The (First) Opium War (1839–42) Qing dynasty
China at this time, had many important trading products that European countries needed such as china, silk and tea but Europe in the other hand, only had silver that Chinese people were interested in. The British wanted to increase the cooperation and trading with China and come up with an idea; to illegally export opium to China. The Chinese government tried to stop the trading but the consumption of opium had already started and the consumption also grew rapidly among the citizens which became a very uneasy problem to solve, a total of 36353 coffins were exported from the United Kingdom to China.
Great Britain made demands for the trading but a war broke out when China didn’t accept the conditions. China lost the war and a preliminary treaty was created; to hand over Hong Kong to Great Britain, pay 6 million dollars to Britain and also opening the trading port of Guangzhou. However, none of the countries accepted the terms of condition and the war didn’t come to an end. In august 1842, U.K had occupied Nanjing and China was forced to make peace and accepting the demands.
1. Open up 4 more ports for every nation and foreign merchants are allowed to live and build in the 5 cities with open ports.
2. Britain was going to obtain Hong Kong.
3.China should pay for the British costs of the war, which was 21 million dollars.
(The photo was taken right after the war, the amount of drug-addicts was around 2 million in China)