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More and more film and television dramas, in order to meet the needs of some people, have repeatedly portrayed the Emperor of the Qing Dynasty as a wise and divine emperor of the ages. For example, Qianlong, who held power for 63 years and died at the age of 89, as an elderly emperor, called himself "the old man of the ten perfections". However, it is precisely because of this that China is weakening and gradually becoming disconnected from the world, digging a big hole for the "Opium War" decades later.
Looking back at history, the Manchus were able to enter the Central Plains, and the luck component played a very important role. Why do so many people in history scold Wu Sangui, because if it were not for his initiative to switch and surrender, Dolgun would not be able to enter the pass no matter how he tried, even if he was lucky enough to take a detour into the Central Plains, it was just to rob and go back to the New Year, he never thought of entering the Central Plains, and even at the beginning of their entry, Dorgon was always ready to flee back to the Guanwai once he encountered hard stubble.
The chaos in the world at the end of the Ming Dynasty gave the Manchus a golden opportunity, and they found that after entering the customs, not only did they go smoothly, but also more and more Han troops surrendered, and their own territory was getting bigger and bigger, which gradually had the ambition to dominate the world.
The Manchus are a typical semi-agricultural and semi-pastoral ethnic group, with no cultural heritage, and no historical heritage, and they also know that it is a godsend opportunity for them to enter the Central Plains, in order to be able to rule the Han people whose population is hundreds of times that of themselves for a long time, in addition to having to learn and use Han culture, they have to clamp down on the Han people everywhere.
The first to suffer were firearms. During the Ming Dynasty, the army had a "Vulcan Battalion", skilled in the use of various advanced firearms, the combat effectiveness was bursting, the Qing Taizu Nurhaci was killed by the cannon of the Ming Army, and at that time, multiple barrels of fire were invented and used, if they continued to improve, it was not impossible to build machine guns.
However, Qianlong preferred primitive horse archery and did not pay any attention to these advanced weapons, and only fought a draw in the conquest of Burma that year, one of the important reasons was that firearms were inferior to people. Those generals who returned from burma suggested the purchase of imitation and more powerful Western firearms, which was rejected by Qianlong, so the Qing Dynasty's firearms were inferior to those of the next generation and continued to degenerate.
During the Second Opium War, the defenders of Cixi, Ningbo, dug up the cannons buried by Wu Sangui in the ground two hundred years ago, and with their power, they actually defeated the attacking Anglo-French coalition forces, which shows that even at the end of the Ming Dynasty, China's artillery technology was still very advanced.
The second to suffer is trade. The Ming Dynasty also engaged in a closed country, which led to the wrath of the Wokou, and Hu Zongxian Qi Jiguang and others spent a lot of effort to quell the Wokou. The Ming Dynasty took this as a warning and reopened the sea ban, and at the end of the Ming Dynasty, maritime trade became increasingly prosperous, and if the Ming Dynasty could continue, perhaps China would also become a maritime trading power.
In the Qing Dynasty, especially when Qianlong was in power, China was once again closed to the country, leaving only Guangzhou to continue foreign trade, importing some kit-kat things from overseas for Qianlong to play. At that time, the world was undergoing earth-shaking changes, the Revolution swept across Europe, the United States became independent, and maritime trade was in full swing.
However, China was indifferent to the great changes in the whole world and the industrial world, and even gradually regressed, Qianlong was still immersed in his own dream of "prosperous world" and could not extricate himself, because of the issue of etiquette, he was unwilling to establish diplomatic relations with Britain, unwilling to integrate into this fissioned world, unwilling to be sober, until decades later, he was humiliated by the cannons of the strong ships.
The last to suffer is culture. From the beginning of Qin Shi Huang to the end of the Ming Dynasty, China experienced nearly two thousand years of feudal society, and the Chinese people increasingly felt that Confucianism had serious flaws, and many promising people began to think about new cultural paths.
For example, Wang Yangming's unity of knowledge and action, such as Huang Zongxi's advocacy of abolishing the "law of one family" to establish the "law of the world", such as Tang Zhen's belief that "all emperors are thieves". These new learnings, like the "Renaissance" of Europe, are trying to find a path more suitable for human development, and it is not known whether they can hatch a perfect path by going with nature.
However, after the Qing soldiers entered the customs, the study of new studies came to an abrupt end, especially after Qianlong ruled the world, daxing "literal prison", not only had nothing to do to catch the wind and shadows, but also imposed capital punishment on those innocent people implicated, and the main offender's relatives were all males over 15 years old and all women under 15 years old were listed as slaves.
Zhuo Changling was sentenced by Qianlong to be a reverse poem because of the poems such as "It can be known that the grass is reckless and weeping, and all the poems are not dead heart", and qianlong was sentenced to reverse poetry, and was killed in a coffin, and his grandson was also beheaded, which was simply unbelievable, and the mouth of the people was even more than the defense of Sichuan, and Qianlong was simply extreme to pervert. Under such a cruel cultural ban, the decline of Confucianism has been revived for more than a hundred years.