Great insights, bfisher! I especially like your breakdown of bondage examples. I am up to 50% and hope to make significant progress over the weekend. I too have been surprised at how much history I am learning in this book. I also was unaware of the Indian linkage to the opium wars. It's sad how they were forced to grow opium on so much land in the small villages at the expense of not being able to grow the necessary food for basic living. I suppose that's an example of economic bondage to add to your list. I always think of tea as the commodity that has a dark history between China-Britain-India. I recommend the book
For All the Tea in China by Sarah Rose on that subject.
I found this great timeline of "opium throughout history."
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/front...c/history.html
This next statement is a random aside on one of your comments. It's interesting how cultures move across the globe, and we often don't recognize or realize the historical significance. Several years ago I worked with a Brazilian company and noticed that many of their employees were of Japanese heritage. I wouldn't have thought too much about it until one of them explained how his family migrated to Brazil during WW2, and it prompted me to do some research. I never would have guessed that Brazil has the largest population of Japanese outside Japan! Their cultures seem so very different.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_Brazilians