Qing Dynasty Essay, Research Paper

In 1644, the Manchus took over China and founded the Qing dynasty. The Qing weren & # 8217 ; t the

worst swayers ; under them the humanistic disciplines flowered and civilization bloomed. Furthermore, they attempted to

transcript Chinese establishments and doctrine to a much greater extent than so the Mongols of the

Yuan. However, in their effort to to emulate the Chinese, they were even more conservative

and inflexible than the Ming. Their attack to foreign policy, which was to do everyone

handle the Emperor like the Son of Heaven and non admit other states as being equal to

China, didn & # 8217 ; t rub the West the right manner, even when the Chinese were in the moral right ( as in

the Opium Wars, which netted Britain Hong Kong and Kowloon ) .

To populate during the Qing Dynasty was to populate in interesting times. Most significantly, the Western

universe attempted to do contact on a government-to-government footing, and, at least ab initio,

failed. The Chinese ( more specifically, the ultra-conservative Manchus ) had no room in their

world-view for the thought of independent, equal states ( this point of view, to a certain grade, still

persists today ) . There was the remainder of the universe, and so there was China. It wasn & # 8217 ; t that they

rejected the thought of a community of states ; it & # 8217 ; s that they couldn & # 8217 ; t conceive of it. It would be like

seeking to learn a Buddhist monastic about the Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost. This point of view was

so permeant that Chinese reformists who advocated more flexibleness in China & # 8217 ; s traffics with the

West were frequently accused of being Westerners with Chinese faces.

Other jobs that plagued the late ( 1840 onwards ) Qing included rampant corruptness, a steady

decentalisation of power, and the unfortunate fact that they were losing control

on excessively many

foreparts at the same clip. Rebellions sprouted like mushrooms after a rain ; revelatory cults

undermined what small official authorization remained. Several of the rebellions, such as the Taiping

Rebellion, really about succeeded. Intensifying the jobs was quibbling between assorted

reformists who disagreed on how to outdo combat the pandemonium and the West ( non needfully in that

order ) ; in hindsight, it is clear that the full system was easy fall ining. .

The attitude of the Western powers towards China ( England, Russia, Germany, France, and the

United States, were, more or less, the primary participants ) was queerly ambivalent. On the 1

manus, they did their best to sabotage what they considered to be restrictive trading and

governmental ordinances ; the best ( or worst, depending on your point of position ) illustration of that

was the British smuggling of opium into Southern China. Other illustrations included the & # 8216 ; right & # 8217 ; for

foreign naval forcess to sail up Chinese rivers and waterways, and extra-territoriality, which meant that

if a British citizen committed a offense in Qing China, he would be tried in a British council under

British jurisprudence. Most of these & # 8216 ; rights & # 8217 ; came into being under a series of pacts that came to be

known, and justly so, as the Unequal Treaties.

On the other manus, they did make their best to shore up up the ailing Qing, the most noteworthy illustration

being the suppression of the Boxer Rebellion in 1900 by foreign military personnels ( chiefly U.S. Marines ) .

What the Western powers were interested in was the carving up of China for their ain intents,

and that, paradoxically, required maintaining China together.

But things happened to forestall that. First, in 1911, the Qing dynasty collapsed and China

plunged headfirst into pandemonium.