Britain went to war with China — twice — specifically to force it to keep buying opium, after China tried to ban a drug that was addicting millions of its citizens.
By the early 19th century, Britain had a serious trade problem: the British public was addicted to Chinese tea, silk, and porcelain, but China wanted almost nothing that Britain produced in return. Silver was flowing out of Britain and into China at an alarming rate. The solution the British East India Company landed on was opium — grown in British-controlled India and smuggled into China in massive quantities.
China's Qing dynasty issued increasingly desperate bans on opium, which had created a massive addiction crisis affecting millions of people, including soldiers and government officials. In 1839, Imperial Commissioner Lin Zexu seized and destroyed 1,200 tonnes of British-owned opium — one of the largest drug confiscations in history — and wrote a formal letter to Queen Victoria asking her to stop the trade on moral grounds. He received no reply.
Britain responded by sending warships. The First Opium War (1839–1842) was a mismatch: modern British steam-powered gunships against Qing war junks. The British navy sailed up the Yangtze River and threatened to cut off China's internal trade routes. The Qing government capitulated and signed the Treaty of Nanking — the first of what China calls the 'unequal treaties' — ceding Hong Kong Island to Britain and opening five ports to foreign trade.
The Second Opium War (1856–1860) began after a dispute over a ship that may or may not have had the right to fly a British flag. Britain and France used it as a pretext, invaded again, and this time marched on Beijing. When negotiations broke down, British and French forces looted and burned the Old Summer Palace — a complex of 200 buildings containing centuries of art, treasures, and archives that had taken 150 years to build. It was one of the greatest acts of cultural destruction of the 19th century.
The resulting treaties went further than the first: the opium trade was formally legalized, more ports were opened, and China was required to pay massive indemnities to Britain and France. Missionaries were given the right to travel and own property anywhere in China. The treaties represented a fundamental assault on Chinese sovereignty.
The Opium Wars began what Chinese historians and nationalists call the 'Century of Humiliation' — a period running from 1839 to 1949 marked by foreign colonialism, unequal treaties, and territorial dismemberment. This historical wound remains politically potent in China today; it is central to how the Chinese Communist Party frames its founding narrative and justifies its resistance to Western pressure.
The opium trade also had lasting consequences for the region. Afghanistan, which supplied much of the opium grown in British India, became a major producer. Hong Kong, ceded in 1842 and expanded in 1860, remained a British territory until 1997. And the twelve bronze animal heads looted from the Old Summer Palace in 1860 became a major international art repatriation dispute — as of 2025, five are still missing.