The First Opium War (3 November 1839-29 August 1842) was a war fought between the United Kingdom and Qing China over British merchants' sales of opium to the Chinese people. The British used their military (particularly naval) superiority to defeat the Chinese, and the Daoguang Emperor was forced to sign the Treaty of Nanking, which ceded Hong Kong Island to the United Kingdom, granted an indemnity to Britain, and opened five treaty ports to the foreign powers.
History[]
By the 18th century a tremendous demand had developed in Europe for Chinese tea, silks, and pottery, but there was little desire in China for any of the goods Europe had to offer. The British East India Company solved the resultant trade imbalance through illegal sales to China of Bengali opium - the amount of opium imported into China jumping from about 200 chests in 1729 to 40,000 in 1838. Alarmed by the rising number of addicts, the Qing government sent commissioner Lin Zexu to Guangzhou with orders to confiscate all opium warehoused there by British merchants. A few days later drunken British sailors killed a Chinese villager and hostilities broke out when the British government refused to hand the accused over to the Chinese authorities. A British fleet was dispatched in June 1840, and outdated Chinese weaponry was no match for British gunboats. After a series of ignominious defeats, the Chinese were compelled to agree to the Treaty of Nanking whereby Hong Kong was handed over to British control, a humiliation that would be ended only when the island was given back to China in 1997. In addition, British subjects would now be tried under British law, not Chinese, for crimes committed on Chinese soil. Meanwhile, Lin was banished to Turkestan in disgrace. With all restrictions on British commercial activity lifted, the next three decades would see the opium trade more than double in value.