1857 United Kingdom general election
In the 1857 United Kingdom general election, the Whigs, led by Lord Palmerston, won a majority in the House of Commons as the Conservative vote fell significantly. The election had been provoked by a vote of censure in Palmerston's government over his approach to the Arrow affair which led to the Second Opium War.
Image: Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston
Image: Edward Smith Stanley, 14th Earl of Derby (cropped)
The Second Opium War, also known as the Second Anglo-Chinese War, the Second China War, the Arrow War, or the Anglo-French expedition to China, was a colonial war lasting from 1856 to 1860, which pitted Great Britain, France, and the United States against the Qing dynasty of China.
Palikao's bridge, on the evening of The Battle of Palikao, by Émile Bayard
The Illustrated London News print of the clipper steamship Ly-ee-moon, built for the opium trade, c. 1859
The execution of the Paris Foreign Missions Society missionary Auguste Chapdelaine was the official cause of the French involvement in the Second Opium War.
The capture of Ye Mingchen after the fall of Canton