>If the effects are the same between two different substances but one has more risks than the other the one with more risks is the harder substance, Therefore opium is harder than "morphine ".

I'm sorry friend, but I assumed it was obvious that I was pointing to the narcotic effects when I suggested morphine/heroine to be "harder" substances. I didn't think most people would think I was talking mainly or solely about chronic health effects of said drugs when I use the adjective term.

On a side note, if you're some sort of avid heroin/morphine/drug enthusiast or proponent that I somehow offended with my academic take on the historic opiate trade, then you should know that I don't have any personal "experience" with the narcotic substances that we are discussing here. I don't smoke tobacco, used marijuana maybe a few times in college, and barely drink as it is. My interests in the discussed drugs are purely academic, and I didn't post my comment with the intention of pushing any sort anti-drug "heroin or morphine is evil" agenda. All I know is refined morphine has more morphine than raw opium / cocaine has way more cocaine chloride than coca leaves. How they affect people when partake, I have to take such info from others.

PS: Now that I think about it, I did get some IV morphine during a surgery and recovery in my young teens. It was pretty good stuff, and helped take the pain off my collapsed lung and broken ribs.

>heroin, cocaine and morphine were not “harder stuff”

You're really going to tell us a glass of whiskey isn't harder hitting than a glass of beer?

The term "harder" is sort of subjective, but I use it here on the basis that heroin/morphine/cocaine are all processed and concentrated products of the natural raw material that they are derived from. Raw opium doesn't contain 100% morphine - it's around 10% by mass.

Refining processes remove the non-psychoactive components and impurities from the base material, isolating /concentrating the components that do have a narcotic effect. For a given dose in mass or volume, heroin or cocaine is more potent than raw opium or coca leaves - cocaine production being the most dramatic change in concentration as the leaves typically contain less than 0.3% active cocaine chloride.

>and weren’t designed for export to China.

Never said they were, just pointing to their presence in the Chinese market. Old-fashion opium was still being imported (and produced domestically) by the ton into China at this time if I recall.

>Your ideas on heroin are wholesale wrong, it was first synthesized in 1874, it wasn’t commercialized until 1895. It was banned in 1924 in the U.S. but was available off the shelf until then. 1920 in the U.K.

I believe I did say "by the start of the 20th century" - if you're unfamiliar with this nomenclature, it means "early-1900s".

>Furthermore, your ideas on the U.S. fighting to stop the drug trade and the U.K. stalling is also wrong, in most cases, the U.K. banned drugs before the U.S.

Maybe, I'm a little vague on my dates and details in this regard. I'll have to reread my sources. Still, the Americans did indeed pushed for wider international collaboration in restricting narcotic trade and production, and they did faced resistance from other nations.

>Your ideas on drugs in the golden triangle being because of the French is preposterous. The Golden Triangle appeared because the communist Chinese outlawed the domestic opium trade in southern China, the growers and dealers shifted south in the 1950s following action by the Chinese.

I agree it's a subjective take open to bias and interpretations from both sides (colonial apologists vs. anti-colonial critics), but it doesn't change the fact that wartime French colonial officials were encouraging cultivation of poppies among local Miao/Hmong farmers for the purpose of producing opium. Whether that encouraged the wider intensive cultivation of opium in post-war Southeast Asia, I leave to more qualified scholars to argue over.

>Your ideas on Japan are equally wrong. The Japanese didn’t “flood” colonial India with cocaine

My sources tell me otherwise.

Excerpt from "Cocaine - An Unauthorized Biography" by Dominic Streatfeild:

->Such was the extent of the Japanese-Indian cocaine trade that in 1930 the Home Office despatched a Mr J Slattery, OBE, to the Far East to find what was going on. His secret report is in the Public Records Office at Kew. Slattery discovered that much of the cocaine being shifted bore the labels of Fujitsuru, Buddha, or Elephant brands, yet none of these were recognized manufacturers...Clearly of the impression that this cocaine all originated in Japan, Slattery could obtain no assistance from the Japanese authorities. Slattery had the wrappings of a Fujitsuru cocaine package analysed to see who made the paper. He was informed, and it was later corroborated, that it was made by the Fuji Company of Japan, and the string that held the package together was also Japanese.

>Nor did the Japanese play a major part in the Chinese opium trade

Please be aware I'm talking about Japan in the larger context of the 19th/20th century narcotic trade in China, so beyond the scope of the earlier Opium Wars period. As the original post hinted, the Japanese DID peddled opiates and other narcotics to the Chinese, something that the Japanese culprits faced charges for during the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal.

My information comes from "Cocaine - An Unauthorized Biography" by Dominic Streatfield - basically covers the entire history of coca and cocaine from the time of the Incas to the coke epidemic of the 1980s. A great read.

>it's impossible morphine is "harder" than opium, the reason opium gets you high is because of the morphine naturally in it mainly.

So you're going to tell me a glass of whiskey (40% ABV) isn't harder hitting than the same size glass of beer (5% ABV)?

Refining opium into morphine or heroin removes the non-narcotic components and impurities in the natural product. The resulting product is much more concentrated in psychoactive agents, hence has a stronger effect for a given dose.

>Morphine was never developed

Morphine was first isolated in 1804/1805 by German chemist Friedrich Serturner - by 1817 he had started a pharmaceutical company to produce and market the new drug as an analgesic. Heavy use of morphine in medical treatment during the American Civil War (and the mass opiate epidemic it spawned in its aftermath) is so well documented that I'm surprise anyone would even try to refute it.

I just wanted to mention that in the period between the 1830s to the end of WWII, China was basically the largest unregulated narcotic market in the entire world. Concessions to foreign powers left the Chinese government(s) unable to restrict or stop shipments of foreign narcotics coming into their country (or unwilling, as they were often involved and benefited from the trade itself) .

Every major nation wanted to get in on the action. The British having defeated the Chinese in war and forced them to accept their opium, were eagerly joined by the French, Dutch, Americans, Germans, and of course, Japanese. By the start of the 20th century, these foreign narcotic importers were moving on to harder stuff - morphine, heroin, and cocaine had been developed and they flooded the enormous Chinese market with the new drugs.

For them, the stronger potency of these refined drugs meant less bulk and weight had to be shipped to serve their overseas markets. The Dutch set up coca plantations on Java to directly produce refined cocaine for the Asiatic market. Japan, not wanting to miss out on the action, also started coca plantations in their new colony of Formosa (modern-day Taiwan). By 1920, it is estimated that combined heroin and cocaine imports into China amounted to 1500 tonnes per year.

Luckily for the Chinese, the Americans after WWI were heading international efforts and treaties to curb the global narcotic trade. Having experienced the bane of epidemic substance abuse in the aftermath of the American Civil War - and now seeing a resurgence of it in returning American soldiers at the end of the Great War, American politicians were adamant in pushing the British and other foreign powers to put a stop to their involvement in the global drug trade. Drugs that were prohibited in their own home countries, but which they hypocritically had no qualms selling and pushing to the Chinese and even their own colonies (the French colonial government directly distributed opiates to their Vietnamese and Laotian subjects in French Indochina).

The British and other powers whinge and moaned about the proposals to impede or stop their lucrative trade and tried to stall, but American eventually strong-armed them to signing and ratifying the first set of international anti-narcotic treaties in modern history. For the British, pressure had ironically, come in the form of Japanese cocaine that was flooding their colony of India, starting massive and disruptive drug epidemics there.

The French signed, but continued to distribute opiates to their colonial possessions in Indochina - even while the colony was being invaded and occupied by the Japanese during WWII. This odd situation gave the cooperating French colonial government the bright idea of growing and refining opium in Indochina itself instead of importing it from the now blockaded Middle East, laying the seeds of what will eventually be known as the Golden Triangle.

The Japanese, who signed these same treaties - continued to allow their firms to produce and distribute cocaine and opiates on the international market - now getting a bigger piece of the pie as other foreign powers had pulled out from the trade due to American pressure. When confronted by the other powers about their continuation in the trade, they simply shrugged their shoulders and acted innocent (even when seized drug shipments had boxes and packaging bearing the emblem of Japanese pharmaceutical firms). For China, their situation would have to worsen before getting better, as invasion and occupation by the Japanese bought increased availability of narcotic drugs to the country's millions of addicts.

I'm just hypothesizing here, but it could be a case of population pressure like that of the equally dramatic Migratory era during the late-Roman empire. There seemed to be a rapid uptake in warfare and fortification in places like the Italian peninsula as well in the period right before the BAC. My guess is the general European population might had reached a population level where there wasn't enough land to support people (with their current agricultural technology at least) or some widespread natural disaster (drought, flood) disturbed the balance of food production/consumption, so local tribes became much more competitive for land and resources, eventually leading to widespread intensive warfare. Those that were defeated then had to move away, either into the territories of the BA states, or forced other tribes to migrate and put pressure on them. While the militaries of the BA states might have handled the occasional intrusion by these "less sophisticated" groups, a constant torrent of desperate (and armed) people fleeing their homelands to gain refuge/loot eventually overwhelm the defenses of the BA states.

The major sources appeared to be Central Asia (Afghanistan/ Uzbekistan), with maybe large scale mining and trade of it from Britannia and Iberia.

There were a bunch of smaller mining operations scattered about the eastern Medditerrean region, but those sources were quickly exhausted.

No doubt, it allowed a larger subset of the population to participate in formal warfare. In the course of the BAC, we went from "palace" militaries made up of a few elite warriors who could afford the more expensive bronze weapons/armor, to militaries based on a larger body of common citizenry or peasant levies. Systems like the Greek polis or Roman Republic probably won't had existed without ironworking technology to produce affordable arms.

>doesn’t require the specialized knowledge to make the alloy

Actually, iron smelting is WAY more complex than bronze smelting.

First off, ancient iron smelters were never really able to fully melt the iron (on any reliable basis) due to the limited temperatures of their furnaces. Copper and tin smelting was pretty straight forward in comparison and had lower temperature requirements to reduce and melt. Melt them together, and you got a strong useable alloy that also convenient melted at a temperature lower than just copper.

With iron, the kind of smelting they had to do was solid-state reduction of the ore - instead of smelting the ore and getting refined molten iron, they broke down and burned off/melted away the non-iron content of the ore to get a somewhat refined chunk or bloom of iron embedded with slag/charcoal. This bloom then had to be painstakingly worked - hammered and folded repeatedly while being periodically heated to a bright yellow/white glow - to consolidate the iron bloom and beat out impurities before getting a usable ingot of iron for making tools/weapons. All this needed an enormous amount of fuel, labour, and skill to perform.

Second issue. Unlike copper or tin, iron had a tendency to absorb a lot of the carbon from the burning charcoal fuel (carburization). This complicates the smelting process as iron that absorbs too much carbon turns into pig iron - A brittle ferrous alloy that couldn't be forged and had a tendency to melt and mix in with the slag during smelting. While people will later develop means to refine this pig iron into useable iron, pig iron was useless and considered an unwanted waste product by early ironworkers. As the first iron smelters figured out, you could reduce the amount of pig iron produced by maintaining a balanced airflow and temperature in the furnace, and also adding fluxing material to the smelt.

Hence, ancient iron smelters had to get a bunch of actions and conditions right in order to make good iron; without any modern measurement tools or direct knowledge of how chemical reactions and the like worked. Instead, they had to figure it all out by trial-and-error. Run the furnace too hot: excessive pig iron is produced as iron absorbs more carbon at high temperatures. Run the furnace too cold: ore doesn't get reduced. Too little airflow: fuel doesn't burn completely, furnace runs cold. Too much airflow: Iron gets re-oxidized by excess oxygen. Adding crushed limestone to the smelt: Oh, more iron!

Smelters had to maintain a constant sweet spot of furnace conditions to get it to produce iron instead of waste slag/pig iron. All this took considerable practical knowledge and experience. So it's not a surprise why it took so long to figure out how to make and use iron compare to copper or tin.

>And so weaker weapons and armor against the sea people who had iron

The thing is, there's no evidence that the Sea People had ironworking technology, at least not in the beginning. Instead, ironworking was restricted to the immediate areas under the control of the Hittites - who seemed to have kept the technology a secret and maintained a monopoly on iron production/trade. It is only after the Bronze Age collapse that we see ironworking proliferate; likely aided by former-Hittite iron smelters who were fleeing their homeland as refugees, or enslaved/assimilated by invaders. The first archeological evidence of iron smelting furnaces being operated outside the Hittite heartland of Anatolia have been dated to around 900-1000 BCE, and by 800 BCE we're seeing an enormous amount of iron being produced and used compare to what was presented during the supposed Hittite iron monopoly.

Isn't the western region more mountainous and the eastern region predominantly flat lowlands? I imagine the great difference in geography had a great impact on cultural diffusion/assimilation, with groups in the highlands more isolated from each other - hence maintaining more cultural/linguistic diversity.

>But how could the Vandal military go from a roaming war band/army through continental Europe to becoming a hegemonic entity in the western Mediterranean, with no prior experience or knowledge in ship building or naval logistics?

Let's not forget the Romans in the beginning weren't much of a seapower either, up until the Punic Wars. In the case of the Vandals, their earlier conquests and Roman concessions in Hispania (Spain) gain them access to maritime ports and naval bases such as Carthago Nova (Cartagena). From there it was only a matter of incorporating local naval experts and ship crews into their military. Even before capturing Carthage, they were already conducting naval activities in and around the Balearic islands from theses Spanish bases.

Absorbing defeated enemy troops and specialists was not an uncommon thing to do in those days, and the Vandals and other Germanic groups weren't the mindless brutes that late-Roman writers will have you believe (especially given that they recruited these same folks into their legions and even gave them high-ranking military positions).

Given their isolation and hints that they might be descended from the earliest wave of homo sapien out of Africa, I will say the Sentinelese.

I believe contemporary Middle or New Kingdom Egypt had a population of 2-3 million at the time?

As a rule of thumb, urban population in those days usually represent about 5-10% of a local regions total population, so you can calculate a rough estimate of the total pop by multiplying combined population of city centers by a factor of 10 to 20.

More accurate estimates will require at minimal assessing the food production capacity of the area in question, ideally paired with records from the locale (which the city-states of Mesopotamia made plenty of in the form of cuneiform clay tablets recording taxes and temple contributions). I'll see if I can dig up something..

Didn't Norse settlement of Greenland predate the arrival of the Thule?

>What did Greek and Roman priests even do?

Speaking as someone from a family that still practices polytheism, as most priests elsewhere, Greek and Roman priests were "privy" to certain divine rituals and rites that people wanted and demanded. This could be rites for good fortune or luck, favour from the deities, protection against harm or evil, or even curses against rivals and foes.

For many of these services, fees will be charged. A temple or sect might also receive patronage and donations from wealthy or powerful believers who want to show their piety or devotion to a deity (or at least the public perception of them).

>In Greek and Roman religions, the gods are pretty much just humans

That just simplify things for people that practice these religions. If the gods are just humans with super powers, then the rational is that they will behave and act like humans. My neighbor Marcus might not be a saint, but if I gift him an jar of wine, he'll most likely be pleased and do me a good favour in return. Likewise, if I sacrifice an amphora of wine to Jupiter or Juno, they'll likely be pleased by it and answer my prayers. In Roman religion, this concept is known as do ut des ("I give that you might give").

Keep in mind, morality is subjective. Just because your version of morality doesn't wholly applied to the beliefs and mythology of Greco-Roman polytheism, does not mean they didn't have their own form of morality in place. What you perceive as "good" or "bad" might be different for a Roman or Greek living two thousand years ago.

>And why would any power derived from them give you any authority over other people?

I mean, you can say the same about monotheistic religions. What gives the Catholic or Islamic priests the authority to represent their monotheistic god on earth? Many instances, monotheistic religious figures have acted and behaved contrary to their "moral" teachings of their faith, yet their members still followed them. These monotheistic institutions have also been challenged and supplemented throughout their history, so they're not exactly invulnerable to strife and discord.

Traditions are powerful thing. Once a religion - mono or poly - establishes itself in a local society, it tends to proactively maintain its place in a way that keeps the people believing in the system.

It's all nationalistic propaganda and myth made after the fact. The truth is the samurai class exploited and brutalized the lower classes in their society at least as much as their contemporaries in other parts of the world. A samurai could literally execute a commoner at will and without trial. There's are reasons why the Meiji reformers sought to strip them of their powers.

> Modern science can show us that at least in our current societies women masturbate less, initiate sex less, etc

Can I get some sauce on that?

>quill was invented only in 600 AD.

The Greeks and Romans used reed pens.

https://sites.dartmouth.edu/ancientbooks/2016/05/23/the-writing-instrument-the-reed-and-quill-and-ink/

Keep in mind Italy managed to unify with their southern half. Germany tried but failed (Austria).

>I think some people are mistranslating the term for indentured servitude in the Qing and Ming laws as "chattel slavery".

I understand indentured servitude to be: a contract of specified time or monetary amount in which an individual is to work for the contract holder until their obligations are fulfilled. I do know that there was a large segment of indentured workers in China up to the modern era - but are these really the same "slaves" being referenced by the translated Qing legal code? I would think indentured workers had some fundamental rights, like the right to marry (as was the case in Europe and colonial Americas).

Under the Qing legal code, the "slaves" were prohibited from marrying, even with permission from their masters. The "slaves" were also prohibited from misrepresenting themselves as freedmen or "honourable persons" (which I take to mean ordinary citizens). Penalties for injuring or kidnapping a "slave" are also reduced compare to committing same acts on an ordinary citizen. In turn, certain crimes committed by "slaves" have increased penalties relative to an ordinary citizen. These "slaves" as referenced seem to be inherently treated as second class subjects by the Qing legal system.

Could Qing indentured workers or slaves be sold or traded at will by their masters? Were their children born free or become indentured/enslaved themselves?

Thanks for commenting :).

Never said they were, but I always thought slavery had an economic element to it that made it more prevalent in some cultures versus others.

I was reading an abbreviated version, but found one fully translated copy here: https://lsc.chineselegalculture.org/Asset/Source/lscDocument_ID-12_No-01.pdf

It's indeed a fascinating read. In regards to family law, the state seemed to have a vested interest in maintaining stability and (mostly patriarchal) hierarchy in private households.

Like one, you can't just divorce or leave your first wife for no reason (unless she committed one of the "deadly sins" for a married woman, one of them being talking too much). It's apparently also a CAPITAL punishment to hit your parents or husband's parents. If a husband catches her wife cheating on him with another man, he can kill them both with no legal repercussions. If he only kills the man, than it falls upon the local magistrate to seize the offending wife to be remarried or sold off as a slave (in which case the profits go to the state).

Thanks for your reply. This topic interests me because I've been led to believe that societies with a surplus in labour had little need for slavery on the level that we saw in say, ancient Rome or 17/18th century Americas. This is obviously not completely true. I'm going to see if I can score some primary sources and have my Chinese friends translate it for me :).

A musket ball is a type of bullet. Bullet is derived from boulette - French for "small ball".