On December 16 1773, a group of American patriots boarded three British vessels and destroyed the tea they were carrying by chucking hundreds of chests into Boston harbour. The rebellion that came to be known as the Boston Tea Party was a milestone in the American Revolution, which triumphed a few years later when the US threw off its colonial yoke.
The Canton opium party (never so named) of 1839 ended rather less triumphantly. Lin Zexu, an imperial commissioner, had written to Queen Victoria asking her why the British were so bent on selling “poison” to the Chinese. When he received no reply, he ordered 20,000 crates of opium to be set alight and sluiced into the sea. Britain reacted furiously, sending in warships, and China was forced to sign the ignominious Treaty of Nanking, in which it indemnified London, opened up five “treaty ports” and ceded Hong Kong island. Lin was sent into exile.
While America’s act of defiance gave birth to a great nation – and two centuries of optimism – China’s rebellion ushered in a period of imperial collapse, Japanese invasion and extended impoverishment.