Hong Kong was to be one of the most wealthy, vibrant outposts in the vast British empire. But its 150 years of rule from London began with a singularly grubby episode: a war over selling drugs.
The first opium war, which was sparked by China's refusal to allow the import of the narcotic, ended in 1842 with a treaty formally ceding Hong Kong, then a sparsely populated island, to British rule.
The territory was expanded to include the peninsula of Kowloon in 1860 after a second conflict over opium.
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