British

"To summarize the Allies’ position, they knew an attack was coming, and they knew where it was coming—in the 200-mile gap between the Maginot Line and the English Channel. In this area, they had about the same number of troops as their enemy, and this in an era when one was supposed to need a three-to-one advantage in order to mount a successful attack. Most amazing of all, the French had even foreseen the possibility that the Germans would attack where they actually did, and they had prepared an answer for it With all of this going for them, how could the French and British lose?"

"The East India Company's food ship Lord Amherst had docked at Shanghai in 1832 with members of a trade mission eager to buy tea and silk in exchange for their own piece-goods and opium. They were given a cold reception by officials acting on imperial orders. The opium clippers continued to establish smuggling bases at Lintin Island, off Canton, and other strategic centres like Hong Kong. The authorities had finally raided warehouses on Lintin and boarded several armed junks waiting offshore to take the drug in. They seized and burned twenty thousand chests worth upwards of £2 million. (Some outraged shippers valued their losses as high as £5 million.) It was the long-expected, and not unwelcome, signal for British warships to come to the aid of all honest merchants in the sacred name of free trade. They demolished the weak Chinese forces in an operation which would pay the plumpest of dividends for a full century."