Italian government seeks to penalize the use of English words

Was that really the reason? What difficulty? They created this difficulty to find a chance to invade.

There was a clear plan to create an addiction and even as it was banned to smuggle more and more into the country.

A lot of things don't happen by chance. So does a certain country not actually have "weapons of mass destruction" etc.

The war came about through a trading inefficiency. The Chinese markets at the time (still holds relatively true today) was a selling market, not a buying market. They weren't interested in European goods. So European trading vessels would have to stock up on silver as currency, and sail to China to trade the silver for desirable goods such as porcelain and silks.

European merchants didn't like this because its far more efficient to profit on every leg and the first leg of hauling silver was a loss with a mostly empty hold, so were seeking a product to sell to the Chinese market that would have pull that they could fill cargo holds with. Due to their lack of scruples, they discovered that opium was such a product and set in motion the very events that still plague us to today of growing opium across Asia to sell to China.

As a flood of cheap opium entered the market through the criminal gangs at the time (who were buying the opium through profitable liaisons with the British) the Chinese authorities set about cracking down on the trade in the interests of its people. Eventually this brought them into conflict with the British and in interests of keeping the ports open to the opium trade the first of two opium wars was declared.

The wikipedia article probably puts it better than I have [1].

> They created this difficulty to find a chance to invade.

If they were seeking to invade then European possessions in China would have been significantly greater than Hong Kong given the weakness of the Qing dynasty over the course of the 19th century (although it would have still been a significant challenge given the might of China's manpower at the time). The British were a brutal force but in a similar fashion to today's US hegemony they were not always primarily motivated by conquest and annexation, wealth was more of a primary motivator. So its much like US foreign policy today which is typically flexed to promote interests relevant to American GDP. It remains ugly when its flexed but its arguably a kinder aim than that of a fully imperialistic force such as say: the Mongols of the 14th and 15th centuries.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars

Right, because we're going to believe Wikipedia + a recount of events that don't even include any insights into the actual plans of e.g. the British empire at the time.

Think about why the British even introduced Opium to China and who controlled most of the production. Do you really believe they weren't plotting anything here?

> If they were seeking to invade then European possessions in China would have been significantly greater than Hong Kong given the weakness of the Qing dynasty over the course of the 19th century

There are lots of ways to invade. It doesn't have to be via military might. It can be via the church, opium as we're discussing here or other factors before the actual fight.

> but in a similar fashion to today's US hegemony they were not always primarily motivated by conquest and annexation

Are we rewriting history here? What happened to Vietnam, Iraq, etc etc? More like the media tries to paint it another way. You're free to not believe in it. I doubt it's all for the GDP.

> not _always_ primarily motivated

Please respect my language choices. What I wanted to impart is that the map of the world is not smeared with the word "USA" like Imperialism would otherwise desire. I feel like you're treating all war as conquest and I feel like there's more nuance.

> Right, because we're going to believe Wikipedia + a recount of events...

Well you're welcome to add your own sources to the discussion as opposed to idle speculation or axe grinding.

You believe what you want but its clear that trade _was_ an element that contributed to the opium war. Most conflicts have numerous competing interests and a wide variety of competing actors. The European age of colonialism made this all the more complex given the lack of effective telecommunications and travel distances. This resulted in more competing interests having more agency which makes conflict all the more complicated and introduces more opportunity for half-truths and subterfuge.

I would discourage this apparent idea you have that the entire British Empire was perfectly controlled by some entirely malicious, autocratic and bloodthirsty hand in some sort of 80's action film with an entirely clear distinction between good and evil. The British Empire _was_ brutish, callous and avaricious and its a better world now without it, but to paint it with the same hand as one might any historic conqueror is to render history into a black and white pastiche.