Source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qing_dynasty
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Opium_War
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/15/opinion/global/the-trauma-of-colonialism.html?_r=1
Questions:
1. It might be obvious what the negative effects of imperialism are, but I personal believe that everything is equal and has equal negative and positive effects, thus I think the imperialism has great positive effects as while, just to equal out the negatives.
Connections:
We just started learning about the imperialism of Africa and India and how the Britain mistreated them, but since we never would focus in detail on the imperialism on China, I decided to do some research regarding this area of study.
New Knowledge:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qing_dynasty
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Opium_War
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/15/opinion/global/the-trauma-of-colonialism.html?_r=1
Questions:
1. It might be obvious what the negative effects of imperialism are, but I personal believe that everything is equal and has equal negative and positive effects, thus I think the imperialism has great positive effects as while, just to equal out the negatives.
Connections:
We just started learning about the imperialism of Africa and India and how the Britain mistreated them, but since we never would focus in detail on the imperialism on China, I decided to do some research regarding this area of study.
New Knowledge:
- During the Qing dynasty, the Chinese became extremely reserved and believed in self-sufficient, which means that they will only engage in transaction of goods and resources within its own country.
- The officials of China view maritime commercial trade with the European powers as unimportant, whereas British saw maritime trade as the key to their economy. No products, industial or not, could satisfy and convince the Chinese officials to open trade, as the Qianglong emperor had told Lord George Macartney, the British delegation to China, "the kings of the myriad nations come by land and sea with all sort of precious things," and "consequently there is nothing we lack...". Chinese does not need anything, raw materials or finished products, except for silver.
- There are actually a legend that saids of a visit of an European delegate, probably from Great Britain to China. The legends goes that the Chinese emperor refuse trade with the nation that the delegate represents simply because the European delegates refuse to abase himself by saluting to the Chinese Emperor, which the Chinese views as a sign of respect and obedience, showing that the European nation that the delegate represents is inferior to China. China had always view its own Emperor as the emperor of all beings.
- As a result, in order to satisfy the Europeans' demand for tea, silk, and ceramic, the European countries need to "funnel" their limited supply of silver into China during the 1700's, which is quite an imbalance of trade for the European nations, especially, Great Britain. Who eventually ends up selling the addictive, lucrative, and most notorious drug, opium, to China to gain all the silver back.
- In respond to such action, China confiscated all stocks of opium that belongs to Great Britain in 1839, causing Great Britain to declare war on China the following year, starting the opium wars.
- Just as a recap to the military and science advancement of the Qing dynasty of China. China has long close its borders and emphasize on self-sufficient. Ever since Zheng He's great expedition to the Indian ocean, China has abandoned its progress on sea sailing and maritime technology, thus loosing ground on this area of study. In fact, all technological advances of China has stalled as there are less war, and there are no need for advance weaponry. China had ever since focus more on the welfare of the emperor. The new dynasties was also known for its exclusiveness, its rule of forbidding other religions apart from its own, and refusing to accept new ideas. This exclusiveness has limit the contact and cooperation between itself and the European nations, which proved fatal, as China was already behind on the arm race (The European nations have guns, cannons, and even steam ships by the time the Chinese are still using swords, bows, obsolete front-loading-powder cannons, and wooden sailboats) and that is the only way to catch up with the progress.
- The opium wars, which are composed of two separate wars, showed China that it is no longer the best of the nations. The steamship outgunned the Chinese junks (wooden sail powered warships) so much that the navy confrontations were more of a massacre and less like a battle. The ground warfare was no better for the Chinese, despite being able to stall the British progress with some pyrrhic victory, the British army crushed any Chinese resistance with little casualties. The final battle of Chinking allows Great Britain to capture Nanking, forcing China to sign the first unequal treaty, the treaty of Nanking.
- The Treaty of Nanking demanded war reparation from China to Great Britain, forced China to open up the five ports of Canton, Amoy, Fuchow, Ningpo, and Shinghai to western trade and missionaries, and to cede the Hong Kong Island to Britain. This is a huge humiliation to the Qing dynasty and fueled huge uprising of the local Chinese population against the already unpopular regime. This is the start of the century of humiliation.
- The invasion of the European nations have not force the people of China to unite and fight back. Instead, it further dissolved it, the Qing dynasty was hated and blamed against for the defeat of the war, and there are numerous revolutions, uprising, civil unrest, and civil war occurring within the Chinese population for attempts of overthrowing the Qing dynasty and taking power. The European powers were exploit China's wealth in the same time.
- Following the second opium war in 1856, where British took further lands and conquered the Chinese capital of Beijing, the Taiping rebellion from 1850 to 1860, where the revolutionary Chinese fought with the Qing dynasty, the Russian-Chinese war in 1860, where Russia take Manchuria the entire north-eastern part of China and Mongolia away, the Sino-French War in 1884, where the French also imperialized southern China, and the Sino-Japanese war, where a huge Chinese military humiliation took place when their newly equipped navy, with steam powered battleships from Germany, was decisively defeated and butchered by the navy of Imperial Japan at the battle of the Yalu River in 1894, also known as the battle of the yellow sea. After which they seceded several north eastern territories and the entire Taiwan island to Japan.
- As a result of all these wars, all European nations, including Russia and Japan, have set up their own occupations and spheres of influence in China.
- Even Germany successfully occupied the Jiaozhou Bay with the excuse of the murder of two German officials in China. However the occupation prompted a "scramble for concession", during which Germany is officially granted the ownership of jiaozhou Bay, the Russian acquisition of Liaodong, and the extension of Great Britain's claim over Hong Kong.
- Completely bedeviled by external pressure and internal unrest, the Chinese group of the boxers, with the support of the emperor of China, attack, assaulted and lay siege to the European commissions in Beijing, killing as many as 200 European civilians. In response, the Eight-Nation Alliance of Italy, United States, France, Austrio-Hungary, Imperial Japanese, Germany, Russia, and Great Britain send out their coalition army and successfully crushed the Boxers rebellion and release the siege of the European civilians.
- It wasn't until after world war 2 was finish, when the imperial Japan and the Capitalistic nationalists of China has been pushed out of China by a newly united communist China that China had finally declared its independence in 1949, ending all the imperialism and its age of humiliation.
- This period of history has instead cause depredation and tumult for all Chinese citizens, but after this all finished, China had again aligned itself on its path to world super power ever since the imperialism has brought China from the ancient swords and superstitions into the modern age of reason and gunpowder, it will forever remain as a lesson to all Chinese, teaching them to never stop progressing and changing itself to adapt to the new world.
- This historical event has huge impact on new Chinese policies from the later 20th century to nowadays. Instead of self-sufficient and close door policy, China rely on globalization, commercial trade and transaction with other countries more than any thing nowadays. In fact, China became so powerful now just because its huge population served as the major consumers of goods from all over the world, lots of other countries manage to survive and prosper because of trade with China, because of Chinese citizens purchasing their goods. China, in return, prospered from selling numerous manufactured resources to countries all over the world at low prices.
- There are other impacts too. The Chinese citizens of China will never forget the humiliation they suffered at the hands of the western imperialists, Russia, and japan. They even has a day named as the "national humiliation day" to honor the century of humiliation. Their textbook talk about the past by saying "a rich, glorious civilizations was humiliated and brought to its knees, their lands lost, and borders redrawn, their people forced to endure barbarous cruelty and suffering".
- The legacy of redrawn borders cause China to become extremely inflexible when it comes to lands that it believe was "lost" due to colonialism. This is probably caused by their desire regain their supreme position again.
Cartoon depicting the European nations, Russia, and Japan splitting the land of China for themselves, with China looking on helplessly.
First opium war, British ironclads (in the background) opening fire and destroying the Chinese junks (fore ground).
Sphere of influences in China.