The Opium Wars

The opium wars were disputed wars between Great Britain and China because of the trade of a drug called Opium. Opium was used as a ingredient of pain killers (ex:morphine, heroin) in China. The Opium drug was later used inside tobacco to smoke it. This was causing lots of health issues to Chinese people due to the smoking of Opium. Due to that response, China wanted to stop the trading of Opium from the British by sending them a letter to the queen. The queen bothered not to respond to the letter leaving China no choice but to keep the British ships from shipping any Opium into their country. This has initiated one of the two Opium Wars; the war to get rid of the opium trade from the British. The second of the Opium Wars had to do with the unfair trading occurring with china from the British. Both Opium wars had to do with the disputed trading that was going on between Britain and China. Unfortunately Britain won both wars because the British had technological advantages the Chinese did not had. Some examples of these technological advantages that the British had, but the Chinese didn't was the big steam powered ships the British had along with their advance weapons such as their machine guns.