Thread by @DavidCranmerUn1

Earl Grey tea - Wikipedia

The Earl Grey blend, or "Earl Grey's Mixture", is assumed to have been named after Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey, British Prime Minister in the 1830s. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earl_Grey…

Grey was a long-time leader of multiple reform movements, and as prime minister, his government was known for bringing about two notable reforms. The Reform Act 1832 brought about parliamentary reform, bringing changes to the House of Commons. His government also enacted the

Slavery Abolition Act 1833, bringing about the abolition of slavery in most of the British Empire.

The Act provided for payments to slave-owners. The amount of money to be spent on the payments was set at "the Sum of Twenty Million Pounds Sterling".

Under the terms of the Act,

the British government raised £20 million to pay out for the loss of the slaves as business assets to the registered owners of the freed slaves. In 1833, £20 million amounted to 40% of the Treasury's annual income or approximately 5% of British GDP at the time. To finance the

payments, the British government took on a £15 million loan, finalised on 3 August 1835, with banker Nathan Mayer Rothschild and his brother-in-law Moses Montefiore; £5 million was paid out directly in government stock, worth £1.5 billion in present day. The money was not paid

back by the British taxpayers until 2015, when the British Government decided to modernise the gilt portfolio by redeeming all remaining undated gilts.

As a notable exception to the rest of the British Empire, the Act did not extend to any of the Territories administered by the

East India Company, including the islands of Ceylon, and Saint Helena, in which the Company had been independently regulating, and in part prohibiting the slave trade since 1774; with regulations prohibiting the enslavement, the sale without a written deed, and the transport of

slaves into Company territory prohibited over the period.

In 1838, with the amount of smuggled opium entering China approaching 1,400 tons a year, the Chinese imposed the death penalty for opium smuggling and sent a Special Imperial Commissioner, Lin Zexu, to curb smuggling.

This resulted in the First Opium War (1839–1842). After the war Hong Kong island was ceded to Britain under the Treaty of Nanking and the Chinese market opened to the opium traders of Britain and other nations. The Jardines and Apcar and Company dominated the trade, although P&O

also tried to take a share.

Open hostilities between China and Britain started in 1839 in what later would be called the "First Opium War". The immediate effect was that both sides, by the words of Charles Elliot and Lin, banned all trade. Before this, Lin had pressured the

Portuguese government of Macau, so the British found themselves without refuge, except for the bare and rocky harbours of Hong Kong. Soon, however, the Chinese forces faced a British naval fleet, which included the East India Company's steam warship Nemesis and improved weapons,

and were soon routed.

Lieutenant General Lord William Henry Cavendish-Bentinck GCB GCH PC (14 September 1774 – 17 June 1839), known as Lord William Bentinck, was a British soldier and statesman. He served as Governor-General of India from 1828 to 1835.

Bentinck was born in

Buckinghamshire, the second son of Prime Minister William Bentinck, 3rd Duke of Portland, and Lady Dorothy (née Cavendish), only daughter of William Cavendish, 4th Duke of Devonshire. On the marriage the family name became Cavendish-Bentinck.

Sailing from Sicily on 30 January

1814, Bentinck first made for Naples. There he reluctantly signed an armistice with Joachim Murat; whom he personally detested as being a man whose "whole life had been a crime," yet whom Britain found it expedient to detach from his brother-in-law, Napoleon, by guaranteeing his

Kingdom of Naples in return for an alliance.

In the autumn of 1795, two years after King Louis XVI of France had been guillotined, royalists and counter-revolutionaries organised an armed uprising. On 3 October, General Napoleon Bonaparte, who was stationed in Paris, was named

commander of the French National Convention's defending forces.

Murat married Caroline Bonaparte in a civil ceremony on 20 January 1800 at Mortefontaine and in a religious ceremony on 4 January 1802 in Paris, thus becoming a son-in-law of Letizia Ramolino as well as brother-

in-law to Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Bonaparte, Lucien Bonaparte, Elisa Bonaparte, Louis Bonaparte, Pauline Bonaparte and Jérôme Bonaparte.

Mortefontaine is a commune in the Oise department in northern France.

The castle of Mortefontaine was bought by Joseph Bonaparte, elder

brother of Napoléon Bonaparte, in 1798. The Convention of 1800 (also known as the Treaty of Mortefontaine), a treaty of friendship between France and the United States of America was signed in the castle of Mortefontaine. The preliminaries of the 1802 Peace of Amiens were also

negotiated at the castle.

The Convention terminated the 1778 agreements, confirmed the principle of 'free trade, free goods' between the two countries and ended the 1798–1800 Quasi-War, an undeclared naval war waged primarily in the Caribbean. However, it failed to address the

issue of compensation demanded by American ship owners for losses suffered before and during the Quasi-War, and as a result was not approved by Congress until December 1801.
By removing areas of friction between the two countries, it re-established Franco-American relations, and

ultimately facilitated the 1803 Louisiana Purchase.

The Treaty of Amiens (French: la paix d'Amiens) temporarily ended hostilities between France and the United Kingdom at the end of the War of the Second Coalition. It marked the end of the French Revolutionary Wars; after a

short peace it set the stage for the Napoleonic Wars. Britain gave up most of its recent conquests; France was to evacuate Naples and Egypt.