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Person1785 – 1850

Lin Zexu

Also called: Lin Tse-hsü

Qing official who, as imperial commissioner at Canton, seized and destroyed British opium, setting off the Opium War

A Fujian native who passed the highest examination, he served as viceroy of Huguang and won a reputation as an honest and able official. A firm advocate of banning opium, he was sent to Canton as imperial commissioner in 1839 and destroyed more than 20,000 chests of British opium at Humen. He had foreign books translated to learn about the West, material that fed into Wei Yuan’s Illustrated Treatise on the Maritime Kingdoms. When war broke out he was blamed and exiled to Ili in Xinjiang.

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1 related event

  1. 1
    1840 – 1842Opium War and Treaty of Nanjingrelated figure

    When Qing China cracked down on opium smuggling, Britain went to war and won. By the Treaty of Nanjing China ceded Hong Kong and opened five ports — the start of the opening of East Asia.

Themes this person appears in

  • The Opening of East Asia1839 – 1901

    From the Opium War to the Boxer Protocol — sixty years in which China, Japan and Korea, forced open by Western gunboats, each tried to reform and went separate ways