opium wars

Opium is a drug that grows from a poppy flower that is very addicted and it relaxes you which makes people want more and more. There was a big war with British and China for opium in the 19th century. Opium is a preparation made from the juice of poppy seedpods, and used to produce heroin. In the 15th century, when opium was first introduced to China, it was used as medicine to treat diseases such as dysentery, cholera, as well as diarrhea. The Opium War was the most humiliating defeat China ever suffered. By the 1830's, the English had become the major drug-trafficking criminal organization in the world; very few drug cartels of the twentieth century can even touch the England of the early nineteenth century in size of criminality. Growing opium in India, the East India Company shipped tons of opium into Canton which it traded for Chinese manufactured goods and for tea. Because of the trades of opium in china, china was becoming addicted to opium and was turning china into a worst economy. War broke out when Chinese junks attempted to turn back English merchant vessels in November of 1839. The Chinese, with old-style weapons and artillery, were no match for the British gunships, which ranged up and down the coast shooting at forts and fighting on land. The Chinese were equally unprepared for the technological superiority of the British land armies, and suffered continual defeats. Finally, in 1842, the Chinese were forced to agree to an ignomious peace under the Treaty of Nanking.

Mountain of the moon

The movie we watched in class was the mountain of the moon because we are studying imperialism. This movie was talking about the way the two famous europeans Richard Burton and John Speke discovered lake victoria which is the source of the nile river. It talked how these two people struggled for months and months to just find the source of the Nile river. Most people died in this adventure and some survived. They both had to take two trips to Africa because they weren't prepared the first time because they didn't have the materials and resources to eat or didn't even have any weapons to protect themselves because they came across other territories and tribes. There were diseases such as malaria. John Speke had became death in his second trip because he forgot to cover himself in his insect tent at night and it got in his ear. John Speke was the one to discover the source of the nile river and named it lake victoria after the queen of the united kingdom Queen Victoria. The europeans had guns and updated resources and the africans had spears so they used that against them and took over Africa.