Module 2; Case
Modern World History
Dr.Barnes
May 22, 2016
Chinese History
Opium Wars
Opium Wars refers to conflicts that arose in China in mid-19th Century between British and
French against China. This Paper seeks to identify the conditions that led to the Opium Wars
in China and the outcome of the wars. It further will explain the Taiping Rebellion in details,
how the movement became powerful and how it ended.
Opium wars occurred in two phases with first phase happening between 1839 and 1842. The
war was between China and Britain (Pletcher, 2015), the war began when China took efforts
of stopping opium trade which was a major threat on their economy. The Emperor by then
was Lin Ze-xu tried to stop the trade by arresting and taking back opium the opium that was
taken by their enemy. The major cause of the wrangle was that Britain had invested in
trading of Chinese good which according to the people of china was illegal. The Britain was
transferring these goods to India which was their source of market. Britain preferred the
Chinese good just because they had no trading commodity such as the silver; therefore they
had to take the Chinese resources in order to trade. This illegal trade called for an action
towards the same and the emperor by then (Ze-xu) decided to take an action to stop the trade.
According to this emperor he believed that foreigner should not be allowed to trade with the
Chinese resources mainly because the trade was transferring the Chinese resources to other
countries which would consequently cause loss of culture and Chinese history. His efforts
