Opium Wars Opium Wars The Opium Wars were two wars in the mid-19th century involving China and the British Empire over the British trade of opium and China's sovereignty. The clashes included the First Opium War (1839–1842) and the Second Opium War (1856–1860). The wars and events between them weakened the Qing dynasty and forced China to trade with the other parts of the world. In 1820, China's economy was the largest in the world, according to British economist Angus Maddison. Within a decade after the end of the Second Opium War, China's share of global GDP had fallen by half. In
Comparison of acceptance of Buddhism in India and China and achieving enlightenment, and because of this his teachings were widely accepted. The teachings of Buddhism not only meshed well with the already deeply engrained philosophical views found in India at the time, but was in fact largely based on previous beliefs and slightly altered practices in response to a philosophically and religiously unstable time period. When Buddhism finally made its way into China, it faced a very different situation than it had in India. By the time of its arrival around the first century CE, China had already been under the influence of Confucianism for hundreds of years, which