a parte la rivolta dei Ciompi, i primi due mesi della rivoluzione francese e l'ammutinamento della Potiomkin ( alcuni aggiungerebbero al Rivoluzione d'Ottobre ma io non mi spingo a tanto) ,
non mi ricordo quando mai il lavoro abbia avuto un ruolo diverso dall'attuale
ciò detto, riporto le parole del mandarino Lin
In 1839, Lin also wrote an extraordinary
memorial to
Queen Victoria in the form of an open letter published in Canton, urging her to end the opium trade. He argued that China was providing Britain with valuable commodities such as tea, porcelain, spices and silk, while Britain sends only "poison" in return. He accused the "barbarians" (a reference to the private merchants) of coveting profit and lacking morality. His memorial expressed a desire that the Queen would act "in accordance with decent feeling" and support his efforts
He wrote:
We find that your country is sixty or seventy thousand
li from China. Yet there are barbarian ships that strive to come here for trade for the purpose of making a great profit. The wealth of China is used to profit the barbarians. That is to say, the great profit made by barbarians is all taken from the rightful share of China. By what right do they then in return use the poisonous drug to injure the Chinese people? Even though the barbarians may not necessarily intend to do us harm, yet in coveting profit to an extreme, they have no regard for injuring others. Let us ask, where is your conscience?
— Lin Zexu, Open letter addressed to the sovereign of England and published in
Canton (1839)
[9]
la risposta furono le cannoriere inglesi nel Fiume Giallo
quindi è solo questione di accettare o di usare l'accetta
o di aspettare che la ruota giri, come hanno fatto i Cinesi: ora sono loro ad usare il libero mercato a loro vantaggio