What the Tide Remembers

China — Opium trade & First Opium War (1839–1842 onward):

British forces and traders imposed opium flows and unequal treaties from 1839 onward; the wars themselves caused military casualties in the tens of thousands, while opium addiction, fiscal extraction and weakened sovereignty contributed to social collapse, uprisings and wider mortality measured in the hundreds of thousands to millions across mid-19th century upheavals.