The Opium War: Britain Forced China to Buy Drugs at Gunpoint—Then Billed Them for the War

Wed, 22 Jul 2026 04:27:54 +0200

Britain didn't go to war over territory, ideology, or assassination. It went to war because China refused to buy drugs. In this video, we uncover the full story of how the British Empire engineered a narcotics pipeline from the poppy fields of Bengal to the harbors of Canton, addicted millions of Chinese citizens to opium, and then launched two devastating wars when China tried to shut the trade down. The result? Unequal treaties, the seizure of Hong Kong, the burning of the Summer Palace, and the beginning of what China still calls its Century of Humiliation — a wound that shaped the modern world and still echoes in geopolitics today.

We cover the East India Company's calculated monopoly on opium production, the chronic British trade deficit that started it all, Commissioner Lin Zexu's dramatic destruction of 20,000 chests of opium, the military campaigns that shattered the Qing Dynasty, the Treaty of Nanking and the cession of Hong Kong, the Second Opium War and the destruction of the Yuanmingyuan, the 99-year lease of the New Territories, Margaret Thatcher's negotiations with Deng Xiaoping, and the 1997 handover that marked the symbolic end of the British Empire.

This is the story of what happens when profit overrides sovereignty, and when the language of free trade is used to justify the most unfree of outcomes.

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