X-Nico

8 unusual facts about First Opium War


Amitav Ghosh

Ghosh is the author of The Circle of Reason (his 1986 debut novel), The Shadow Lines (1988), The Calcutta Chromosome (1995), The Glass Palace (2000), The Hungry Tide (2004), and Sea of Poppies (2008), the first volume of The Ibis trilogy, set in the 1830s, just before the Opium War, which encapsulates the colonial history of the East.

Foochow Romanized

After Fuzhou became one of the five Chinese treaty ports opened by the Treaty of Nanjing at the end of First Opium War (from 1839 to 1842), many Western missionaries arrived in the city.

Frederic Wakeman

Strangers at the Gate focused on social disorder in the Pearl River Delta in the aftermath of the First Opium War and extensively utilized documents seized by the British from the Guangdong-Guangxi Governor-General's office.

Jardine Paper

The Jardine Paper was the proposal sent by Dr. William Jardine to Lord Palmerston to guide the British government in its plans to wage war with China which eventually was called the First Opium War.

Ruan Yuan

He was the governor, the most important imperial official, of Guangdong province during the critical years 1817–1826, just before the First Opium War with Britain.

Seaman's Hospital

Seaman's Hospital was originally opened by Dr Young, a surgeon of the Honourable East India Company in 1843 during the First Opium War.

The Bund

At the northern end of The Bund, along the riverfront, is Huangpu Park, in which is situated the Monument to the People's Heroes - a tall, abstract concrete tower which is a memorial for the those who died during the revolutionary struggle of Shanghai dating back to the First Opium War.

Tsiang Tingfu

Tsiang blamed China's unequal treatment by Western powers after the First Opium War (1839-42) on the Chinese unequal treatment of Western powers before the war.


Chinatown, Sacramento

Throughout the early 1840s and 1850s, China was at war with Great Britain and France in the First and Second Opium Wars.

HMS Hyacinth

This battle was the first of many decisive victories of the British over the Qing Dynasty's military in the First Opium War.

Huangpu District, Guangzhou

During the First Opium War, the Battle of Whampoa was fought between British and Chinese forces on 2 March 1841.

Johnston Road

The road was named after Alexander Robert Johnston, the British Deputy Superintendent of Trade during the First Opium War.

Richard Charlton

In the 1839 First Opium War the Chinese rebelled against the monopoly of the English East India Company.


see also

Huang Juezi

When the First Opium War broke out in 1839, Huang joined Deng Tingzhen in resisting the British army then later took charge of the Yuzhang Confucian Academy (豫章书院).

Stransham family

Anthony Blaxland Stransham (d. 1900), General, leader of the Royal Marines during the First Opium War