The colonial history of China is particularly important as we consider her rise on the world stage once again. Readers of this blog may remember my brief discussion about The Silk Road early at the outset of these discussions of world history. Before the advent of national economic statistics across the world, it was impossible to measure the comparative wealth of different peoples. Yet, the evidence we do possess shows that China and India were considerably more wealthy than anywhere else in the world until Britain invaded China in the 1840s.

After having outlined in the previous blog the origins of the early monopoly companies, it is now worth pausing to understand how these monopoly companies operated. Divest yourself of any conception you might possess of a trading company today. From their origins, these companies operated like ships of war. They were designed to combat all aggression from any direction: aggression from the people they might meet on landing, from other ships that might wish to steal their cargoes, and from other European monopoly companies that wished to steal their trade.