Contextualization: Opium Wars Event Cards
WORLDHISTORYPROJECT1200/LESSON6.3 ACTIVITYCONTEXTUALIZATION: OPIUM WARSEVENTCARDSEuropeans and Americans benefited from new technology created during the Industrial Revolution including steam-powered ships and advanced weapons.China restricted foreign access to trade to the port city of Guangzhou.Opium was cultivated in British-controlled India and smuggled into China in an attempt to reverse Britain’s trade imbalance with China.Industrialized nations practiced economic imperialism and attempted to influence regions economically rather than through direct rule of colonies.Industrialization began in Great Britain in the mid-eighteenth century and quickly spread to other areas of Europe and North America.British opium flooded China with devastating effects that included addiction and death.In 1840, a British steam-powered fleet arrived in China with powerful weapons.Industrialized nations established colonies around the world including areas of Asia, Africa, the Americas, and Australasia using policies of direct and indirect rule.Chinese exports were in demand around the world, which allowed China to dominate trade from its earliest dynasties to the early nineteenth-century Qing Dynasty.The demand for Chinese goods in Great Britain created a trade imbalance, with the British East India Company spending 17 million pounds on Chinese tea from 1821 to 1830.Qing official Lin Zexu destroyed 20,000 chests of British opium to halt illegal smuggling of the drug.China mainly had sail-powered ships and Chinese soldiers carried bows and older muskets.