Opium War And The Chinese Empire

For centuries, the Chinese empire have remained isolated from the problems and politics of the western world. But everything began to change when the British and the Chinese empire stated to have disputes because of trading rights. Later the dispute transformed into a full-scale war. But the British won the war with ease because of the superior weaponry and training. This could be seen as the most humiliating defeat the Chinese empire have to endure. The whole ordeal ended with The Chinese signing many unfair treaties. And it could also be considered as the beginning of the modern china. The events which led to the opium war. The Chinese and Europe had been trading Ever since the arrival of Portuguese during the 16. But during the 17th …show more content…
This created an enormous trade deficit for the British. So this cause the British to look for more profitable way to trade with the Chinese which led the trade opium for Chinese good, as opium was used in china as an aphrodisiac ever since 8th century AD. This made the trading easier because the British India had an abundance of opium. Portuguese were the first to popularized tobacco in china, which were brought from north America. And with the large amount of opium available, the Chinese public started to smoke both opium and tobacco together. This started to grow concern among the public, so the Chinese government tried to ban the use of opium. But this did not stop the British, because they were easily abele to bypass the government restrictions with the help of local authorities and smugglers. During the 1830’s, the Chinese black market was overflowing with tons of opium provided by the British companies for silver currencies. And by 1838, the number of Chinese who were addicted to opium increased to 12 million and on the December of that same year emperor daoguang sent a government commissioner named Lin …show more content…
The British parliament voted to send a navy fleet to china. The mission of the fleet was to make the Chinese government to compensate the merchants for their loss, end the restrictions placed on the foreign merchants and to let them create a base of trade in a Chinese island. In June of 1840, as soon as the British fleet arrived they started to blockade the Zhu Jiang river, which in English is known as the pearl river. This was the beginning of the first opium war. Then the fleet sailed to north, to Beijing where the emperor was living. On July 6, the British fleet fought the Chinese defense on the zhoushan island. The battle only lasted 9 minutes. The one-sided battle ended with the obliteration of the Chinese defense and the capturing of the island itself. the British fleet then carried sailing to the north fighting and blockading more Chinese ports. While the British used guns, the Chinese soldiers were still using swords and bows. During this time the official Chinese military was spread across the empire which would take them months to get to the battle but also the old Chinese stone forts were simply no match the British navy. The reoccurring defeats made the Chinese military realized they could