Could the first Opium War have gone much worse?

Specifically, could the British have taken more than they did? Could they have made other demands?

Or conversely, did China have any chance to do better for itself?
 
Well, the war could have been avoided altogether by China, or the truce that was worked out early in the war could have been accepted so clearly it could have gone much better for China. Once the war was on, the British could have asked for much more and there is little China could do to stop them.

So I would say The answer to both questions is YES as it was China got a bad result but one she could live with.
 

Derek Pullem

Kicked
Donor
Have Melbourne survive the no confidence vote (which he lost by one vote IOTL) and Palmerston stays as Foreign Secretary for a year or two longer. That should ensure a more aggressive approach from the British.
 
I can't imagine grabbing a big chunk of China would end well. Trade concessions that the Chinese impose on their own people is just manifestly a better prospect than occupying a populated, urbanized nation (or worse yet, partially occupying said nation)--particularly before industrialization had advanced enough to give Europeans better kill ratios than what they'd achieved by the 1830s.
 
Worst case the Qing are overthrow/face a major revolution while the UK takes Taiwan as a naval, military and trade waypoint in the Far East.
 
If I was the UK, in such a scenario - I'd probably be pushing for Taiwan and something geographically convenient that contains the entire Pearl River Watershed. We've seen how that region IOTL exploded economically - but that entire region being Hong-Kong-ified or made into British China would be able to allow the British to exert power throughout the Pacific. I'd also very rapidly be trying to find someone else to rule it in the long-term. Essentially make the area an investors dream. Free China as the financial investors party-land. Huge investment profits to be made to sell goods in China from Free China, and a large domestic market. Further, as a British Protectorate/Dominion, if Hong Kong and Taiwan are still under direct control, you've got the potential for the British to have logistics across the Pacific as well as across the Indian Ocean, which would be powerful strategically.

It'd be interesting to see a TL where an Industrialised South China intervenes in Northern China eventually, or whether it would at all, if the idea of a unified China can be broken.
 
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