The Opium Wars

The Opium Wars were wars between Great Britan and China. These wars were due to the drug opium and that is why they were called the Opium Wars. Great Britan wanted to balance out their tea trade with China however since China was a self-sufficiant country, China in reality wanted nothing to trade with Great Britan even though they used gold and silver, they couldn't find anything else to trade. This is when Great Britan began to import opium into China from India. The Chinese people bought it very easily. However even though during the 15- century, opium was first used as medicine to treat diseases such as dysentery, cholera, and diarrhea, the British promoted opium in China as being smoked as a drug.

Each year about 2 million pounds of opium were being sold in China. This affected China very much because it weakened its population due to the fact that nearly 10 percent of the people in China were smoking opium. It also affected China ecomonically because of the large amount of resources used to pay for the opium. The illegal selling of opium became a big problem in China because even the Chinese government accepted brides from the British and became corrupted themselves. During the war, when China discovered the opium selling, the British attacked China in a very unexpected way. Due to the fact that China was not ready for these attacks and being that they weren't as advanced as Great Britan, the British won the war and China was forced to sign a treaty called the Treaty of Nanjing. This treaty not only ended the war but also opened more ports in China for the British.