You have the Dutch in Indonesia, and you have the Spanish in the Philippines. But what we're going to focus on in this video is the European, and in particular the British attempt, to open up the Chinese markets to British trade, China at the time under the control of the Qing Dynasty. Well before this period, Chinese products were in demand in Europe, in particular Chinese porcelain and Chinese silk. Unfortunate for the Europeans, the Chinese did not have a lot of demand for European products, and so you had a balance of trade problem. These products would be exported from China into Europe, and you would have hard silver currency going to China. And so the imperial powers, especially the British, were looking for a solution. And they eventually found that opium grown in India, which is a highly addictive drug, it's the core constituent of heroin and morphine, could be addictive to the Chinese people, and maybe could help solve this balance of trade problem, that silver could then flow outside of China.