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(i)
The year 1776 was the peak of the Qing Dynasty.
In this year, after 5 years of bloody war, the Qing forces won the victory in quelling the rebellion in Sichuan and Jinchuan, and maintained the stability of the southwest frontier of the Qing Dynasty. The Qing Dynasty invested a total of 600,000 troops and 70 million yuan in this regard, which also ranked second in Qianlong's "Ten Complete Martial Arts", which caused the collapse of the local toast system and laid a solid position for the imperial court in the southwest in one fell swoop.
In this year, Qianlong ordered that the wise men and loyal generals of the Ming Dynasty be commended, believing that they were awe-inspiring in their ambitions, that their righteousness was praiseworthy, that they had sacrificed their lives for the country, that they had become benevolent and righteous, and that they should not be annihilated in the world. These loyal people included Fang Xiaoru, Qi Tai, Huang Zicheng and other courtiers who dared to violate Yan Zhizhi's advice, as well as Shi Kefa, Liu Zongzhou, Zodiac Zhou and other military generals who defended the city and martyred the country.
Qianlong's method was obviously higher than that of the birds and the monarchs of the previous dynasty, and the sympathy for the heroes and celebrities of the former dynasty was nothing more than to win the hearts and minds of the remnants of the Ming Dynasty.
In this year, Qianlong began to carry out a large-scale cultural strategy that lasted until his death: that is, to sort out the books left over from the previous dynasty, which was conducive to the governance of the world by the Qing Dynasty, and ordered people to compile them into books for wide circulation; to copy and destroy all those books that were unfavorable to the dynasty; and to recompile and copy all those works of greater fame, which was actually a falsification. Therefore, when studying history, Qianlong's "Four Libraries and Complete Books" can only be used as a reference, and cannot be regarded as a history of faith.
If you want to destroy your country, you must first destroy its history; if you want to destroy its history, you must first destroy its writing.
In the nearly 300-year history of the Qing Dynasty, dozens of large and small text prison movements have been carried out. Throughout the Qing Dynasty, when scholars wrote with pens, they should first pay attention not to make taboos; in order to avoid copying, they also deliberately used the local script of ethnic minorities that the officials of the Qing Dynasty did not know, which looked like a book of heaven, but it was actually a hidden means.
This approach is widely circulated.
This year, the famous corrupt official in the history of the great power, He Yan, was 26 years old, and he had previously served as the imperial bodyguard and the minister of treasury management, and he also held two important positions: director of the Central Office and minister of finance. Because of his shrewd performance of duties, he was deeply appreciated by Qianlong.
The year 1776 was the year of The Yellow Tengda. Qianlong promoted him to the post of Right Attendant of the Household Department, in March he was made Minister of Military Aircraft, and in April he was appointed Minister of Internal Affairs. In August, he was appointed deputy governor of the Yellow Flag. In November, he was appointed vice president of the National History Museum and rewarded with a crown of the Imperial Family; in December, he was appointed as the chief of the affairs of the Three Banners of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and gave the Forbidden City horseback riding.
In the next 23 years until the fall, He Yan was promoted by Qianlong and his power fell to the opposition. According to some sources, the income from the confiscation of property was equivalent to the sum of the income of the imperial court for 15 years at that time.
(ii)
In 1776, the year he began to soar, it was the year of the birth of the United States. In North America, across the Pacific, the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence, the United States officially declared its independence, and July 4 of each year is the anniversary of the United States' independence.
"We believe that the following truths are self-evident: that all men are created equal, that the Creator has endowed them with a number of non-negotiable rights, including the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
This year, Thomas Paine's Common Sense and Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations came out. The two books, the former prompting the publication of the Declaration of Independence, and the latter marking the creation of the classical economic system of the rich country and the rich people.
In this way, from the theoretical system to the economic system, a basic American outline is constructed. Basically, it can be described in the following paragraph, which is:
When the founding fathers of the United States did the top-level design, they feared that the voters would elect a villain, so they set up two houses that limited the power of the president. Fearing that the members of both houses would be bribed, they set up a justice to use the law to restrain them. Fearing that the justices would not be reliable, they not only gave the "salt on persimmon oil" to the media, but also banned the official newspaper. Fearing that even this would not help, the people had the right to bear arms.
The United States has been established for more than two hundred years. It is also under this top-level design that the United States has grown from scratch and become the world's unshakable number one power.
(iii)
The United States of 1776 was not yet in the vision of the Qing Dynasty. The Qing Dynasty was later destroyed in the intersection with Europe and the United States.
The huge Taiping Army caused a total population loss of more than 100 million, but it did not shake the foundation of the Qing Dynasty. On the contrary, after the two Opium Wars, the Qing Dynasty was in a dilemma and could not stop the tide of Westernization.
As early as 1793 in the late Qianlong period, the famous British politician and diplomat Ma Jiaerni led a delegation to China in the name of wishing the Qianlong Emperor a happy birthday, hoping to open the Chinese market through negotiations, but finally returned without success.
On the map used by Qianlong at that time, there was only a vague depiction of the European continent, mainly based on the old maps left by the Yuan and Ming dynasties, which were limitedly supplemented by European missionaries. So the Britain that Qianlong could see was nothing more than a slightly larger island. He felt that the whole world could not be the royal land, and these small states were just coming to pay tribute to the Heavenly Dynasty, ask for some rewards, fight the autumn wind and so on.
Obviously, Qianlong misjudged the situation, not understanding that Britain had replaced the Netherlands as the biggest winner of the great navigation era in the past one or two hundred years, that the colonies it owned were moving towards an empire that never set, and that the newly independent United States was just an egg laid by Britain.
The Macartney mission was welcomed and entertained by the imperial court, but failed to reach a trade agreement. There was little secrecy or patent awareness at the time, and he brought with him britain's most advanced weapons and scientific instruments, including the smoothbore guns that were widely used in the American Revolutionary War. These were all regarded by Qianlong as a strange trick, and until the Opium War, they were still stacked in warehouses and never used.
Those who say that they are backward and are about to be beaten can shut up, and the Qing Dynasty at that time was by no means backward in weapons, and the reason for their beating was ignorance and stubbornness, refusing to let the grass people in the circle know that the outside world was wonderful, refusing to let the grass people know that there was another new life that could not be slaves, and they were worried about losing their more than two hundred million fat two-legged sheep that could be slaughtered at any time.
According to the etiquette of the Qing Dynasty, Ma Jiaerni wanted to perform three kneeling and nine prostrations to Qianlong, but he was only willing to perform the British style of kneeling on one knee and one knee, and Qianlong was very unhappy, and hastily sent him away. Qianlong wrote a letter to King George III of England at the time, the original text of which reads as follows:
Carried by Fengtian, the Emperor edicted, and the King of England was informed:
The king of The King of Shu'er, far away in the heavy ocean, devoted himself to the transformation, and sent special envoys to the table, sailed to the court, wished for long life, and prepared square objects, with the general Chen. Reading the table text, the meaning of the words is earnest, and it is deeply praised for the king's deferential sincerity. All the envoys and deputy envoys who have paid tribute to the table, read their envoys to travel far, and push the grace and gift...
Roughly speaking, it means: You are a small country in England, and you have come to my kingdom today to seek naturalization, and you have brought many gifts, which are enough to express your loyalty, and you will not be indebted to you, Yunyun.
After that, the Qing Dynasty did not have much contact with Europe and the United States, and was limited to private trade. But the emperors of the Qing Dynasty began to vaguely know that there were powerful empires threatening the Qing Dynasty, and there was more than one Tsarist Russia. After the Second Opium War, Japan saw the weakness of the Qing Dynasty and began the Meiji Restoration, breaking away from Asia and entering Europe.
Britain called the Opium War the Sino-British Trade War, in fact, to compete for the open market of a big country. The original opium was produced in Southeast Asia, but the locals did not smoke it, and it was the Qing people who carried it forward and turned it into self-production. It was too late for Daoguang to discover that opium was causing an outflow of wealth and affecting the combat effectiveness of soldiers. The British did not care what to do with the Qing trade, but it just so happened that opium was more profitable. If there were more profitable chips at that time, it should be called the Sino-British chip war.
In the end, what was the Qing court afraid of Europe and the United States?
In fact, they are afraid of the "Declaration of Independence" of the United States, the "Bill of Rights" of Britain, the "Bill of Rights" of Britain, the Newspaper of Rights that dare to write anything, the fear of the ordinary people who can hide a few guns at will, the fear of their parliament's restrictions on the royal power, the fear of the court's accounting expenditure to be made public, the fear of their justices can be tried by anyone, the fear of the American militia is not under the management of the American court, the fear of officials can not be appointed by the court but elected by the public. What is afraid is that the greedy family foundation of the officials will be made public to the public, and the fear is that they will lose their privileges after being equal with the grass people...
In 1900, Cixi knew that she was invincible, and in the case of a disastrous defeat to Japan in 1894 and the total annihilation of the Beiyang Fleet, she dared to declare war on 11 countries, including Japan, in one breath after only 6 years. In her bones, she would rather bring the wealth and privileges stolen by her ancestors into the coffin than give them to the untouchables in her eyes to share.
Cixi once said to the iron hat kings of the Qing Dynasty: When you are conservative and backward, I still don't know that the strategies of foreigners such as Europe and the United States and small Japanese sons can make the country strong? You didn't think about it, they are strong, restricting the king's power, which is equivalent to us handing over the inheritance of our ancestors, and we have all become vases; our ancestors did not kill less when they entered the customs, and which of you did not have a blood debt in your hands over the years? The set of foreigners, after the change of day, can you still have your good fruit to eat?
In order to keep Ai Xin Jueluo's Jiangshan Sheji from being lost, Empress Dowager Cixi implemented reforms under the impetus of the reformist ministers Li Hongzhang and Zhang Zhidong. At the beginning of the reform, Empress Dowager Cixi first set the "four cannot be changed": that is, the three principles and five constants cannot be changed; the law of the ancestors cannot be changed; the authority of the Qing Dynasty cannot be changed; and her supreme imperial power cannot be changed. These "four intransigences" firmly limit the changes to the economic field, and cannot go one step further than the thunder pool in the form of government. Therefore, the Qing Dynasty could only engage in the "foreign affairs movement" that introduced advanced Western technology, and there was a theoretical system corresponding to it -- "middle school as the body, Western learning as the use" and "mastering the art of the master to control the yi."
The Western affairs movement promoted the economic growth of society and promoted the progress of the human environment to a certain extent. If you want to wear a crown, you will bear its weight. At this time, the decadent system of the Great Qing Dynasty has become the biggest obstacle to social development, and the internal and external difficulties are getting worse and worse. The diehards in power have preserved their immediate vested interests, but they have missed the opportunity for change.
Such a corrupt imperial court, greedy and foolish, arrogant, naturally wanted to be swept into the garbage heap of history.
The fall of the Qing Dynasty had nothing to do with weapons. In addition to the smoothbore guns used in the North American Revolutionary War when Qianlong was mentioned earlier, the Beiyang Fleet is also one of the world's largest armed forces, and among the weapons captured by the Eight-Power Alliance when it entered Beijing was a large number of the world's most advanced Maxim machine guns.
(iv)
On the other side of the ocean in the late Qing Dynasty, the United States was rising at an alarming rate to become a world power. The young United States was not perfect at the beginning of its founding, and there are many shortcomings to this day. The most black American in the world is the United States' own newspapers, radio and television stations, so that it has always given people the illusion that the United States is no longer working.
Until the 1950s, blacks in the United States were subjected to institutional discrimination, with a black woman arrested for refusing to give way to a white passenger on a bus.
In 1963 Martin Luther King Jr. gave a speech "I Have a Dream" and was assassinated 5 years later. In that speech he said:
I dream of a day when this country will stand up and truly realize the true meaning of its creed— that we believe that truth is self-evident and that all men are created equal. ...... If America is to be a great nation, that dream must come true.
On the other hand, in the Great Qing Dynasty, the world is changing, the environment is changing, but the greed of the upper and the lower and the foolishness have not changed. The Qing Dynasty is dead, where is China going? When commemorating the centenary of the Xinhai Revolution, the writer Mr. Yang Zhao once said: The Republic of China is an era of searching for answers, and many things in that era are too new to be named, so that we can only say it with our fingers.
Sometimes, people learn to speak in two years, but they spend their whole lives learning to shut up. Now find the answer?