Answer:
The Opium War, usually the Opium War refers to the First Opium War, which the United Kingdom often calls the First Sino-British War or the 'Commercial War'. It was an unjust war of aggression launched by the United Kingdom against China from 1840 to 1842. It is also the beginning of the history of modern humiliation in China.
In 1840 (the 20th year of Daoguang), the British government decided to send an expeditionary force to invade China under the pretext of Lin Zexu's Humen sales of cigarettes. In June 1840, 47 British ships and 4,000 soldiers from the army, led by Rear Admiral George Yilu and Elliott, the Commercial Supervisor in China, successively arrived outside the mouth of the Pearl River in Guangdong, blocked Haikou, and the Opium War began.
The Opium War ended with China losing and ceding territory with reparations. China and the UK signed the Treaty of Nanjing, the first unequal treaty in Chinese history to humiliate the country. China began to cede territory, pay indemnities, and negotiate tariffs with foreign countries, which seriously endangered China's sovereignty, began to become a semi-colonial and semi-feudal society, lost its independent status, and promoted the disintegration of the small-scale peasant economy. At the same time, the Opium War also opened a new chapter in the history of the modern Chinese people's resistance to foreign aggression.
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