Imperialism In 1800

After the first Sino-British War, China was forced to accept the western influence and later then the Taiping movement accelerated the progress of China’s modern history and promoted the Westernization movement.

China has changed in certain ways and remained the same in others from the early Golden Ages to the late 1900s. China has experienced a series of cultural and political transformations, shaping the lives of many Chinese citizens. Culturally, the country’s art and literature hardly changed for almost eight hundred years. Along with their culture, China remained politically the same from the beginning of the Golden Ages all the way until the 1800s. On the other hand, China’s government and society were restructured after new leaders took over. From a monarch to total communism, China’s society had a multitude of new ideas and policies they had to adapt to.

China before the 1800s was very isolated. The West comes in and gains control by selling Opium to the Chinese for tea and silk. This was nowhere fair, eventually, China wanted to ban this trade that led to war. The Royal Navy’s modernized ships versus poor china’s unadvanced ships, I wonder who won. China was forced into the world of modernization. The British came in and reshaped China like it was clay, with no regard to the natives. This eventually leads to some failed rebellions. These past three examples are how western modernization helped or ruined countries, and that it isn't always black and

The late nineteenth century culminated centuries of progress for the prominent Asian societies of Qing China and Tokugawa Japan, defining their economic strength and influence in foreign affairs. Each society encountered taxing struggles from internal rebellions to external pressures from outside nations. The Qing dynasty in China survived the crises of the 1850s-1860s, while the Tokugawa shogunate in Japan did not (i.e., collapsed) because of a number of important historical differences. Distinct political, social, and foreign policy differences caused seemingly parallel societies to spiral off in opposite directions. With the aid of a highly centralized government, a stable social and political order, and an amicable nature towards foreign policy, the strength of the Chinese government prevailed against both internal and external challenges. Tokugawa Japan ran a course completely opposite of Qing China and ultimately collapsed in the 1860s. Three significant factors leading to this failure resided in its decentralized government, static and hereditary social order, and hostile nature towards foreign affairs. Reviewed first are the factors

China remains a current world super power that has been around for thousands of years. It was one of the first civilizations ever created and it has evolved into an enormous country. China is a large territory, but only 10% of the land can be farmed on. This continues to be a tremendous problem, especially with the large population that mostly lives in rural areas. In the past China was seen as a fragile nation that was still stuck in the past, although after the Four Humiliations this began to change. The Four Humiliations were a group of events that forced China to modernize due to the losses it faced. After the last of the four humiliations and the fall of the dynasty era during 1911, China began to catch up to the westernized world by modernizing their government, military, and education. The Chinese

This had led to British completely outmuscling the Chinese with their far superior technology, as well as forcing the Chinese into a treaty that opened up numerous ports in China, allowed Westerners to move to China, as well as pay reparations to the British. This utter defeat showed the Chinese that they needed to adapt, and our second document, a map forecasting the partition of China amongst various nations, showed them that they needed to make those changes quick. All of this led to arguments between groups who felt China needed to self-strengthen and those who feared the increasing influence of Western ideals that could be brought on by learning more about the West in order to better defend against it. This is shown in our third document on self-strengtheners, such as Feng Guifen who argues for youths to be taught in Western languages and sciences in order to best defend against them. This document shows further the nationalism within China, as well as the importance of traditions, ideals, and values, as both sides argue their points based on protecting them from Western

China experiences the pressure of the imperialist’s military which China did not have the knowledge or the experience to match. China went from a superior leader, self-sufficient country, that thought that everyone else were barbarians to a torn country. China accepted foreign trade, but they wanted to control and limit how much and with who the trade was used for, they felt that they European trade was unnecessary. They did not allow the western merchants to have any power or privileges and restricted them to Canton, plus they refused to open their trade system beyond Co-Hong which caused china to not become as prosperous as Japan. (Valentini 2013) Because China the believed that they were the center of civilization and that the Western culture was inferior the Chinese government refused to go along with any of the European’s request and the two nations became hostile towards

Before the arrival of western powers, China was very stable, agricultural, and ethnocentric. They had many factories that produced silk, cotton, and porcelain with their natural resources: salt, tin, silver, and iron mines. They had no interest of trade or interaction with foreigners. From the early eighteenth century, European and American Imperialism spread throughout China with a goal to extend their nation’s power. China was one of many territories that undertook the changes of New Imperialism. By 1912, the country was governed by outside nations: Great Britain (mostly), Russia, Germany, France, and Japan. Their influence on China resulted malignantly on the country’s economy, political ties, and lifestyle; in spite of the few

The 19th century had sparked a time period of bloody revolution, social and political reform, and both economic and financial problems for China. Though the cause of many of these problems could be rooted to internal conflict, foreign influence on Chinese ways proved to be disastrous. During the early 19th century the population was growing, the economy seemed stable and generally people seemed content with China’s economic progress. However these feelings of success would soon end as overpopulation would cause widespread poverty and famine. At that point in time China’s rulers had been Manchu; the Qing dynasty had been in rule but even its

China was weakened and by this period in time, had become dependent on the Europeans, which now “controlled” them.

During the early nineteenth century, both China and Japan enforced policies restricting foreign trade in order to avoid industrialization and western ideas, but after both societies experienced foreign invasions and unequal treaties being established by foreigners, Japan began to industrialize and became imperialists trying to create an empire, while China differed in that the people wanted reform and government restrained the reformation of their society, therefore causing multiple rebellions and overall the collapse of their empire.

The Qing dynasty (1916-1912) is the last imperial dynasty of China, it was consider as the most powerful country during the “golden age” ruled by Kang Xi and Qian Long, and it has over 400 million population and has the 1st ranked GDP in the world at the moment. The Qing has the supreme power at the time and has the significant influence in East Asian. However, the collapse of the Qing Dynasty made a humiliate history of China. The Qing dynasty doesn't fall suddenly, and the collapse of Qing is not just simply because domestic revolution and alien invasion. The failure of the Qing government is worthy to study, we need to take a deep step and explore the root cause of the collapse of Qing.

While westerners in China pushed to claim rights and generally oppose Chinese reformers who worked to better China, the Chinese government and society continued to face internal problems.

     Another country that had imperialistic rule was China. The British forced the Chinese to trade with them. As the result of the Opium War, which China lost, they had to accept extraterritoriality. In 1894, Japanese pressure on China led to war. Japan crushed China and western powers moved quickly to carve out spheres of influences on the Chinese coast. Imperial powers accepted the idea of an Open Door Policy, where trade was open to everyone. Negative effects China had were that there land was carved up, they most many rights and people due to wars. Poverty and misery increased, while no nationalism occurred. Chinese

One might wonder what life was like in China 300 years ago? Or even think about the aspects of life just 100 years ago? Others ponder the history of China, and how the country came to be. The Manchus, and their invasion of China played an enormous role in all of these thoughts. The Manchu invasion of China during the 17th century, was an extremely significant event in Chinese history, that left important impacts on China. It also helped to influence culture for years to come.