the calls Opium Wars were conflicts between the United Kingdom and the Chinese Empire in the 1840s and 1850s that had as their main motive the trade of the opium, that is, a drug derived from the flower of poppy, which has an analgesic effect, cultivated in Asia and widely consumed in Europe and America during the nineteenth century.
We know that the 19th century was, among other characteristics, the century of imperialism and that England was one of the nations that most reached tracts of land on the globe in that period. On the Asian continent, the British had India under their Crown and arrived, through the Opium Wars, to establish themselves in the dominions of Shanghai, in China. In England, the business undertaken by the British East India Company. Among the most traded products were tea and opium.
The English bought tea from the Chinese and took the opium for sale in the West. There was a very high demand for opium in Europe and America, both pharmaceutical demand (opium was used on war wounded and people suffering from diseases causing intense pain) and recreational (there were many clubs for the consumption of opium and hashish in the main cities European countries). However, the Chinese emperors were concerned about the use of opium among the population of China, given the chemical dependency and the physical and moral decay caused by the drug. Beginning in 1800, China established decrees prohibiting the consumption of opium. However, sanctions were ignored, and the trade of the product with the British encouraged its use among the Chinese as well.
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In 1839, China definitively stopped the opium trade and ordered the seizure of about 20,000 boxes of the product, expelling the English merchants who were trading them. This action profoundly affected the United Kingdom, the main stakeholder in the product. On November 3 of the same year, the British declared war on China, which effectively began at the beginning of the following year. That First Opium War it lasted from 1840 to 1842 and resulted in the Chinese defeat and the consequent subordination of China to the Western powers that demanded an opening to the free market.
The main document that laid the foundations for such opening was the Treaty of Nakin, signed in 1842, between the Chinese dynasty of Manchu and the United Kingdom. This treaty was considered one of the “Unequal Treaties” that “trapped” the Chinese empire to open itself to trade with Western powers. It didn't take long for the provisions of that treaty to be broken. In 1856, the Chinese government seized one of the ships representing the English crown, a gesture that constituted a violation of the Treaty of Nanjing.
This gesture led the two countries to Second Opium War, which lasted from 1856 to 1860. This second war culminated not only in the takeover of more strategic regions of Chinese trade, but also in the takeover of the empire's capital, the city of Beijing, in 1860 by the official lordElgin, who, with the help of the French, invaded the city and burned down the Chinese Emperor's Summer Palace.
By Me. Cláudio Fernandes
Would you like to reference this text in a school or academic work? Look:
FERNANDES, Claudio. "Opium Wars"; Brazil School. Available in: https://brasilescola.uol.com.br/historiag/guerras-do-opio.htm. Accessed on June 27, 2021.
