This war was between China and Great Britain over the drug, opium. Opium is a drug that the could heal mostly dysentery patients.
 

           The two empires that were fighting was Great Britain and China.  At this time China and Great Britain were good friends trading opium and other goods with each other.  Their friendly relationship ended because of opium, the drug.

           This war was very confusing so you would want to read carefully.  Great Britain started selling opium to China for medical purposes.  Later China started to abuse opium and use it as drug.  China told Great Britain to please stop selling the drug opium and they didn't.  China got mad and thats how the first opium war started. 
 

            The places of where they fought was all over the empire of  Great Britain and the Chinese empire.  Their were many opium wars but we will only mention one of them.  The Opium Wars were spread out all over and we don't really know where they mostly fought, but it was mostly in China and Great Britain.
 

             This war started in June of 1840 when Great Britain wouldn't stop selling opium to Chinese Junkies.  After two long years the first Opium War was over.  The Treaty of Naking stopped this madness.  The only thing was Great Britain took over most of Chinese land.  Most of the Chinese empire was gone.  Soon the Chinese fought back again and that would start the second Opium War.
 
 

              War isn't nice but you have to do it sometimes.  China was fighting because Great Britain was ruining their economy by introducing the drug opium.  Although they use it for medical purposes, Great Britain showed Chinese Junkies you can use it for getting high.  Great Britain wouldn't stop selling this to Chinese Junkies after it was illegal so China got mad.  They wanted to stop the selling of opium.  
 

               Great Britain won because they had all sorts of guns and fire power.  All that China had was a million people with swords.  China didn't have an unlimited supply of guns and fire power.  They used swords and they did have a lot of swords.  For them to get guns they would need one for every person fighting.  They couldn't afford it.  They have millions of people in their empire.

BOOKS WE USED:
Plants that Changed History. New York: New York Macmillan Publishing Company, 1985.

Thomas, Peggy, Medicines from Nature Canada Fitzhen & Whiteside ltd. 1997

Harris, Neil, Drugs and Crime New York Frankland Walts 1989 
ONLINE REFERENCES:
http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/heroin/opiwar1.htm

http://encarta.msn.com/index/conciseindex/08/0088D000.htm?z=1&pg=2&br=1

http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/CHING/OPIUM.HTM

http://www.mrdowling.com/613-opiumwars.html

http://www.oldnewspublishing.com/opium.htm

7http://www.yahooligans.com/around_the_world/countries/china/hong_kong/history/opium_wars/
 
 
 

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