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In 1839, the Daoguang Emperor, rejecting proposals to legalize and tax opium, appointed viceroy Lin Zexu to solve the problem by completely banning the opium trade (various forms of opium had been prohibited in China since 1729) without offering compensation and ordered a blockade of foreign trade in Canton. Lin confiscated 20,283 chests of opium (approximately 1210 tons or 2.66 million pounds) after confining the foreign traders to the Canton Factories and cutting off their supplies to intimidate them into surrendering the opium. The British government did not question China's right to prohibit opium, but it objected to the way this was handled; it viewed the sudden strict enforcement as laying a trap for the traders, and the confinement of the British with their supplies cut off was tantamount to starving them into submission or death, forcing them violently to surrender property without compensation. They dispatched a military force to China and in the ensuing conflict, the Royal Navy used its naval and gunnery power to inflict a series of decisive defeats on the Chinese Empire, a tactic later referred to as gunboat diplomacy.
1839