A political cartoon from the Opium Wars in China in the mid-19th century. Imperial European powers, including Britain and France, were accused of creating widespread addiction by forcing opium ...

During the 19th century, opium was British India's most valued export and China its most lucrative market. So much so that in 1858 Britain went to war not to prevent drug trafficking, but to ...

Our current best example is the trade imbalance with China and countries' refusal to address the problem in a meaningful way. By the 16 th century China was one of the leading nations of the world.

The Opium Wars In the first half of the 19th century, the British government faced an economic problem. Imports of tea, porcelain and silk from China had created a large trade imbalance .

The Opium Wars that occurred between 1839 and 1842 and 1856 and 1860 saw China battling rampant opium addiction, trying to ...

In addition to the opium wars, references to events of the 1930s and'40s by Chinese leaders today are also linked to a "more internationalist China that's looking outward", Mitter says.

Huang Yanming, a pro-democracy activist in south-west China, argues that the wars were more about the freedom to trade than a struggle over opium—calling them “Opium Wars”, he says, is ...