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Taku Forts
The Taku Forts or Dagukou Forts (大沽口炮台), also called the Peiho Forts are forts located by the Hai River (Peiho River) estuary in the Binhai New Area, Tianjin, in northeastern China. They are located southeast of the Tianjin urban center. In 1988 the Dagukou Forts were added to the 3rd Batch of National Priority Protected Sites, and was open to the public in 1997. History The first fort was built during the reign of the Ming Jiajing Emperor between 1522 and 1527. Its purpose was to protect Tianjin from attack by wokou sea raiders. Later, in 1816, the Qing government built the first two forts on both sides of the Haihe estuary in response to increased concerns about seaborne threats from the West. By 1841, in response to the First Opium War, the defensive system in Dagukou was reinforced into a system of five big forts, 13 earthen batteries, and 13 earthworks. In 1851, Imperial Commissioner Sengge Rinchen carried out a comprehensive renovation of the forts, build ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Artillery Battery
In military organizations, an artillery battery is a unit or multiple systems of artillery, mortar systems, rocket artillery, multiple rocket launchers, surface-to-surface missiles, ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, etc., so grouped to facilitate better battlefield communication and command and control, as well as to provide dispersion for its constituent gunnery crews and their systems. The term is also used in a naval context to describe groups of guns on warships. Land usage Historically the term "battery" referred to a cluster of cannons in action as a group, either in a temporary field position during a battle or at the siege of a fortress or a city. Such batteries could be a mixture of cannon, howitzer, or mortar types. A siege could involve many batteries at different sites around the besieged place. The term also came to be used for a group of cannons in a fixed fortification, for coastal or frontier defence. During the 18th century "battery" began to be used ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Opium Trade
Opium (also known as poppy tears, or Lachryma papaveris) is the dried latex obtained from the seed capsules of the opium poppy ''Papaver somniferum''. Approximately 12 percent of opium is made up of the analgesic alkaloid morphine, which is processed chemically to produce heroin and other synthetic opioids for medicinal use and for the illegal drug trade. Opium's main psychoactive alkaloids, primarily morphine, act on μ-opioid receptors, causing analgesia and addiction with long-term use leading to tolerance, dependence, and increased cancer risk. The latex also contains the closely related opiates codeine and thebaine, and non-analgesic alkaloids such as papaverine and noscapine. The traditional, labor-intensive method of obtaining the latex is to scratch ("score") the immature seed pods (fruits) by hand; the latex leaks out and dries to a sticky yellowish residue that is later scraped off and dehydrated. The English word for opium is borrowed from Latin, which in t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Blood Is Thicker Than Water
Blood is thicker than water is a proverb in English meaning that familial bonds will always be stronger than other relationships. The oldest record of this saying can be traced back to the 12th century in German. Historical perspectives A similar proverb in German first appeared in a different form in the Middle High German, medieval German beast epic ''Reinhart Fuchs'' (c. 1180; English: ''Reynard the Fox'') by Heinrich der Glîchezære. The 13th-century Heidelberg manuscript reads in part, "''ouch hoer ich sagen, das sippe blůt von wazzere niht verdirbet''". In English it reads, "I also hear it said that kin-blood is not spoiled by water." Jacob Grimm suggests that this saying, which is not read anywhere else, means that the bonds of family blood are not erased by the waters of baptism, and so the raven Diezelin will have inherited his father's outlook despite having been christened. In 1412, the English priest John Lydgate observed in ''Troy Book'', "''For naturelly blod wil ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
American Civil War
The American Civil War (April 12, 1861May 26, 1865; also known by Names of the American Civil War, other names) was a civil war in the United States between the Union (American Civil War), Union ("the North") and the Confederate States of America, Confederacy ("the South"), which was formed in 1861 by U.S. state, states that had Secession in the United States, seceded from the Union. The Origins of the American Civil War, central conflict leading to war was a dispute over whether Slavery in the United States, slavery should be permitted to expand into the western territories, leading to more slave states, or be prohibited from doing so, which many believed would place slavery on a course of ultimate extinction. Timeline of events leading to the American Civil War, Decades of controversy over slavery came to a head when Abraham Lincoln, who opposed slavery's expansion, won the 1860 presidential election. Seven Southern slave states responded to Lincoln's victory by seceding f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Confederate Navy
The Confederate States Navy (CSN) was the Navy, naval branch of the Confederate States Armed Forces, established by an act of the Confederate States Congress on February 21, 1861. It was responsible for Confederate naval operations during the American Civil War against the United States's Union Navy. The three major tasks of the Confederate States Navy during its existence were the protection of Confederate harbors and coastlines from outside invasion, making the war costly for the United States by attacking its merchant ships worldwide, and Blockade runners of the American Civil War, running the Union blockade, U.S. blockade by drawing off Union ships in pursuit of Confederate commerce raiders and warships. It was ineffective in these tasks, as the coastal blockade by the United States Navy reduced trade by the South to 5 percent of its pre-war levels. Additionally, the control of inland rivers and coastal navigation by the US Navy forced the south to overload its limited railroa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Josiah Tattnall III
Commodore Josiah Tattnall (November 9, 1795 – June 14, 1871) was a United States Navy officer during the War of 1812, the Second Barbary War, the Mexican–American War and the Second Opium War. He later served in the Confederate States Navy during the American Civil War. Schooling and War of 1812 Josiah was the son of Josiah Tattnall, who was Governor and U.S. Senator from Georgia. He was born on his father's Bonaventure Plantation, near Savannah, Georgia. After studying in England, he was appointed a midshipman on January 1, 1812, and attended the Naval academy at Washington, D.C., until 1 August when he was assigned to the frigate ''Constellation''. When his ship tried to slip out to sea, the strong British squadron operating in the Chesapeake Bay forced her to put into Norfolk, Virginia. ''Constellation'' remained bottled up in Hampton Roads for the duration of the War of 1812, but Tattnall and his comrades still managed to get into the fray. He was among the 100 or so ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Commodore (USN)
Commodore was an early title and later a rank in the United States Navy, United States Coast Guard and the Confederate States Navy, and also has been a rank in the United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Commissioned Officer Corps (NOAA Corps) and its ancestor organizations. For over two centuries, the designation has been given varying levels of authority and formality. Today, it is no longer a specific rank within active-duty or reserve forces or in the Public Health Service Commissioned Corps or NOAA Corps, but it remains in use as an ''honorary title'' within the U.S. Navy and U.S. Coast Guard for those senior captains ( pay grade O-6) in command of operational organizations composed of multiple independent subordinate naval units, ''e.g.'', multiple independent ships, submarines, or aviation squadrons. However, "commodore" is a rank that is actively used in the United States Coast Guard Auxiliary, the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Battle Of Taku Forts (1859)
The Second Battle of Taku Forts () was a failed Anglo-French attempt to seize the Taku Forts along the Hai River in Tianjin, China, in June 1859 during the Second Opium War. A chartered American steamship arrived on scene and assisted the French and British in their attempted suppression of the forts. Background After the First Battle of Taku Forts in 1858, the Xianfeng Emperor appointed the Mongol general Sengge Rinchen to take charge of coastal defense. Sengge Rinchen hailed from a rich lineage - the 26th generation descendant of Qasar, a brother of Genghis Khan. He took to this task with ardor, repairing and improving the coastal defenses in preparation for the British arrival. A second, stronger boom was constructed across the river to further restrict the movement of British ships. This second boom was made of full-sized tree trunks, connected with heavy chains. Two rows of ditches were dug in front of the forts' walls, filled with water and mud, and an abatis of iron spi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
James Hope (Royal Navy Officer)
Admiral of the Fleet Sir James Hope, GCB (3 March 1808 – 9 June 1881) was a Royal Navy officer. As a captain he was present at the Battle of Vuelta de Obligado during the Uruguayan Civil War and then in the Baltic Sea during the Crimean War. Hope became Commander-in-Chief, East Indies and China Station and, when the Chinese authorities refused to allow British and French ministers to travel to Peking, he was instructed to force the Hai River. He assembled a squadron of eleven gunboats and other vessels and, at the Second Battle of the Taku Forts, he led an assault on the forts at the mouth of the river in a resumption of the Second Opium War. However the forts had been strengthened and the squadron encountered firm resistance from the Chinese defenders: Hope was forced to retreat. Two years later the Russians attempted to establish a year-round anchorage on the coast of the island of Tsushima, a Japanese territory located between Kyushu and Korea, in what became known as the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Treaties Of Tianjin
The Treaty of Tientsin, also known as the Treaty of Tianjin, is a collective name for several unequal treaties signed at Tianjin (then romanized as Tientsin) in June 1858. The Qing dynasty, Russian Empire, Second French Empire, United Kingdom, and the United States were the parties involved. These treaties, counted by the Chinese among the unequal treaties, opened more treaty ports, Chinese ports to foreign trade, permitted Beijing Legation Quarter, foreign legations in the Chinese capital Beijing, allowed Christian missionary activity, and effectively legalized the import of opium. They ended the first phase of the Second Opium War, which had begun in 1856 and were ratified by the Xianfeng Emperor, Emperor of China in the Convention of Peking in 1860, after the end of the war. Dates The Xianfeng Emperor authorized negotiations for the treaty on May 29, 1858.Wang, Dong. China's Unequal Treaties: Narrating National History. Lexington Books, 2005, p. 16. His chief representatives ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Second Opium War
The Second Opium War (), also known as the Second Anglo-Chinese War or ''Arrow'' War, was fought between the United Kingdom, France, Russia, and the United States against the Qing dynasty of China between 1856 and 1860. It was the second major conflict in the Opium Wars, which were fought over the right to import opium to China, and resulted in a second defeat for the Qing and the forced legalisation of the opium trade. It caused many Chinese officials to believe that conflicts with the Western powers were no longer traditional wars, but part of a looming national crisis. On 8 October 1856, Qing officials seized the ''Arrow'', a British-registered cargo ship, and arrested its Chinese sailors. The British consul, Harry Parkes, protested, upon which the viceroy of Liangguang, Ye Mingchen, delivered most of the sailors to the British on 22 October, but refused to release the rest. The next day, British gunboats shelled the city of Canton. The British government decided to seek ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Battle Of Taku Forts (1858)
The First Battle of Taku Forts () was the first attack of the Anglo-French alliance against the Taku Forts along the Hai River in Tianjin, China, on 20 May 1858, during the Second Opium War. The British and French sent a squadron of gunboats, under Rear-Admiral Admiral Michael Seymour, to attack China's Taku Forts. The battle ended as an allied success. However, the first phase of the Second Opium War would end with the Treaties of Tianjin and the forts were returned to the hands of the Qing Army, leading to the Second Battle of Taku Forts in 1859. Background After the beginning of the Second Opium War, the Anglo-French alliance captured the significant harbor of Canton (Guangzhou) during the Battle of Canton in 1857. The Xianfeng Emperor received the news that Canton had been occupied on 27 January 1858. The British commander Michael Seymour, hoping to force a settlement (the later Treaty of Tianjin), ordered an attack on the Taku Forts as they were the closer path ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
