The Land of Green Tea: Letters and Adventures of Colonel C.L. Baker of the Madras Artillery 1834-1850 Pamela Masefield
This is the story of events leading to the first Chinese Opium War, recorded by Wyndham Baker in letters to his family. From the East India Company's Croydon training college, he goes out to India and thence, in response to the British passion for tea-drinking, to China with his Gunners, to set up the first tea factory in Canton - in payment for which the British shipped opium from India.