In case one forgot what some resorted to overturn their deficits. 

The East India Company drove the expansion of the British Empire in Asia. The Company's army had first joined forces with the Royal Navy during the Seven Years' War, and the two continued to cooperate in arenas outside India: the eviction of Napoleon from Egypt (1799), the capture of Javafrom the Netherlands (1811), the acquisition of Singapore (1819) and Malacca (1824) and the defeat of Burma (1826).^[80]

From its base in India, the Company had also been engaged in an increasingly profitable opiumexport trade to China since the 1730s. This trade, illegal since it was outlawed by the Qing dynastyin 1729, helped reverse the trade imbalances resulting from the British imports of tea, which saw large outflows of silver from Britain to China.^[86] In 1839, the confiscation by the Chinese authorities at Canton of 20,000 chests of opium led Britain to attack China in the First Opium War, and the seizure by Britain of Hong Kong, at that time a minor settlement.^[87]

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