preface
In the late Qing Dynasty, it was nothing more than fighting wars, losing money and cutting land, fighting again, losing money again, cutting land again, infinite reincarnation.
The most humiliating period in history must be the late Qing Dynasty.
So how much meat were cut off in the late Qing Dynasty? How much money was lost?
Did the silver be paid off later? Let's do the math today.
01
Backwardness must be beaten
Since 1840, the Qing Dynasty has signed a lot of unequal treaties, but the ones who lost the most money are probably these three, the Treaty of Nanjing, the Treaty of Shimonoseki and the Treaty of Xinqiu.
The first is the Opium War in 1840, the two countries because of the trade war war, British warships and soldiers under the city of Dagukou, in fact, this time is not far from the imperial capital, the Daoguang Emperor quickly sent the minister Qishan to Guangzhou to replace Lin Zexu, and the two countries signed the "Nose Piercing Grass Treaty" after negotiation.
The customs duties are still Qing government, but Hong Kong will be ceded and 6 million silver dollars will be paid. However, Qishan did not dare to report that he had ceded Hong Kong, until later Daoguang found out, and directly sent him a frontier to see the scenery on the grounds that Qishan had ceded Hong Kong without authorization.
In the history books, the image of Qishan is a traitor, admiring the foreigner, and the seller seeks glory, in fact, from the "Nose Piercing Grass Covenant" alone, it is actually good, it is the Qing Dynasty's modern reparations to cut the least land, the evaluation given by the great historian Jiang Tinghuang is that the ability is far beyond the time, which can be regarded as whitewashing him.
On the other hand, the British responsible for signing the righteous law reported to the United Kingdom, but the London government considered that the benefits were too small, the treaty was too lenient, the most important thing was not the full opening of the port, and the ceded Hong Kong Island was considered to be a place where 'birds do not lay eggs'. Queen Victoria also blamed Yi Lu, feeling that Yi Lu was ineffective and directly removed Yi Lu from his post.
At that time, the two sides withdrew the sponsors, so the negotiations broke down, and the British warships continued north, cutting off the economic lifeline of the Qing Dynasty--- the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal, and the British army attacked the Chinese mainland along the mouth of the Yangtze River.
20,000 British troops landed in Nanjing, and a large number of artillery batteries were erected on Bauhinia Mountain outside Nanjing, and the frightened Qing government hurriedly signed the Treaty of Nanjing, which in addition to ceding Hong Kong, customs duties were gone, and five ports were opened.
Of course, there is the most important thing, that is, losing money, money is the eternal benefit, this time lost 21 million silver dollars.
This time it is much harsher than "The Nose Piercing Covenant", and the compensation is still Spanish silver dollars.
At that time, there were hundreds of kinds of currency commonly used in the Qing Dynasty, including official coins of the Great Qing Dynasty, silver tickets circulated by private money houses, and "fan coins" minted in Spain, Britain, and the Netherlands.
The front of the Spanish silver dollar looks like a wig for the king, and I don't know that I thought it was "Sekyamuni", also known as Buddha's head or Buddha silver. This coin is uniform, neat in specification, and has a large output, so major transactions are formulated for this coin.
Although the Spanish Empire has declined, its coins are still useful and a strong currency.
Do you know what the concept of 21 million Spanish silver dollars is?
A Buddha silver weighs about 0.72 grams, about 15.12 million taels of silver, generally 20 taels of silver is enough for ordinary people to spend a year, at that time, ordinary mansions in Beijing only needed 70 taels of silver. Of course, it is very difficult to convert the currency price of the era.
Twenty-year-old eggs only need 1 yuan a pound, and now they have soared to 5~6 yuan, not to mention the currency exchange of various countries 200 years ago. But in order to facilitate the conversion, we roughly calculated one or two in the middle and late Qing Dynasty according to the foreign ratio conversion website, which is equivalent to about 15 US dollars, which means that the Qing Dynasty took away 315 million US dollars in the Treaty of Nanjing.
To be precise, it was equivalent to one-third of the Qing government's annual fiscal revenue at that time, and with the internal strength of the Qing government's compensation at that time, the London government also wondered whether it could come up with so much money at one time, and intimately set them up installments.
It can be divided into four years and six installments, if not paid according to the time, then 5% interest will be added every year, in fact, the Qing government at that time was still a little bit of a family, plus the amount of compensation was not particularly large, so the money was paid by the Qing government on schedule.
02
Persimmons still have to find a soft pinch
Of course, there is time for this kind of spending money to buy a day, and after about 20 years, in 1860, the British found their second brother France and several other small countries this time, and the two discussed, let's go to the big Qing to borrow some silver flowers. So he drove the army into the city of Beijing, and also burned the Old Summer Palace, and the Qing Dynasty was so frightened that he didn't think of resisting, so he signed the Treaty of Beijing with Britain and France.
This time, in addition to ceding Kowloon, he also gave the east of the Ussuri River, including Sakhalin Island and Haisenwei, to Tsarist Russia---, which did not do anything to make peace. As with the Treaty of Nanjing, the reparations amounted to 21 million taels of silver dollars. Of course, losing money and cutting land is a loss, but it is not without a little gain.
At the same time, the Qing regime was facing the threat of the Taiping Rebellion, and the southeastern half of the country was shaken, and the three countries that benefited from the benefits said that they would assist the Qing government in dealing with the Taiping Rebellion, and then the Qing government, relying on the blessing of foreign troops and equipment, quickly suppressed the peasant uprising.
At this time, Japan saw that it had won its own son and was easily pinched by others, and finally it was impatient.
In 1895, after launching the Sino-Japanese War and beating his former master, he also signed the Treaty of Shimonoseki, which required Japan to compensate 200 million taels of silver for military expenditure, and Japan also took Taiwan and the Liaodong Peninsula in the treaty.
But let the Japanese take the Liaodong Peninsula, the Russians feared that they would harm their Far Eastern interests, so they asked Germany and France to intervene and force Japan to abandon the Liaodong Peninsula.
The funny thing is that the Qing government also gave an extra 30 million taels of silver to redeem the Liaodong Peninsula, and this logic is also unsolvable.
This time, the payment is still in installments, and there is an additional interest payment of 5% per year, which is paid over seven years. The Japanese felt that the silver of the Qing government was not pure enough, and needed to add another 13 million taels of purity fees, coupled with the decline in international silver prices, the exchange loss accompanied by 15 million taels, a Shimonoseki treaty, directly let the Qing government compensate Japan for 260 million taels of silver.
At this time, the Qing government was already terminally ill, even if it did not eat or drink for a year, its income was only 80 million taels, which was equivalent to three years of national treasury revenue,
260 million taels of silver is equivalent to 3.64 billion US dollars, which is definitely an astronomical amount, the Qing court after several baptisms, really can not get money, can only borrow from other countries at high interest, so first borrowed from the British HSBC and repaid the first installment.
However, it was opposed by Germany, France and Russia, saying that we helped you find the Liaodong Peninsula, and if you want to borrow money, you must first borrow from us, so the Qing government changed to borrowing from the three countries. But Russia was still not satisfied, first kicked Germany out, and then cooperated with France, lending the Qing government a total of 400 million francs, which was equivalent to about 98 million taels of silver, with an annual interest rate of 4%, guaranteed by customs revenues, and repaid in 36 years.
Later, in order to avoid the protests of Britain and Germany, the Qing government had to borrow from Germany and Britain at interest rates of 5% and 4.5%, and Japan took this astronomical amount to enrich the country and strengthen the army, which became the later Asian hegemon.
03
Is Tsinghua University U.S. sponsored?
After getting these treaties, the Qing government did not know that the tendon was wrong, and actually believed that the Boxers were really invulnerable, and ran to war with 11 countries, wanting to use this to wash away the shame of these years, so they were beaten by the eight-nation coalition army, and if they couldn't be beaten, then you had to be cut, so there was the "Xin Ugly Peace Treaty".
This time, the compensation is 450 million taels of silver, paid in 39 years, with an annual interest of 4%, which is calculated to 980 million taels with principal and interest, about 14.7 billion US dollars.
Perhaps the conscience of some countries found that so many countries bullied a country really carelessly, returned part of the accounts, and the United States also took the money to fund the study of Qing court students, which is really ridiculous, is there a feeling of slap to a date.
And there has always been a rumor that Tsinghua University is sponsored by the United States, what kind of thing is this?
So in order to refute this rumor, I consulted some historical materials, because the defeat of the Qing government in those years naturally required reparations, probably because the United States felt that it was a free and developed country, because there was no lion to pay compensation.
At that time, they only asked for military compensation, but these military compensation payments were three times the compensation, which was discovered by Liang Chen, the minister in the United States at the time, in order not to refute the face of the Americans, after negotiation, took out part of the accounts to build a school, and Tsinghua University is also one of them.
In fact, Tsinghua University was built with Chinese money, not as some Tian Gou on the Internet said, taking the accounts paid by China to build the school, how did it become the money donated by the Americans?
04
How much did the Qing Dynasty pay in the end?
After the end of World War I, China, as the victorious power, the government of the Republic of China did not recognize any unequal treaties and refused any debt compensation.
Soviet Russia then replaced Tsarist Russia, and for the sake of international political reputation, immediately affirmed that the Gengzi Clause was a symbol of imperialism, and they were willing to give it up, and then the rest of the countries followed suit.
In fact, the Qing court government should have paid 576 million taels of silver, equivalent to about 8 billion US dollars, which is the largest amount of compensation in Chinese history.
This is definitely the most humiliating era in Chinese history, remember that if you fall behind, you will be beaten.
Before the Opium War, the continent was the world's richest country, and it was a unified country.
But it was in this situation that we signed all kinds of treaties to kneel at the slightest threat, the Sino-Japanese War was the most, and the total annihilation of the army in the case of warships superior to Japan was the greatest shame of our nation, because at this time China did not even have the courage to resist, just a dog, and the great powers let go east to the east, let go west to the west!
Personal summary: Both periods are the history of shame for our nation, the late Qing is like a dog, and the Republic is like a rabbit!
What do you think?
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