Week 12

4/15/24 The End of Imperial China

● End of Qing dynasty
○ 1840-42: Opium War; Taiping Rebellion; Expansion of the treaty port system; the
Tongzhi Restoration; the First Sino-Japanese war; Hundred Days’ Reform; The Boxer
Uprising; 19011: New Republic
● (The first) Opium War 1840-1842
○ 1st military campaign between China and Britain
○ Background
■ Changes in international trade structures (Tribute trade and Canton trade)
■ Chinese refusal to accept the European trade model
■ Chronic trade imbalance -> opium trade
■ A rise in the value of silver
■ The spread of addiction
○ South China Sea as World Economy
■ silver trade became important currency - European businessmen became the
middleman
■ silver turned to Opium
○ Opium addiction
■ it was first used for medicinal use and then used for recreational
■ first only used for high class and rich merchants, but spread to common people
too
○ Illegal
■ Ting Dynasty in 1779 banned it, but opium imports still increased
■ 1830’s re-i statement of imperial opium ban
○ Change in balance
■ silver was used as important currency for tax
■ prices of silver increased within China; they struggled with high taxes
■ instigated peasant uprisings
○ Commissioner Lin Zexu 1785-1850
■ Worked to ban opium
■ Sent letter to Queen Victoria
■ Seized the opium trading ships from Britain and poured it into the sea
■ Threatened the end of Canton trade to British merchants that were bringing
opium
○ Armies
■ Qing armies were defeated at first
■ Battles movies from trading center near Hong Kong to the political power near
Beijing
○ Treaty of Nanjing 1842
■ Cessation of Hong Kong
■ 5 ports were opened for trade
■ Provision of “extraterritoriality” - British is not under jurisdiction of China even
if they did something bad isn’t he country
 ■ ”Most favored nation” clause: if other countries are made better treaties with
China, British immediately get the same treatment
● Inauguration of the treaty century 1842-1943
○ more treaty ports and fewer restrictions on trade
■ less importance on domestic goods
○ treaty tariffs set by the imperial powers
○ extraterritoriality
○ Crisis within
■ growing population put new pressures on the land
■ difficulty the educated elite found in gaining official employment
■ mounting incidences of opium addiction
■ outflow of silver
■ waning abilities of the regular banner armies
■ demoralization in the bureaucracy
○ How can China be strong enough to prevent foreign threats - how to make the Qing a
powerful modern state
■ 1. Tongzhi Restoration 1860-1864
● adopt Western learning for practical development; adopt, advance, and
reform technology from the West
■ Sino-Japanese War 1894-1895
● horribly defeated by Japan
● Japan used to stay at the margins of the central civilization, but are
powerful enough to beat China
● Made them realize how significant these threats are
● Japan is now the center of civilization in Asia
■ 2. Hundred Days Reform 1898 (failed quickly)
● must think of the constitutional monarchy
● backlashed because those reform only lasted for 103 days
● government administration was revamped, law code was changed,
military was reformed, and corruption was attacked
● when corruption was attacked - the army, traditional education system
threatened the privileged classes
■ 3. Boxer Uprising 1899-1901
● kicking out the Western traders
● 8 nation alliance army occupied Beijing asked for large sum of money in
exchange for Boxer Uprising
■ 4. Chinese Revolution 1911
● overthrowing the imperial dynasty and making a new modern form of
government
● Republican Revolution (Xinhai Revolution) 1911
○ Overthrew China’s last imperial dynasty
○ Established the Republic of China
○ Background
■ weakened moral and political authority of the Qing
 ■ insufficiency of top down reforms
■ Anti-Manchu sentiment
■ emergence of more activist and reformist elites
■ toward the direction of constitutionalism and parliamentary government
○ Sun Zhongshan (Sun Yatsen, 1866-1925)
■ from poor, rural family in Guangdong - suffered from famine and some family
immigrated to US
■ Educated in Hawaii and Hong Kong - progressive vision
■ 1905: the Revolutionary Alliance
○ Wuchang uprising
■ army made an attack on the Qing army
■ 1st military victory of the alliance; occupied Wuhan and declared their
independence from the Qing state
■ encouraged uprisings in each region - not that easy; strong presence of Qing
military, gangsters and others wanted to have this power
○ Compromise
■ Alliance had to collaborate with one of the Qing generals
■ agreed to overthrow Qing dynasty and the general became the first president
(Yuan Sakai)
■ He declared himself to be the emperor, but died within a year
○ No unified power
■ for 10 years, strong local warlords and remaining Qing armies constantly struggle
to dominate the region
■ 1928 - Republic of Chinese government took over
○ Frustration
■ if we don’t actually change, there’ll still be struggle
■ Anti-imperialist movement - creation of new Chinese culture based on global and
Western standards
● democracy and science
■ Bottom up reform
■ Resurge of chinese national exam
● How can we make China a powerful and modern state?
○ depends on what type of China you want to create; time period; new traditions in change
in world system
○ fix one aspect of the tradition and flatten the rest to push out modernity
○ tradition is always reinterpreted for our own needs