The Opium War has come to stand for everything that today’s China seeks to put behind it, as this vast country seeks to reclaim its position as a world power.
The Opium War may be explained as the very successful British move to weaken, conquer and dominate China.
One of the methods was introducing the destructive use of opium and drugs, which completely set back the Chinese society.
This destroyed the social fabric, the work ethic and other vital elements in the Chinese developing society at the time, making it much easier for the British to dominate China.
Today, it is the United States that has its population weakened by yet a new Opium War, as the opioid crisis, methamphetamines, crack and synthetic drugs flood in through the Mexican border.
Predominantly Western nations are today weakened by the very same poisons of opium that spelt the end of China’s golden age.
An important book, Imperial Twilight: The Opium War and the End of China’s Last Golden Age by Stephen R. Platt, a historian at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, describes this period in history. It outlines how China fell. How its last age of great civilization came to an end in the nineteenth-century Opium War.
China Imperial Twilight: “In this dramatic, epic story, award-winning historian Stephen Platt sheds new light on the early attempts by Western traders and missionaries to “open” China even as China’s imperial rulers were 
struggling to manage their country’s decline and Confucian scholars grappled with how to use foreign trade to China’s advantage.
The book paints an enduring portrait of an immensely profitable—and mostly peaceful—meeting of civilizations that was destined to be shattered by one of the most shockingly unjust wars in the annals of imperial history.
Brimming with a fascinating cast of British, Chinese, and American characters, this riveting narrative of relations between China and the West has important implications for today’s uncertain and ever-changing political climate,” explains Imperial Twilight: The Opium War and the End of China’s Last Golden Age.
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China Imperial Twilight: About the book: When Britain launched its first war on China in 1839, pushed into hostilities by profiteering drug merchants and free-trade interests, it sealed the fate of what had long been seen as the most prosperous and powerful empire in Asia, if not the world.
But internal problems of corruption, popular unrest, and dwindling finances had weakened China far more than was commonly understood, and the war would help set in motion the eventual fall of the Qing dynasty–which, in turn, would lead to the rise of nationalism and communism in the twentieth century. As one of the most potent turning points in the country’s modern history, the Opium War has since come to stand for everything that today’s China seeks to put behind it.
In this dramatic, epic story, award-winning historian Stephen Platt sheds new light on the early attempts by Western traders and missionaries to “open” China–traveling mostly in secret beyond Canton, the single port where they were allowed–even as China’s imperial rulers were struggling to manage their country’s decline and Confucian scholars grappled with how to use foreign trade to China’s advantage.
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