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.