Dmitri Mendeleev presented his periodic table of the elements based on increasing atomic weight on March 6, 1869, in a presentation to the Russian Chemical Society. While Mendeleev's table was the first to gain some acceptance in the scientific community, it was not the first table of its kind.
In the end, the British sale of opium was used as means for  obtaining more land and trading rights from the Chinese, leading to  the devastation of the Chinese government and economy which is why  The First Opium War will be remembered in history as the time when  China was ultimately betrayed by the British.
Opium War definition, a war between Great Britain and China that began in 1839 as a conflict over the opium trade and ended in 1842 with the Chinese cession of Hong Kong to the British, the opening of five Chinese ports to foreign merchants, and the grant of other commercial and diplomatic privileges in the Treaty of Nanking. See more.