China in the 1800s: the road to collapse…

What does the map suggest about China’s geography?(find rivers, mountains etc)

What do these photos suggest about China’s economy historically?

What do the images suggest about the power of Chinese Emperors?

The Forbidden City, BeijingThe Great Wall

Quiz time!• You are a senior official in the British Government in

the 1830s. You are desperate to develop trade links with China to increase access to Chinese porcelain, silk and tea. Unfortunately, however, the Chinese court is refusing to allow you to expand beyond your very small base in Hong Kong… and Chinese consumers are also uninterested in buying British goods. Do you:

(a)Accept that you cannot win them all and focus on exploiting the ever-expanding Indian market instead.

(b)Focus on building relationships within the Chinese court to try to force the emperor to change his mind.

(c) Exploit a deeply unethical opportunity to come to the aid of British opium (heroin) dealers in Hong Kong, who Chinese officials are – not unreasonably – trying to shut down.

The First Opium War 1839-1842• … alas, the answer is indeed (c): help the

Opium dealers.

• By the 1820s, the one product that the British East India Company was having success selling in China was opium.

• Understandably the Chinese Government was far from happy about this.

• In 1839 Emperor Daoguang appointed a lead official, Lin Zexu, to stamp out the trade. He prompted seized 1,200 tonnes of the drug from British traders and burned it (presumably in a well-ventilated area…)

• No compensation was offered. The traders turned to the British Government for help, who very nobly and entirely selflessly stepped in to protect the principle of “free trade”…

The First Opium War 1839-1842The war took a while, mainly owing to the

great distances involved, but the fighting

was straightforward

.

The antiquated Chinese navy and

army was no match for the modern gunboats and

artillery of Britain.

By the middle of 1842 Britain had control of the Yangtze, the main river in central China

and Shanghai. A peace treaty quickly followed…

• To their credit, the great Liberal politician Gladstone, and many British newspapers, campaigned vociferously against the Government’s decision to exploit the Opium trade. But this made little difference…

• … indeed, it was such a handy (and easy) war that, in 1856-1860 the British Government launched a Second Opium War to further exploit China’s weakness defend free trade…

Impact of the Opium WarsBy 1860, Britain had… - control of Hong Kong and its

surrounding territory (not returned to China until 1997);

- the right to own property and proselytize (promote Christianity) in China;

- legalized the opium trade; - secured trading rights in a number of

new cities; and - extorted substantial cash penalties

from China for damage caused to British goods.

鸦片战争

At the end of the 2nd Opium war, British and French troops (who Britain was allied with in the 2nd war)

burned down the Emperor’s Summer Palace.

The Chinese emperor was humiliated – and China was now fully embarked upon what Chinese nationalists would later look back on as their

“century of humiliation” (1838-1949).

Other European powers quickly followed suit, demanding rights and “concessions” from China.

Off topic for a moment… but Britain had previous for burning down symbolic stuff in the 19th Century.

In 1814, during the “War of 1812” against the USA, British troops occupied Washington DC and burned down the

White House.

This remains the only time in US History that Washington DC has been occupied by a foreign force.

Discuss on your tables: who are

the characters in this cartoon?

What is happening?

What is the significance of

how the figure at the back is

represented?

One of the first things the German Government did in their “sphere of

influence” in Shandong Province, was build a brewery.

To this day Qingdao beer remains the most popular domestic beer in China.

Loss of “heavenly mandate”• It is no wonder that by the

1840s many Chinese began to question whether the Qing dynasty retained its “heavenly mandate”.

• The most extreme of several domestic rebellions against the Qing in the 19th Century was led by Hong Xiuquan.

Read the handout

and answer the questions in short

sentences.

Opium War siege scene

Final scene from a Chinese movie of 1997

to commemorate the return of Hong Kong to

China.