After the beginning of the Western colonial era, the great powers relied on advanced foreign guns and cannons to flaunt their might around the world, and they could find whoever they wanted. Even the Great Qing dynasty was defeated in the Opium War, and the Qing government had no choice but to bow to the great powers.
Jurchen is an ethnic minority in the north of our country, known for being brave and good at war, riding and shooting. In ancient times, there was a widely spread saying: Jurchen is dissatisfied with ten thousand, and full of ten thousand invincible.
However, we know that the Eight Banners on which the Qing Dynasty relied for survival are no longer the tiger and wolf divisions of the past, and they have been comfortable for too long, and even some training horses cannot go up, whether it is discipline or discipline, or weapons and equipment are not at all an equal magnitude.
The most fundamental reason is that the Qing Dynasty is still a small-scale peasant economy, an agricultural country. While the Western powers, including Britain, have embarked on the road of industrialization, failure is inevitable.
At the same time, Afghanistan in Central Asia was also targeted by the great powers, mainly Britain and Tsarist Russia. These two countries are not easy to mess with, the Qing government has suffered a lot of losses in these two countries, and Tsarist Russia is also the country that has annexed the most Chinese territory.
Curiously, Britain's performance in the face of Afghanistan was far from the name of the Empire of the Rising Sun. From 1839 to 1919, it took eighty years to wage three wars and still failed to conquer Afghanistan. What's going on?
Afghanistan is a landlocked country in Central Asia, but bad luck is strategically important. Tsarist Russia not only wants to annex Central Asia, but also to go south to the Indian Ocean, to open this line, and to get rid of Afghanistan. In order to protect British India, britain needed to set up a strategic border on the periphery, so it also targeted Afghanistan.
The British also understood the ambitions and nature of the Russians, so they were more anxious, hoping to occupy Afghanistan, and launched three consecutive wars of aggression.
However, there are many difficulties in attacking Afghanistan. The British were not adapted to the terrain and climate of Afghanistan, were not familiar with mountain warfare, and were passively beaten and embarrassed everywhere in the deep mountains and dense forests.
Although the British invading army has an absolute advantage in terms of strength and equipment, its weaknesses are also very obvious. The British army was on an expedition, the logistics were poor, the traffic supply line was long, it was vulnerable to attack, and it was impossible to raise combat materials on the spot, making it difficult to support a long-term war.
The Afghans are a fierce fighting people, forming a fierce folk custom, facing foreign invaders, they have taken up arms to use the favorable terrain to resist the invaders, making the invaders pay a heavy price.
Britain also established a pro-British government, but this did not prevent the invasion of Tsarist Russia, but Britain could not do anything, and it was impossible to really fight with Russia. So the two forces are fighting here, and in order to prevent the guns from going wrong, the British did not treat Afghanistan like India.
Of course, Afghanistan did not take advantage of britain and lost a lot of territory. Therefore, this does not mean that Britain has gone downhill, and it should be known that the Opium War in the same period also began, and the humiliation suffered by the late Qing Dynasty had just begun.