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Britain and the Empire: The importance of Trade - Coggle Diagram
Britain and the Empire: The importance of Trade
Far East
China
British traders made huge profits from drugs
Early 19th Century - virtually the only place where tea was available
Britain exploited China by selling them opium to get a hold of tea
Estimated 12M peasants addicted to opium
Grew opium poppies in India - shipped opium to smugglers in China
William Jardine + James Matherson made huge money from opium, opium soon accounted to be 1/5th of Britian's earnings
Opium ordered to be destroyed in China
Opium wars - Chinese had no choice but to surrender, forced to open ports for Britain
Singapore
Rubber tree - latex inside which is used to make rubber -> Henry Ridley saw massive potential with the rubber tree and encouraged many to plant it
Found a way to tap trees without killing them
Rubber could be made into many things which made it very sought after
British Malaya
Millions of rubber trees planted -> thousands of workers from India brought in to work on the states.
By 1930s 3/4 of the rubber coming from here
Hong Kong
became one of the richest trading ports in the world
Jardine Matherson and Co.
Retuned to China in 1997
India
Earliest Britons in India were traders, men who went their for spices etc.
East India Co.
raised its own army for troops
Allowed them to conquer more land in India
Robert Clive
Involved in significant levels of corruption
Won Battle of Plasety in 1757 against ruler of Bengal -> allowed East India Company to expand its control
British traders were awestruck by weath + opulence of India's ruling dynasties
British systematically looted India's wealth through taxation and removing treasures, impoverishing the population
Chintz - a type of Indian cloth became very popular in Britain
Raw cotton taken from India to British factories where it was spun into cloth -> India cloth trade virtually collapsed, had to rely on cloth woven in Britian
Slave Trade
Jamaica was a small island but land needed large numbers of people for plantations
Sugar harvested
Terrible conditions, within 3 years of arriving in Jamaica 1/3 of them would be dead
Extremely harsh punishmentsq
Sugar planters, known as the plantocracy, enjoyed huge power - slaves had no rights, so planters could act like dictators over their slaves
Thomas Thistlewood - committed horrifc acts of violence
By 1775, 1M people transported from Africa to West Indies
Abolished in 1807
British embraced slavery to provide labour for highly profitable sugar plantations in the Carribean
Over 1.5M Africans were forcibly transported as slaves to work on these plantations under brutal conditions
Financing trade
City of London
The heart of the Empire - where goods bought and sold
Traders invested, bought shares in companies + goods
Banking
From the 17th Century, Britian took the lead in banking and insurance
Growth of British Empire started with piracy - Privateers - licensed to steal by the monarch
Government took a share of the money
Victims were Spanish ships carrying gold from America
By the end of the 19th Century, 1/2 the world's trade in GBP
Empire run by politicians + merchants
Consequences of development in trade
India's cloth trade virtually collapsed, had to rely on cloth woven in Britain
Ghandi's boycott helped to encourage some of the 300M unemployed in India to protest against British rule -> contributed to India's independence
Ability to relocate raw materials from one colony and manufacture in another
Slave trade - exploitation of labour
Initially slave trade was integral part of British empire but following abolition Britain resorts to preventing competitors for continuing the slave trade
Increased tension with other nations and colonies
British economy dependent on the global picture
New Trade routes
Growth of the Empire leads to the growth of the Royal Navy
Merchants + EIC
Jamaica
Stayed in British hands after peace was declared between Spain and Britian