History
The Opium Wars,1839 - 1842 and 1856 - 1860:
Since trading began with China in the sixteenth century there was a high demand for tea, silk and porcelain in Britain. But due to the low demand for European commodities in the East, Britain had a large trade deficit with China and had to pay for its imported goods with silver. In 1773 the governor-general of India, Warren Hastings, decided to establish an East India Company opium monopoly in Bengal, encouraging Indian peasants to plant huge swathes of poppies and then illegally exporting the exceptionally high-quality opium to China to counter Britain's deficit. The opium trade took off rapidly, and the flow of silver began to reverse. Despite several attempts by the Chinese authorities to curb the trade, by the 1820s China imported 900 tons of opium from Bengal annually, enough to supply 12.5 million smokers: Chinese society was crippled and the whole economy disrupted. Eventually what started as a trade dispute twice erupted in war. China's defeat forced the government to tolerate the opium trade, opening up several ports to foreign commerce and yielding Hong Kong to Britain. This humiliation at the hand of foreign powers contributed to the downfall of the Qing Dynasty in 1911, and it wasn't until Mao's ruthless Communist revolution in 1949 that China's opium pandemic, estimated at some 20 million addicts, was finally brought under control.
The ibis in Egyptian mythology:
The ibis was a sacred bird of religious veneration in ancient Egypt, particularly associated with the god Thoth, one of the most important deities of the Egyptian pantheon, who was usually depicted with the head of an ibis. Thoth (which means 'he who is like the ibis') has been likened to the mind of God. In Egyptian mythology he is strongly connected with the moon (the curve of the ibis's beak is said to resemble the crescent moon) and is often associated with arbitration, magic, writing, science and the judging of the dead. Thoth served as a mediating power, especially between good and evil, making sure neither had a decisive victory over the other, and was the master of both physical and moral (i.e. Divine) law. Sometimes he was depicted as a baboon, which was seen as a nocturnal and intelligent creature.
The history of the lascars:
The term 'lascar' (believed to derive from the Persian lashkar, meaning an army, a camp or a band of followers) dates back to the early 1500s when it was used by Portuguese explorers to describe the sailors they encountered from modern India, Malaysia, Thailand, Burma, China, East Africa and the Middle East. By the seventeenth century, though, lascars were increasingly employed on British merchant ships as the Empire rapidly expanded and new trading routes materialised. Wanted for their cheap labour and apocryphal seafaring nous, thousands of lascars were recruited in gangs by native 'serangs' (from the Persian for 'overseer') who were responsible for their discipline and work, and for communication between the European and lascar crews onboard ship. So popular did the system prove that the 1660 Navigation Acts and the 1802 Lascar Act both sought “ with limited success ” to restrict the use of lascars in order to preserve jobs for British sailors. Lascars continued to be employed until the mid twentieth century, however, as their skills - and sheer numbers - proved invaluable to British merchants, especially during times of war when British crews were co-opted by the Navy.