Opium Wars

The Opium War of 1839-1841 is the popular shorthand for the first Sino-British War, a pivotal event in modern Chinese history. It is the first war that the China fought with a Western power in the modern era and is commonly cited as the beginning of Chinas One Hundred Years of Humiliation, a century in which China suffered greatly at the hands of rapacious Western imperialists and which continues to inform Chinese understandings of its place in the world today. This course examines this conflict in detail, while providing an introduction to the field of historical studies.