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The Opium Wars were a pivotal and dark chapter in the tangled history between China and the West, where commerce, addiction, and power collided with devastating consequences. At their core, these conflicts were not just about trade but represented profound shifts in global influence, sovereignty, and the exploitation of weakness.
Puyi was only two years old when his uncle, the Guangxu Emperor, died of arsenic poisoning on November 14, 1908, and the Empress Dowager selected the little boy as the new emperor before she died the very next day.
On December 2, 1908, Puyi was formally enthroned as the Xuantong Emperor, but the toddler did not like the ceremony and reportedly cried and struggled as he was named the Son of Heaven.
The child emperor spent the next four years in the Forbidden City, cut off from his birth family and surrounded by a host of eunuchs who had to obey his every childish whim. When the little boy discovered that he had that power, he would order the eunuchs caned if they displeased him in any way.
After the Second Sino-Japanese War broke out in 1937, the aggressive and disciplined Japenees troops had already managed to take Shanghai, and had just taken the city of Nanking (Nanjing), the capital of Nationalist China. With a retreat of Chinese forces the Japanese took the city with relative ease.