... Russia, France, Germany, and Japan - realized the importance of having easy access to trade with China and began to secure ports all along the Chinese coastline. Several treaties were signed between the different nationals. Later, British took possession of the New Territories, which was declared a part of the overall territory of Hong Kong. The Opium War, also called the Anglo-Chinese War, was the most humiliating defeat China ever suffered. In European history, it is perhaps the most sordid, base, and vicious event in European history, possibly, just possibly, overshadowed by the excesses of the Third Reich in the twentieth century. By the 1830's, the English had become the major drug-trafficking criminal organization in the world; very few drug cartels of the twentieth century can even touch the England of the early nineteenth century in sheer size of criminality. Growing opium in India, the East India Company shipped tons ...

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