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Business Pioneers that Had Quite the Disturbing Background

Khalid Elhassan December 8, 2021 36 min

Coco Chanel, circa 1960. Encyclopedia Britannica

The British 67th Regiment of Foot captures a Chinese fort during the Second Opium War. Wikimedia

12. In the Name of Opium and Expanded Business Opportunities, an Anglo-French Army Marched on Beijing

France, which also sought greater trade concessions and business opportunities from China, eagerly joined Britain in the Second Opium War. The disparity between the Chinese and Western forces was even greater this second time around. Moreover, the Chinese were in the midst of a huge peasant revolt, the Taiping Rebellion, whose leader claimed to be Jesus Christ’s younger brother. The combined British and French army had little trouble in seizing Canton in 1857, and as China’s military setbacks mounted, the Chinese government sued for peace.

When talks broke down, the invaders sailed to northern China, seized the Taku Forts near Tianjin, and advanced upon Beijing. That brought the Chinese back to the negotiating table. At some point in the midst of the fresh round of diplomacy, a British envoy insulted his Chinese counterpart and was arrested along with his party. Half of his entourage was tortured to death. In retaliation, the Anglo-French forces attacked and routed a Chinese army near Beijing, and forced the emperor to flee his capital.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.