The Causes of the Second Opium War and the Arrow Incident

Abstract

The Arrow Incident has already received considerable attention from scholars examining the circumstances surrounding the outbreak of the Second Opium War. In this text, the authors focus not only on the nature and course of the incident itself in the broader context of China in the 1850s, but also on the question of possible British misrepresentation of the entire incident. In this context, they also seek to test the hypothesis that unpublished British sources provide sufficient evidence of a purposeful manipulation and misinterpretation of the incident. A great deal of attention is also paid to the behaviour of the key actors and their possible failures.