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Hist 270, Week 15, Lecture 2 (Tim Brook)
The World in China
introduction: the 19c is usually portrayed as an ever greater and unmitigated disaster; in some
ways it was, but it must also be seen as an evolving interaction between Chinese and nonChinese states and individuals in which Chinese themselves were influential actors, even if they
were left with little certainty or confidence when the Qing dynasty collapsed.
economic
political
intellectual/
cultural
1. Foreign interests in
China
opium
“free trade”
Christianity
2. Chinese
accommodation
compradores,
opium trade
treaty ports,
extraterritoriality
diplomacy,
translation
3. Chinese resistance
global economic
crisis
Taiping Rebellion.
Self-Strengthening,
Boxer Rebellion
xenophobia +
study abroad
4. Legacies for the
20th century
deficit,
indemnities
unequal treaties,
end of monarchy
uncertainty +
radicalism
(1) Foreign Interests in China
tea: Thomas Twinings opened his teashop on the Strand in 1706, the longest continuous ratepayer in London; Twinings logo created 1787 is world's oldest company logo still in use.
opium: handled by the East India Company until its charter is revoked in 1837, thereafter
handled by companies such as Jardine’s (now Jardine Matheson).
William Jardine pressures Prime Minister Lord Palmerston to get Parliament to declare war on
China in 1839: the first Opium War.
chest=1 picul (approx. 60 kg.)
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Dr. Peter Parker (1804-88): Yale M.D. and minister graduated 1834; traveled to Canton same
year, first full-time medical missionary in China, opens Ophthalmic Hospital in 1835,
also served as diplomatic interpreter for US in 1844 and again 1856.
Lam Qua 林官 (actual name Qiao Guangchang 關喬昌, 1801-60) one of the greatest painters of
south China in the 19c; painted Parker’s portrait, also sketched medical deformities for
Parker to display back in the US; must have studied with the English painter George
Chinnery (177401852), though the latter claimed not.
Lin Zexu: the official commissioner by the emperor to solve the opium question, but whose
actions push Britain into retaliating with war; Lam Qua painted Lin’s portrait, and Parker
treated his hernia (small world).
Lam Qua painted Lin and Chinnery painted Jardine: the protagonists of the Opium War.
(2) Chinese Accommodation
Treaty of Nanking, 1842: main articles:
2. designating 5 ports where foreigners could live and trade (“treaty ports”);
3. the Qing cedes Hong Kong Island to the British;
4. $6 million indemnity for the opium Lin destroyd;
5. end of government foreign trade monopoly (known as the Cohong), plus $3 mllion
awarded to cover unpaid debts to British merchants;
6. $12 million to be paid for Britain’s expenses during the Opium War.
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the mid-19c trade system:
textiles: Britain to India
tea: India (no longer China) to Britain
opium: India to China
raw cotton: US to Britain (paid for by the opium revenues).
China goes from trade surplus to trade deficit during 1870s.
Sir John Bowring: 1835 MP; 1849-534 British consul at Canton and superintendant of trade;
returned to England to lobby for the decimal system; 1854-59 governor of Hong Kong,
may have provoked second Opium War but enlarged the role of Chinese in law and
public life; last post as commissioner to Italy in 1861.
Prince Gong (Manchu name Isin): opposed to foreigners as young man but shifts to interest and
friendship, joins Cixi’s palace coup in 1861, reorganized the Zongli Yamen (Foreign
Office) to handle Qing relations with Western powers, set up translation bureau to train
Chinese in Western languages and translate foreign scientific works into Chinese.
(3) Chinese Resistance
popular resistance: Taiping Rebellion (Hong Xiuquan as Christian), 1851-64.
state resistance: the Self-Strengthening Movement, discredited by war with Japan in 1894-95.
popular resistance: Boxer Rebellion, 1900.
Empress Dowager Cixi: comes to power with Prince Gong, deft at navigating court politics but
incapable of assessing the Qing position in the world, backs the Boxers and then driven
into internal exile for having done so.
Hudson Taylor: studied medicine 1852, quit in 1853 to become evangelical missionary, arrived
in Shanghai 1854, turned from medical mission to what was called “faith mission”;
founded China Inland Mission in London in 1865 to send hundreds of missionaries
among the people; helped by the Chefoo Convention (1876) which permitted
missionaries to work inland; 58 CIM missionaries, 21 foreign children, and innumerable
Chinese converts killed in Boxer Rebellion; died at home in Changsha in 1905.
(4) Legacies for the 20th Century
indemnities; scramble for China; spheres of influence; unequal treaties.
1911 Revolution ends monarchy without a clear plan: Sun Yatsen becomes president because of
his international image but is quickly outflanked and pushed aside by the military.
Kaiser Wilhelm II:
after German envoy to Peking murdered, the Kaiser sends off a military force with mandate to
redress the insult to the German flag (his words), German troops were the worst behaved
of the 8 nations that formed the joint expeditionary army to capture Peking from Boxers.
Yuan Shikai: the head of the Qing military defects to the Republicans, and assumes the
presidency as soon as he can; his American advisor from Johns Hopkins University
proposes that he re-establish the monarchy with himself as the next emperor, but he died
in 191 before he can carry through the plan.