" Estimated dispatch: 18 Aug 2014 - 19 Aug 2014 Tournament of Shadows: The great game and the race for empire in Asia Tournament of Shadows: The great game and the race for empire in Asia by Shareen Blair Brysac £0.70 Only 1 left in stock. Condition: Used - Very Good Quantity: 1 Change quantity of Tournament of Shadows: The great game and the race for empire in Asia from 1 Sold by: betterworldbooksltd "
More Holes in my bank account!
]]>We have biotechnology at least as advanced as 2014 state of the art - if alien, we're probably better, as due to plot, we can walk about and breathe etc, probably even pass for human.
We have time.
So I'd start in the early 18th century, and put my main basket of eggs in the highlands of Papua New Guinea. We grow coca leaf inside the fence, and deliberately encourage impassable jungle outside. Through the God Gambit, a good neighbour policy and brute force, we encourage locals to ensure privacy and obscurity.
We find a young Joseph Conrad type fallen Westerner to deal with us - and we're just another tribe to him - help him become a player with John Company.
Fast forward, the British fight a couple of wars with China to defend our right to be their pharmacist - probably burn the capital for us- and we end up a major Hong Kong bank. By 1900, entirely legit. And we settle for that. Who wants the whole world when you can rent or buy any particular bit?
]]>However, if you're looking for messed up drugs, you can always figure out how to make methamphetamine from some poor Eurasian Ephedra plant (the relevant plants grow all through the drier Himalayas) and start a 20th century-style drug running operation almost anywhere. It would be interesting to see if it was more or less effective than the British and their opium wars. Unfortunately, their poppy fields were based in, um, much the same area. Speed-balls, anyone? On third thought, scratch this idea. I'm going to go wash my brain out now.
]]>By the way, do your cats ever hold your awards shelf hostage?
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]]>The tricky part would be getting the aluminum for the zeppelin or plane bodies, if you're going to make a 19th century air force.
With your oil-based chemical technology, you could jump directly to fiberglass and carbon fiber.
Also, the strength/weight ratio difference between steel and aluminum is less than you might expect; the Soviet MiG-29 and the American B-70 airframes were largely steel.
Production of aluminum by chemical means is tedious and expensive. Enough that when the Washington Monument was built, it was capped with aluminum, which was more valuable than gold or platinum. But if you have electricity, separation of aluminum by electrolysis is trivially simple.
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