opium war- imperialism in china

The opium war all started with a trade between the british and china, it was the very first drug war in the 19th century. Some people refer to as angelo-chinese war, opium is made from a juice of poppy seapods and it would later be produced into heroin. Back in the 18th century, Opium is regulary used as a medicene, by the 1800's the black market changed it into a drug which cause millions of people from china to get addicted. Commissioner Lin Zexu had battled the problem of drug use in the provinces of Hubei and Hunan, and he now attempted to eliminate opium. He blockaded the foreign community, stopped trade, ordered Chinese servants to leave, arrested a leading foreign dealer, and demanded that the merchants surrender their inventory of opium. When the war began, the chinese were no match for the britsh due to the military poorly trained. The treaty of nanjing had to make china give up opium and hong kong to the british.