1. On July 18, 1891, in Xiangyin, Hunan, an old man passed away.
However, it is regrettable that this old man who was worried about the country and the people did not get his name from the Qing court when he was alive, and did not receive the title given by the Qing court after his death, only a sentence that the Qing court was not close to humanity
"The books he wrote on foreign countries were quite controversial from the outside world, so he was not given a posthumous title
Let him bear the name of "traitor" and lie on the ground for a long time, so that the hero will be in tears.
It's just that those in power seem to have forgotten how they moved and reasoned to let this old man set foot on European soil, and if this old man did not come forward, how they could get out of the "Margaret Incident" and how they could solve the British.
"All matters of intercourse and the customs and customs of various countries shall be recorded in detail by the envoys and reported as they are." After a few years, the opportunities of various countries, Chinese can be insightful, not unsure. Since the diary does not have a certain genre, it is necessary to do its best to handle such events in order to benefit the country. "--- "Diary of the Four Kingdoms of Britain, France, And Italy"
It's just that the old man's mission has been completed, but in exchange for the gratuitous insults and accusations of the Chinese people, loneliness accompanies the second half of his life, which has to be said to be the sadness of an era!
He was Guo Songtao, the first envoy of the Qing Dynasty stationed abroad!
2. In 1874 (the thirteenth year of Tongzhi), Japan, which had just embarked on the road of the Meiji Restoration, invaded Taiwan under the pretext of Taiwan's killing of Ryukyu fishermen, and the noble Heavenly Dynasty Not only did not win a diplomatic victory, but instead compensated Japan with 500,000 taels of silver, which triggered a debate within the Westerners on "coastal defense", "Sai defense", and "equal emphasis on the two defenses of the Sea".
Along with the internal strife between the Westerners, a group of diehards who have not eaten the ancients obstructed the Western affairs movement, believing that the Great Qing Dynasty had followed the example of the West to build factories and manufacture foreign guns, but it was still unable to win in the face of Japan.
This worried Empress Dowager Cixi, the de facto ruler of the Qing court.
In fact, the arguments of the diehards are also what Cixi urgently needs to understand, after all, from the eleventh year of Xianfeng (1861), in order to suppress the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, Zeng Guofan has established the Anqing Ordnance Institute, which can be regarded as the beginning of the foreign affairs of the Great Qing Dynasty.
In the short period of time since then, the Westerners have successively set up a number of large-scale factories that imitate the Western Ocean, such as the Jiangnan General Bureau of Machinery Manufacturing, the Jinling Manufacturing Bureau, the Fuzhou Shipping Bureau, and the Tianjin Machinery Bureau, so that the scene of ZTE once appeared in the Qing Dynasty, which was called "Tongzhi ZTE" in history.
However, all this was broken in the thirteenth year of Tongzhi, and the Great Qing Dynasty was defeated in the face of the provocation of the small countries in the same Confucian cultural circle, which also triggered Cixi's thinking.
Therefore, what exactly is a foreign affair and how this foreign affair should be handled has become something that the Qing Dynasty authorities urgently need to understand.
To this end, Empress Dowager Cixi, through the Prime Minister Yamen, made a downward will, that is, to plan a strategy for the establishment of foreign affairs, and she really needed to open up her speech and listen to the voices of all parties. And before Feng Guifen's
"Based on the Chinese Lun and Changming Sect, supplemented by the techniques of wealth and strength of various countries"
It didn't satisfy her, after all, from the eleventh year of Xianfeng to the thirteenth year of Tongzhi, Daqing had been taking this road, but it did not work.
Perhaps, history is destined to need a real warrior to tear apart the dark clouds in the politics of the late Qing Dynasty, and this person is Guo Songtao, who has been teaching at home for ten years and has re-emerged from the mountains.
In the first year of Guangxu, in early 1875, Guo Songtao, who had left the mountains to serve as an envoy to Fujian, took advantage of the imperial court's will to make a fold for Empress Dowager Cixi. In this book, he expounded his thoughts on the strength of the West and proposed the path of foreign affairs to be taken by the Qing Dynasty in the future.
"The establishment of the Western countries has its origin and the end, its origin is in the imperial court politics and religion, and its end is in the merchants, shipbuilding, and instrument-making, which complement each other to benefit its prosperity and strength, and the last section is also in the middle." --- "Tiao Chen Haiphong Matters".
Guo Songtao believes that it is very wrong to simply regard the strength and prosperity of the West as the advantages of ships and cannons, and if the Qing Dynasty simply learns the "last skills" such as machines and guns, it will not be possible to achieve a rich country and a strong army.
Therefore, only by studying the political environment and economic system of Western countries, cultivating their own talent education system, and developing their own national industry and commerce, the official government only plays a guiding role, not supervision, which is the real foreign affairs road of the Great Qing Dynasty.
Guo Songtao's fold can be described as a stone breaking, and it also made him famous for a while.
In China in the 1870s, Confucian morality still influenced people's thinking, and a feudal scholar who did not have much contact with foreigners and had been staying in the countryside to teach could recognize the fundamentals of the strength of Western countries and advocate the development of national capitalism.
It is precisely because of Guo Songtao's foresight that it also pointed out the path of reform of the feudal dynasty for the later reformists.
3. In the first year of Guangxu, in February 1875, the "Margaret Incident" occurred in Yunnan, and the British, who had been eyeing the southwest frontier of China, took this opportunity to force the Qing government to sign the "Yantai Treaty", and also asked the Qing State to send a permanent envoy to represent the Emperor of the Great Qing State and the Queen of England in a face-to-face informal exchange on this incident, in order to maintain normal diplomatic relations between the two countries.
A stone stirred up thousands of waves, because at this time, the Qing Dynasty was deeply influenced by the traditional "Huayi Distinction" and was still immersed in the idea of "tribute to the clan".
The scholars and masters of the Great Qing Dynasty believed that the Great Qing was the Heavenly Dynasty, the Kingdom of Shang, and the others were barbarians. Historically, only barbarians and feudal states have sent "envoys" to pay tribute and worship to the Heavenly Dynasty, but there is absolutely no saying that the condescending envoys of the Heavenly Dynasty are "stationed abroad". If there is, it is also the disobedience of the Heavenly Dynasty army to fight against Fanbang, let alone apologize to Fanbang.
Therefore, this kind of demand of the British is simply a great shame in the eyes of the scholars and doctors of the Great Qing Dynasty! Not to mention the diehards, even some of the westerners are angry.
This also caused Cixi a headache, foreigners could not afford to offend, and the appearance of Guo Songtao solved the problems of the Qing Dynasty.
In fact, Guo Songtao was indeed the most suitable envoy to foreign countries.
Because Guo Songtao was a true Confucian, not only familiar with the Confucian classics, but also a jinshi of the Great Qing Dynasty; what was important was that he was not conservative, and a "Tiao Chen Haiphong Matters" gave Cixi hope and was an important member of the Western affairs faction.
Although the pioneers are great, the trauma of the soul cannot be understood and experienced by others.
After Guo Songtao accepted the appointment of the Qing court's envoys stationed abroad, accusations and curses such as "traitors" and "traitors" were all pointed at him for a time. However, Guo Songtao did not compromise, he thought
"I can know the details, and then I know the law of control"
In order to verify whether his theory is correct and for the future of the country and the nation, he embarked on a journey without hesitation.
Only this time, Guo Songtao's realm changed again, which was a higher improvement compared to when he played "Tiao Chen Haiphong Matters". Because he threw a more fierce idea to the Chinese people, that is, to abandon the "Huayi distinction" that has been passed down for thousands of years, and to face up to the civilization and civilization of European countries.
"Is it different for a people who know all over the world, and who have this reason in their hearts and minds, so they are in tune with heaven? And the obscenity of 'a corner of the East is China, Yu Ji Yi Di Ye', I dare to know! "--- "Guo Songtao's Diary"
He believes that if the Great Qing Dynasty insists on the "Distinction between Huayi and Yi" again, it is not right, and if it wants to truly realize the goal of making the country rich and strong, it is necessary to abandon this concept of "heaven and heaven and the kingdom" and integrate it into modern civilization as soon as possible.
Especially at this time, Europe has completed the second industrial revolution, as a British and French envoy, Guo Songtao after a detailed field investigation, after many exchanges with Yan Fu, Li Fengbao and other first batch of naval students, let him further understand the gap between the Great Qing Dynasty and European countries, and the sense of national crisis in his heart is also getting stronger and stronger.
He believes that Western countries must not be regarded as barbarians, and backward regions and nations can also be transformed into advanced civilization countries, and now that the civilization between the Great Qing Dynasty and Britain, France and other countries has been transformed, the confucian traditional "enlightenment thinking" has lost its teaching significance, if you still adhere to the outdated "Di Yi concept", it will eventually cause the country and the nation to fall into a deeper whirlpool and cannot extricate themselves.
"In the two thousand years since the founding of the Western Empire, the cultivation of politics and religion has its own end, and the rise of the Liao and Jin dynasties for a while, the prosperity and decline, the situation is absolutely different... The only one who intends to be reserved, who is righteous and who ignores the father of the people, will overthrow the country and destroy the family, and be high in the name of being quick to discuss it. ”
--- "Guo Songtao's Diary"
All this was written into a diary by Guo Songtao, who also compiled the diary into a manuscript called "Making the Western Chronicle" and sent it back to China. Without selfishness, he just wants to find the clearest path for those in power in china through what he sees, hears, and thinks.
However, what he did not expect at all was that after Premier Yamen published this book that was extremely ideologically cutting-edge at that time, the group of colleagues in China not only did not calm down and do well, but repeatedly exposed their criticism of him, so that the "Ji Cheng of the Western Era" published was recycled and destroyed, and he himself completely carried the name of "Traitor".
Sadly, because of the pride of the scholars, the Great Qing Dynasty lost the first theoretical guidance that made it possible to achieve a rich country and a strong army.
4. Guo Songtao was the first forerunner of the late Qing Dynasty who was truly born out of the group of feudal scholars and doctors and had a modern national consciousness.
Perhaps, he was not as famous as his contemporaries Zeng Guofan, Zuo Zongtang, Li Hongzhang, and Zhang Zhidong, but his ideas and ideas surpassed them, and also pointed out a direction for the reformists and revolutionary parties in the late Qing Dynasty.
And he also clearly told the latecomers with his own ending that it is very difficult to achieve the independence and prosperity of the country and the nation under the authoritarian system, and unless the ruler's mind is very firm, it will still be hindered by external opposition.
Guo Songtao is unfortunate, because in the end he still can't fight for an era, and his extremely forward-looking ideas are not accepted by the times, and he can only watch the country and the nation step by step step into the abyss in his lifetime without being able to do anything.
Guo Songtao was fortunate, he still had a few companions, a few understanders, that Mr. Li Er, who had been whistling in the late Qing Dynasty for half a century, was his staunch supporter, and Zeng Jize, who succeeded him as British and French minister, was his fellow traveler.
The Qing Dynasty treated Guo Songtao unfairly, and those in power refused Li Hongzhang's request and did not give this old man who was bent on serving the country and the people and seeking the country's prosperity and strength a most basic evaluation, which chilled people's hearts and the world.
When did the Qing Dynasty care about public opinion? Enough to see the decay of this dynasty!
However, Wang Lang believes that perhaps Guo Songtao does not care about those false names, he cares about when the country can become rich and strong, and when the nation can be strong!
He was destined to be a giant of thought admired by those who came after him!
Resources:
ZHANG Chenyi. On Guo Songtao's Nationalist Thought. China Literature and History Network.2006-09-25
GUO Songtao. Diary of London and Paris
Draft History of the Qing Dynasty. Biography of Guo Songtao
[I am Jiangdong Wang Lang, bringing you a different historical vision!] Stick to the original, like me please pay attention to me! 】