Lin Zexu destroys confiscated opium at Humen
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.
Historical — it happened, and the record is settled.
Subjects
- Opium · trade good · not located
- Canton (historical) — modern Guangzhou · city · China
- English (later British) East India Company · chartered company · not located
Evidence
Partly verified — Core facts are sourced; some optional detail is deliberately absent.
Opium Trade
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.
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Asian History, Oxford University Press · 2019 · Partly verified
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Asian History, DOI 10.1093/acrefore/9780190277727.013.608, article 'Opium Trade'
Recorded on Opium
- Parliament bans the use of printed calicoes
- Qing trade confined to Canton
- Boston Tea Party
- Commutation Act cuts British tea duty
- East India Company's China monopoly ends; Tea Committee founded
- The Opium Wars
- Lin Zexu destroys confiscated opium at Humen
- Treaty of Nanking
- Robert Fortune removes tea plants and tea makers from China
Related
Related because they share a subject in the Atlas — never because the text looks similar.
- Robert Fortune removes tea plants and tea makers from China · 1848–1851
- Treaty of Nanking · 1842-08-29
- The Opium Wars · 1839–1860
- East India Company's China monopoly ends; Tea Committee founded · 1834
- Commutation Act cuts British tea duty · 1784
- Boston Tea Party · 1773-12-16
- Qing trade confined to Canton · 1757
- Parliament bans the use of printed calicoes · 1721