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Dec 19, 2017 · Even as late as the 1890s, more than 30 years after Britain’s last conflict with China, the Opium Wars were still being celebrated in extravagant firework tableaux. The Crystal Palace burned ...
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Jun 13, 2021 · How The Opium War Changed China Forever. The impact of this 19th century conflict can still be felt in Chinese politics and soceity today. The Western presence in China became so ubiquitous, and ...
Mar 19, 2024 · By the early 20th century, an estimated 20 million people were addicted. When the Communists took over in 1949, they banned opium production, put addicts into detox programs, executed over 800 ...
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- The first Opium War
- The second Opium War
The Opium Wars were two conflicts fought in China in the mid-19th century between the forces of Western countries and of the Qing dynasty, which ruled China from 1644 to 1911/12. The first Opium War (1839–42) was fought between China and Great Britain, and the second Opium War (1856–60), also known as the Arrow War or the Anglo-French War in China, was fought by Great Britain and France against China.
Qing dynasty
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What caused the Opium Wars?
The first Opium War was the result of China’s attempt to suppress the illegal opium trade, which had led to widespread addiction in China and was causing serious social and economic disruption there. British traders were the primary source of the drug in China. The second Opium War was the result of the desire of Great Britain and France to win additional commercial privileges in China, including the legalization of the opium trade, as well as to gain more legal and territorial concessions in China.
Read more below: The first Opium War
The Opium Wars arose from China’s attempts to suppress the opium trade. Foreign traders (primarily British) had been illegally exporting opium mainly from India to China since the 18th century, but that trade grew dramatically from about 1820. The resulting widespread addiction in China was causing serious social and economic disruption there. In spring 1839 the Chinese government confiscated and destroyed more than 20,000 chests of opium—some 1,400 tons of the drug—that were warehoused at Canton (Guangzhou) by British merchants. The antagonism between the two sides increased in July when some drunken British sailors killed a Chinese villager. The British government, which did not wish its subjects to be tried in the Chinese legal system, refused to turn the accused men over to the Chinese courts.
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A History of War
Hostilities broke out later that year when British warships destroyed a Chinese blockade of the Pearl River (Zhu Jiang) estuary at Hong Kong. The British government decided in early 1840 to send an expeditionary force to China, which arrived at Hong Kong in June. The British fleet proceeded up the Pearl River estuary to Canton, and, after months of negotiations there, attacked and occupied the city in May 1841. Subsequent British campaigns over the next year were likewise successful against the inferior Qing forces, despite a determined counterattack by Chinese troops in the spring of 1842. The British held against that offensive, however, and captured Nanjing (Nanking) in late August, which put an end to the fighting.
In the mid-1850s, while the Qing government was embroiled in trying to quell the Taiping Rebellion (1850–64), the British, seeking to extend their trading rights in China, found an excuse to renew hostilities. In early October 1856 some Chinese officials boarded the British-registered ship Arrow while it was docked in Canton, arrested several Chinese crew members (who were later released), and allegedly lowered the British flag. Later that month a British warship sailed up the Pearl River estuary and began bombarding Canton, and there were skirmishes between British and Chinese troops. Trading ceased as a stalemate ensued. In December Chinese in Canton burned foreign factories (trading warehouses) there, and tensions escalated.
The French decided to join the British military expedition, using as their excuse the murder of a French missionary in the interior of China in early 1856. After delays in assembling the forces in China (British troops that were en route were first diverted to India to help quell the Indian Mutiny), the allies began military operations in late 1857. They quickly captured Canton, deposed the city’s intransigent governor, and installed a more-compliant official. In May 1858 allied troops in British warships reached Tianjin (Tientsin) and forced the Chinese into negotiations. The treaties of Tianjin, signed in June 1858, provided residence in Beijing for foreign envoys, the opening of several new ports to Western trade and residence, the right of foreign travel in the interior of China, and freedom of movement for Christian missionaries. In further negotiations in Shanghai later in the year, the importation of opium was legalized.
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Jul 3, 2018 · The Opium War still haunts China with an indelible historical and national syndrome of victimhood and vengeance, making the defeat in the war the most potent rallying cry in today’s China for revenge in the thinly veiled call for the restitution of a “Chinese Dream,” making China the most destabilizing actor in the Indo-Pacific region and ...
Jun 6, 2012 · The Opium Wars of 1839-42 and 1856-60 between Qing-dynasty China and Britain are a perfect case study of the international divergence of opinion that the Empire continues to generate. In China the conflicts – the first between it and a western nation – are a national wound: the start of a western conspiracy to destroy China with drugs and ...
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Jul 20, 2020 · A British naval fleet arrived in June 1840, attacking along the Chinese coast. With their inferior military technology, the Chinese were no match for the British and, after a series of military defeats, they agreed to sign humiliating peace terms. The long and unhappy history of trade between China and the west.
