China's Century of Crisis

• Many in China still feel the emotional impact of the Opium War (1839–1842).
• The Opium War began what the Chinese call a "century of humiliation" due to Britain's intrusion and sale of addictive opium.
• Most societies in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America had to deal with European imperialism.
• Societies faced internal crises while maintaining formal independence.
• European imperialism had four main dimensions: military might/political ambitions, a new world economy radiating from Europe, European cultural influence, and engagement with modern culture.

China's Century of Crisis

• In 1793, Emperor Qianlong rejected Britain’s request to loosen trade restrictions.
• By 1912, the Chinese empire collapsed and became a weak junior member in a European-dominated world.
• China's population grew from 100 million in 1685 to 430 million in 1853.
• China lacked an Industrial Revolution, leading to pressure on land, impoverishment, unemployment, and starvation.
• The Chinese bureaucracy couldn't keep pace with the growing population.
• Corruption and harsh treatment of peasants were widespread among officials.
• Bandit gangs and peasant rebellions became common.
• The Taiping Uprising was the culmination of China’s internal crisis, affecting much of China from 1850–1864.
• Hong Xiuquan (1814–1864) led the Taiping Uprising, proclaiming himself the younger brother of Jesus.
• Hong wanted to establish a "heavenly kingdom of great peace."
• The Taiping Uprising called for radical equality.
• The Taiping Uprising even planned to industrialize China.
• Women fought in their own regiments during the Taiping Uprising.
• Officials ordered women's feet to be unbound.
• The Taiping land program promised equal land shares for men and women.
• Women could sit in civil service exams and take positions usually overseeing women.
• The Taiping Uprising promoted marriage by mutual attraction.
• Hong became more conservative in his views later on.
• Initial successes led to the establishment of the Taiping capital in Nanjing in 1853.
• The Taiping Rebellion was crushed in 1864.
• The resolution of the Taiping rebellion consolidated the power of the provincial gentry even more, leading to intense conservatism and unresolved problems.
• 20 million–30 million people died in the Taiping Rebellion.
• The Opium Wars show the transformation of China’s relationship with Europe.
• The British began to sell large quantities of Indian opium in China.
• Chinese authorities tried to stop the opium trade due to addiction dangers.
• European merchants bribed officials to smuggle opium.
• China suffered a specie drain from silver spent on opium.
• In 1836, the emperor tried to suppress the opium trade.
• The first Opium War (1839–1842) forced China to accept free trade and "proper" relations among countries.
• The Treaty of Nanjing (1842) restricted Chinese sovereignty and opened five ports to European traders.
• During the second Opium War (1856–1858), Europeans vandalized the imperial Summer Palace.
• More treaty ports were opened, foreigners could travel freely and buy land, China was opened to missionaries, and Western powers could patrol China’s interior waterways.
• China was defeated by the French (1885) and Japanese (1895), losing control of Vietnam, Korea, and Taiwan.
• The Qing dynasty was weakened when China needed a strong government to modernize.
• "Unequal treaties" inhibited China’s industrialization.
• The Chinese government tried the "self-strengthening" policy in the 1860s and 1870s applying traditional principles with limited Western borrowing.
• They tried to improve the examination system, restore rural order by supporting landlords and repairing irrigation, found industrial factories, and establish modern arsenals/shipyards while studying other languages/sciences.
• Conservative leaders feared development would harm the landlord class.
• New industries were largely dependent on foreigners, strengthening local authority rather than the central state.
• The Boxer Uprising (1898–1901) saw militia organizations killing Europeans and Chinese Christians and besieging foreign embassies in Beijing.
• Western powers and Japan occupied Beijing to crush the revolt and imposed massive reparation payments on China.
• Educated Chinese became disillusioned with the Qing dynasty and formed organizations to propose reforms.
• There was a growing drive for a unified nation with more public participation.
• Chinese nationalism was against both foreign imperialists and the foreign Qing dynasty.
• The government agreed to some reforms in the early twentieth century, but it wasn't enough and the imperial order collapsed in 1911.

The Ottoman Empire and the West in the Nineteenth Century

• Both China and the Ottoman Empire felt they didn't need to learn from the West, avoided direct colonial rule but were diminished, attempted "defensive modernization," and suffered a split between modernists and traditionalists.
• By 1900, the Ottoman Empire was known as the "sick man of Europe".
• Region by region, the Islamic world fell under Christian rule, which Ottomans couldn’t prevent.
• The Ottomans lost territory to Russia, Britain, Austria, and France.
• Napoleon’s 1798 invasion of Egypt was especially devastating.
• Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Romania attained independence.
• The central Ottoman state had weakened, with provincial authorities and local warlords gaining more power and limiting the government’s ability to raise money.
• The Janissaries had become militarily ineffective.
• The Ottoman economy was hit hard by Western developments as Europeans gained direct access to Asia.
• Cheap European manufactured goods harmed Ottoman artisans.
• Foreign merchants won immunity from Ottoman laws and taxes.
• The government relied on foreign loans to finance economic development efforts.
• The Ottoman Empire had reached a state of dependency on Europe.
• The Ottomans attempted ambitious reforms, going considerably further than the Chinese.
• The Ottomans didn’t have an internal crisis on the scale of China, no internal upheaval at the core of the empire, didn’t have to deal with explosive population growth, and their rulers were Turkic and Muslim.
• In the late eighteenth century, Selim III tried to establish new military and administrative structures based on European advisors and techniques.
• Selim III was overthrown and murdered in 1807.
• After 1839, more far-reaching measures (Tanzimat, or "reorganization") emerged, marking the beginning of extensive industrialization and modernization and accepting the principle that all citizens are equal before the law.
• There was a tide of secular legislation and secular schools, creating modest educational openings for women mainly in Istanbul.
• Supporters of reform saw the Ottoman Empire as a secular state.
• Reform created a new class of writers, etc.—the "Young Ottomans" who urged the creation of a constitutional regime.
• Islamic modernism accepted Western technology and science but not its materialism.
• Sultan Abd al-Hamid II (r. 1876–1909) accepted a new constitution and an elected parliament in 1876 that limited the sultan’s authority, but almost immediately suspended it and turned to an older style of despotism in the face of a Russian invasion.
• Opposition coalesced around the "Young Turks" (military and civilian elites) who advocated a militantly secular public life and shifted to thinking in terms of a Turkish national state.
• A military coup in 1908 gave the Young Turks real power.
• The Young Turks radically secularized schools, courts, and law codes.
• The Young Turks permitted elections and competing parties.
• The Young Turks made a Law of Family Rights for all.
• The Young Turks encouraged Turkish as the official language.
• The Young Turks opened modern schools for women, allowed them to wear Western dress, restricted polygamy, and permitted some divorce.
• The Young Turks antagonized non-Turkic peoples in the Ottoman Empire.
• Turkish rule stimulated Arab and other nationalisms in response.
• The Ottoman Empire completely disintegrated after World War I.
• By 1900, both China and the Ottoman Empire were "semi-colonies".
• Both China and the Ottoman Empire gave rise to a new nationalist conception of society.
• In China, the imperial system collapsed in 1912, followed by a vast revolution, and the creation of a communist regime by 1949 within the same territory.
• The Ottoman Empire collapsed following World War I.
• Chinese revolutionaries rejected Confucian culture much more than Turkish leaders rejected Islam.

The Japanese Difference: The Rise of a New East Asian Power

• Japan was forced to open up to more "normal" relations with the world by U.S. Commodore Matthew Perry in 1853.
• From 1853–1900, there was a radical transformation of Japanese society.
• Japan became powerful, modern, united, and industrialized.
• Japan created its own East Asian empire.
• The Tokugawa shoguns had ruled since about 1600.
• Their main task was preventing civil war among rival feudal lords (the daimyo).
• Japan enjoyed internal peace from 1600 to 1850.
• The daimyo were strictly regulated but retained considerable autonomy.
• Japan wasn’t unified by a single law, currency, or central authority that reached to the local level.
• Japanese society was hierarchical, with samurai at the top, then peasants, artisans, and merchants.
• There was considerable change in Japan during the Tokugawa period.
• Samurai evolved into a bureaucratic/administrative class.
• There was great economic growth, commercialization, and urban development.
• By 1750, Japan was perhaps the most urbanized country.
• Japan had high literacy rates (40 percent of males, 15 percent of females).
• Change made it impossible for the shogunate to freeze society.
• Corruption was widespread.
• The United States sent Commodore Perry in 1853 to demand better treatment for castaways, the right to refuel and buy provisions, and the opening of trade ports.
• The shogun’s spinelessness in agreeing to the demands of the "foreign devils" triggered a civil war.
• In 1868, a group of young samurai from the south took over (Meiji Restoration).
• They claimed to be restoring the 15-year-old emperor Meiji to power and aimed to save Japan from the foreigners by transformation of Japanese society rather than by resistance.
• The West wasn’t as interested in Japan as it was in China, reducing pressure.
• The first task was creating national unity.
• They attacked the power and privileges of the daimyo and the samurai.
• The Meiji dismantled the Confucian-based social order.
• Almost all Japanese became legally equal.
• The Meiji showed widespread interest in many aspects of the West, from science to hairstyles.
• Official missions were sent to the West.
• Hundreds of students studied abroad.
• There was translation of Western books into Japanese.
• Eventually, Japan settled down to more selective borrowing from the West.
• Christianity made little progress.
• Shinto was raised to the level of a state cult.
• The Meiji recognized that oppression of women impeded modernization.
• There was universal education but segregated by sex.
• Women were prohibited from public life.
• There was a state-guided industrialization program that established model factories, opened mines, built railroads, and created postal, currency, and banking systems.
• Many state enterprises were then sold to private investors.
• Japan accomplished modernization without acquiring foreign debt.
• Society paid a heavy price for modernization.
• Many peasant families were impoverished.
• The countryside suffered infanticide, the sale of daughters, and starvation.
• Early urban workers, especially females, received harsh treatment.
• Efforts to organize unions were repressed.
• By the early twentieth century, Western powers readjusted treaties in Japan’s favor.
• Japanese empire building included wars against China (1894–1895) and Russia (1904–1905).
• Japan gained colonial control of Taiwan and Korea and won a foothold in Manchuria.
• Japan was widely admired as a model for development or a potential ally against imperialism.
• Japan’s colonial policies were at least as brutal as European ones.

Reflections: Success and Failure in History

• We must be very careful in applying ideas of "success" and "failure" to historical complexities.
• Much depends on the criteria we apply.
• Need to consider the issue of "success for whom?".
• Historical actors are never completely free in making decisions and lack the benefit of hindsight.