The Opium Wars.

The Opium wars where between the Brithish and the Chinese. The chinese didint want to trade with anyone or open their ports for trade. The British wanted to trade with the chinese so they tough of a drug that the chinese people coudent resist this was Opium. nearly 2 million pounds of opium were being sold in China each year, opium weakened a large amount of the Chinese population. In the 19th century, 10 percent of the Chinese population was smoking opium. This also affected China economically.The goverment in china discovered the British smuggling opium into China to sellit in 1838 that efforts to restrict the opium trade were taken they lead an anti-opium campaign Lin wrote a letter to Queen Victoria of England arguing that if the opium was so harmful in its effects that Britain had made opium trading and consumption illegal in England, then why was England exporting such harmful products to other countries. 1840, British gunboats arrived and attacked China, destroying many coastal cities. This was known as the First Opium War the British won because they had much larger boats then the chinese.