Trading the Poppy: The Industrial Revolution in Manchester and the First Opium War in China

This resource includes primary source documents – quotes from books, engravings and maps - that can be used to support historical enquiry. Secondary material is used to give different perspectives on Manchester and the Opium Trade / Wars and students are invited to interrogate these ideas, though that may be more relevant for GCSE History or as a bridge to GCSE History. The sources can be used to ask and answer questions about trade, life in cities during the industrial revolution and empire in the Victorian period. The resource pulls together sources from across the Portico’s historic book collection and archive with objects from the Silk Museum, Macclesfield and Bolton Library and Museum Services. It is adapted from the Infamous: Opium, Silk, Tea and the Mission exhibition at the Portico Library (1 February – 8 June 2024) that was curated and written by Iris Yau and owes much to Zheng Yangwen’s Ten Lessons in Modern Chinese History* (2018).

Teachers can use all of it to support a series of lessons – depending on the number of activities or discussions – or pull parts out of it for one lesson or to support a module on experiences of the Industrial Revolution and / or trade in the nineteenth century. These notes support the Powerpoint Presentation.

Images and archive material used belong to the Portico Library, unless otherwise stated. This is shared as a free resource under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) License, which permits use, distribution, and reproduction in any non-commercial medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Curriculum links:
KS3 History – Industry, Empire and Social Change 1745-1901: The Industrial Revolution; How Trading Works (East India Company, Cities in England and the Qing Dynasty in China); the expansion of industrial cities; how did Britain get an Empire?
GCSE History – It can be used to support The Story of China
KS3 Geography – Human Environment: Urban Change; A background to China and How is China Changing? –Trade History
PSHE – Drug Addiction: Causes and Consequences
Citizenship – British Identity, Diaspora and Migration

In addition, it supports Literacy – Reading Historical Creative Fiction pre-1914 as well as PSHE - the development of empathy.