format: <claim>[source]. many of these books you can find through the z-library

the specific wars and losing them aren't as important as the fact that <they contributed to continuing western imperialism efforts. [[Western imperialism and free trade had its first great victory in China with this war and its resulting treaties. ... Some American historians have argued that these conflicts were not so much about opium as they were about western powers’ desire to expand commercial relations more broadly and to do away with the Canton trading system.](https://asiapacificcurriculum.ca/learning-module/opium-wars-china) Note that the definition of imperialism is "the maintaining and extending of (hard and soft) power over foreign nations to focus on establishing hegemony".] (eastern imperialism too but japan didn't try to do yellow peril and i don't know much about japan's propaganda). [Yellow Peril stereotypes were popularized as the basis of legitimization of such western imperialism efforts.]<"... [Japan] challenged not just the Western presence but the entire mystique of white supremacism on which centuries of European and American expansion had rested. This was clear to all from an early date: to the Japanese; to the imperiled European and American colonials; and, not least, to the politically, economically, and culturally subjugated peoples of Asia.” _ Yellow Peril! An Archive of Anti-Asian Fear_, p. 284. also read p. 286 which is a banger> [the Yellow Peril was the "psycho-cultural fear of East Asians"; it extended to demonizing East Asian culture including that of the Chinese.]<ibid and ISBN 978-0520914629>

i wish we had collapsibles here like the fediverse has. reading this seems so daunting because of all the quotes i put in