Lin Zexu destroys the opium at Humen
1839 · Event
The emperor's incorruptible commissioner blockades the foreign merchants at Canton, confiscates 20,000 chests of British opium, and spends 23 days dissolving over a thousand tonnes of it into the sea. To Britain's traders it is theft demanding a naval response; the war party in London gets its cause.
On these timelines: The Opium Wars, China, Master, British Empire, United Kingdom (combined)
More from The Opium Wars
- Opium Wars (1839)
- Second Opium War (1856)
- Britain takes Hong Kong (1841)
- Burning of the Summer Palace (1860)
- The Convention of Peking (1860)
- The Treaty of Tientsin (1858)
- The Arrow incident (1856)
- The iron steamer Nemesis shreds the war junks (1841)
Around 1839
- Great Famine of Ireland (1845)
- Revolutions of 1848 (1848)
- Communist Manifesto (1848)
- Victorian era (1837)
- Reign of Victoria (1837)
- First public demonstration of surgical anaesthesia (1846)
- Abolition of slavery in British Empire (1833)
- Revolutions of 1848 in Germany (1848)
- Liverpool and Manchester Railway (1830)
- The Great Wave off Kanagawa (1831)