Opium Wars - Imperialism in China

The Opium war was from 1839  to 1842, it was between Britain and  china. it all started when  Europe wanted to trade with different countries. So when  Great Britain went to India they found this plant well this drug. so then they went to china and since china didn't wanna trade with them. Britain  though  if we get them addicted to the drug then  they gonna want ti all the time and they would agree trading with us. That actually worked but then the Chinese government notice what they were doing  so he prohibited selling opium or using it. so then Britain got mad but they kept trying so they went to war with china and took over Hon Kong  and that's how China and USA ,etc   they trade with china now. It also helped  china getting out there to learn from  other and new things. And  not only that's one of the reason why china is so advance with technology now . This war was called the Opium war  because  the opium plant  was what stared the Chinese and Britain to fight since Britain wanted to trade so bad with china  , but china didn't. But at the end  Great  Britain  won  because they had china addicted to the opium and they convinced china. Also they had  better technology and weapons.The British  had firepower . and they took control of the important island of Hong Kong. And  China was also forced to legalize the selling of opium.

 

Film Lesson: "Mountains of the Moon"

The film " Mountains of the Moon "  was about  finding  the source of the Nile river  it basically talk about exploring Africa where no white people had ever been before. it showed imperialism in many. Some of the hardships that Europeans faced as they explored Africa was  the diseases, bugs, the weather type, the wild , trying to get  to the source of the Nile by walking , also  by being attack  many times by different tribes in Africa. But at the end  they found the source of the Nile and when they found it they named it lake Victoria and this was really weird because they didn't discovered the lake  people in Africa knew it was there but they didn't really cared about that  but John speek  and Richard Burton named it  Victoria because they were superior then Africans they had more  power . And that's how imperialism work . Also Europeans had way better technology than  African and  one of the primary technology was  guns this was an advantage  Europeans  had over Africans. Europeans eventually  were able to conquer Africa very easily   because they had guns , they had machines to make the guns too, Europeans also found the cure for malaria.

Imperialism Project

We did the Imperialism project to see how overtime countries owned others. a lot of countries were starting to trade . they started to bring slaves too, gold, silver, copper, coal , making factories in different part of the world to spread different ideas and trading help each other learn new thing.

Not everyone would come back a live though a few would survive their journey. One person that went on a journey to find an easier way to get spices from India was Christopher Columbus. They would go to India to get spices, cotton and opium but spices was important for Europeans. Instead of ending up in India Christopher Columbus ended in America what he called the New World. Finding the New World was better because now Europe was earning more money with the crops they grew in the New World.