China: Treaties, Opium Wars and Independence
China is one of the largest nations in the world and remained largely self governed and independent of other nations for most of its history. Besides the traders based along the silk road and a few embassy’s sent to the Emperor, China remained whole unto itself. Through the course of Opium wars and the subsequent unequal treaties made by the winning parties, China slowly started to loose ground and control.
There have been a few instances of western advancement in China, but many were short lived or non-influential, like when Alexander invaded in the fourth century B.C. and other attacks made by the Roman Empire throughout B.C. and A.D. history. Besides these attacks, there was hardly any real contact with western civilizations and none with Europe. Rome become China’s only real contact with the west and when Rome fell around the fifth century A.D. that connection was lost. Another advancement was the crusades of Europe, but those just mostly spurred trade to begin, which is where the real involvement comes from.
The silk road brought many traders into China where they couldn’t really traverse before. With these trades came contacts and a desire to get more from the country. Besides land routes, water routes began to sprout up and so did the missionary efforts. Jesuits were the main missionary forces, started with Matteo Ricci who went to the Ming Court. Though he ultimately failed, it started a trend of Jesuits in the Chinese court.
The Westerners still wanted to get to China and all its goods. Russia went into China and eventually a trade system was set up in 1689 between the two, after two embassies and Russian occupation of Chinese land.
The first real instance of China losing land to western nations is in the aftermath of the Opium wars. There had been treaties before, like the Treaty of Nerchinsk in 1689, but not an unequal treaty like the ones following the Opium wars. Many missions were sent from England to get in with the Chinese, including the MacCartney Mission in 1792 where the only outcome was allowance of the Canton system. The British always pushed against their restrictions on trade and Lin Zieu called for prohibition of the English because the people of China were quickly becoming addicts on the opium that was imported. In 1839 the representative in China got back to England and called for war. The first Opium war ensued and China lost. In 1842 the Treaty of Nanking was signed and it was the first unequal treaty that China was forced to sign. Now the Chinese had restrictions in their own lands.
The Treaty of Nanking let British into the land with more powers than ever before. The British got the Right of Consular which gave them extraterritoriality. Now no matter what they did in or to China, they were exempt from any punishment by the Chinese. The treaty ended the Cohong monopoly and even gave the city of Hong Kong to the British for their complete rule. The treaty also granted treaty ports, which were pieces of land that belonged to the English. The westerners were allowed to trade in their treaty ports which were placed along the Chinese coasts. The Chinese thought that these were to be containment areas of the westerners, but from the beginning the British exploited their gain with tariffs on goods at five percent of value. It didn’t take long for the English to break through their treaty port bonds. With more negotiations and treaties they soon had extensive treaty ports all along China, and their ports were growing extensively. One of the greatest Chinese cities to grow because of this occupation was Shanghai; once a small port, it became a western city of bustling trade.
After this first treaty was established by the British, more treaties ensued with the French, Americans, and even Russians getting the better of the Chinese. As with the second Opium war where the French and English went against China and won. The war spanned from 1856 to 1860 with sever conventions and treaties made before it was all ended. Thus, the Chinese started losing their own land and powers to western nations.
The power of the Chinese was getting weaker with each rebellion that happened in its borders, like the Taiping Rebellion from 1850 to 1864. Most of the new rebellions had western influence in them, positive and negative against the westerners depending on the group. Many formed with religious backing, like the God Worshipers Society which was the predecessor for the Taiping Rebellion. These new ideas of God came from the western missionaries or acquaintances through trade, but that did not mean, however, that the God Worshipers Society wanted to join their western influences. They wanted to live separately from Chinese and western rule, but failed to consolidate their society and fell. Other rebellions in this era where ones like the Nien Rebellion in 1853 to 1868 in north central China and the Moslem Rebellion in 1855 to 1873 in north west China. The dates off all three of these rebellions go through many of the same years and mixed to weaken the dynasty. They were mostly fighting to get the westerners out, but ironically, they helped cause the sovereignty to collapse, leaving plenty of control in the hands of those westerners.
Besides all of the rebellions chipping away at the Chinese powers, the wars with England and other European countries taxed it greatly and it couldn’t hold up under the pressures. There were many, many wars with other countries, but one of the most debilitating wars in this time was the Boxer rebellion, where England and France were joined by Germany, Russia and America in attacking the Chinese. In the 1900’s it finally succumbed.
Imperialism is a policy of extending your nation’s power and authority by taking over territories of another country or by establishing economic and political influence over that country and nation. The western powers, most notably England, did exactly that. They pushed so hard and got so much that they hurt China beyond the state they originally found it in. China’s conflicts within and without its borders was too much. Because of all these things, China broke and became a lesser under its European counterparts.
