An incident aboard the Arrow, flying a British flag, gives the British the pretext to launch the Second Opium War

The Treaty of Tientsin, ending the Second Opium War, gives European powers new rights to intervene in Chinese affairs

Under the Treaty of Aigun, Russia wins from China the valuable Pacific coastline down to Vladivostok

British and French forces occupy Beijing and burn the imperial summer palace, at the end of the Second Opium War

British officer Charles Gordon leads untrained auxiliaries against the Taiping rebels in China, becoming known as Chinese Gordon

Imperial Chinese troops and Gordon's auxiliaries take Nanjing, the rebel capital, finally bringing to an end the Taiping rebellion

The most famous of the three-masted tea-clippers, the Cutty Sark is launched at Dumbarton for service to and from China

The War of the Pacific brings Chile new mineral wealth at the expense of Bolivia and Peru

The imperial government in China formally acknowledges Portuguese territorial rights in Macao

France brings Cambodia and Vietnam into a federation of protectorates under the title French Indochina

Civil war breaks out in Chile between supporters of a liberal president and a hostile congress

France incorporates Laos within French Indochina

Japan and China go to war over Korea, with disastrous results for China

Japan's navy destroys the remains of China's fleet at Weihaiwei

At the end of the Sino-Japanese war China cedes to Japan the island of Taiwan, together with Port Arthur and the Liadong peninsula

Russian forces seize the strategically important Chinese harbour known in the west as Port Arthur

US Secretary of State John Hay circulates a proposal that western powers should adopt an open-to-all trading policy in China

Hostility to foreign intrusion erupts in China with the Boxer Rising

The Japanese defeat a larger force of Russians at Mukden in the final land battle of the Russo-Japanese War

The Treaty of Portsmouth gives Japan control of Port Arthur and much of the Liaotung Peninsula

The Great Valparaiso Earthquake damages much of central Chile and is felt from Peru to Buenos Aires

The last Manchu emperor, Puyi, is placed on the throne at the age of two on the death of his uncle, the Guanxu emperor

The Empress Dowager Cixi dies the day after selecting the infant Puyi for the Chinese throne

Sun Yatsen and others merge several smaller Chinese political groups into the Guomindang, or Nationalist Party

An uprising in the city of Wuchang is the first major event in the rapidly developing Chinese revolution