Historical Background: From the beginning of the Qing Dynasty to the beginning of the Opium War, the Qing Dynasty was an independent feudal state. In the late Qing Dynasty, from the end of the Qianlong period, the river showed a trend of declining rivers, the national situation of the past was decaying day by day, and the feudal system had seriously hindered the development of the modern economy. The budding capitalism that emerged in the middle of the Ming Dynasty developed very slowly. Until the Opium War, the self-sufficient natural economy, which combined small-scale agriculture and cottage industries, dominated China's social economy.
Land annexation has become increasingly serious and has become a common phenomenon throughout the country. The rule of officials was corrupted, and the feudal autocracy developed to the extreme. The Qing government used the "Four Books" and "Five Classics" to imprison people's minds and brutally suppress those who were dissatisfied or commented on current affairs. The country's air defense is empty, and the armament is in ruins. In terms of foreign relations, the Qing Dynasty practiced a policy of retreat for a long time, which seriously hindered China's foreign trade and social, political and economic development. And with the increasing corruption of the Qing Dynasty's rule and the intensification of exploitation and oppression of the people, the class contradictions in the country became increasingly intensified, and the resistance struggles of the masses of the people rose one after another. The rule of the Qing dynasty faced a deep crisis, and Chinese feudal society had come to an end.
While the Qing dynasty was declining, capitalism in Britain, France and the United States was developing rapidly. The industrial revolution began in Britain in the 60s of the 18th century, and by the thirties and forties of the 19th century, the large machine industry gradually replaced the factory handicraft industry. The development of British industry, the sharp rise in industrial output, "the need to expand the sales of products, driving the bourgeoisie to run around the world", striving to find new resources and foreign markets.
France is a capitalist country after Britain, and by the eve of the Opium War, France's industrial output was the second largest in the world. Capitalist industry was not developed in the United States on the eve of the Opium War, but it was on the rise. In the 30s of the 19th century, the American bourgeoisie was plundering the lands of Indians and Mexicans to the south, excluding the power of European capitalism in Latin America and completely controlling the market, so the United States did not have enough power to invade China in the middle of the 19th century. The United States acted as a helper for the British invaders, following the British invasion of China.
After the Industrial Revolution, the British bourgeoisie tried to sell industrial products to China, in an attempt to open China's door with commodity trade. Until the twenties and thirties of the 19th century, China's trade with Britain still maintained a status of more than 23 million taels of silver per year. In order to change this unfavorable trade situation, the British bourgeoisie resorted to diplomatic means to negotiate forcefully, and failed to achieve its goal, so it adopted despicable means to smuggle a large number of special commodities - opium to China to satisfy their unlimited desire for profit.
The serious harm brought by the opium trade to Chinese society attracted the attention of the Qing government and the broad masses of the people. Proceeding from its own interests, the Qing government issued bans eight times from 1821 to 1834; A section of the ruling class witnessed a social crisis and demanded reform of bad government, and opium was banned in China. In December 1838, the Daoguang Emperor appointed Lin Zexu as the minister of Qincha and sent him to Guangdong to ban smoking.
Lin Zexu, the governor of Huguang, sent the minister of Qincha to Guangzhou to be in charge of execution, which is the famous Humen tobacco sales in history. In March 1839, after Lin Zexu arrived in Guangzhou, he ordered foreign tobacco dealers to hand over all opium, and promised not to sell it again, promising that "the ship will never dare to carry opium in the future, and if it is brought, once it is discovered, the goods will be exhausted, and the person will be righteous and willing to confess the crime", and from June 3 to June 25, most of the opium stocks legally belonging to the British were destroyed. The British regarded the Chinese's anti-smoking campaign as an invasion of private property, which they felt intolerable, and contributed to the outbreak of war.
On July 5, 1840, the British fleet shelled the county town of Dinghai on the Zhoushan Islands of China, and the First Opium War broke out. The First Opium War was the beginning of modern Chinese history. After "closing off the country", China lagged behind the world tide. In the First Opium War, China suffered a crushing defeat under the attack of the strong ships and guns of the great powers, and the Daoguang Emperor sent Qishan (Qishan), the governor directly under him, to negotiate peace with the British and sign the first unequal treaty in Chinese history, the Treaty of Nanjing. For the first time, China ceded land to a foreign country, paid reparations, and agreed tariffs, seriously endangering China's sovereignty. As a result, China began to degenerate into a semi-colonial and semi-feudal society and promoted the disintegration of the natural economy. Since then, the Opium War has opened a new chapter in the history of modern Chinese people's resistance to foreign aggression.