鸦片战争是中英间第一次正面冲突,但中英间的交往却早在鸦片战争前的两个多世纪就开始了.其间,英国国王曾先后四次遣使来华,但四次通使的目的均未达到,竟成了后来中英鸦片战争爆发的诱因之一。远在英国伊丽莎白女王时代(1565—1603年),东方中国的富庶,就已成了冒险家东来“寻宝”的动力,这在莎士比亚的《第十二夜》、《温莎地方的风流娘儿们》等剧作中多有披露。尤其是1587年1592年的英葡亚速儿海战中,在英国截获的墨西哥、葡萄牙商船上,“载满了对华贸易的秘密物品”(吕苏译:《鸦片东渐史》,第65页),“价值将超过200万比索”(朱杰勤:《中西文化交通史译粹》,第203页),这更激发了英国人对中国市场 The Opium War was the first confrontation between China and Britain, but the exchanges between China and Britain began more than two centuries before the Opium War, during which the British king once dispatched four visits to China, The purpose of the mission was not reached, which became one of the incentives that later triggered the outbreak of the Sino-British Opium War. Far as the Elizabethan Empire (1565-1603) in Britain, the affluence of East China and China has become the driving force behind adventurers’ “treasure hunt” in Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night”, “Windshields and Wives in Windsor” More dramas and other disclosure. In particular, in the British-Portuguese Azov war in 1587, in 1587, at the Mexican and Portuguese merchants intercepted in England, it was “packed with secrets of trade with China” (Lusu: “The History of Opium East”, p. 65 Page), “worth more than 2 million pesos” (Zhu Jieqin: “Chinese and Western literary translation history”, p. 203), which even inspired the British people on the Chinese market