The Opium Wars — The Garden of Perfect Brightness (Part Two)

The fleet has arrived. Now two empires that barely understand each other are about to find out just how differently they've spent the last fifty years.

In this episode: the strange iron ship that broke the rules of naval warfare, a Chinese defence built on assumptions the Industrial Revolution simply erased, and the palace complex so beautiful it took a century to build — and a single order to destroy. We follow the war to its end, through treaties, indemnities, and a fresh conflict a generation later, all the way to a five-year-old emperor, a five-year-old's mother who quietly seized an empire, and a phrase every Chinese schoolchild still learns today: the century of humiliation.

This is the story of how a trade dispute over tea and opium ended with smoke over Beijing — and why the bill for it is still being paid.