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Lin Zexu destroys confiscated opium at Humen

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Imperial Commissioner Lin Zexu, sent to Canton to enforce the prohibition on opium, compelled the surrender of foreign opium stocks and had them destroyed at Humen over some three weeks from 3 June 1839 — on the order of twenty thousand chests, about a thousand long tons. This was enforcement of Chinese law against an illegal import. The British government treated the destruction of the merchants' property as a casus belli and dispatched a naval expedition.

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Connections · 3
Assembled narrative · 1

Assembled from 40 blocks · 1 evidence · 29 related

  1. Story
  2. Imperial Commissioner Lin Zexu, sent to Canton to enforce the prohibition on opium, compelled the surrender of foreign opium stocks and had them destroyed at Humen over some three weeks from 3 June 1839 — on the order of twenty thousand chests, about a thousand long tons. This was enforcement of Chinese law against an illegal import. The British government treated the destruction of the merchants' property as a casus belli and dispatched a naval expedition.
  3. Knowledge
  4. Canton (historical) — modern Guangzhou
  5. English (later British) East India Company
  6. Opium
  7. Lin Zexu destroys confiscated opium at Humen
  8. Connections
  9. Opium
  10. Canton (historical) — modern Guangzhou
  11. English (later British) East India Company
  12. English (later British) East India Company
  13. Silver
  14. Canton (historical) — modern Guangzhou
  15. Lin Zexu destroys confiscated opium at Humen
  16. The Opium Wars
  17. Tea
  18. Cohong (Gonghang)
  19. Silver
  20. Opium
  21. Shanghai
  22. Qing trade confined to Canton
  23. East India Company's China monopoly ends; Tea Committee founded
  24. Lin Zexu destroys confiscated opium at Humen
  25. The Opium Wars
  26. Treaty of Nanking
  27. Opium
  28. Assam
  29. Tea
  30. Robert Fortune
  31. Qing trade confined to Canton
  32. Boston Tea Party
  33. Commutation Act cuts British tea duty
  34. East India Company's China monopoly ends; Tea Committee founded
  35. Lin Zexu destroys confiscated opium at Humen
  36. The Opium Wars
  37. Robert Fortune removes tea plants and tea makers from China
  38. Parliament bans the use of printed calicoes
  39. Evidence
  40. The Anglo-Indian opium trade, organised as a Bengal monopoly and sold on to private smugglers, rose from a few thousand chests annually in the 1820s to roughly forty thousand by 1839 and reversed the silver flow that had funded tea purchases.
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/atlas?object=EVENT_HUMEN_OPIUM_DESTRUCTION&experience=EVENT_HUMEN_OPIUM_DESTRUCTION