner Lin asked foreign opium merchants to turn over their Opium for destruction. British Opium merchants complied but then successfully lobbied the British Parliament to start a war against China in 1839, the first ‘Opium war” to extract compensation from Chinese government for the destruction of the opium and to protect the future sale of a commodity that would eventually provide about 15% of the British colonial government income in India. British merchants arguments were legally very weak and not valid. But the financial benefit to Great Britain and British India was remarkable. The Chinese victims were non-western and lived far away. So, the British parliament approved the war to promote opium trade in china. Great Britain won The “first Opium war” from 1839-1842, then fought again and defeated China in “Second Opium War” from 1856-1860. British justification for waging war included the then popular Social Darwinist view that if a people were militarily weak , they deserved to be dominated by a militarily more powerful Western country. The opium wars were also justified on the basis that Chinese were not Christian or European , and were an inferior race.

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