First Opium War (sep 4, 1839 – aug 29, 1842)
Description:
Foreign traders had been illegally exporting opium to China since the 18th century, but that trade grew dramatically from about 1820. The resulting widespread addiction in China was causing serious social and economic disruption there. In spring 1839 the Chinese government confiscated and destroyed more than 20,000 chests of opium from British merchants.
Hostilities broke out later that year when British warships destroyed a Chinese blockade of the Pearl River estuary at Hong Kong. The British sent an expeditionary force to China, which arrived in June. Subsequent British campaigns over the next few years were likewise successful against the inferior Qing forces, despite a determined counterattack by Chinese troops in the spring of 1842. The British held against that offensive, and captured Nanjing in late August, which put an end to the fighting.
Treaty of Nanking in 1842 ceded Hong Kong island to the United Kingdom in perpetuity, and established five treaty ports at Shanghai, Canton, Ningbo, Fuzhou, and Amoy.
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