The Qing government, after a decade of…

The Qing government, after a decade of unsuccessful anti-opium campaigns, adopts drastic prohibitory laws against the opium trade in 1839.

The emperor ha dispatched a commissioner, Lin Zexu (1785-1850), to Guangzhou to suppress illicit opium traffic.

Lin had seized illegal stocks of opium owned by Chinese dealers, then detained the entire foreign community and confiscated and destroyed some twenty thousand chests of illicit British opium.

The British had retaliated with a punitive expedition, thus initiating the first Anglo- Chinese war, better known as the Opium War (1839-42).