As a general account, Julia Lovell's The Opium War is at the moment probably the best single volume discussing the period, though it concentrates principally on the (First) Opium War of 1839-42 and only briefly discusses the Second Opium War/Arrow War of 1856-60. The latter part of the book concentrates mainly on cultural legacy and historiography so ought to be right up your alley.

Lovell draws mainly on Mao Haijian's 1995 book Tianchao de bengkui (Collapse of the Heavenly Dynasty) for the Qing side of things, which has been translated into English as The Qing Empire and the Opium War, and it gives much more detail on the operational history of the Opium War but not much in terms of the historiographical or cultural elements that Lovell covers.

As for the Second Opium War, you're unfortunately rather out of luck. The only relatively recent scholarly work on it is J.Y. Wong's Deadly Dreams (1998), which concentrates mainly on the war's origins and the discourses used to justify it in Britain. Aspects of the analysis are problematic (in particular, Wong places the blame for escalation solely on Britain and exonerates Ye Mingchen, which is now a bit out of step with the increasingly mixed views of Lin Zexu and the balance of responsibility for the First Opium War). If you're after operational history you'll be disappointed, as it's mainly an economic and intellectual history of imperialism and imperialist discourse around the Arrow War. It does however offer a good historiographical review. - EDIT: That is not to say the book is by any means bad, in fact it is very good, but it doesn't seem to be what you're after.

I wrote up a brief reading list for the Opium Wars but the key recommends are the same.