Flight to China

Hermione
Oct 31, 2016
4 min read

Hello ladies and gentleman, welcome to not 007´s flight, the trip is going to be approximately 12 hours, so please strap your seats and relax, because we have a long flight until we reach China.

While we reach our destination, we offer you some popcorn and soda, because we are going to talk about China´s history.

First off, China in the 19th Century:

Under the Qing Dynasty, it was all rosy, but eventually, their peaceful empire started to fall. China´s population was quickly growing, and land wasn´t enough, plus, China had various external as well as internal conflicts going on, all this at the same time caused the terrible fall go the Quing Dynasty.

Two awful rebellions happened during the 19th Century in China: The Taiping Rebellion and the Boxer Rebellion:

The Boxer Rebellion began en 1900, it was a failed attempt from the Chinese secret organization called the " Society of the Righteous and Harmonious Fists " to get rid of all the foreigns and their properties, Cixi supported them.

And, the Taiping Rebellion ocurred from 1850 to 1864, it was political and religious movement considered on of the most important events in China in the 19th century. This rebellion was leaded by Hong Xiuquan, it took about 20 million lives, and dramaticaly changed the Qing Dynasty.

The leaders who directed the efforts to change Chinese society after the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949 were raised in the old society and had been marked with its values.

In terms of government, there was no democracy whatsoever, during the 19th century China was under control of the Qing Dynasty, which lasted from 1644 to 1912 and was the last empire to rule the region. The beginning and middle periods of this Dynasty were prosper, and in this century, even though the Qing emperors were incompetent and the government was weak, the Dynasty seemed somewhat successful because the population kept growing, the territory stayed intact, and the empire slowly modernized. Internal rebellions against the Qing Dynasty, invasions, and wars like the Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895), which they lost, also occurred in this century.

Moving on to economy, in the early 19th century, China was a prosperous state with abundant natural resources, a huge but contented population, and a royal house of great prestige at home and abroad. By the late 19th century, however, the strong Chinese state began its own destruction, particularly with its expanding population. After all the major rebellions in the middle 1800s, there were many natural disasters in the late 1800. All these disasters impoverished the survivors who faced foreign economic competition and modernization when they had little knowledge of the outside world or scientific knowledge. Due to modernization and imports, a lot of people lost their work. So the poor faced starvation and died, and the population became poorer overall.

For culture, contemporary Chinese called the 18th and 19th century "unparalleled in history," when all aspects of culture flourished. In the 19th century, about a quarter of the population practices Taoism, Confucianism and other traditional religions, and it was during this century when Protestant and Catholic ministries started converting chinese to these religions.

There were also external conflicts that influenced China, for example, the British soon became China’s largest foreign trading partner and started importing large amounts of opium, an addictive narcotic. Even though it was prohibited at fist, it later became more accessible and as a result a lot of Chinese people became addicted. Beijing tried to ban Opium in Canton, a port city, however the British continued exporting opium, this made the Chinese angry and resulted in the First Opium War (1839-1842) in which China was defeated and forced to sign a humiliating treaty which opened chinese cities to trade with foreign control and legal jurisdiction.

The First Sino-Japanese War started in 1894, a war between China and Japan which lasted eight monts, the main cause for the war was that both countries wanted control over the Korean peninsula. The Chinese lost again and were forced to give up Korea, the island of Taiwan and the Liaodong Peninsula to Japan, the Japanese control over Liaodong also gave them control over Manchuria, where they would start the invasion of China in 1930.

According to “Alpha History” by the end of the 1800s a significant amount of foreigners, form countries like the USA, Britain, France, Germany and Japan, moved into China and established spheres of influence to further their commercial and economic interests without the consent of the Qing government. The humiliated Qing dynasty lost the support of the people and its power over China, as a result it became irrelevant.

Near the end of the 19th century western powers forced the Qing Dynasty to accept foreign control on China’s economical affairs, this inspired the Society of Righteous and Harmonious fists, a secret Chinese group, to carry out attacks on foreigners and Chinese Christians, starting the Boxer Rebellion.

Thank you for your attention, now that you know about China´s 19th century history, we will let you sleep. If you need any drinks or something please ask one of our flight attendants.

Here are some of the references we used throughout the flight´s speech, if you are interested in reading any of the articles please ask for them:

References

Boxer Rebellion. (2009). History. Retrieved from

http://www.history.com/topics/boxer-rebellion

China and the West: Imperialism, Opium, and Self-Strengthening (1800-1921). Asia for

educators. Retrieved from

http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/main_pop/kpct/kp_imperialism.htm

From Reform to Revolution, 1842 to 1911.(n.d.). Asia for Educators. Retrieved from

http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/special/china_1750_reform.htm

Foreign Imperialism in China. (2015). Alpha History. Retrieved from

http://alphahistory.com/chineserevolution/foreign-imperialism-in-china/

Traditional society and culture. (n.d.).Country studies. Retrieved from http://countrystudies.us/china/42.htm