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The Western Powers Arrive As also in other places in Asia, in China the Portuguese were the pioneers, establishing a base" at Macao, from which they monopolised foreign trade at the Chinese port of Guangzhou. Soon the Spanish also arrived, followed by the British and the French. Trade between China and the West was carried on in the guise of tribute: foreigners were obliged to follow the old rules imposed on envoys from China's tributary states. There was no conception at the imperial court that the Europeans would expect or deserve to be treated as cultural or political equals. The only exception was Russia, the most powerful inland neighbour. The Manchus (the ruling Qing Dynasty at that time) were sensitive to the need for security along the northern land frontier and therefore were prepared to be realistic in dealing with Russia.
The Treaty of Nerchinsk (1689) with the Russians, drafted to bring to an end a series of border incidents and to establish a border between Siberia and Manchuria (Northeast China) along the Healing Jiang (Amur River), was China's first bilateral agreement with a European power. In 1727 the Treaty of Kiakhta delimited the remainder of the eastern portion of the Sino-Russian border. Western diplomatic efforts to expand trade on equal terms were rebuffed, the official Chinese assumption being that the empire was not in need of foreign -- and thus inferior -- products. Despite this attitude, trade flourished, even though after 1760 all foreign trade was confined to Guangzhou, where the foreign traders had to limit their dealings to a dozen officially licensed Chinese merchant firms. Trade was not the sole basis of contact with the West.
Since the thirteenth century, Roman Catholic missionaries had been attempting to establish their church in China. Although by 1800 only a few hundred thousand Chinese had been converted, the missionaries -- mostly Jesuits -- contributed greatly to Chinese knowledge in such fields as cannon casting, calendar making, geography, mathematics, cartography, music, art, and architecture. The Jesuits were especially adept at fitting Christianity into a Chinese framework and were condemned by a papal decision in 1704 for having tolerated the continuance of Confucian ancestor rites among Christian converts. The papal decision quickly weakened the Christian movement, which it proscribed as heterodox and disloyal. The Opium War, 1839 - 42 During the eighteenth century, the market in Europe and America for tea, a new drink in the West, expanded greatly. Therefore, there was a continuing demand for Chinese silk and porcelain.
But China, still in its pre-industrial stage, wanted little that the West had to offer, causing the Westerners, mostly British, to have an bad balance of trade (for the British). To change the situation, the foreigners developed a third-party trade, exchanging their merchandise in India and Southeast Asia for raw materials and semi-processed goods, which found a ready market in Guangzhou. By the early nineteenth century, raw cotton and opium from India had become the staple British imports into China, in spite of the fact that opium was prohibited entry by imperial decree. The opium traffic was made possible through the connivance of profit-seeking merchants and a corrupt bureaucracy. In 1839 the Qing government, after a decade of unsuccessful anti-opium campaigns, adopted drastic prohibitory laws against the opium trade. The emperor dispatched a commissioner, Lin Zeng (1785 - 1850), to Guangzhou to suppress illicit opium traffic.
Lin seized illegal stocks of opium owned by Chinese dealers and then detained the entire foreign community and confiscated and destroyed some 20, 000 chests of illicit British opium. The British retaliated with a punitive expedition, thus initiating the first Anglo-Chinese war, better known as the Opium War (1839 - 42). Unprepared for war and grossly underestimating the capabilities of the enemy, the Chinese were disastrously defeated, and their image of their own imperial power was tarnished beyond repair. The Treaty of Nanjing (1842), signed on board a British warship by two Manchu imperial commissioners and the British plenipotentiary, was the first of a series of agreements with the Western trading nations later called by the Chinese the "unequal treaties. " Under the Treaty of Nanjing, China ceded the island of Hong Kong (or Xianggang in pinyin) to the British; abolished the licensed monopoly system of trade; opened 5 ports to British residence and foreign trade; limited the tariff on trade to 5 percent ad valorem; granted British nationals extraterritoriality (exemption from Chinese laws); and paid a large indemnity.
In addition, Britain was to have most-favoured-nation treatment, that is, it would receive whatever trading concessions the Chinese granted other powers then or later. The Treaty of Nanjing set the scope and character of an unequal relationship for the ensuing century of what the Chinese would call "national humiliations. " The treaty was followed by other incursions, wars, and treaties that granted new concessions and added new privileges for the foreigners. The Taiping Rebellion, 1851 - 64 During the mid-nineteenth century, China's problems were compounded by natural calamities of unprecedented proportions, including droughts, famines, and floods. Government neglect of public works was in part responsible for this and other disasters, and the Qing administration did little to relieve the widespread misery caused by them. Economic tensions, military defeats at Western hands, and anti-Manchu sentiments all combined to produce widespread unrest, especially in the south.
South China had been the last area to yield to the Qing conquerors and the first to be exposed to Western influence. It provided a likely setting for the largest uprising in modern Chinese history -- the Taiping Rebellion. The Taiping rebels were led by Hong Xiuquan (1814 - 64), a village teacher and unsuccessful imperial examination candidate. Hong formulated an eclectic ideology combining the ideals of pre-Confucian utopianism with Protestant beliefs.
He soon had a following in the thousands who were heavily anti-Manchu and anti-establishment. Hong's followers formed a military organisation to protect against bandits and recruited troops not only among believers but also from among other armed peasant groups and secret societies. In 1851 Hong Xiuquan and others launched an uprising in Guizhou () Province. Hong proclaimed the Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace (or Taiping Tianguo) with himself as king. The new order was to reconstitute a legendary ancient state in which the peasantry owned and tilled the land in common; slavery, concubinage, arranged marriage, opium smoking, foot binding, judicial torture, and the worship of idols were all to be eliminated. The Taiping tolerance of the esoteric rituals and quasi-religious societies of south China -- themselves a threat to Qing stability -- and their relentless attacks on Confucianism -- still widely accepted as the moral foundation of Chinese behaviour -- contributed to the ultimate defeat of the rebellion.
Its advocacy of radical social reforms alienated the Han Chinese scholar-gentry class. The Taiping army, although it had captured Nanjing and driven as far north as Tianjin (), failed to establish stable base areas. The movement's leaders found themselves in a net of internal feuds, defections, and corruption. Additionally, British and French forces, being more willing to deal with the weak Qing administration than contend with the uncertainties of a Taiping regime, came to the assistance of the imperial army.
Before the Chinese army succeeded in crushing the revolt, however, 14 years had passed, and well over 30 million people were reported killed. To defeat the rebellion, the Qing court needed, besides Western help, an army stronger and more popular than the demoralized imperial forces. In 1860, scholar-official Zeng Guofan (1811 - 72), from Hunan () Province, was appointed imperial commissioner and governor-general of the Taiping-controlled territories and placed in command of the war against the rebels. Zeng's Hunan army, created and paid for by local taxes, became a powerful new fighting force under the command of eminent scholar-generals.
Zeng's success gave new power to an emerging Han Chinese elite and eroded Qing authority. Simultaneous uprisings in north China (the Nian Rebellion) and Southwest China (the Muslim Rebellion) further demonstrated Qing weakness. The Hundred Days' Reform and the Aftermath In the 103 days from June 11 to September 21, 1898, the Qing emperor, Guangxu (1875 - 1908), ordered a series of reforms aimed at making sweeping social and institutional changes. This effort reflected the thinking of a group of progressive scholar-reformers who had impressed the court with the urgency of making innovations for the nation's survival. Influenced by the Japanese success with modernisation, the reformers declared that China needed more than "self-strengthening" and that innovation must be accompanied by institutional and ideological change. The imperial edicts for reform covered a broad range of subjects, including stamping out corruption and remaking, among other things, the academic and civil-service examination systems, legal system, governmental structure, defence establishment, and postal services.
The edicts attempted to modernise agriculture, medicine, and mining and to promote practical studies instead of Neo-Confucian orthodoxy. The court also planned to send students abroad for firsthand observation and technical studies. All these changes were to be brought about under a de facto constitutional monarchy. Opposition to the reform was intense among the conservative ruling elite, especially the Manchus, who, in condemning the announced reform as too radical, proposed instead a more moderate and gradualist course of change. Supported by ultraconservatives and with the tacit support of the political opportunist Yuan Shikari (1859 - 1916), Empress Dowager Ci Xi () engineered a coup d' tat on September 21, 1898, forcing the young reform-minded Guangxu into seclusion. Ci Xi took over the government as regent.
The Hundred Days' Reform () ended with the rescind ment of the new edicts and the execution of six of the reform's chief advocates. The two principal leaders, Kang Youwei (1858 - 1927) and Liang Qichao (1873 - 1929), fled abroad to found the Baohuang Hui (or Protect the Emperor Society) and to work, unsuccessfully, for a constitutional monarchy in China. The conservatives then gave clandestine backing to the anti foreign and anti-Christian movement of secret societies known as Yihetuan (or Society of Righteousness and Harmony). The movement has been better known in the West as the Boxers (from an earlier name -- Yihequan, or Righteousness and Harmony Boxers). In 1900 Boxer bands spread over the north China countryside, burning missionary facilities and killing Chinese Christians. Finally, in June 1900, the Boxers besieged the foreign concessions in Beijing and Tianjin, an action that provoked an allied relief expedition by the offended nations.
The Qing declared war against the invaders, who easily crushed their opposition and occupied north China. Under the Protocol of 1901, the court was made to consent to the execution of ten high officials and the punishment of hundreds of others, expansion of the Legation Quarter, payment of war reparations, stationing of foreign troops in China, and razing of some Chinese fortifications. In the decade that followed, the court belatedly put into effect some reform measures. These included the abolition of the moribund Confucian-based examination, educational and military modernisation patterned after the model of Japan, and an experiment, if half-hearted, in constitutional and parliamentary government.
The suddenness and ambitiousness of the reform effort actually hindered its success. One effect, to be felt for decades to come, was the establishment of new armies, which, in turn, gave rise to warlords. The Republican Revolution of 1911 Failure of reform from the top and the fiasco of the Boxer Uprising convinced many Chinese that the only real solution lay in outright revolution, in sweeping away the old order and erecting a new one patterned preferably after the example of Japan. The revolutionary leader was Sun Yat-sen (or Sun Yixian in p...
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Research essay sample on Constitutional Monarchy Secret Societies
