2/6 🧵 The first Opium War (1839–1842) grew out of a trade imbalance. Britain wanted Chinese tea, silk, and porcelain, but China had little interest in British goods, so silver flowed out of Britain. To fix that, British merchants pushed opium grown in India into China, even though the Qing government had banned it. The addiction crisis became severe, and the Qing court finally acted. Commissioner Lin Zexu in 1839 cracked down hard in Canton, seized and destroyed large opium stocks, and tried to stop the trade. Britain treated this as an attack on property and commerce, though the real issue was that it was profiting from narcotics smuggling. The British sent a modern steam-powered fleet and artillery that China could not match. Qing forces were outgunned on land and sea.