[ginko]

>And a good response to that might be: "when you say the Chinese made their minds up, are you talking about a democratic process?"

It was the early 19th century. You could count the number of democratic countries on one hand. (If you counted countries where only men could vote)

[rsynnott]

Really zero hands; there was nowhere in 1839 that would be considered democratic by modern standards (no-one even had universal male suffrage at that point, never mind universal suffrage).

[dash2]

Right. But this renders moot the whole question of force and consent here. One undemocratic government did something to another undemocratic government. Or at least, if you think democracy is the sole source of legitimacy, that's what happens. I think there are other possible stories that could be told.