John Ralston Saul on Trade vs. Wellbeing of People

"There is one free trade issue that is rarely mentioned in the context of Cobden and the great movement. During the eighteenth century, the British, followed by the French and the Americans, wanted to buy high-quality Chinese goods - tea, silk, porcelain. The West could not produce these goods, or at any rate could not match the Chinese level of excellence. The problem was the the Chinese didn't want any Western goods. There being no two-way trade, the West had to pay cash. The British used silver they received in trade with Spain. In 1781 there was no silver, so Warren Hastings, the first governor-general of India, sent off Indian opium to be sold in China to pay for British imports. This eventually led to two Opium Wars in which the West - pretending to be at war over the treatment of their traders - fought China to force the country to go on importing opium, thus addicting its citizens. By 1830 this trade was probably the largest single commodity business in the world. The same House of Commons, so enthusiastic about the moral virtues of free trade, defeated motions to ban the opium trade in 1870, 1875, 1886 and 1889. The trade ended in 1913 as part of the winding down of the first free trade experiment.

Put bluntly, Britain in particular and the West in general asked themselves whether the moral principle of fair trade trumped the well-being of a people. They answered that it did.

This is a question valid for all time; even if we refused to raise it at appropriate moments, history will, when the time comes to describe our actions for future generations. In what possible context could a question relevant to the opium trade be raised today? What about the pharmaceuticals essential to combat AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis in the developing world and the way in which their prices are artificially kept high by the Trade-Related aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) regime in the WTO? Or what about Western industrial agriculture and its effect on gragile societies? Or the destructive effect of unregulated financial markets on weaker economies?"

p.43,44 John Ralston Saul, "The Collapse of Globalism." (2005) Penguin, New York.