During the Kangqian dynasty, when the Qing Dynasty was at its strongest, the rulers of the Qing Dynasty felt that their country was a "heavenly kingdom" and did not need to trade with other countries. Moreover, Western colonists also found a large amount of silver in South America. At that time, the Qing Dynasty mainly used silver as currency.
Therefore, trading with them would have a great impact on the economy of the Qing Dynasty, and the prevalence of Western capitalism threatened the feudal rule of the Qing Dynasty. So the rulers at that time realized the policy of "closing the country off".
Closed Qing Dynasty
Under the closed-door policy, it did resist the impact of Western economic policies on the rule of the Qing Dynasty, but it also brought a big problem, that is, if you do not communicate with the world, you will not catch up with the pace of the times, and you will lag behind the world.
The Qing Dynasty was still "raising heavenly years". The Western countries established capitalist governments through bourgeois revolutions, and then through the First Industrial Revolution.
As a result, the economic and industrial centers of the world slowly moved to the West. To be backward is to be beaten, which is the eternal truth of the world.
After the development of the capitalist powers in the West, they began to plunder the wealth of the world, establishing colonies around the world to squeeze the local population. to build your own country and accumulate more wealth for the country. And how could the Qing Empire survive the torrent of history at that time?
First friction
In 1840, because the Qing government let Lin Zexu sell cigarettes at Humen, which caused the British Empire to be dissatisfied with the Qing government, it sent 47 ships led by Rear Admiral George Yilu to the mouth of the Pearl River in Guangdong province in June 1840 to start a war against the Qing government. Despite the Qing's strenuous resistance, the Qing suffered more than 22,000 casualties, while the British suffered only 523 casualties (only 69 deaths).
There are many reasons for this, such as the Qing army still used the low-ability bird rifle, while the British army used the latest flintlock gun. There is also that many of the Qing troops who participated in the war at that time were the children of the Eight Banners, most of them smoked opium, and they were mentally weak all day, and many other factors led to the defeat of the Qing army. Defeat will be squeezed.
Thus the first unequal treaty in modern China was born the Treaty of Nanking. This is a treaty of humiliation and humiliation. It marked China's entry into a semi-feudal and semi-colonial society.
Frustrated again, start remediing
Aggression, unless you become stronger, there will be a second, third, and countless times as long as there is a first. Soon after, the Second Opium War ended in 1860, and Britain, France, Russia, and the United States invaded China again.
This time the Qing government was fighting against the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, and there was no force to fight against the four empires, and in such an environment, the four powers began to invade China in a frenzied way, and all invaded Beijing, the capital of the Qing Empire.
Committed the heinous crime of "burning the Yuanmingyuan", which was one of the most serious crimes of the great powers invading China, when the Yuanmingyuan was said to be the crystallization of the treasures of oriental culture, and the Qing government spent a huge amount of money to build a royal garden for 150 years, from the Kangxi Emperor to the Jiaqing Emperor.
Countless skilled craftsmen were used. It stored a lot of celebrity calligraphy and paintings, ancient books, porcelain, etc., and almost all the treasures that the Qing government could find in China at that time were put in. Westerners call the Old Summer Palace the Parthenon of the East.
Such a treasure was devastated by the great powers in the fire of three days and three nights.
They took away what could be taken away by car, and those that could not be taken away were burned with fire.
In this way, they were not satisfied with forcing the Qing government and them to sign the "Treaty of Yaohun", the "Treaty of Beijing", the "Treaty of Surveying and Dividing the Northwest Boundary", and so on. These treaties in turn made the Qing government pay compensation for the cession of land, and also demanded china's ownership of railways and the right to develop resources. Frenziedly plundering the resources of Chinese mainland.
These oppressions forced the top echelons of the Qing government to begin to remedy the faltering Qing Dynasty at that time, and the foreign affairs movement of "saving the dead and trying to survive" began, which was a movement led by feudal landlords to learn the advanced science and technology of the Western bourgeoisie, and it was also a "self-help" movement.
Led by the central representative YiXin the Prince of Gong, and the local representatives Li Hongzhang, Zuo Zongtang, Zhang Zhidong, and Zeng Guofan. This began with Zeng Guofan's ordnance office in Anhui in 1861. There are also Li Hongzhang's Jiangnan Manufacturing General Bureau and steamship merchants bureau in Shanghai in 1865 and 1872, and so on.
They also created the newspapers Declaration and the Bulletin of the Nations. There was also the establishment of a new-style school, and the prototype of the predecessor of Peking University, the Beijing Normal University Hall, was the Beijing Normal University Tongwenguan established at that time.
But all this was just a dying struggle, in the Sino-Japanese War, after the sinking of China's largest German-built Dingyuan and Zhenyuan ships in the Weihai War.
The Western Affairs Movement declared bankruptcy. The Western affairs movement failed because its purpose was not to take China down a new path, but to guarantee the rule of the feudal empire.
But it's not useless,
It brought advanced Western technology to China at that time and accumulated the wealth of China's national capitalist economy. It also provides a false example for future generations of national salvation movements. Remind future generations that if they want to understand China, they must change the social nature of semi-feudal and semi-colonial society.
The last straw that crushed the donkey
Japan, a backward oriental island nation, began the Meiji Restoration in 1868 after the Black Ship Incident in the United States, abandoning almost everything learned from the Tang Dynasty in China at that time and comprehensively learning from the West.
Unlike the Chinese Western affairs movement, the Meiji Restoration succeeded, allowing Japanese industry to develop rapidly, and soon became the only industrialized country in Asia. And Japan is a country that embraces the spirit of Bushido. He wants to rule the world, and the first step to this world domination is to occupy China first. So the invasion of China began.
In 1894, Japan launched the Sino-Japanese War, when the Qing government was still resisting the Boxer Rebellion at home. In the years of war, many Qing troops were killed, and the national strength was very empty, so many of the Qing troops were untrained recruits.
According to the post-war survey, a large proportion of the 16,000 Qing soldiers who participated in the war were untrained recruits!
They may have been farming in the fields with farm tools last month, and this month they had to wield unfamiliar knives and spears to fight!
Even so, the Japanese army was still met with relatively stubborn resistance, after conquering Lushun, in order to retaliate against the local soldiers and civilians, the Japanese army, which has always been full of animalism, began the infamous "Lushun Massacre", and later found that only 800 people survived in a city.
Soon Japan expanded its aggression, and many chinese heroes died heroically, one of them was Deng Shichang, who piloted the Zhiyuan when it was hit by a torpedo and sank into the water. He rushed to the Japanese warship Yoshino and was martyred for the country. In the end, Japan was defeated in the Sino-Japanese War. The Treaty of Maguan was signed with Japan.
The reasons for the defeat of the war were diverse, but one of the most hateful reasons was that the Sino-Japanese War coincided with Empress Dowager Cixi's 60th birthday, and the government gave Cixi the silver that was originally used to buy warships for her birthday. From then on, it seems that the life of the Qing Dynasty is not long. A new system is urgently needed to treat this terminally ill country and nation.