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The Opium Wars were named that because the British and the Chinese were fighting over the opium. Opium is a highly-addictive drug given to the Chinese. It is grown in the East Indies. The British would give the opium, which was used to make medicine, to the Chinese in exchange for some Chinese tea. In 1838, the Chinese government demanded not to give them any more opium due to people being highly addictive to it and dying. In 1840, the First Opium war began. The British won the war because they had advanced weapon technology and the Chinese doesn't.
In 1842, the Chinese were forced to sign the Treaty of Nanjing, which allows the British to trade in ports around China, including Hong Kong. In 1843, they signed the Treaty of the Bogue. It states that the Chinese were responsible for destroying quantities of opium in the sea during an anti-opium campaign. Unfourtunately, in 1856, the Second Opium War began due to an argument over the treaties. Once again, the British won and made the Chinese sign the Treaty of Tianjin, which opens up 11 additional ports in China.
For the last 2 days, our class and I had watched a movie named "Mountains of the Moon". It's about 2 European men who wanted to find the source of the Nile River. The Europeans had to face dangers as they explored Africa. They had to deal with hostile tribes, a lot of mosquitoes (in the movie, one of the Europeans got a bug in its ear and he ended up with a bleeding ear), robbers, malaria (a type of disease that resulted in death for some people), and starvation. They went to Africa with guns, so they had a better advantage of conquering Africa (it's because in the past, the Africans had spears and swords for weapons).
As for Lake Victoria, it's named after a British queen because the European men had "discovered" it, even though the Africans knew about the lake. (I mean, seriously people, the lake's in Africa!) Unfortunately, one of the European men (I think it was a guy named Speek) had committed suicide when they returned back to England to tell many people of their discovery.
In Global class, we did an Imperialism project. The project is supposed to show and teach us how Imperialism spread around the world. Imperialism occurs mostly because the main country needed to get objects that they don't have. So they had to trade with other people to get the things they need. Another reason for Imperialism is to get new lands. There were some lands (like Africa) that carry a disease so disastrous it can kill millions of people. There were other cases when people, like the British, brings an unknown disease to a new country (like the New World) and kill people in the new land with the disease.
