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"The Opening to China Part II: the Second Opium War, the United States, and the Treaty of Tianjin, 1857–1859". Office of the Historian. US Department of State; Waley, Arthur (1958). The Opium War Through Chinese Eyes. London: George Allen & Unwin. Wong, J. Y. (2002). Deadly Dreams: Opium and the Arrow War (1856-1860) in China. Cambridge ...
The First Opium War (Chinese: 第一次鴉片戰爭; pinyin: Dìyīcì yāpiàn zhànzhēng), also known as the Anglo-Chinese War, was a series of military engagements fought between the British Empire and the Qing Dynasty of China between 1839 and 1842.
In China, the First Opium War is considered to have been the beginning of modern Chinese history. [ 12 ] [ 13 ] [ 14 ] Between the two wars, repeated acts of aggression against British subjects led in 1847 to the Expedition to Canton which assaulted and took, by a coup de main , the forts of the Bocca Tigris resulting in the spiking of 879 guns.
Historical accounts suggest that opium first arrived in China during the Tang dynasty (618–907) as part of the merchandise of Arab traders. [10] Later on, Song Dynasty (960–1279) poet and pharmacologist Su Dongpo recorded the use of opium as a medicinal herb: "Daoists often persuade you to drink the jisu water, but even a child can prepare the yingsu soup."
In September 1840, the Daoguang Emperor of the Qing dynasty fired Imperial Commissioner Lin Zexu and replaced him with Qishan. [2] British Foreign Secretary Lord Palmerston instructed Plenipotentiary Charles Elliot to have the ports of Canton, Amoy, Fuzhou, Ningbo, and Shanghai opened for trade; to acquire the cession of at least one island (or if the Chinese refused, the establishment of a ...
The number of people using the drug in China grew rapidly, to the point that the trade imbalance shifted in the foreign countries' favor. In 1839 matters came to a head when Chinese official Lin Zexu tried to end the opium trade altogether by destroying a large amount of opium in Canton, thereby triggering the First Opium War.
In 'Smoke and Ashes,' Amitav Ghosh draws comparisons between America's modern opioid crisis and the West's flooding of China with opium in the 18th century.
The skirmish was the first armed conflict of the First Opium War and occurred when British boats opened fire on Chinese war junks enforcing a food sales embargo on the British community. The ban was ordered after a Chinese man died in a brawl with drunk British sailors at Tsim Sha Tsui .