Reaction to Revolution: China
Overview
Reaction to Revolution: China
In the 19th century, a rising British Empire challenged China’s traditional leadership in East Asia.
Learning Objectives
- Analyze the weaknesses of the Qing Dynasty in the 19th century that opened China to foreign influence and aggression
Key Terms / Key Concepts
Pax Britannica: the period of relative peace in Europe (1815 – 1914) during which the British Empire became the global hegemonic power and adopted the role of a global police force
The imperial Chinese tributary system: the network of trade and foreign relations between China and its tributaries, which helped to shape much of East Asian affairs. It consisted almost entirely of mutually beneficial economic relationships, with politically autonomous and usually independent member states, as well as facilitated frequent economic and cultural exchange
Opium Wars: two wars in the mid-19th century (1839 – 1842 and 1856 – 1860) involving Anglo-Chinese disputes over British trade in China and China’s sovereignty, which weakened the Qing dynasty and forced China to trade with the rest of the world
British East India Company: an English and later British joint-stock company formed to pursue trade with the East Indies but in actuality trading mainly with the Indian subcontinent and Qing China
Kowtow: the act of deep respect shown by prostration: kneeling and bowing so low as to have one’s head touching the ground (In East Asian culture, it is the highest sign of reverence and is widely used for one’s elders, superiors, and especially the emperor, as well as for religious and cultural objects of worship.)
Treaty of Tientsin: a collective name for several documents signed in 1858 that ended the first phase of the Second Opium War involving the Qing, Russian, Second French Empires, United Kingdom, and United States (These unequal treaties opened more Chinese ports to foreign trade, permitted foreign legations in the Chinese capital Beijing, allowed Christian missionary activity, and legalized the import of opium. They were ratified by the Emperor of China in the Convention of Peking in 1860 after the end of the war.)
Treaty of Nanjing: a peace treaty that ended the First Opium War (1839 – 42) between the United Kingdom and the Qing dynasty of China, signed in August 1842, which ended the old Canton System and created a new framework for China’s foreign relations and overseas trade that would last for almost 100 years (From the Chinese perspective, the most injurious terms were the fixed trade tariff, extraterritoriality, and the most favored nation provisions. It was the first of what the Chinese later called the unequal treaties in which Britain had no obligations in return.)
First Opium War: an 1839 – 1842 war fought between the United Kingdom and the Qing dynasty over their conflicting viewpoints on diplomatic relations, trade, and the administration of justice for foreign nationals in China
Convention of Beijing: an agreement comprising three distinct treaties between the Qing Empire (China) and the United Kingdom, France, and Russia in 1860, which ended the Second Opium War
Century of Humiliation: the period of intervention and imperialism by Western powers and Japan in China between 1839 and 1949, which arose in 1915 in the atmosphere of increased Chinese nationalism
Second Opium War: a war pitting the British Empire and the French Empire against the Qing dynasty of China, lasting from 1856 to 1860
Reaction to Revolution: China
As Europe was engulphed in the early stages of the Industrial Revolution and in the throes of the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars in the late 18th and early 19th century, China remained a stable and prosperous empire under the Qin Dynasty. However, as the 19th century progressed, China found itself bullied by the rising British Empire, which was emerging from the Industrial Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars as a dominating world power.
Pax Britannica
Pax Britannica (Latin for “British Peace,” modeled after Pax Romana) was the period of relative peace in Europe (1815 – 1914) during which the British Empire became the global hegemonic power and adopted the role of a global police force.
Between 1815 and 1914, a period referred to as Britain’s “imperial century,” around 10 million square miles of territory and roughly 400 million people were added to the British Empire. Victory over Napoleonic France left the British without any serious international rival, other than perhaps Russia in central Asia. When Russia tried expanding its influence in the Balkans, the British and French defeated it in the Crimean War (1854 – 56), thereby protecting the by-then feeble Ottoman Empire.
Britain’s Royal Navy controlled most of the key maritime trade routes and enjoyed unchallenged sea power. Alongside the formal control it exerted over its own colonies, Britain’s dominant position in world trade meant that it effectively controlled access to many regions, such as Asia and Latin America. British merchants, shippers, and bankers had such an overwhelming advantage over everyone else that in addition to its colonies, it had an informal empire.
The global superiority of British military and commerce was aided by a divided and relatively weak continental Europe and the presence of the Royal Navy on all of the world’s oceans and seas. Even outside its formal empire, Britain controlled trade with countries such as China, Siam, and Argentina. Following the Congress of Vienna, the British Empire’s economic strength continued to develop through naval dominance and diplomatic efforts to maintain a balance of power in continental Europe.
In this era, the Royal Navy provided services around the world that benefited other nations, such as the suppression of piracy and blocking the slave trade. The Slave Trade Act 1807 banned the trade across the British Empire, after which the Royal Navy established the West Africa Squadron and the government negotiated international treaties under which they could enforce the ban. Sea power, however, did not project on land. Land wars fought between the major powers include the Crimean War, the Franco-Austrian War, the Austro-Prussian War, and the Franco-Prussian War, as well as numerous conflicts between lesser powers. The Royal Navy engaged in the First Opium War (1839 – 1842) and Second Opium War (1856 – 1860) against Imperial China. The Royal Navy was superior to any other two navies in the world, combined. Between 1815 and the passage of the German naval laws of 1890 and 1898, only France was a potential naval threat.
Imperial Chinese Tributary System
The rise of the British Empire challenged the traditional leadership that imperial China had maintained across East Asia. The imperial Chinese tributary system was the network of trade and foreign relations between China and its tributaries (neighboring states under China’s authority) which helped to shape much of East Asian affairs. Contrary to other tribute systems around the world, the Chinese system consisted almost entirely of mutually beneficial economic relationships. Member states of the system were politically autonomous and usually independent. The system shaped foreign policy and trade for over 2,000 years of imperial China’s economic and cultural dominance of the region and thus played a huge role in the history of Asia, particularly East Asia. The tributary system was the primary instrument of diplomatic exchange throughout the Imperial Era. While most member states of the system during the Qing rule were smaller Asian states, Great Britain, the Netherlands, and Portugal also sent tributes to China.
European Trade with Qing China
British ships began to appear sporadically around the coasts of China from 1635. Without establishing formal relations through the tributary system, British merchants were allowed to trade at the ports of Zhoushan and Xiamen in addition to Guangzhou (Canton). However, trade began to flourish after the Qing dynasty relaxed maritime trade restrictions in the 1680s and after Taiwan came under Qing control in 1683. Even rhetoric about the tributary status of Europeans was muted. Official British trade was conducted through the auspices of the British East India Company, which held a royal charter for trade with the Far East. The British East India Company gradually came to dominate Sino-European trade from its position in India.
Guangzhou (Canton) was the port of preference for most foreign trade. From 1700 – 1842, Guangzhou came to dominate maritime trade with China, and this period became known as the Canton System. From the inception of the Canton System in 1757, trade in goods from China was extremely lucrative for European and Chinese merchants alike. However, foreign traders were only permitted to do business through a body of Chinese merchants known as the Cohong and were restricted to Canton. Foreigners could only live in one of the Thirteen Factories, a neighborhood along the Pearl River in southwestern Guangzhou, and were not allowed to enter, much less live or trade in, any other part of China.
While silk and porcelain drove trade through popularity in the west, an insatiable demand for tea existed in Britain. However, only silver was accepted in payment by China, which resulted in a chronic trade deficit. From the mid-17th century, around 28 million kilograms of silver were received by China, principally from European powers, in exchange for Chinese goods. Britain had been on the gold standard since the 18th century, so it had to purchase silver from continental Europe and Mexico to supply the Chinese appetite for silver. Attempts at the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th centuries by a British embassy (twice), a Dutch mission, and Russia to negotiate more expansive access to the Chinese market were all vetoed by successive Emperors. By 1817, the British realized they could reduce the trade deficit and turn the Indian colony profitable by counter-trading in narcotic Indian opium. The Qing administration initially tolerated opium importation because it created an indirect tax on Chinese subjects while allowing the British to double tea exports from China to England, thereby profiting the monopoly on tea exports held by the Qing imperial treasury and its agents. The increasingly complex opium trade would eventually become a source of a military conflict between the Qing dynasty and Britain (Opium Wars).
Foreign Relations
The kowtow—or prostration—was an issue facing Western embassies to China. Western diplomats understood that kowtowing meant accepting the superiority of the Emperor of China over their own monarchs, an act they found unacceptable. The British embassies of George Macartney (1793) and William Pitt Amherst (1816) were unsuccessful at negotiating the expansion of trade and interstate relations, partly because kowtowing would mean acknowledging their king as a subject of the Chinese Emperor. However, Dutch ambassador Isaac Titsingh did not refuse to kowtow during his 1794 – 1795 mission to the imperial court of the Qianlong Emperor. The members of the Titsingh mission made every effort to conform with the demands of complex Imperial court etiquette. Other European powers were not willing to make such a concession.
China did not deal with Russia through the Ministry of Tributary Affairs, but rather through the same ministry as the Mongols (seen by the Chinese as a problematic partner), which served to acknowledge Russia’s status as a non-tributary nation. In 1665, Russian explorers had met the Manchus in present-day northeastern China. This initial contact led eventually to a treaty between the two powers. Using the common language of Latin, which the Chinese knew from Jesuit missionaries, the Kangxi Emperor of China and Tsar Peter I of the Russian Empire negotiated the Treaty of Nerchinsk in 1689. This delineated the borders between Russia and China, some sections of which still exist today.
Under the Canton System, between 1757 and 1842, Western merchants in China were restricted to live and conduct business only in the approved area of the port of Guangzhou, through a government-approved merchant house. Their factories formed a tight-knit community, which the historian Jacques Downs called a “golden ghetto” because it was both isolated and lucrative.
The Chinese worldview changed very little during the Qing dynasty as China’s perspectives on foreigners continued to be informed and reinforced by deliberate policies and practices designed to minimize evidence of its growing weakness and West’s evolving power. After the Titsingh mission, no further non-Asian ambassadors were even allowed to approach the Qing capital until the consequences of the Opium Wars changed everything.
The Opium Wars
The history of opium in China began with the use of opium for medicinal purposes during the 7th century. In the 17th century, the practice of mixing opium with tobacco for the act of smoking spread from Southeast Asia; this created a far greater demand.
In the mid-18th century, after the British gained control over the Bengal Presidency—the largest colonial subdivision of British India, , the former monopoly on opium production held by the Mughal emperors passed to the East India Company (EIC) under the The East India Company Act of 1793. However, the EIC was £28 million in debt, partly as a result of the insatiable demand for Chinese tea in the UK market. Chinese tea had to be paid for in silver, so silver supplies had to be purchased from continental Europe and Mexico. To redress the imbalance, the EIC began auctions of opium in Calcutta and saw its profits soar from the opium trade. Considering that importation of opium into China had been virtually banned by Chinese law, the EIC established an elaborate trading scheme, partially relying on legal markets and partially leveraging illicit ones. British merchants bought tea in Canton on credit and balanced their debts by selling opium at auction in Calcutta. From there, the opium would reach the Chinese coast hidden aboard British ships and was smuggled into China by native merchants.
In 1797, the EIC further tightened its grip on the opium trade by enforcing direct trade between opium farmers and the British and ending the role of Bengali purchasing agents. British exports of opium to China grew from an estimated 15 long tons in 1730 to 75 long tons in 1773 shipped in over 2,000 chests. The Qing dynasty Jiaqing Emperor issued an imperial decree banning imports of the drug in 1799. Nevertheless, by 1804, the British trade deficit with China turned into a surplus, leading to seven million silver dollars going to India between 1806 and 1809. Meanwhile, Americans entered the opium trade with less expensive but inferior Turkish opium and by 1810 claimed ~10% of the trade in Canton.
In the same year the emperor issued a further imperial edict prohibiting the use and trade of opium. The decree had little effect. The Qing government, far away in Beijing in the north of China, was unable to halt opium smuggling in the southern provinces. A porous Chinese border and rampant local demand facilitated the trade and by the 1820s, China was importing 900 long tons of Bengali opium annually. The opium trafficked into China was processed by the EIC at its two factories in Patna and Benares. In the 1820s, opium from Malwa in the non-British controlled part of India became available and, as prices fell due to competition, production was stepped up.
In addition to the drain of silver, by 1838 the number of Chinese opium addicts had grown to between 4 million and 12 million and the Daoguang Emperor demanded action. Officials at the court who advocated legalizing and taxing the trade were defeated by those who advocated suppressing it. The Emperor sent the leader of the hard-line faction, Special Imperial Commissioner Lin Zexu, to Canton, where he quickly arrested Chinese opium dealers and summarily demanded that foreign firms turn over their stocks with no compensation. When they refused, Lin stopped trade altogether and placed the foreign residents under virtual siege in their factories. The British Superintendent of Trade in China, Charles Elliot got the British traders to agree to hand over their opium stock with the promise of eventual compensation from the British government for their loss. While this amounted to a tacit acknowledgment that the British government did not disapprove of the trade, it also placed a huge liability on the exchequer. This promise and the inability of the British government to pay it without causing a political storm was an important casus belli for the subsequent British offensive.
First Opium War
In October 1839, the Thomas Coutts arrived in China and sailed to Canton. The ship was owned by Quakers, who refused to deal in opium. The ship’s captain, Warner, believed Elliot had exceeded his legal authority by banning the signing of the “no opium trade” bond and negotiated with the governor of Canton, hoping that all British ships could unload their goods at Chuenpi, an island near Humen. To prevent other British ships from following the Thomas Coutts, Elliot ordered a blockade of the Pearl River. Fighting began on November 3, 1839, when a second British ship, the Royal Saxon, attempted to sail to Canton. Then the British Royal Navy ships HMS Volage and HMS Hyacinth fired warning shots at the Royal Saxon. The Qing navy’s official report claimed that the navy attempted to protect the British merchant vessel and reported a victory for that day. In reality, they had been overtaken by the Royal Naval vessels and many Chinese ships were sunk.
The First Opium War revealed the outdated state of the Chinese military. The Qing navy was severely outclassed by the modern tactics and firepower of the British Royal Navy. British soldiers, using advanced muskets and artillery, easily outmaneuvered and outgunned Qing forces in ground battles. The Qing surrender in 1842 marked a decisive, humiliating blow to China. The Treaty of Nanjing demanded war reparations, forced China to open up the Treaty Ports of Canton, Amoy, Fuchow, Ningpo, and Shanghai to western trade and missionaries, and to cede Hong Kong Island to Britain. It revealed weaknesses in the Qing government and provoked rebellions against the regime.
Second Opium War
The 1850s saw the rapid growth of European aggression toward China. Some shared goals of the European powers were the expansion of their overseas markets and the establishment of new ports of call. To expand their privileges in China, Britain demanded the Qing authorities renegotiate the 1842 Treaty of Nanking, citing their most favored nation status. The British demands included opening all of China to British merchant companies, legalizing the opium trade, exempting foreign imports from internal transit duties, suppression of piracy, regulation of the coolie (indentured laborers) trade, permission for a British ambassador to reside in Beijing, and for the English-language version of all treaties to take precedence over the Chinese language.
To give Chinese merchant vessels operating around treaty ports the same privileges accorded British ships by the Treaty of Nanking, British authorities granted these vessels British registration in Hong Kong. In October 1856, Chinese marines in Canton seized a cargo ship called the Arrow on suspicion of piracy, arresting 12 of its 14 Chinese crew members. The Arrow was previously used by pirates, captured by the Chinese government, and subsequently resold. It was then registered as a British ship and still flew the British flag at the time of its detainment, although its registration had expired. Its captain, Thomas Kennedy, aboard a nearby vessel at the time, reported seeing Chinese marines pull the British flag down from the ship. The British consul in Canton, Harry Parkes, contacted Ye Mingchen—imperial commissioner and Viceroy of Liangguang—to demand the immediate release of the crew and an apology for the alleged insult to the flag. Ye released nine of the crew members but refused to release the last three.
On October 25, the British demanded to enter Canton. The next day, they started to bombard the city, firing one shot every 10 minutes. Ye Mingchen issued a bounty on every British head taken. On October 29, a hole was blasted in the city walls and troops entered, with a flag of the United States of America being planted by James Keenan (U.S. Consul) on the walls and residence of Ye Mingchen. Negotiations failed, the city was bombarded, and the war escalated.
In 1858, with no other options, the Xianfeng Emperor agreed to the Treaty of Tientsin, which contained clauses deeply insulting to the Chinese, such as a demand that all official Chinese documents be written in English and a proviso granting British warships unlimited access to all navigable Chinese rivers. Shortly after the Qing imperial court agreed to the disadvantageous treaties, hawkish ministers prevailed upon the Xianfeng Emperor to resist Western encroachment, which led to a resumption of hostilities. In 1860, with Anglo-French forces marching on Beijing, the emperor and his court fled the capital for the imperial hunting lodge at Rehe. Once in Beijing, the Anglo-French forces looted the Old Summer Palace and, in an act of revenge for the arrest of several Englishmen, burnt it to the ground. Prince Gong, a younger half-brother of the emperor, was forced to sign the Convention of Beijing. The agreement comprised three distinct treaties concluded between the Qing Empire and the United Kingdom, France, and Russia (while Russia had not been a belligerent, it threatened weakened China with a war on a second front). The British, French, and Russians were granted a permanent diplomatic presence in Beijing, something the Qing Empire resisted to the very end, as it suggested equality between China and the European powers. The Chinese had to pay 8 million taels to Britain and France. Britain acquired Kowloon (next to Hong Kong). The opium trade was legalized, and Christians were granted full civil rights, including the right to own property and the right to evangelize. The treaty also ceded parts of Outer Manchuria to the Russian Empire.
Legacy
The First Opium War marked the start of what 20th century Chinese nationalists called the Century of Humiliation. The ease with which the British forces defeated the numerically superior Chinese armies damaged the Qing dynasty’s prestige. The Treaty of Nanking was a step to opening the lucrative Chinese market to global commerce and the opium trade.
Historian Jonathan Spence notes that the harm opium caused was clear, but that in a stagnating economy, it supplied fluid capital and created new tax sources. Smugglers, poor farmers, coolies, retail merchants and officials all depended on opium for their livelihoods. In the last decade of the Qing dynasty, however, a focused moral outrage overcame these vested interests.
The terms of the treaties ending the Opium Wars undermined China’s traditional mechanisms of foreign relations and methods of controlled trade. More ports were opened for trade, gunboats, and foreign residence. Hong Kong was seized by the British to become a free and open port. Tariffs were abolished preventing the Chinese from raising future duties to protect domestic industries and extraterritorial practices exempted Westerners from Chinese law. This made them subject to their own civil and criminal laws of their home country. Most importantly, the opium problem was never addressed and after the treaty ending the First War was signed, opium addiction doubled. Due to the Qing government’s inability to control collection of taxes on imported goods, the British government convinced the Manchu court to allow Westerners to partake in government official affairs. In 1858 opium was legalized.
The First Opium War both reflected and contributed to a further weakening of the Chinese state’s power and legitimacy. Anti-Qing sentiment grew in the form of rebellions such as the Taiping Rebellion—a civil war lasting from 1850-64 in which at least 20 million Chinese died.
The opium trade faced intense enmity from the later British Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone. As a member of Parliament, Gladstone called it “most infamous and atrocious,” referring to the opium trade between China and British India in particular. Gladstone was fiercely against both Opium Wars, denounced British violence against Chinese, and was ardently opposed to the British trade in opium to China. Gladstone criticized the First War as “unjust in its origin, a war more calculated in its progress to cover this country with permanent disgrace.” His hostility to opium stemmed from the effects of the drug on his sister Helen.
The standard interpretation in the People’s Republic of China presented the war as the beginning of modern China and the emergence of the Chinese people’s resistance to imperialism and feudalism.
Attributions
Title Image
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dragoon_Guards_in_Second_Opium_War.jpg
The Engish King's Dragoon Guards closing with the Chinese cavalry in the engagement near Peking on 21 September 1860 during the Second Opium War.- "From a sketch by our special artist in China", Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Adapted from:
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-worldhistory/chapter/the-century-of-peace/
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-worldhistory/chapter/the-last-chinese-dynasty/
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/