Britain takes Hong Kong
1841 · Event
A naval party raises the flag over a thinly peopled island with a deep harbour — a possession the foreign secretary sneers at as 'a barren rock'. Ceded formally at Nanking the next year, the barren rock becomes one of the great cities of the earth, and stays British for 156 years.
On these timelines: The Opium Wars, China, British Empire, Master, United Kingdom (combined)
More from The Opium Wars
- Opium Wars (1839)
- Lin Zexu destroys the opium at Humen (1839)
- Second Opium War (1856)
- 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 1841
- Great Famine of Ireland (1845)
- Taiping Rebellion (1851)
- 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)
- The Great Wave off Kanagawa (1831)