First Opium War
Welcome to the 19th century. It’s all downhill from here. The 19th century was a disaster for China and the Qing Dynasty. Actually, it was one disaster after another.
With China being a self-contained civilization, the only thing the Qing wanted from the West in exchange for its highly desired tea, porcelain, and silk was silver. However, millions of Chinese citizens were eager to get their hands on something else: opium. Fortunately for the British, who couldn’t import enough tea to satisfy the demand, they were the world’s premier producers of opium, which they farmed in their colony India. Britain began selling opium to China in 1781, and sales skyrocketed into the 19th century. Britain encouraged opium use among the citizenry of China because the more opium it exported to China, the less silver it needed to exchange for Chinese goods. (The U.S. even got into the act, selling cheap opium from Turkey.) In 1799, the imperial powers in Beijing banned the import of opium due to its societal impact. But over 1,000 miles away, the merchants in Canton (now Guangzhou), China’s only international port, looked the other way because opium was such a hot commodity. Now Britain was paying for all the tea in China with opium instead of silver, which it primarily had to buy from Spain. Without the British silver it had been relying on, what had been the Qing’s outsized trade surplus was turning into a deficit.
In 1839, Beijing finally cracked down, seizing all British opium in Canton and on board ships at sea. Over 1,000 tons of opium were confiscated and destroyed. British financial losses were enormous. With no compensation coming from China for confiscated opium, Britain saw only one solution. In 1839, the British Empire went to war against China. It was a lopsided war as it became immediately clear that the West had at last surpassed China in all manner of technologies. China had been resting on its past technological glories. The British Royal Navy was overwhelming. During 3 ½ years of what was primarily a maritime war, British losses were negligible compared with China’s casualties of as many as 20,000. The war ended in 1842 with the punishing Treaty of Nanking. Specific restrictions on trade in Canton were lifted. Trade tariffs were fixed. Four other trading ports were designated, including Shanghai. (Britain had had its eye on Shanghai, strategically situated at the mouth of the Yangtze River, the highway to China’s heartland.) China was to pay Britain $21 million. And Britain got Hong Kong.
China’s humiliation had begun. But first, an internal matter. (Ironically, the issue of the legalization of the opium trade was left unresolved.)
[Historical information is primarily gathered from Wikipedia, so you know it must be true.]
Imagine that. Britain using Opium to trade with the Chinese. Unbelievable!
The original drug wars!