Battle of Kowloon

Date: September 4, 1839 • Location: Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong

This milestone marked the outbreak and beginning of this historic period, which spanned 1839–1842.

First Opium War: British vessels opened fire on Chinese war junks enforcing a food sales embargo on the British community on the Kowloon Peninsula.

The First Opium War, also known as the Anglo-Chinese War, was a series of military engagements fought between the British Empire and Qing China between 1839 and 1842. The immediate issue was the Chinese enforcement of their ban on the opium trade by seizing private opium stocks from mainly British merchants at Guangzhou and threatening to impose the death penalty for future offenders. Despite the opium ban, the British government supported the merchants' demand for compensation for seized goods, and insisted on the principles of free trade and equal diplomatic recognition with China. Twentieth-century nationalists considered 1839 the start of a century of humiliation, and many historians consider it the beginning of modern Chinese history.