Deadly Dreams : Opium and the Arrow War (1856–1860) in China

Wong reveals the extent of Britain's reliance on the opium and tea trade with China, and argues that Victorian free trade ideology was a less decisive factor in the Arrow War (1856–60) than was Britain's economic struggle to support a vast colonial enterprise.

The Arrow War (1856–60) involved all the world's major powers, and could almost be called a world war because of the global economic and diplomatic issues driving it. For twenty-five years Dr John Wong has been trying to discover the true origins of the war. What began as a study of an alleged insult to the British flag supposedly flying over the boat Arrow led to an analysis of complex Chinese and British diplomacy; of the even more complex Chinese tea and silk exports; of British India's jealously guarded economic strategies and opium monopoly; of cotton supplied to the Lancashire mills by the Americans, who thereby made up their trade deficit with China occasioned by their heavy purchases of tea; of intricate Westminster politics and British global trade; of French pride and cultural priorities; of Russian intrigues and territorial designs; and of America's apparent aloofness and real ambitions.