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I believe the entry of foreigners, opium and missionaries definitely represents a turning point in Chinese history, as the effect of these things helped to shape Chinese foreign policy and change their views on not only the barbarian' foreigners but also on their own assumed cultural and moral superiority.

In the early stages of trade with China, the Chinese were very much in control, they dictated the terms and location of all trade, utilising only one port Canton' for foreign trade. The tariffs, often expressed as contributions' or presents' were quite high, but were the only way the British traders were allowed into the system. The other imbalance, as far as the British were concerned was the fact that the Chinese were not interested in their items of trade, especially wool, which was the major British export of the time (highly impractical in tropical China) meaning that most trades were of British Silver bullion for Chinese goods such as porcelains and tea. This imbalance, as well as the impractical nature of the one port system, especially considering the tea fields which accounted for 80% of trade were located in excess of 400 miles away , encouraged British traders to seek alternatives to rectify this imbalance.

The Chinese already used opium since the 17th century, with usage estimated at about 10% f the general population. The British saw this commodity as the answer to rectifying the imbalance in their trades with the Chinese. At first it was traded through the Canton Port, however after official edicts in 1800 and 1813, the importing of opium became the smuggling of opium into China and moved out of the ports to the marshy deltas where willing distributors from China would pick up and distribute the cargo well beyond Canton. This steadily increasing trade in Opium, at first under a monopoly by the East India Company, until 1834 and then by private traders also not only rectified the trade imbalance, but a mass outflow of Chinese Silver bullion was observed, to pay for the ever increasing drug imports.

The effects of the sale of Opium on the Chinese were marked, not only with the deterioration of society as a whole, but because of the bi-metal currency of China (Copper and Silver) a large gap began to grow between the relative values of these metals, and persons having to exchange their copper for silver to pay their taxes would have to pay almost double in copper, from 1650 copper coins in 1800 up to 2700 in the 1830's .
"The crisis of international

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