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Saturday, 22 October 2022

The opium wars: a brief history

 Opium Wars: 

The Opium Wars (simplified Chinese: 鸦片战争; traditional Chinese: 鴉片戰爭) were two conflicts waged between China and Western powers during the mid-19th century. The First Opium War was fought from 1839 to 1842 between China and the United Kingdom, and was triggered by the Chinese government's campaign to enforce its prohibition against opium trafficking by British merchants. The Second Opium War was waged by Britain and France against China from 1856 to 1860. In each war, the superior military advantages enjoyed by European forces led to several easy victories over the Chinese military, with the consequence that China was compelled to sign unequal treaties to grant favourable tariffs, trade concessions, reparations and territory to Western powers. 

The two conflicts, along with the various treaties imposed during "century of humiliation", weakened the Chinese government's authority and forced China to open specified treaty ports (including Shanghai) to Western merchants.[1][2] In addition, China ceded sovereignty over Hong Kong to the British Empire, which maintained control over the region until 1997. During this period, the Chinese economy also contracted slightly as a result of the wars, though the Taiping Rebellion and Dungan Revolt had a much larger economic effect.[3] 

First Opium War 

The First Opium War broke out in 1839 between China and Britain and was fought over trading rights (including the right of free trade) and Britain's diplomatic status among Chinese officials. In the eighteenth century, China enjoyed a trade surplus with Europe, trading porcelain, silk, and tea in exchange for silver. By the late 18th century, the British East India Company (EIC) expanded the cultivation of opium in the Bengal Presidency, selling it to private merchants who transported it to China and covertly sold it on to Chinese smugglers.[4] By 1797, the EIC was selling 4,000 chests of opium (each weighing 77 kg) to private merchants per annum.[5]


In earlier centuries, opium was utilised as a medicine with anaesthetic qualities, but new Chinese practices of smoking opium recreationally increased demand tremendously and often led to smokers developing addictions. Successive Chinese emperors issued edicts making opium illegal in 1729, 1799, 1814, and 1831, but imports grew as smugglers and colluding officials in China sought profit.[6] Some American merchants entered the trade by smuggling opium from Turkey into China, including Warren Delano Jr., the grandfather of twentieth-century President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Francis Blackwell Forbes; in American historiography this is sometimes referred to as the Old China Trade.[7] By 1833, the Chinese opium trade soared to 30,000 chests.[5] British and American merchants sent opium to warehouses in the free-trade port of Canton, and sold it to Chinese smugglers.[6][8]


In 1834, the EIC's monopoly on British trade with China ceased, and the opium trade burgeoned. Partly concerned with moral issues over the consumption of opium and partly with the outflow of silver, the Daoguang Emperor charged High Commissioner Lin Zexu with ending the trade. In 1839, Lin published in Canton an open letter to Queen Victoria requesting her cooperation in a halting the opium trade. The letter never reached the Queen.[9] It was later published in The Times as a direct appeal to the British public for their cooperation.[10] An edict from the Daoguang Emperor followed on 18 March,[11] emphasising the serious penalties for opium smuggling that would now apply henceforth. Lin ordered the seizure of all opium in Canton, including that held by foreign governments and trading companies (called factories),[12] and the companies prepared to hand over a token amount to placate him.[13][page needed] Charles Elliot, Chief Superintendent of British Trade in China, arrived 3 days after the expiry of Lin's deadline, as Chinese troops enforced a shutdown and blockade of the factories. The standoff ended after Elliot paid for all the opium on credit from the British government (despite lacking official authority to make the purchase) and handed the 20,000 chests (1,300 metric tons) over to Lin, who had them destroyed at Humen.[citation needed]


Elliott then wrote to London advising the use of military force to resolve the dispute with the Chinese government. A small skirmish occurred between British and Chinese warships in the Kowloon Estuary on 4 September 1839.[12] After almost a year, the British government decided, in May 1840, to send a military expedition to impose reparations for the financial losses experienced by opium traders in Canton and to guarantee future security for the trade. On 21 June 1840 a British naval force arrived off Macao and moved to bombard the port of Dinghai. In the ensuing conflict, the Royal Navy used its superior ships and guns to inflict a series of decisive defeats on Chinese forces.[14]


The war was concluded by the Treaty of Nanjing in 1842, the first of the Unequal treaties between China and Western powers.[15] The treaty ceded the Hong Kong Island and surrounding smaller islands to Britain, and established five cities as treaty ports open to Western traders: Shanghai, Canton, Ningpo, Foochow, and Amoy.[16] The treaty also stipulated that China would pay a twenty-one million dollar payment to Britain as reparations for the destroyed opium, with six million to be paid immediately, and the rest through specified installments thereafter.[17] Another treaty the following year gave most favoured nation status to Britain and added provisions for British extraterritoriality.[15] France secured the same concessions in treaties of 1843 and 1844.[18] 

Second Opium War 

In 1853, northern China was convulsed by the Taiping Rebellion, which established its capital at Nanking. In spite of this, a new Imperial Commissioner Ye Mingchen was appointed at Canton, determined to stamp out the opium trade, which was still technically illegal. In October 1856 he seized the Arrow, a ship claiming British registration, and threw its crew into chains. Sir John Bowring, Governor of British Hong Kong, called up Rear Admiral Sir Michael Seymour's East Indies and China Station fleet which on 23 October bombarded and captured the Pearl River forts on the approach to Canton, and proceeded to bombard Canton itself, but had insufficient forces to take and hold the city. On 15 December, during a riot in Canton, European commercial properties were set on fire and Bowring appealed for military intervention.[16] The execution of a French missionary inspired support from France.[citation needed]


Britain and France now sought greater concessions from China, including the legalization of the opium trade, expanding of the transportation of coolies to European colonies, opening all of China to British and French citizens and exempting foreign imports from internal transit duties.[19] The war resulted in the 1858 Treaty of Tientsin, in which the Chinese government agreed to pay war reparations for the expenses of the recent conflict, open a second group of ten ports to European commerce, legalize the opium trade, and grant foreign traders and missionaries rights to travel within China.[16] After a second phase of fighting which included the sack of the Old Summer Palace and the occupation of the Forbidden City palace complex in Beijing, the treaty was confirmed by the Convention of Peking in 1860.[citation needed]

More on design as heuristic.

 Emily Reeves: The Systems Biology Revolution 

Evolution News @DiscoveryCSC 

On a new episode of ID the Future, biochemist and metabolic nutritionist Emily Reeves tells the story of the systems biology revolution, why it is intelligent-design friendly, and why it is overturning Darwinian reductionism. This presentation was recorded at the 2022 Westminster Conference on Science and Faith in the greater Philadelphia area, which was jointly sponsored by Discovery Institute’s Center for Science & Culture and Westminster Theological Seminary. Download the podcast or listen to it here. 


Darwinists are finding that resistance is futile?

 Beneficial Borgs Have Landed 

David Coppedge 

As I reported last year when it was first announced, Nature proclaimed the existence of “unexpected structures” in soils that appear to gather and share genetic know-how between microbes. 


Jillian Banfield coined the term “Borgs” for the structures after the mythical Star Trek beings that grow by assimilating other beings. Now, Nature has published work by Banfield and her colleagues on this phenomenon, using her creative term in the title: “Borgs are giant genetic elements with potential to expand metabolic capacity.” One of the co-authors is Jennifer Doudna who discovered the CRISPR-Cas9 gene splicing mechanism.


A “Borg” is described as a “storage locker” for genes in news from Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. See, Aliyah Kovner, “Methane-Eating ‘Borgs’ Have Been Assimilating Earth’s Microbes.” And they might just help save the planet. How? They can share information with microbes on how to “eat” methane — a potent greenhouse gas believed to be contributing to climate change. If we can breed them, we might be able to reduce methane emissions.


Wondering why some archaea microbes in the Methanoperedens family contain Borgs in their genomes and some do not, Kovner suggests the following reason:

One likely explanation is that Borgs act as a storage locker for metabolic genes that are only needed at certain times. Ongoing methane monitoring research has shown that methane concentrations can vary significantly throughout the year, usually peaking in the fall and dropping to the lowest levels in early spring. The Borgs therefore provide a competitive advantage to methane-eating microbes like Methanoperedens during periods of abundance when there is more methane than their native cellular machinery can break down.  

Whether the advantage is “competitive” or not in a Darwinian sense, it would certainly be convenient for an organism to stash its methane-digesting tools in a storage locker in the off season. This implies the ability to find the tools later.  

The Discovery 

Banfield and colleagues were gathering mud samples in the East River near Crested Butte, Colorado, when they discovered the Borgs. She classifies them with plasmids as “extra-chromosomal elements” (ECEs), except that Borgs tend to be much larger. Some of them can have a million base pairs of information — a third the size of a Methanoperedens genome. 


The Borgs are not separate entities; they live within cells but appear to be giant “DNA packages” that can shuttle between microbes. How the sharing is accomplished for such large collections of data remains to be seen. 


Where did Borgs come from? Banfield is not sure; she compares it to examples of endosymbiosis that supposedly gave rise to chloroplasts in plants and mitochondria in animals. There are differences, though; “the overall diversity of genes found in the Borgs indicates that these DNA packages were assimilated from a wide range of organisms.” 

We can neither prove that they are archaeal viruses or plasmids or minichromosomes, nor prove that they are not. Although they may ultimately be classified as megaplasmids, they are clearly different from anything that has been previously reported. It is fascinating to ponder their possible evolutionary origins. Borg homologous recombination may indicate movement among hosts, thus their possible roles as gene transfer agents. 

Must Borgs have “evolutionary” origins? Maybe they co-existed with the microbes from the start. It’s incredibly exciting to discover a new biological paradigm coming to light that, to the microbes at least, is not new at all.  

No matter the origin, it is clear that Borgs have existed alongside these archaea, shuttling genes back and forth, for a very long time. 

Plasmids were already known as ECEs that contain genes for antibiotic resistance that microbes can share within soils. By comparison, Borgs are like large diverse libraries of information open to a wide variety of organisms. 

Plasmids are known to serve a similar purpose, quickly spreading genes for resistance to toxic molecules (like heavy metals and antibiotics) when the toxins are present in high enough concentrations to exert evolutionary pressure.


“There is evidence that different types of Borgs sometimes coexist in the same host Methanopreredens cell. This opens the possibility that Borgs could be spreading genes across lineages,” said Banfield. 

With national labs and prestigious journals starting to read these storage libraries of genetic information, more surprises are sure to come.  

Notably, some Methanoperedens were found with no Borgs. And, in addition to recognizable genes, the Borgs also contain unique genes encoding other metabolic proteins, membrane proteins, and extracellular proteinsalmost certainly involved in electron conduction required for energy generation, as well as other proteins that have unknown effects on their hosts. 

A New Paradigm  

The finding that some archaea contain “storage lockers” of genetic information is giving rise to a new paradigm about genetic inheritance. Now, Borgs can be added to my list from last month of gene sharing processes, enlarging the thought of “immense implications for neo-Darwinian theory that are not yet fully recognized.”  

No means no.

 John18:36KJV"Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is my kingdom not from hence." 

Christ's kingdom is no part of the present civilisation it is meant to supplant,to replace the present civilisation not to ameliorate it.

The bible makes it quite clear that it is only after our resurrection that we begin  to rule as kings with Christ. 

Revelation20:6KJV"6Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: on such the second death hath no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand years." 

Revelation2:10KJV"Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer: behold, the devil shall cast some of you into prison, that ye may be tried; and ye shall have tribulation ten days: be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life. " 

So only after a lifetime of tested and perfected integrity in the flesh. Do we get to rule as kings and priests with Christ(i.e all who are called and chosen). 

Thus it is not the business of the true Church to attempt to foist Christian religion/morals on this dying system at gunpoint as many of the fake churches of Christendom seem bent on doing. 

Nations come and go JEHOVAH'S kingdom is forever. 

Deuteronomy2:9KJV9And the LORD said unto me, Distress not the Moabites, neither contend with them in battle: for I will not give thee of their land for a possession; because I have given Ar unto the children of Lot for a possession." 

The Moabites practiced the same disgusting demon worship that the Canaanites practiced(and for which they were being punished by God). Yet the Israelites were not to make it their business to impose God's law by force of arms on Moab. They fought to keep the (then national) Church clean not to clean up the world or even the region. 

Note please that the Moabites were assigned an inviolable possession by JEHOVAH, just like the Israelites were, JEHOVAH has given the unbeliever the right to his unbelief and the rebel the right to his rebellion. But why? Two reasons,1) he knows that folly is its own penalty 

Proverbs4:19NIV"But the way of the wicked is like deep darkness; they do not know what makes them stumble."  

2)He does not want hypocritical ingrates in his Church :

Psalms15:1,2ASV"1JEHOVAH, who shall sojourn in thy tabernacle? Who shall dwell in thy holy hill?


2He that walketh uprightly, and worketh righteousness, And speaketh truth in his HEART;" 

We owe our heavenly Father a debt that can never be repaid, and I'm not even referring to the forgiveness of our mountain of sins.

Acts14:17NIV"Yet he has not left himself without testimony: He has shown kindness by giving you rain from heaven and crops in their seasons; he provides you with plenty of food and fills your hearts with joy.”" 

Our cup was already filled and he just kept pouring. The Lord JEHOVAH is the only one worthy of our vow of dedication. If you can't utter the vow from your heart then feel free to turn aside to which ever other God you imagine can take our Lord's place,pleasure,money,the Fatherland,the party ,the latest political messiah ,hey have at it.

But JEHOVAH'S loyalists choose to concur with the words of the ancient sage:

Joshua24:15ASV"And if it seem evil unto you to serve JEHOVAH, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve JEHOVAH."