This is a bit like that debate about Confederate states fighting for state rights. The right to own slaves.
China didn't want to trade much except for silver and opium. The Chinese trade was emptying British coffers of silver so the British forced trade of one of the few things the Chinese were willing to trade in exchange for their highly sought out goods.
> China didn't want to trade much except for silver and opium
The Manchu Qing government wanted this, many Chinese considered them to be foreign oppressors not much better than the British and the French and were happy to trade with the Europeans (not only for opium).
> of opium...
Again, opium was only a part of it and it was not that important by the second Opium war. China was falling apart due to internal issues and European powers opportunistically used this to peel of parts of China and to expand their overseas markets (for all kinds of goods besides opium) further increasing internal instability.
I’m not trying to exonerate the British or to downplay their imperialist policies but the ‘Opium wars’ were not merely about the opium trade, they weren’t even widely called that until much later. The modern popular perceptions of the wars is highly influenced by Chinnese civil war propaganda (from both sides) which portrays them as beginning of some western plot to destabilize and destroy China while it’s much more complicated than that.
of opium...
This is a bit like that debate about Confederate states fighting for state rights. The right to own slaves.
China didn't want to trade much except for silver and opium. The Chinese trade was emptying British coffers of silver so the British forced trade of one of the few things the Chinese were willing to trade in exchange for their highly sought out goods.