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Sino-European Relations: Opium War

  • Guy S. Alitto

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This lecture explores the events leading up to the Opium War in Qing dynasty during the 1830s. It discusses the dissolution of the British East India Company and the internal debate over opium policy within the Qing court. Additionally, it highlights Lin Zexu’s role as imperial commissioner and his efforts to control the opium trade, ultimately leading to the destruction of British opium and sparking the Opium War.

Introduction

This lecture explores the events leading up to the Opium War in Qing China during the 1830s and highlights Lin Zexu’s role as imperial commissioner.

About The Author

Guy S. Alitto

Guy S. Alitto One of the best sinologists of modern times, Guy Alitto is an American academic in the History and East Asian Languages and Civilization Departments at the University of Chicago. He is known in China for revitalizing the scholarship on Chinese Confucian scholar Liang Shuming. He is best known in America for his scholarship and for his role as translator for the first official Chinese delegations to the United States after Richard Nixon’s first visits to China.

 

About this video

Author(s)
Guy S. Alitto
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-97-9912-1
Online ISBN
978-981-97-9912-1
Total duration
20 min
Publisher
Springer, Singapore
Copyright information
© FLTRP 2024

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Video Transcript

In the 1830s, there were two important events that would directly contribute to the situation that lead to the Opium War.

The first of these is that British East India Company goes out of business. That is, it’s supposed to have a monopoly on all British trade in the East in general. But by even the end of the 18th century, this monopoly was quite ineffective. It was because of other British traders who had entered especially the opium trade and were more aggressive essentially. This ineffective monopoly then meant that the East Indian Company could not maintain itself. In 1834, the East Indian Company goes out of business in China anyway. Perhaps not in the rest of the world, but in China, there is no more British East India Company.