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The Qing Dynasty: The Decline
Dynasty composed by the Manchus, they began its decline in the XIX century
Foreign trade was limited to the Guangzhou (Canton) zone.
• Deficit in the British commercial balance: Great Britain imported tea, silk and porcelain and exported only Indian cotton -
The British “savior” and The Nanjing Treaty
The Opium War, Opium was grown in India and transported to China through the British East Indian Company. Opium, as a drug, was not accepted by the Chinese government.
Nanjing Treaty caused five ports to open to British trade, limited taxes on British goods, chinese to pay indemnity for warfare costs and extraterritoriality. -
Tai Ping Rebellion Started
Peasant rebellion sparked by the leadership of a Christian convert, Hong Xiuquan.
The objectives where to Solve economical problems, land for them, destroy the demon Manchu rulers (Qing dynasty)
Europeans also came to aid the dynasty -
End of the Tai Ping Rebellion
It is estimated that the entire rebellion cost more than twenty million lives (twice that of World War I).
Even by the 1950s, some parts of central China had not yet fully recovered from the destruction of the Taiping
era.
It introduced notions of common property, land reform, equal position of women, abstinence from opium, tobacco and alcohol, calendar reform, literary reform, and above all, a new political-military organization. -
The Boxer Rebellion
A Chinese secret organization called the Society of the Righteous and Harmonious Fists led an uprising in northern China against the spread of Western and Japanese influence there. The rebels, referred to by Westerners as Boxers because they performed physical exercises they believed would make them able to withstand bullets, killed foreigners and Chinese Christians and destroyed foreign property. -
One Hundred Days of Reform
The emperor was Guang Xu
There were political, administrative and education reforms.
Empress Dowager Cixi imprisoned the emperor
and she began to rule
•End to the reforms
