In the words of Marx, "close on its heels is the commercial war of the European nations, which has the globe as its battlefield." Penetration into Africa, China, Southeast Asia and the Middle East involved more than one colonial power at the time. Although powers sometimes collaborated together to intervene in local governance, such as the Eight-Nation Alliance of Austria-Hungary, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, which formed as a group to stop the Boxer Rebellion in China, more often the powers fought to gain control of territories. The invention of the Maxim machine gun easily ensured victory for the industrialized powers; in the battle of Obdurman 10,000 Sudanese died while the British lost only 20 soldiers. The opium trade is a classic example of how imperial power made profits at the expense of the least developed country. While Chinese goods were in high demand in Europe, Europeans had little to pay with except gold and silver. To break this trade imbalance, the Royal East India Company decided to export opium, a highly addictive substance, to China. Although banned by the Chinese ruler, the importation of opium continued. When