#103 The Scourge of Opium

East India Company's iron steamship, Nemesis, destroying Chinese war junks in January 1841. Wikimedia.

Views on opium

• Based on the short reading from Schell and Delury, the video you watched, and prior knowledge, consider the following questions with a partner:
  • What images or associations come to mind when you think about opium? ​What are some common twenty-first century associations with opiates (morphine, heroin) or partially- or fully-synthetic opioids (OxyContin, fentanyl)?
  • What assumptions might people in the nineteenth century have had about opium?

Opium: opium, the opium trade, and the Opium War and its aftermath

• View Opium Crisis (slides).

Exercise: “Who is responsible?”

• Instructions (Google Doc).