The First Opium War Britain usually called the First British-Chinese War or "Trade War", which was a war launched by Britain against China from 1840 to 1842, and it was also the beginning of China's modern history.

After the closed door, the Qing dynasty gradually fell behind the world trend, but it still maintained a trade surplus position in foreign trade. In order to reverse the trade deficit with China, Britain began to smuggle drugs and opium to China for huge profits.

/kloc-in the winter of 0/838 (18th year of Daoguang), Daoguang Emperor sent Lin Zexu, governor of Huguang, as an imperial envoy to Guangdong to ban opium. After Lin Zexu came to power, he seized more than 20,000 boxes of opium and destroyed them all at Humen Haikou. In order to open the door to the China market, the British government decided to send an expeditionary force to invade China. The British Parliament also passed the war appropriation bill for China. In June,1840,47 British ships and 4,000 army personnel, led by Major General Anthony Blaxland Stransham and Charles Eliot, arrived outside the Pearl River estuary in Guangdong, blocked the Haikou and started the Opium War [2]. Although this war is only a part of the Opium War, it is sometimes called the Opium War. The war has been going on intermittently, during which a series of battles and military actions are irrelevant.

At the beginning of the war, China soldiers and civilians rose up and dealt a heavy blow to the British invaders. However, the decadent feudal system could not resist the British invasion, and the war ended in China's failure and reparations. China's first unequal treaty, treaty of nanking, was signed. China began to cede territory, pay reparations and negotiate tariffs to foreign countries, which seriously endangered China's sovereignty. The Opium War made China a semi-colonial and semi-feudal society, lost its independent status and promoted the disintegration of the natural economy. At the same time, it also opened a new chapter in the history of modern China people's resistance to foreign aggression.