Second Opium War in the context of "Yishan (official)"

Felice Beato (c. 1832 – 29 January 1909), also known as Felix Beato, was an Italian–British photographer. He was one of the first people to take photographs in East Asia and one of the first war photographers as well as a pioneer of travel photography. He is noted for his genre works, portraits, and views and panoramas of the architecture and landscapes of Asia and the Mediterranean region. Beato's travels gave him opportunities to create images of countries, people, and events unfamiliar and remote to most people in Europe and North America. His works provide images of such events as the Indian Rebellion of 1857 and the Second Opium War, and represent the first substantial body of photojournalism. He influenced other photographers; and his impact in Japan, where he taught and worked with numerous other photographers and artists, was particularly deep and lasting.

The handover of Macau from the Portuguese Republic to the People's Republic of China (PRC) officially occurred at midnight on 20 December 1999. This event ended 442 years of Portuguese rule in the former settlement, which began in 1557. Macau was settled by Portuguese merchants that year during the Ming dynasty era and was subsequently under various degrees of Portuguese rule until 1999. Portugal's involvement in the region was formally recognised by the Qing dynasty in 1749. The Portuguese governor João Maria Ferreira do Amaral, emboldened by British actions in the First Opium War and the Treaty of Nanking, attempted to annex the territory by expelling Qing authorities in 1846, but was assassinated in 1849. After the Second Opium War, the Portuguese government, along with a British representative, signed the 1887 Sino-Portuguese Treaty of Peking that gave Portugal perpetual colonial rights to Macau on the condition that Portugal would cooperate in efforts to end the smuggling of opium.

After the Proclamation of the People's Republic of China in 1949 and the transfer of China's seat from the Republic of China (ROC) to the PRC at the United Nations (UN) in 1971, then Chinese foreign Minister Huang Hua appealed to the UN Special Committee on Decolonization to remove Macau and Hong Kong from its list of colonies, preferring to engage in direct bilateral negotiations in getting the territories returned rather than the independence of the territories as was implied by its inclusion on the list.

The presidency armies were the armies of the three presidencies of the East India Company's rule in India, later the forces of the British Crown in India, composed primarily of Indian sepoys. The presidency armies were named after the presidencies: the Bengal Army, the Madras Army and the Bombay Army. Initially, only Europeans served as commissioned or non-commissioned officers. In time, Indian Army units were garrisoned from Peshawar in the north, to Sind in the west, and to Rangoon in the east. The army was engaged in the wars to extend British control in India (the Mysore, Maratha and Sikh wars) and beyond (the Burma, Afghan, First and Second Opium Wars, and the Expedition to Abyssinia).

The presidency armies, like the presidencies themselves, belonged to the Company until the Indian Rebellion of 1857, when the Crown took over the Company and its three armies. In 1895, the three presidency armies were merged into a united Indian Army.

The Sino-Portuguese Treaty of Peking was an unequal treaty signed on 1 December 1887 between the Kingdom of Portugal and the Qing dynasty. Regarded by China as one of the unequal treaties concluded following the Second Opium War, it granted Portugal perpetual colonial rights over Macau in exchange for its cooperation in curbing the smuggling of opium.

The Treaty of Tientsin, also known as the Treaty of Tianjin, is a collective name for several unequal treaties signed at Tianjin (then romanized as Tientsin) in June 1858. The Qing dynasty, Russian Empire, Second French Empire, United Kingdom, and the United States were the parties involved. These treaties, counted by the Chinese among the unequal treaties, opened more Chinese ports to foreign trade, permitted foreign legations in the Chinese capital Beijing, allowed Christian missionary activity, and effectively legalized the import of opium. They ended the first phase of the Second Opium War, which had begun in 1856 and were ratified by the Emperor of China in the Convention of Peking in 1860, after the end of the war.

Between 1858 and 1860, the Russian Empire annexed territories adjoining the Amur River belonging to the Chinese Qing dynasty through the imposition of unequal treaties. The 1858 Treaty of Aigun, signed by the general Nikolay Muravyov representing the Russian Empire and the official Yishan representing Qing China, ceded Priamurye—a territory stretching from the Amur River north to the Stanovoy Mountains, but the Qing government initially refused to recognize the treaty's validity. Two years later, the Second Opium War concluded with the Convention of Peking, which affirmed the previous treaty as well as an additional cession including the entire Pacific coast to the Korean border, as well as the island of Sakhalin to Russia. These two territories roughly correspond to modern-day Amur Oblast and Primorsky Krai, respectively. Collectively, they are often referred to as Outer Manchuria, part of the greater region of Manchuria.

The Opium Wars (simplified Chinese: 鸦片战争; traditional Chinese: 鴉片戰爭; pinyin: Yāpiàn zhànzhēng) were two conflicts waged between the Qing dynasty and the Western powers during the mid-19th century.

The First Opium War was fought from 1839 to 1842 between China and the British Empire. It was triggered by the Qing government's campaign to enforce its prohibition of opium, which included destroying opium stocks owned by British merchants and the British East India Company. The British government responded by sending a naval expedition to force the Chinese government to pay reparations and allow the opium trade. The Second Opium War was waged by Britain and France against China from 1856 to 1860, and consequently resulted in China being forced to legalise opium.

Ye Mingchen (21 December 1807 – 9 April 1859) was a high-ranking Chinese official during the Qing dynasty, known for his resistance to British influence in Canton (Guangzhou) in the aftermath of the First Opium War and his role in the beginning of the Second Opium War.