The Opium Wars

Assembled from 76 blocks · 2 evidence · 49 related

1. Story
2. Two wars fought by Britain — joined by France in the second — against Qing China, arising from the British insistence on trading opium into China against Chinese law and on terms of its own choosing. The First War (1839–1842) followed Lin Zexu's destruction of confiscated opium and ended in Qing defeat and the Treaty of Nanking; the Second (1856–1860) ended with the sacking of the Yuanmingyuan and treaties that legalised the opium trade and opened further ports. The wars were fought so that Britain could keep paying for tea with a narcotic, and they inaugurated what Chinese historiography calls the century of humiliation.
3. Knowledge
4. Tea
5. Canton (historical) — modern Guangzhou
6. English (later British) East India Company
7. Silver
8. Opium
9. The Opium Wars
10. Connections
11. Opium
12. Tea
13. Silver
14. Canton (historical) — modern Guangzhou
15. English (later British) East India Company
16. English (later British) East India Company
17. Silver
18. Canton (historical) — modern Guangzhou
19. Lin Zexu destroys confiscated opium at Humen
20. The Opium Wars
21. Camellia sinensis
22. Silver
23. London
24. Tea Horse Road (Chamagudao)
25. Canton (historical) — modern Guangzhou
26. English (later British) East India Company
27. Tea culture
28. Tea buried in the Han Yangling mausoleum
29. Tea-for-horse exchange between China and Tibet
30. Tea first shipped to Europe by sea
31. Qing trade confined to Canton
32. Boston Tea Party
33. Commutation Act cuts British tea duty
34. Robert Bruce shown tea growing in Assam
35. East India Company's China monopoly ends; Tea Committee founded
36. First Assam tea auctioned in London
37. The Opium Wars
38. Treaty of Nanking
39. Tea
40. The Columbian Exchange
41. Manila
42. Canton (historical) — modern Guangzhou
43. Opium
44. Qing trade confined to Canton
45. Commutation Act cuts British tea duty
46. The Opium Wars
47. Treaty of Nanking
48. Potosí
49. Silver ore is registered at the Cerro Rico of Potosí
50. Manila is founded as the eastern terminus
51. Mercury amalgamation and the mita transform Potosí
52. Tea
53. Cohong (Gonghang)
54. Silver
55. Opium
56. Shanghai
57. Qing trade confined to Canton
58. East India Company's China monopoly ends; Tea Committee founded
59. Lin Zexu destroys confiscated opium at Humen
60. The Opium Wars
61. Treaty of Nanking
62. Opium
63. Assam
64. Tea
65. Robert Fortune
66. Qing trade confined to Canton
67. Boston Tea Party
68. Commutation Act cuts British tea duty
69. East India Company's China monopoly ends; Tea Committee founded
70. Lin Zexu destroys confiscated opium at Humen
71. The Opium Wars
72. Robert Fortune removes tea plants and tea makers from China
73. Parliament bans the use of printed calicoes
74. Evidence
75. 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.
76. The treaty opened five ports, ceded Hong Kong, abolished the Cohong monopoly, fixed tariffs and imposed a silver indemnity — and made no mention of opium.