1793: Chinese emperor Qianlong rejects British request for open trade.’

• This is a continuity of China’s history of the restriction of outsider’s influence in China.

Take a look at the internal and external factors of China’s “century of humiliation” that culminated in the Taiping Uprising.

Internal Factors

A Chinese Internal Crisis:

• Population growth from 100 million in 1685 to 430 million in 1853

  • Lack of industrialization and agricultural development made it difficult for the Qing administration and farmers to keep up with these numbers: caused famines.

    • The farmers were angered by pressure on land, smaller farms, unemployment, impoverishment, starvation.

      • A cause of the Taiping Rebellion is thus their class distinction and struggle, much similar to the Atlantic Revolutions

        • American Revolution: Colonial people are angry with their status and the economic grievances posed to them by a war-distraught Britain.

        • French Revolution: The French Third Estate was angered by their lack of say in politics (estate general) and with Louis XVI’s economic choices and his suppression of the new National Assembly.

• The Qing Dynasty administration was laced with corruption, loss of central state power

  • The state and bureaucracy could not carry out its proper functions (tax collection)

  • Failure of the civil service examination system: lack of competent leadership

• Effect: New bandit gangs and peasant rebellions aligned in opposition to the Qing Dynasty.

External Factors

• The main external factor that caused internal discontent among the peasantry was British economic imperialism, more specifically the first Opium War

The British Empire schemed to create a sphere of influence in China by smuggling opium harvested in its East India company into China.

Opium was paid for in silver, causing a massive outflow and imbalance that brought disastrous economic problems.

• During the Columbian exchange, Ming China had acquired silver in massive quantities as Western countries traded the metal for Chinese luxury goods.

The Qing responded with the sinking of multiple British opium ships.

• British economic and military intrusion intensified during the First Opium War (1840-1842)

• The spread of cheap British opium that came from the British East India Company devastated Chinese society and led to widespread addiction and corruption.

  • A new sphere of influence was acquired when Britain forced open Chinese ports for more trade after they decisively won the First Opium War— an effect of the 1842 Treaty of Nanjing.

The Taiping Rebellion (1850-1864):

Major internal factor that led to the fall of the Qing Dynasty.

Led by Protestant zealot Hong Xiuquan

• Leader of the revolutionary Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, an absolute monarchy that conspired to overthrow the Qing Dynasty and bring revolutionary societal change

  • Hong Xiuquan was determined to rid China of private property, opium, and prostitution, and reorganize society into segregated military camps of men and women.

  • The Taiping Rebellion involved the Hakka women in the army and ordered the unbinding of women’s feet in the places that were liberated. Women were permitted to sit in for civil service examinations, and mutual attraction was also let to be the basis for marriage over family interests.

    • This heavily diverges from the Confucian orthodoxy of China which hierarchically suppressed women and subjected them to inferior positions in society.

      • These reforms were unsuccessful because they weren’t consistently implemented, and the Taiping rebellion was also crushed in a short period of time.

• The Taiping Rebellion was crushed by Qing provincial lords with aid from Western militaries

  • The Qing Dynasty was weakened, as power was consolidated within the provincial gentry rather than the state

• The devastation and destruction that accompanied the civil war seriously disrupted and weakened the Chinese economy.

  • An estimated 20-30 million died

The Opium Wars (1850-1864):

The British Empire schemed to create a sphere of influence in China by smuggling cheap opium harvested in its East India company into China.

Opium was paid for in silver by the Chinese, causing a massive outflow and imbalance that brought disastrous economic problems.

• During the Columbian exchange, Ming China had acquired silver in massive quantities as Western countries traded the metal for Chinese luxury goods. Over 30% of the world’s silver accumulated in China.

Opium trade created millions of addicts, prompting Commissioner Lin Zexu to lead efforts to seize and destroy opium imports.

• The British responded by engaging in combat against the Chinese in the First Opium War of 1840-1842 to crush opposition to its economic and political interests.

  • A new sphere of influence was acquired when Britain forced open Chinese ports for more trade after they decisively won the First Opium War— an effect of the 1842 Treaty of Nanjing.

• The Second Opium War (1856-1858) resulted in another British win and the Treaty of Tientsin.

Unequal treaties:

• Treaty of Nanjing (1842) forced China to pay reparations, give over the island of Hong Kong to the British, and allow trade at five treaty ports.

• Treaty of Tientsin (1858) opened more treaty ports for trade, allowed Christian missionaries and the purchasing of private property, and effectively made Opium legal as an import.

  • Both of these treaties prevented China’s industrialization and independent economic growth, and allowed the Western nations to extract raw materials and wealth from China.

Imperialism in China:

• French: Colonized Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam in 1885

• Japanese: Colonized Taiwan and Korea in 1895

  • Sphere of influence in Manchuria shared with Tsarist Russia

    • Rival imperial ambitions in Manchuria and Korea would start the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905), which the Russian Empire would lose humiliatingly.

      • This discontent would boil into the Russian Revolution of 1917, putting Bolshevik socialists in power and soon later the establishment of the Soviet Union.

China at this point was an informal empire

• This term describes areas dominated by Western spheres off influence that were not fully colonized and still maintained a level of independence.

The Failure of Conservative Modernization

Self Strengthening movement:

An 1860s-1870s campaign aimed at reforming the government and military institutions in response to threats from the European presence in the region.

• Included the limited establishment of industrial factories, the construction of railroads, and Western education and military training.

  • Failed because of a Chinese reluctance to support modernization due to conservative Confucian fears that urban, industrial, or commercial development would erode the traditional social hierarchy of China.

  • Also a lack of social reform over technological advancement

    • The movement ended when China lost the First Sino-Japanese War in 1895

China entered yet another state of peasant uprising with the anti-foreign, anti-colonial Boxer Rebellion that aimed to kill foreign missionaries and Europeans in Northern China.

• It was ultimately ended by foreign powers, but it contributed to the fall of the dynasty in 1911.

Educated Chinese were in discontent with the Qing Dynasty’s handling of the crisis: creation of clubs urging for full Western governmental reforms.

• A powerful progress-based force of Chinese nationalism directed against foreign (Western and Qing) and traditional influence began to emerge towards the dawn of the 20th century.

A last-minute reform: the Hundred Days of Reform of 1898

• Occurred after the defeat in the Sino Japanese War and was a failure.

1911 Chinese Revolution

• The Guomindang Nationalist Party, led by Sun Yat-sen, put an end to the Qing Dynasty and established the Republic of China for the nation to become more Westernized and powerful

• Chiang Kai-shek ran the GMD in 1920s while Japanese and Soviets also struggled to control China

• Later, the GMD would come into conflict with the rising Communist Party and would flee to Taiwan.

Making Connections:

AP Comparison

To what extent were the causes of these peasant rebellions similar to those that led to the loss of the Mandate of Heaven in earlier Chinese dynasties?

The Ming Dynasty was ended by internal corruption, economic inflation from silver, and invasions from the Manchu forces. The Qing Dynasty was likewise ended by internal corruption, and opium is similar to Columbian-exchange era silver in that it was pumped into China by a maritime empire and they both weaved societal problems, that being hyperinflation by silver, and mass corruption and war by opium.

AP Causation

What were the causes of the massive peasant rebellions in nineteenth-century China?

Economic hardships, exacerbated by natural disasters and government corruption, played a significant role in fueling the discontent among the peasant population. Additionally, significant Western influence from opium weaved corruption in society.

AP Comparison

To what extent was the European presence in Asia different from the European presence in Africa?

• Expansion and Control

  • In Africa, European powers like Britain, France, Germany, and Belgium conquered all of the continent and established direct political control through colonies to set up a labor-fueled extraction of raw materials needed for their industrial cities back at home. These competing European powers would use diplomacy amongst themselves in the Berlin Conference of 1884 to set up their plan to establish direct military control over territories.

  • In Asia, European powers did colonization, but not on a full scale. France and Britain generated spheres of influence in China through the unequal treaties of Nanjing and Tientsin from the Opium Wars, allowing them to freely extract wealth and materials from China without the need to annex it. Thus it was more focused on economic dominance rather than political control.

• Motives

  • In Africa, European powers sought to annex Africa for economic and material reasons. They desired access to Africa’s vast raw materials in order to fuel their industrial economies.

  • In Asia, European powers sought to establish a lucrative economic dominance for the main purpose of extracting wealth from China’s huge population.