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Lecture 4 Objectives: THE LONDON: THE CORPORATION-- ORIGINS OF OPIUM DRUG SMUGGLING

✔ To learn the reasons and circumstances for the two Opium Wars between Great Britain and China?

✔ To understand why the British Empire refused China's demand that it stop smuggling Opium into the country? Why wouldn't Great Britain accept this demand?

​✔ To comprehend why it is so significant that the City of London is actually a privately owned corporation. To understand what the ramifications are of this.

✔ To understand the historical significance of the East India Company. Name four things that make this company unprecedented in world history.

Discussion Questions

1. Lord Mayor Sir Stephen Sloane was the great-great grandfather of what very famous American? Why is this ancestral connection between these two figures important?

2. What is the primary role of the Lord Mayor of London, the Corporation? Is he and the city under the power of the Queen or the Government?

3. What is the first example of Corporate Espionage? How did this shift the balance of power between two very powerful countries?

4. What did the British families of Matheson, Keswick, Swire, Dent, Inchcape, Baring, and Rothschild have in common?

5. What is the Thuggee sect that the British discovered in India? What is ironic about the fact that the British attempted to eradicate this organization?