One day in July 1841, Zhenjiang, Jiangsu. Two old friends met, originally planned to talk to the bed, but they did not have the pleasure and excitement of the old friends to meet, some are just the common sadness and helplessness, can only be relatively speechless, a night without sleep, the so-called "ten thousand senses of the day, meet without a word."
The next day, one of them was Yi Li, he was Lin Zexu, and the other was Wei Yuan. On the occasion of parting, he accepted the "Chronicle of Four Continents" organized by Lin Zexu in Guangzhou and began to further collect information and compile the "Chart of the Sea Country" to awaken the people of the country, understand the world situation, and save the danger.
Wei yuan
A year later, the Atlas of the Sea Kingdom was written. The book comprehensively introduces the geography, history, politics, economy, military, science and technology, and even religion, culture, education, terroir and other situations of various countries in the world, and many modern military science and technology materials such as shipbuilding are also gathered in the book.
This book, which hoped to create miracles but failed to play its due role, wrote a short sentence of "Master Yi Long Skill to Control Yi" to tell the first generation of Chinese who opened their eyes to the world and thought about the future of their country. Wei Yuan, who grew up in the traditional Chinese cultural environment, saw the power of strong ships and cannons, and also vaguely saw the institutional strengths of the modernized country. He advocated the establishment of shipyards and arsenals in Guangzhou, hired French and American engineers to supervise construction, and taught ship navigation and the use of weapons.
However, the "Atlas of the Sea Country", which embodies the dream of saving the country and trying to strengthen the country, has encountered an unprecedented cold reception. At that time, there were at least 3 million literate people in China, but few people read the book, let alone seriously understand the profound connotations of the book. Wei Yuan did not expect that the confidant of this book was actually in Japan, and that he would later enlighten and promote the Meiji Restoration in Japan. The narrow strait separates China and Japan. The gap between the two sides' responses to the national crisis is even much wider than a strait.
In the political climate of China in the middle of the 19th century, japan still lacked the courage to learn from the enemy, the urgency of saving the country could not change the inertia of traditional thinking, and the cannon of 1840 could not awaken a dream of the heavenly dynasty that was too traditional, and the change was over before it even sprouted.
At the end of the Opium War, the Daoguang Emperor was 60 years old, he wanted to clean his ears, hated to hear bad news, and when he learned that the British army had withdrawn from the Yangtze River, The Daoguang Emperor's first reaction was to order the coastal provinces to withdraw their troops to save military expenses. Most of the officials in the Qing Dynasty were "smart people" who knew how to like and dislike the emperor's likes and dislikes, and for many people, the "future" was more important than anything else. As for "Yingyi", it was just a small trouble that the Empire had faced, and under the shock of the "Holy Heavenly Power", and then a little "Huairou" was touched, didn't the enemy obediently retreat? Isn't it possible to enjoy wealth again? The war was over, everything in China was back to square one, and the military and political officers of the Qing government celebrated each other.
The rulers of the Qing Dynasty also worked hard to let the social economy run on the track of the original natural economy, and the opportunity for China's transformation into a modern society based on the market economy was lost again and again, and the road to modernization seemed to be close at hand, but in fact it was out of reach. Before the Opium War, China had fewer and fewer arable fields and more population, and the rate of population growth made people's lives increasingly embarrassing. After the Opium War, the influx of opium, foreign goods and a large amount of indemnities made the economic situation of the whole of China worse and worse, and every year a large amount of opium and other commodities came in, and huge amounts of silver flowed out, resulting in expensive money. Land annexation is also on the rise. In Jintian Village, Guangxi Province, for example, landlords occupy more than 85% of the land, and the rent is generally 50% to 70%, and some even as high as 80%. At the same time, the corruption and exploitation of officials made the peasants increasingly intolerable, which eventually led to the Taiping Rebellion that swept most of China.
In 1843, a 29-year-old boy in HuaXian County, Guangdong Province, fell off the list for the fourth time, and even Xiucai did not pass the examination. The story of the famous Luosun Mountain has been staged countless times in China's more than a thousand years of imperial examinations, and many people have been hit by this blow, or they have bravely fought again until they die; Or go back to your hometown to cultivate and read, don't him. But this man's reaction was really different, he was frustrated, angry, but not helpless. He shouted: Wait until I come to get the corporal myself!
In 1844, Hong Xiuquan and his friend Feng Yunshan began a missionary activity in Guangxi. During this period, Hong Xiuquan and Guangdong devoted themselves to learning Christianity to improve the doctrines and rituals of the "Worship of God Society", and studied at the Luo Xiaoquan Chapel in Guangzhou for 4 months. Feng Yunshan, on the other hand, took the initiative to stay in Guangxi and began to organize propaganda work. Within a few years, the "Worship God Society" developed rapidly in several counties in the Zijing Mountains of Guangxi, with a growing number of participants and even spread to Guangdong.
On January 11, 1851, Hong Xiuquan's birthday, the Taiping Banner was erected in Jintian Village, Guangxi. Soon, Hong Xiu assumed the full title of Heavenly King and established the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.
Suddenly, the yellow flag of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom spread all over the southeast, and the southeast corner was replaced by a new owner. The Qing Empire's life-sustaining Jiangnan Caoyun was paralyzed, the north-south traffic was cut off, and it faced a major challenge unprecedented since the Dingding Central Plains.
On March 18, 1853, with a loud noise, the city wall of Nanjing's YifengMen was collapsed by landmines, Lin Fengxiang led his troops to climb the Yifengmen First, and countless yellow flags quickly poured into the city from the gap, and Lu Jianying, the governor of Liangjiang, the minister of Qincha, was killed. On March 19, the Taiping Army broke through the inner city, beheaded the Jiangning general Xiang Hou, and the deputy governor Huo Longwu and captured Nanjing.
On March 29, a sunny day, Yang Xiuqing led all the soldiers to the shore to greet Hong Xiuquan, and in a cheer, Hong Xiuquan entered Nanjing for the first time and never left again.
When it first entered Nanjing, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom had a new atmosphere, straightened out its troops, strictly enforced military discipline, and standardized order. Soon after, the "Tianchao Tianmu System" was promulgated, which promulgated the land dream of Chinese peasants for thousands of years in the form of decrees. However, the social ideal of "having land and farming, having food and food, having clothes and clothing, having money and making the same envoys, being everywhere uneven, and no one not keeping warm" is nothing less than absolute egalitarianism with the characteristics of primitive society, which runs counter to the trend of world development at that time, and it is obviously difficult to grow a modernized state and society on such a basis. Ideals and fantasies were so strangely and naturally combined in the dream paradise of Chinese farmers in the mid-to-late 19th century.
Why did the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom fail? This is a question that has aroused the thinking of countless scholars in later generations. Among them, the leadership's large-scale construction, extravagance and lavishness, and internal power struggles are all important reasons for its rapid decline. The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom deviated from the "equality" it preached and quickly degenerated into a decadent feudal dynasty, until the final collapse, which was only more than 10 years.
In 1856, the Tianjing Incident seriously weakened the leadership and military strength of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, and the original strategic advantage over the Qing Dynasty no longer existed, and the war situation took a sharp turn for the worse. In June 1864, the Xiang army led by Zeng Guofan captured the Tianwang Palace.
Marx
Marx, who had placed great hopes on the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, wrote the following words a few years after the failure of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom:
"They didn't give themselves any tasks other than a change of dynasty... The panic they gave to the people was worse than the panic they gave to the rulers. Their whole mission seems to be to use ugly destruction to deal with stagnation and decay, and this destruction has no signs of construction work. ”
In vain, there was a "New Chapter of Senior Administration" that adapted to the trend, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom could not be implemented, the Qing government was unwilling to implement it, and more importantly, there was no class that could implement it. However, it was the Taiping Rebellion that caused some people to finally wake up from the dream of "Heyan Haiqing".
Reading has a sense: the Opium War, the British ship cannon opened the door of China, Western goods poured into China, modern advanced ideas, production methods gradually entered the vision of the Chinese, and the rulers of the Heavenly Dynasty chose to turn a blind eye and abandon it as contempt. Thinking that the heavenly dynasty is a superior nation, the enemy is regarded as "heroic", and the blind arrogance is interpreted to the fullest, and the fist of the enemy's powerful military force in the face does not make the Qing government wake up. In the official field of the Great Qing Dynasty, there are many "smart people", and the "future" is more important than anything else, so that they can fight hard, and there will be thousands of reasons for appeasement.
In the era of decay and decay, there were still people who opened their eyes to see the world, and Wei Yuan was the first person to open his eyes to see the world. The original intention of the "Chart of the Sea Country" was to enlighten the people of the country to see the world, but they were coldly treated, and the readers were all taking the examination, reading the eight strands of literature, only for the sake of the career, who had the leisure to read books about foreign countries. The sad thing is that Japan, which is across the sea, began to accept reform because of the enlightenment of the "Chart of the Sea Country" -- the Meiji Restoration, which was a big step forward for the modernization process of Japan, and the gap between China and Japan gradually widened, laying the groundwork for the subsequent historical shame and lamenting for Wei Yuan.
The loss of power humiliated the country, the land was cut off to pay compensation, the people did not have a good life, and a peasant uprising broke out. Hong Xiuquan and Yang Xiuqing armed their minds with advanced Western ideas, but they established an equal society in a primitive society and a feudal social system. "Farming with fields, food and food, clothing and clothing, money and envoys, everywhere uneven, no one without warmth" has satisfied the wishes of the broad masses of peasants, but backward means of production are difficult to support a utopian social system, it is difficult to operate, the people are not rich families, take out the fruits of their own labor to share, uneven interests stifle enthusiasm, doomed to a long time; laying down a tile of the country and the country will be extravagant and lavish, and the leading strata will lose leadership power because of suspicion, uneven interests, and contradictions in power struggle On the other hand, the limitations of the peasant class doomed it to be unable to carry out a revolution at the bottom of the side.
The advanced Elements of China in the Dark Age groped in the dark, and it still seems great today, they opened up the people's wisdom, attacked the foundation of the old forces, and promoted the process of China's modernization.
Marx, who was far away, was also watching the peasant movement in China, and at first he had a positive evaluation of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement, with great expectations, but in the end he was still disappointed - "They did not propose any tasks to themselves except for the change of dynasty... The panic they gave to the people was worse than the panic they gave to the rulers. Their whole mission seems to be to use ugly destruction to deal with stagnation and decay, and this destruction has no signs of construction work. The Communist Manifesto was issued in 1848 and awaited the discovery of China's advanced intellectuals decades later.
The ancestors saved the people and sought the lives of the people, and they also dreamed of revival. Today, China has achieved a well-off society in an all-round way, but we will not lie in the book of merits to talk about a well-off, and our generation will continue to struggle to realize the dream of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.
I would like to thank Mr. Gu Yaqi for his book "The Road to Rejuvenation".