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Hong Kong Island is an island in the southern part of Hong Kong. The island, known originally and on road signs simply as "Hong Kong", had a population of 1,289,500 and a population density of 16,390 per square kilometre (42,400/sq mi), as of 2023. It is the second largest island in Hong Kong, with the largest being Lantau Island. Hong Kong Island forms one of the three areas of Hong Kong, with the other two being Kowloon and the New Territories.
The First Opium War, also known as the Anglo-Chinese War, was a series of military engagements fought between the British Empire and the Chinese Qing dynasty between 1839 and 1842. The immediate issue was the Chinese enforcement of their ban on the opium trade by seizing private opium stocks from mainly British merchants at Guangzhou and threatening to impose the death penalty for future offenders. Despite the opium ban, the British government supported the merchants' demand for compensation for seized goods, and insisted on the principles of free trade and equal diplomatic recognition with China. Opium was Britain's single most profitable commodity trade of the 19th century. After months of tensions between the two states, the Royal Navy launched an expedition in June 1840, which ultimately defeated the Chinese using technologically superior ships and weapons by August 1842. The British then imposed the Treaty of Nanking, which forced China to increase foreign trade, give compensation, and cede Hong Kong Island to the British. Consequently, the opium trade continued in China. Twentieth-century nationalists considered 1839 the start of a century of humiliation, and many historians consider it the beginning of modern Chinese history.