causal claim
Colonial corporations compelled local populations to abandon other crops and produce opium, even at the cost of millions of deaths by starvation.
Unidentified speaker · Si Sheppard – How did a few hundred Spanish soldiers topple two empires? · 1 Oct 2026
In their words
The transcript segments this claim was taken from
“All this forced the local people to stop producing these crops,”
“even if it means millions starved to death,”
“in order to produce opium to take advantage of that, which was devastating in its impact in political structures that had no real environment where that was part of their established traditions.”Play from 1:32:31Report a misattribution
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