This Week in China's History: Lin Zexu Confiscates the Opium

March 18, 1839

The emperor had given Lín Zéxú 林則徐 a task, and he intended to carry it out. So, just a week after arriving in Canton, the commissioner delivered a special edict to the British traders gathered there. 

"I proceed to issue my commands [to the] foreign merchants: deliver up to the government every particle of the opium on board their storeships… that it may be burned and destroyed, and that thus the evil may be entirely extirpated. There must not be the smallest atom concealed or withheld.