Fathers die and sons succeed, this is a custom in China after entering the patriarchal society through the matrilineal society, the rise and fall of the country is between one person and one family, polygamy is a normal state in China's feudal society. What kind of sparks occur when polygamy meets monogamy?
The marital status in England was different from that of feudal society, and they adhered to monogamy.
When he was the Daoguang Emperor, he did not know that there was a young woman who was only 22 years old sitting on the throne of Britain, and later he knew it, and he actually asked a question, and now he will be ridiculed when he mentions it.
I. The Qing Dynasty, which was passively beaten
After the death of the Jiaqing Emperor, the Daoguang Emperor ascended the throne as emperor, and the Qing Dynasty at this time had already been in turmoil and did not return to the original Kangqian prosperous world.
The Daoguang Emperor took over another mess, and the previous prosperity made the emperors of the Qing Dynasty swell to arrogance.
Although the Qianlong period was also a prosperous period, he brought the Qing Dynasty into a closed state.
After Jiaqing ascended to the throne, he raided the mansion and confiscated a lot of silver, and then began to rectify the atmosphere.
At that time, the Jiaqing Emperor officially seized imperial power when he was 39 years old, and he was now facing the mess left by Qianlong. During Qianlong's reign, corrupt officials ran rampant and extravagance became a common practice. All of this was transferred to the people.
There were also problems in the army, military discipline was scattered, and it had long since lost its original courage.
After Jiaqing ascended the throne, in order to turn the tide, he was assassinated many times. However, the corruption of officials and the lack of military morale cannot be recovered by his own strength alone, and the Qing Dynasty has already declined at this moment.
After the Daoguang Emperor ascended the throne, he also wanted to rectify the officialdom and restore the purity of the imperial court.
Second, the Qing Dynasty, which is difficult to return
Although the Daoguang Emperor was very hard to change this situation, the Qing Dynasty had already shown decay and could not be changed.
The Daoguang Emperor was still working very hard as an emperor, which could not change his arrogant personality.
He believes that the Qing Dynasty is still a powerful country in the prosperous era of Kangqian, and no country in the world can surpass it, even if the current country is not as good as before.
Therefore, he looked down on Western countries, and he felt that these countries could not oppose the Qing Dynasty.
While the West was vigorously engaged in a commercial revolution, the Qing Dynasty was still immersed in self-confidence.
It was through the Industrial Revolution that the power of the Western powers increased greatly, and they began to be dissatisfied with their own countries. In order to expand their power, they set their sights on the Qing Dynasty.
The Daoguang Emperor at that time did not know at all that the Qing Dynasty had encountered his Waterloo this time, and China had also suffered the beginning of the humiliation of modern times, that is, the Opium War.
The Opium War was led by the British, and although Lin Zexu sold cigarettes, this was not a cure for the symptoms.
The Qing Dynasty ended in defeat during the Opium War and signed the first unequal treaty.
This is really a shame for China, a big country, that it has made other countries fight without the ability to fight back, and it is even complacent to think that it is very powerful, which makes people very ironic.
3. The Speechless Daoguang Emperor
And the Daoguang Emperor was still very speechless, after the war, the Qing army also took prisoners of the British army.
The Daoguang Emperor later saw these captives and reacted completely differently from ordinary people. Normal people will ask about the other party's weapon configuration and plans, but the Daoguang Emperor is not.
At that time, the Daoguang Emperor saw the British captives and asked these questions.
He asked the captives what size and population the captives were,
There are also the questions of whether to ride a horse, and the most speechless is the question he asks about the Queen of England.
He was surprised to learn from the captives that the Queen of England was only 22 years old.
Then he said, "The heroine is only twenty-two years old, so why should she be the head of a country?" Is there a match, who is the name of the husband, and what position does he currently hold in the country? "On this one issue he is still ridiculed.
This sentence can be seen in the superficiality of the Daoguang Emperor, but as a feudal emperor, there is nothing wrong with his problems.
After all, for thousands of years, it was dominated by male power, and the emperor pointed out a Wu Zetian, so it was normal for the British Daoguang Emperor to not understand.
The idea was normal, but what left people speechless was that he wanted to include the Queen of England in the harem. The Daoguang Emperor thought at that time that he could not only get a beauty, but also save the country from war.
How ridiculous such an idea is, and you can also see the gap between East and West.
Iv. The Conflict Between East and West
The Daoguang Emperor had such an idea related to his childhood education, after all, many families at that time would adopt a marriage system, and the Daoguang Emperor's idea was a phenomenon of all societies in that period.
But he did not understand what Britain was like, what the situation was like.
In Britain, the succession to the throne was no longer limited to men and women. Because they believe in Christianity, so
From the 2nd century BC onwards, Britain practiced monogamy, which no one could violate.
If this system is violated, it will be punished.
And their succession to the throne is not limited to men and women, but in the same case, men have priority.
When the Opium War broke out, It was Queen Victoria who reigned, and her parents had only one child, so it was a natural succession.
Compared with the feudal period, the British inheritance system was that there was no struggle for the throne.
The feudal dynasty is different, and there will naturally be competition when there are many children. The two periods were fundamentally different, so the problem of the Daoguang Emperor was normal in the eyes of the Qing Dynasty.
The idea of the Daoguang Emperor also shows the current situation of the entire dynasty, no matter what the situation of the emperor, they have long been derailed from the world.
They were so arrogant and did not know how to learn from other people's advanced culture, which doomed the Qing Dynasty to decline.
After Qianlong, China went downhill, and if his heir could go abroad and see what was going on outside, the Qing Dynasty might have been in a different situation
The Qing Dynasty will not be destroyed so quickly, let alone let the Chinese nation fall into a passive beating situation for hundreds of years.
5. Summary
During the feudal period, the emperors accepted Confucian culture, but they deviated from that culture.
The most fundamental reason why they dare not contact the outside world is that they are afraid of themselves. They fear that foreign cultures will have an impact on their power and thus their position will be unstable.
But the state keeps pace with the times, and such ideas only imprison the mind.
If he had gone out, the Daoguang Emperor would certainly not have asked such a ridiculous question, let alone made people laugh at the questions he had raised at that time, laughing at his ignorance and narrow-mindedness.
The loneliness of the Qing Dynasty was doomed, and the impact of their isolation was also indelible.
Looking at the West, queens abound, while China only has one Wu Zetian, which still makes people talk about it and controversy.
Later, in order to prevent the Wu Zetian incident from happening again, a plaque was erected for the harem not to interfere in politics. One
One is to illustrate the low status of women in China since then, and the other is that there is no room for renewal and reform in that period. But everything is far away, let us cherish the life now.