Ever since Lin Zexu came to Guangdong to preside over the smoking ban, the conflict between the Qing Dynasty and the English Kingdom has been spiraling. Pen & Fun & Pavilion www.biquge.info

In June 1839, Lin Zexu raided the British merchants' hall in Guangzhou, put most of the British merchants under house arrest, and forcibly confiscated the opium brought to China by the British merchants, and finally destroyed the opium worth 9 million taels of silver in Humen, which was the famous Humen cigarette sale.

Subsequently, the British consul Yilu expressed strong opposition to this act, believing that it was an infringement of the private property rights of British merchants, which was refuted by Governor Lin.

Afterwards, Lin Zexu demanded that all British merchants write a letter of guarantee, vowing that they would never bring opium to China again, and that merchants who did not write this guarantee would not be allowed to do business in China.

Some British businessmen were tempted by this, but they were strongly opposed by Yilu, and in the name of the British government, no businessman was allowed to write such a guarantee.

As a result, Lin Zexu, who was furious, expelled all the British from Guangzhou, so that the British could only sail to Victoria Harbour between Hong Kong and the Kowloon Peninsula.

In July 1839, idle British merchant sailors went to a village on the Kowloon Peninsula to drink, and then got drunk and caused trouble, killing Lin Weixi, a villager on the Kowloon Peninsula, and sparking a diplomatic conflict.

Lin Zexu demanded that Yilu hand over the murder suspects, but Yilu was afraid that this would lose British face, so he privately set up a temporary court in Hong Kong to try the five sailors who made trouble, and sentenced them to only half a year's imprisonment and only served in India.

It is rumored that in order to achieve the purpose of mitigating the sentence, Yilu privately sent someone to send a bribe of 1,500 taels of silver to the widow of the deceased Lin Weixi, asking her to give false testimony in court and say good things about the five sailors who made trouble.

This set of duplicity of Yilu naturally could not hide the long-tested Governor Lam, so Governor Lin sent troops into Macao to expel all the British residents of Macao to Victoria Harbour.

When the British arrived at Victoria Harbour, he ordered his warships, the Cambridge and the Vola, to lead eighteen ocean-going merchant ships to attack all the Chinese ships in sight.

In this battle, Guan Tianpei led 28 ships of the naval division to meet the battle, but he was outnumbered and suffered heavy losses.

It is worth mentioning that Tianpei was not lightly injured in this battle, but Captain Douglas, the temporary commander of the Navy of the British fleet, was also injured in the arm.

After that, the Qing Dynasty sailors and the British maritime forces fought many battles near the Kowloon Peninsula, but most of them ended in crushing defeats.

This failure is understandable, the British side has two warships, plus more than 60 armed merchant ships, although each sortie is only two warships leading more than a dozen merchant ships, but the total tonnage is also more than 20,000 tons, while on the Chinese side, dozens of warships combined, the total tonnage may not reach 3,000 tons.

As a reminder, in the Battle of Maguan decades later, the total tonnage of the Qing navy was between 15,000 tons and 20,000 tons, and the imperial court at that time strictly forbade sailors to fight back, and finally suffered a humiliating defeat.

Between June 1839 and June 1840, when the Opium War really began, many strange things happened.

During this period, two British merchant ships, persuaded by the preferential terms proposed by the Chinese side, went to Canton without permission against the orders of the British consuls, wrote a pledge that they would not sell opium in the future, and allowed them to trade in Canton, and bought a full ship of tea at a fairly low price.

However, when the ships left Canton and entered the sea from the mouth of the Pearl River, Consul Yilu personally led people to the mouth to intercept the merchant ships who did not obey orders, and ordered the warships to shell the two merchant ships.

In the end, the Qing navy stepped in to protect the British merchant ships from leaving, while the British navy desperately attacked their own country's merchant ships.

Another thing worth mentioning is that although there was tension between the British at Canton and Victoria Bay, trade between the two sides did not stand still and went on all the time.

It turned out that there were 18 American merchant ships active in the sea from Guangzhou to Kowloon at that time, and because the American consul had always flaunted neutrality and made efforts to mediate the dispute between the two countries, it was commended by Governor Lin and the Canton government to allow American merchant ships to travel freely and trade between the two sides.

Of course, these American merchant ships also took advantage of the opportunity to make a fortune in national distress, and every time they transported goods between the British merchant ships in Canton and Victoria Harbor, the American ships had to charge a lot of transportation fees, reaching the level of 35 to 40 oceans per ton.

Considering that the cost of sea transportation from the UK mainland to Guangzhou is only about 35 yuan per ton, this is really an unusually high price (from the United States to Guangzhou, the transportation cost is similar).

In terms of transportation at that time, an ocean-going merchant ship had a displacement of about 1,000 tons, a value of about 30,000 oceans, and the value of the cargo it carried ranged from 80,000 to 150,000 yuan.

If you transport goods from Guangzhou to Victoria Harbor once, you will have to charge more than 30,000 yuan in transportation fees, which is even higher than the value of the ship itself.

It is worth mentioning that American merchants have also been engaged in the opium business before, and they are not much whiter than the British, and they are much darker than the British in terms of customs duties and other aspects.

For example, more than 90 percent of the opium sold by the British was not declared by customs, that is to say, more than 90 percent of the opium was actually smuggled goods, while on the American side, 100 percent of the opium sold was not declared, and all the opium sold was smuggled goods.

It's no wonder that so many British businessmen are gnashing their teeth at these American businessmen.

Li Xian was just an ordinary middle school student before the crossing, and he was still the kind of student who didn't particularly like history, and he was not very familiar with the history of this stage.

Experiencing this war this time gave him the opportunity to learn more about the true face of this period of history.

First of all, if Lin Zexu had not stopped smoking, would this conflict have been avoided, and would the series of tragic situations suffered by the Qing State be alleviated?

Li Xian's conclusion after reading this series of conflicts is three words: impossible.

To understand the nature of the Opium Wars, it is first necessary to understand the trade between China and Britain.

China was the world's most famous supernation before modern times, and along with India, it was known as the silver tomb.

China's exports of tea, silk, porcelain, etc. are all sought-after goods, relatively speaking, there are few or almost no imported goods.

Earlier, cloth and cotton, velvet and other goods were imported from places like England and Europe, but later they were no longer even imported, and there are very good reasons for this.

At this time, Britain was a textile power, after years of rapid development of productive forces after the industrial revolution, the production of cloth with good quality and low price, occupying most of the European and American markets and colonial markets.

However, after arriving in China, the Songjiang cloth produced in the Songjiang Mansion of the Qing Dynasty (that is, the Songjiang Mansion where Shanghai is located) was of high quality and low price, not only cheaper than the British cloth, but also better in quality than the British cloth, and the British cloth was easily squeezed out of the market (as for how such a strange thing could happen, Li Xian was also puzzled).

Jin Zhiyu: Thank you for the recommendation votes of book friends such as ""Rolling without money", ""I want to make money", "Book Friends 160504111324383".