The Opium War The Opium Wars were really not about Opium. Instead, they were a result of Western (especially British) desires to further their economic interests in China. In addition to rigid restrictions under the Canton System of trade, the British suffered from a negative trade deficit with China. Therefore, I feel that Opium was only a symptom of a much larger problem, that problem being that the Westerners wanted a virtually unrestricted trading environment …showed first 75 words of 768 total…

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