The Opium Wars

What are the Opiums wars? Why do they continue to flame modern Chinese nationalism ? In the early nineteenth century, the opium trade from India to China became a significant source of British income, but the Son of Heaven outlawed the use of opium because his population had grown excessively addicted to it. Despite the ban, the British and the Americans were using illegal routes to trade their opium. In July 1839, Commissioner Lin Zexu formally addressed a letter to Queen Victoria where he outlined the harmful effects of the drug on his populations and urged her to stop the trade of opium. He ended with a threat to decapitate those who continued the trade. That very year, Queen Victoria, barely 20, retaliated by ordering her first ocean-going warship, the Nemesis, to bombard China’s coast in what came to be known as the First Opium War. The Chinese suffered a crushing defeat and were forced to sign to Treaty of Nanking, which effectively handed over Hong Kong to the British and also opened five other ports to trade in 1842. The Opium wars shaped Chinese nationalism and laid the foundations of unhealthy interactions.