1840 in Asia - 1840 in China, 1840 in Syria, First Opium War, Damascus Affair, Capture of Chusan, Battle of the Barrier (Paperback)

Purchase includes free access to book updates online and a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: The First Anglo-Chinese War (183942), known popularly as the First Opium War, was fought between the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and the Qing Dynasty of China, with the aim of securing economic benefits from trade in China. In 1842, the Treaty of Nankingthe first of what the Chinese called the unequal treatiesgranted an indemnity to Britain, the opening of five treaty ports, and the cession of Hong Kong Island, ending the monopoly of trading in the Canton System. The war marked the end of China's isolation and the beginning of modern Chinese history. During the 19th century, trading in goods from China was extremely lucrative for Europeans and Chinese merchants alike. Due to the Qing Dynasty's trade restrictions, whereby maritime trade was only allowed to take place in Canton (Guangzhou) conducted by imperially sanctioned monopolies, it became uneconomical to trade in low-value manufactured consumer products that the average Chinese could buy from the British like the Indians did. Instead, the Sino-British trade became dominated by high-value luxury items such as tea (from China to Britain) and silver (from Britain to China), to the extent that European specie metals became widely used in China. Britain had been on the gold standard since the 18th century, so it had to purchase silver from continental Europe and Mexico to supply the Chinese appetite for silver, which was a costly process at a time before demonetization of silver by Germany in the 1870s. In casting about for other possible commodities to reverse the flow of silver out of the country and into China, the British decided on opium. Opium as a medicinal ingredient was documented in texts as early as the Ming dynasty but its recreational use was limited and there wer... More: http://booksllc.net/?id=143829