The eighteenth century was an important watershed for world civilization. China during this period was in the heyday of the last absolute monarchical society, the kangqian dynasty. The Qing Dynasty experienced the efforts of the three emperors of Kangxi, Yongzheng and Qianlong, and ushered in the peak of its national strength, during which China's feudal monarchy reached its peak, the economy developed rapidly, and the population grew rapidly.
However, the peak of a dynasty is often also the starting point of decline, and when the "Kangqian prosperous era" ended one hundred and thirty-four years later, China and Western civilization were misplaced with each other, and Western countries "overtook in curves" and left the Qing Dynasty far behind. So, during the reign of the three emperors of the Qing Dynasty, Kangxi, Yongzheng and Qianlong, what were other countries in the world doing, and how did they develop so that they could surpass the Qing Dynasty and lead the development of nineteenth-century civilization?
During the "Kangqian Prosperous Era", the Qing Dynasty ushered in its glorious period, and it was also during this period that Europe finally came out of the long Middle Ages, and a new Western world was born.
By the time Kangxi came to power, Dutch global commercial hegemony had been firmly established. In the middle of the seventeenth century, the Netherlands ushered in its splendor. During this period, the Netherlands was the largest colonial empire in the world, with 15,000 branches of the Dutch East India Company alone, accounting for half of the world's total trade. When the Qing government ordered the closure of the country and the "sea ban", the Netherlands had 15,000 ships, accounting for three-quarters of the world's total number of ships, more than the total number of British, French, and German ships.
After the kangqian boom entered the middle and late period, the Netherlands had declined, but the colonial boom in Europe did not stop, and the emerging colonial empire Britain followed closely behind.
England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was in its ascendancy. In terms of production mode, Britain led the first industrial revolution, in 1764, the twenty-ninth year of the Qianlong Dynasty of the Qing Dynasty, Hargreaves invented the "Jenny Spinning Machine", marking the beginning of the British Industrial Revolution, which ushered in the era of replacing manual labor with machines. Economically, driven by the Industrial Revolution and overseas trade, Britain's economy grew rapidly, rapidly completing the accumulation of raw capital. Politically, bourgeois rule was established in Britain, and a parliamentary system and a cabinet system were born. Culturally, the Renaissance and the Enlightenment of Ideas developed further in Britain, democracy and science became the advocacy of society, people's minds were emancipated, and the field of art developed rapidly.
France during this period, like England, was influenced by the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. France was also one of the first countries to be affected by the Industrial Revolution, and in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, some of france's textile industries began to use machines and steam power, and other industrial sectors gradually followed suit. In 1789, fifty-four years after Qianlong, a vigorous bourgeois revolution broke out in France and the Declaration of the Rights of Man was issued. King Louis XVI of France was sent to the guillotine, the French autocracy began to waver, and the power of the bourgeoisie grew stronger.
At the same time, the United States, unwilling to be subject to British colonial rule, broke out the "American Revolution". In 1773, the Boston Tea Pouring Incident broke out, and the call for independence in the United States became increasingly loud. In 1774, representatives of the thirteen north American states convened the First Continental Congress. In 1775, the American Revolutionary War broke out, and the American people officially began their struggle for independence. The following year, the famous Declaration of Independence was published. After the arduous struggle of the American people, Britain recognized the independence of the United States at the Paris Peace Conference in 1783, and since then, the United States has been active on the world stage as an independent country. At the same time, the fruits of the Industrial Revolution also affected the United States, which, coupled with the vast land and bourgeois system of the United States, developed rapidly in its economy and made continuous social progress.
In fact, horizontally, the comprehensive national strength of the Qing Dynasty, ruled by the three emperors of Kangxi, Yongzheng and Qianlong, is still in the forefront of the world. During the Kangqian period, the Treasury of the Qing Dynasty had sufficient financial reserves, reaching 80 million taels in the highest year and remaining in the range of 60 million to 70 million taels all year round. In terms of gross domestic product, China accounts for one-third of the world's total production, and the total industrial output accounts for thirty-two percent of the world's total. From this point of view, it is not impossible to say that the Qing Dynasty in the heyday of Kangqian was the most powerful country in the world at that time.
However, in fact, the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were a watershed between China and the world, and the Qing Dynasty's economy was still ahead of other countries in the world, but whether it was the economic system, political system, or the ability of scientific and technological innovation, the Qing Dynasty had entered a bottleneck period where it could no longer progress.
After the Industrial Revolution, both Britain and France have made great progress in military strength. When the British envoy Ma Garni sent an envoy to the Qing Dynasty, he was deeply impressed by the dismantled armament of the Qing Dynasty. The Emperor ordered the Qing army to hold a military parade to welcome the delegation, but the British, instead of being frightened, concluded that "Chinese society has been stuck and cannot move forward", "its prosperity is over", and "it can land easily here". Macartney recorded: "The broad-clothed and long-sleeved soldiers of this generation had no military education, and the weapons used were no more than knives, guns, bows, and arrows. Once unfortunate, the foreign soldiers have driven in, can this generation resist or not? It is still a difficult question to answer. (Qianlong Ying Envoy's Visit to the Book)
Objectively speaking, during the reigns of Kangxi, Yongzheng, and Qianlong, there was no doubt about the wealth of the country, but under the highly centralized feudal monarchical system, the people were not strong, science and technology were not strong, culture was not strong, and even the political system was the last afterglow. In contrast, other countries in the world, such as the United Kingdom and the United States, emerging colonial empires, have risen rapidly, whether economically, politically or culturally, have undergone qualitative changes. Even countries such as France and Germany, which are mired in civil wars, are developing the Industrial Revolution, developing capitalist economies, and opening up overseas markets. In this way, the qing dynasty, which was closed to the outside world, was naturally already lagging behind the world trend in substance, and when the afterglow of the Kangqian dynasty ended, the decline of the Qing Dynasty was an inevitable result.
Resources:
"Qianlong Ying Envoy Visiting Memoirs"