It was also one of the most controversial military conflicts in British history, largely due to the tenacious campaign within the British government by the trigger-happy liberal interventionist Foreign Secretary Lord Palmerston, and his equally fierce opponents led by William Gladstone, who called Palmerston’s Opium War with China “a war more unjust in its origin, a war more calculated in its progress to cover this country with permanent disgrace.” Over the Tory Party’s vigorous objection, the House of Commons reluctantly passed Palmerston’s motion for the conflict with a narrow vote of 271 to 262. Some of these battles were fierce, bloody, and protracted, others were lopsided and peculiarly quick. The war lasted for nearly three years that witnessed several campaigns fought at battle grounds usually hundreds or even thousands of miles apart in Southern, Central, and Northern China. The war was fought between a large British expeditionary force composed of nearly 20,000 British troops and three dozen of the Royal Navy’s modern warships, against about 100,000 Chinese defenders.
The most consequential war involving a European nation in Asia in the 19th century is the 1839-1842 Opium War.
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