(The first Opium war between China and Britain (1839-1842

Abstract

The Opium party one of the important wars in the history of China, because of its negative effects on Chinese society, as the entry of Opium into China and its spread throughout: All of its markets led to the deterioration of the health and moral status of Chinese society, and thus this led to a decline its country’s production of local goods that were produced by China, and also increased European exports and their entry into the market, as well as Britain s repeated request from Chinses ports to British trade in order to obtain privileges by establishing British trade centres similar to European countries. Despite China opening its ports to British trade, British goods have not been popular in Chinese markets, due to the Chinese preferred local Chinese goods that were cheap, while European goods were expensive, and thus British goods suffered huge losses because Britain spent huge sums of money on ships to transport goods and deliver them to China. Britain wanted to compensate for these losses, so it introduced opium into Chinese markets secretly .By dealing with some Chinese merchants in exchange for obtaining money, and opium spread widely in China, the Chinese government took strict measures against the promotion of this substance and issued orders to confiscate and burn opium .Indeed ,the Chinese government was able to confiscate the opium found on board British ships anchored in the port of Canton and it he burned it, which led to increasing anger among the British merchants and one of them clashed with a Chinese customs employee and killed him. Then China refused to hand over the killer to the Chinese authorities, and as a result, the first opium war began between China and Britain, which lasted three years and led to …China ceded Hong Kong Island to Britain under an unfair treaty signed by China with Britain to end war.