Qing dynasty (1636–1912)

Not to be confused with Qin dynasty

Great Qing 清 (qīng) ᡩᠠᡳ᠌ᠴᡳᠩ ᡤᡠᡵᡠᠨ གྲེཨཏ་ཆིང
1636–1912
Flag (1889–1912) Coat of arms
The Qing Dynasty in 1820 C.E.
Capital and largest city	Beijing
Common languages	Mandarin, Mongolian, Manchu, Tibetan
Dominant mode of production	Feudalism
Government	Absolute monarchy (1636–1911) Constitutional monarchy (1911–1912)
History
• Established	1636
• Dissolution	1912
Area
• Total	14,700,000 km²
Population
• 1912 estimate	432,000,000

The Qing dynasty was the last dynasty to control China. It was established in 1636 by Hong Taiji, an ethnic Manchu, as a successor to the Later Jin dynasty. While initially isolated to Manchuria (Northeastern China), the fall of the Ming dynasty in 1644 allowed the Qing to spread all throughout China and beyond. It stayed in power until the Xinhai Revolution of 1912, a bourgeois revolution which led to the creation of the Republic of China.

In the early 1700s, China produced 35% of the world's GDP and printed half the world's books. European countries bought Chinese porcelain, silk, and tea with gold, leading the British to sell over 30,000 tons of silver to China.

The dynasty suffered from the imperialism of Japan and Europe and lost Hong Kong to Britain after the First Opium War in 1839. In 1895, the Qing dynasty lost control over Taiwan and Korea in the First Sino-Japanese War when they were taken over by Japan. The Boxer Rebellion at the turn of the century attempted to reestablish China's sovereignty but was crushed by a Western military alliance which included the United States, Austria-Hungary, Britain, France, and others.

History

Manchu conquest

In the Ming dynasty, the Great Wall represented the frontier between "settled" territory on the inside, and nomadic, loose populations on the outside that may have been governed by the empire, but were not really Chinese. To the far east of the wall, however, in the coastal areas, Chinese settlers had started occupying land beyond the wall in what is now sometimes called Southern Manchuria, more accurately Liaoning Province. When the Manchu set out to conquer China, that area became the first the conquered.

In 1626, the Manchus proclaimed a revived Jin dynasty (the later Jin dynasty). They established a capital city at what is now the city of Shenyang, built in the same layout as the city of Beijing. In 1635, the Manchu language was made the official language of the court. In 1636, the name of the dynasty was changed from Jin to Qing, meaning pure (and from which we derive the name China in English). The symbolism behind the name showed an ambition to do more than simply revive the name of the Jin but also to purify China of the decadence of the Ming dynasty—tying their ambitions to the Mandate of Heaven which the Manchus said the Ming had lost.

In the 1640s, military campaigns against the Ming became more active and larger. In 1641, a Ming garrison was besieged and captured by the Manchus, marking a great victory. Additionally, several of the defeated Ming generals defected and joined the Manchus in their conquest. By early 1644, the Manchus had established their control over all of the northeast right up to the Great Wall, which they had not yet been able to penetrate.

In China, the situation was bleak: the crises that had been building up in years prior had not been addressed due to a factionalized government and the financial problems of the dynasty had began to intensify as well. Silver imports into China from China and Spain decreased drastically, which put a limit on monetization and thus the possible growth of the Chinese economy. Zhu Youjian (朱由檢, Zhū Yóujiǎn), crowned emperor of Ming in 1628, tried to get the economy under control through a series of reforms, but it was too late to save it.

The problems plaguing the empire compounded throughout his reign. For example, dispossessed farmers started organizing themselves in bandit and rebel bands, raiding and attacking small towns, which required the government to deploy troops. However, the lack of revenue and loss of fortune to bandits meant that troops were not paid their wages in time or even at all, leading to them disbanding or even joining the rebels and further compounding the problem.

Throughout the Manchu conquests, a man emerged as a leader: Li Zicheng (李自成). Originally the leader of an independent army in north Shaanxi, he was positioned to attack the capital at Beijing in 1644, entering it in April of that year and occupying it for himself. As the story goes, on the morning that Li's army took Beijing, the emperor Zhu Youjian woke up as usual only to find all his advisors and courtiers had fled, without anyone telling him about the invaders. The emperor then took a piece of silk and walked out of the palace (which was highly unusual for emperors to do) up to a hill surrounding the city. There, he pricked his finger and wrote on the silk 'Son of Heaven' (天子), his official title. He then hanged himself from a tree on the hillside, and thus brought the rule of the Ming to an end.

With Li Zicheng in control of the capital, officials and princes from imperial families fled to Nanjing, the secondary capital of the dynasty. They held there for a while and even proclaimed a successor, none of which saved the Ming. Li Zicheng proclaimed a dynasty of his own as well in Beijing, with himself as the new emperor. He began the process of establishing his rule shortly afterwards: calling officials to introduce themselves at his court, and creating a new government with them. This dynasty was short-lived, however, as the Manchus were still active and so were Ming loyalists. The Manchus had been stopped beyond the Great Wall at its eastern end, and could not get past a Ming fortress no matter their attempts.

When Li Zicheng captured Beijing however, the general of the fortress, Wu Sangui (吳三桂) found himself in a difficult position: he was still a Chinese general charged with protecting the empire, but his dynasty did not really exist anymore. His mistress was also in Beijing, and he was worried she might be recruited into the new emperor's harem. He thus negotiated with the Manchus: he would allow them to bring their army inside through the Great Wall, and both their army and the fortress' garrison would go down to Beijing to drive out the rebels and restore the Ming dynasty.

The Manchus agreed, and the gates of the fortress were opened. The two then went west to Beijing and destroyed Li's nascent dynasty. Unsurprisingly, the Manchus then announced they would not restore the Ming dynasty but put their Qing dynasty in place. Having achieved his real objective—securing his mistress—and understanding the reality of the Manchu conquest, Wu did not object to this turn of events and later became a general under the Qing.

While seizing the capital was a very important step to establish the Qing, there was of course a lot left to do. The Manchus then had to establish their rule over the rest of the empire and have it recognized. Military campaigns continued for the next two years, and as in previous such conquests, the greatest resistance came from the Jiangnan area, in Southern China, which was the wealthiest region in China and thus also the one most producing literate and academic scholars. At the city of Yangzhou, the Manchus met fierce resistance—much stronger than they anticipated. After they took the city, they enacted upon the city ten days of looting and killing, essentially killing any Chinese they found within the city. This, the Manchus hoped, would send a message against further resistance. On the contrary, it strengthened the national identity and those who resisted at Yangzhou were considered to be brave heroes who preferred to choose death over surrender. The story of Yangzhou would play a motif at the end of the Qing dynasty centuries later as an appeal to Chinese patriotism and nationalism.

By the end of the 1640s, most of the resistance against the Manchus had been extinguished. Some loyalist elements did hold out against the Manchus, notably on the island of Taiwan. At the time, the island was part of Fujian province and in a peculiar position: while it was part of the empire, it had become a focal point for activity by Europeans (specifically the Portuguese and the Dutch). Ming loyalists crossed the strait and settled in Taiwan, but never really made an attempt to retake the empire. It was only by the 1680s that the loyalists in Taiwan were suppressed.

In 1660, the last emperor of the Ming (who was in exile in what is now Myanmar, when the royal family fled the Manchu) was returned to China and executed, effectively putting an end to the Ming dynasty. The Qing empire could then properly begin, and would ultimately be the last of China's dynasty.

High Qing era

In 1661, the first emperor of the Qing died and was succeeded by one of his sons, the Kangxi emperor (康熙, Kāngxī , personal name Xuanye), which began a series of long reigns: over the next 135 years, only three emperors would reign over the Qing. Historically, these three emperors represent the greatest achievements of not only the Qing dynasty, but of all of Chinese civilization up to that point as their rules were also met with great advances in literature, culture, peace, prosperity and stability.

Xuanye came to the throne at the age of 8. He was not the oldest son of the emperor, but he had survived smallpox which was taken as a sign of his good health. For the first five or six years, he was guided in his rule by a council of regents, called the Oboi regency after his uncle, who headed the regency. In 1667, when Xuanye was a teen, he took it upon himself to stop his regency and his uncle was relieved of his duties.

Xuanye's ascension to the throne coincided with a time where things were stabilizing in the Qing. Still, In the 1670s, Xuanye faced the most serious challenge to the Qing dynasty—both up until that point in the dynasty's history and until the middle of the 19th century. Wu Sangui, the general at the fortress that let the Manchus in years prior, was not content with the new emperor. He had been rewarded for his cooperation by being granted very large territory as a feudal domain, but in the 1670s, the Qing wanted to seize these territories (as well as those they had granted to other defecting generals), perhaps in preparation before the holders of this land died and passed it down to their sons.

Southwestern rebellion

This triggered a rebellion in the Southwest of China, with Wu Sangui as its leader, known as the revolt of the three feudatories (三藩之亂, Sānfān zhī luàn) due to the three generals that rose up. More military forces in South and Southwest China joined in with the rebellion, but certainly not all of them, and not outside of this region. It took the Qing dynasty 8 years to take down the rebellion, suppressing it by the 1680s. Their success was made possible due to the loyalty the vast majority of the Chinese army displayed towards this new dynasty: this was a very significant development as it showed that the Qing state was not perceived as an "alien", non-Chinese body (such as the Jin or Yuan were).

The Manchus had achieved this loyalty largely because after the initial conquest of the Ming, they had established conditions of peace within the empire and had allowed, for the most part, let the Chinese return to their livelihood. They did, however, impose heavy taxation on the Jangnan area and had established the traditional Manchu queue hairstyle as the only allowed hairstyle for Han men, which became associated with Chinese identity in a generation or two. The penalty for not wearing the hair was execution for trahison.

Expansion

Once the rebellion had been quelled, the emperor turned his attention to trying to win control over all of the Mongol tribes. This would be a difficult undertaking: Mongol tribes were scattered over a wide geographical area. The Eastern Mongols, with whom the Jurchen had made partnerships, for located close to China, but the Western Mongols did not share this partnership and had fled to escape the turmoil in China, going as far as Southern Russia. The Qing empire soon became a multi-ethnic state: the bringing together of the Manchus, the Han Chinese, the Mongols, Tibetans and the Central Asian populations in far Xinjiang was pursued by Xuanye and his successors.

Xuanye, however, was not succesful in defeating or luring the Western Mongols to China. However, he did start the process which was carried on by his successors. He was also able to project Qing power into new geographic areas—notably in the province of Xinjiang. Another concern of his was his efforts to stabilize the fiscal bases for his dynasty. In 1712, the Qing state undertook a survey of the empire, much like the Ming had done under Zhang Juzheng. This survey updated tax rates, but came with a new condition: the rates fixed by this survey would remain in perpetuity, meaning that a piece of land, once its value and tax had been set by this survey, would never see it change. This was known as the Tax Edict of 1712 and led to major problems later for the Qing.

Yongzheng reforms

in 1722, Xuanye died after a reign of over 60 years, and was succeeded by one of his sons who adopted the name of the Yongzheng (雍正) emperor (personal name Yinzhen). The circumstances of his succession are a little unusual. Even at the time, some historians questioned his legitimacy: Yinzhen was the 13th son of the emperor, so quite far removed from the line of succession. Yet, he was named in an edict which was purportedly written by his father, the emperor, on his deathbed. This edict, however, was believed by most Chinese to have been forged. The conduct of the young emperor after coming to power also created a certain amount of suspicion: he had bad relations with most of his other brothers, and had most of them either imprisoned, exiled or executed.

Nonetheless, he turned out to be an effective emperor. Despite his shorter reign (from 1722 to 1735), he devoted these years to improving the administration of the empire and was more benevolent than his father. Unsurprisingly, the tax edict of 1712 was starting to create problems for the Qing: the flow of income to the imperial treasury was lower than the emperor thought it should be and there were indeed problems with the collection system and its subsequent repatriation to the capital. Taxes would be collected on the local level, forwarded to the provincial, consolidated there and then sent to the capital. Then, the imperial treasury would return funding to the provincial level which would return it to the local villages and cities. With so many steps, losses of silver due to corruption and other problems happened very often. Particularly, because the taxes were paid in silver, the metal would be melted down by the government and then remolded into bars for easier transport. Fees and other surcharges happened during this process, essentially making the collection of taxes variable every time. These charges would also normally not be recorded, which allowed for corruption.

Yinzhen wanted to reform the tax collection system to improve the flow of income to the capital and reduce corruption, giving the imperial court greater control. He reformed the system so that not only collection and transfer would be properly recorded, but localities would be allowed to keep a portion of the taxes they paid for themselves to be used as their funding, instead of having the silver first go to the capital and then be sent back to the villages. This project was first tested in some provinces in Central China where it proved very successful. When attempting to expand this reform to the whole empire however, Yinzhen met a lot of resistance: the provinces in Central China were generally in a middle-ground in terms of economic and social revenue. This system, however, did not please the local nobles in the coastal areas, which were generally richer, as they wanted to keep control over the flow of silver with which they could enrich themselves.

The emperor eventually became frustrated with this system and abandoned it in the early 1730s, thereby informally accepting the conditions led by the coastal nobles.

Other reforms were also attempted. Notably, he finished the establishment of the Grand Council which had been started by his father. A continuation of the Grand Secretariat under the Ming, the Council supplanted the Secretariat. The Grand Council was almost entirely a deliberative and consultative body, meant to be debating policy, which did make it the most critical decision-making institution in China as the emperor was the one who promulgated law. The Grand Secretariat, which took up this consultative function under the Ming (on top of their existing administrative function), was thus relegated back to being an administrative institution. The Grand Council did not have fixed membership, with members being appointed by the emperor. Yinzhen also undertook reforms for the well-being of his subjects and regularized the status of certain outcast social groups.

Reign of Qianlong

Yinzhen died after only 13 years on the throne, and was succeeded by one of his sons who chose the name of the Qianlong (乾隆) emperor (personal name Hongli), reigning from 1735 until 1795. He actually lived until 1798, but abdicated so that he would not reign longer than his grandfather, the Kangxi emperor. His reign is viewed by many historians as the high-tide of the Qing dynasty. His 60 years of rule were a period where the early achievements of the Qing dynasty came to fruition, and Hongli built on efforts his predecessors had started. He was a very hands-on and pragmatic administrators, paying close attention to the details of many going-ons of the empire.

Population continued to grow in China, reaching about 400 million by the end of his reign. China attained its greatest prosperity in history during this time, making it probably the richest country in the world at the time. Notably, many Chinese goods such as tea, porcelain, silk, etc. flowed all around the planet in the global market. At its height, China was responsible for 25% of global economic production.

Nonetheless, it was not a completely peaceful time. Hongli pursued military campaigns as well, and was able to complete the process of bringing all of the Mongol tribes into the empire by the 1770s. He pursued a very careful policy of dealing with defeated enemies: he would give them official titles and great wealth, as he was interested in expanding the empire and strengthening it, by making his subjects loyal.

He also deepened the relationship between the Qing empire and Tibet. Tibet had been closely linked to the Mongols, and was embedded into the Qing empire at its establishment through that link. Hongli continued the policies of maintaining a strong Chinese presence in Tibet.

Map of Qing borders at their height (in red) overlaid by a map of modern-day China (the People's Republic)

It was under Hongli that China reached its peak in terms of territorial area: indeed, the borders of modern-day China (the People's Republic) were built under the Qing and are in fact slightly smaller than they were under the Qing, who controlled Mongolia and parts of what is now India, Nepal and Russia.

By the end of Hongli's reign, new problems emerged—many of which as a result of the long period of success the dynasty had. The growth of China's population, for example, could hardly be sustained by the amount of land that the empire possessed, who had no more land to expand (conquer) into. The economy started stagnating and plateaued, as it reached a point at which it was limited by the current technology and means of production that existed. At the same time, capitalism began to emerge in the West, specifically in England, and led to new kinds of conflicts that eventually reached China.

Early Western influence

The Dutch eventually came to focus their economic activity on the islands of Southeast Asia (modern-day Indonesia) and in Japan, gaining a place as the only—Europeans—foreigners who could still trade with Japan after the closing down of their borders. The Spanish established themselves in the Philippines, and Manila became a lucrative center of trade for them after they conquered it in 1571, through which they sold Mexican silver to China.

The Portuguese, who had been the first to establish a presence in Southeast Asia, maintained some role there: they had trading posts on the West coast of India, and established the enclave at Macao in 1557, which remained in their hands until 1999, but they devoted most of their attention to Africa and Brazil and did not become as significant as other European powers in East Asia. Meanwhile, the British became involved in India.

While all were interested in China and saw it as the "greatest prize of all", being a tremendous market and the source of high-quality manufactured goods, they had difficulties getting access to it. At the end of the 18th century, both China and Europe were moving through a period of great change. The first big change in Europe was of course the Industrial Revolution, which took place in Britain first and led to new conditions for the production of commodities. The circumstances that led to the industrial revolution were also present in China, especially in the Jiangnan area and in parts of India (the Bengal region). Nonetheless, while there is a wide debate over how the industrial revolution took place in Britain, the fact remains that it was the first country to go through with it.

From about the middle of the 18th century, China had regulated its trade with European powers through the Canton system (一口通商, Yīkǒu tōngshāng). Under this system, trade could only take place in one port, the port of Canton (now more accurately called Guangzhou) in the far South of China, past Hong Kong and Schenzen and requiring boats to sail into the mouth of a river called the Schizi Yang (狮子洋). Moreover, that trade had to be conducted through licensed Chinese agents, the hong merchants, who served as brokers between European and Chinese merchants.

This trade did function and was in fact quite lively, but it was a trade in which European merchants brought silver to China with which they bought Chinese commodities. This regulated system was quite satisfactory for the Chinese as they made good money and had a lot of outlets for their manufactured goods, but wasn't as interesting to the European merchants as even if they did acquire goods they could sell back in their homeland, they realized there was still a lot of untapped potential in dealing with China if only they could sell the Chinese a commodity which China would pay silver for, thus reversing the flow of trade and balancing the flow a little better.

In 1792, and then again in 1816 (before and after the Napoleonic Wars), the British sent diplomatic missions to China to try and establish commercial relations between the two countries. In both instances, these missions were received very politely but were told that the Chinese were simply not interested in their "shoddy goods" (as emperor Qianlong said to King George III in a letter).

This was considered unacceptable to the British, who still required some commodity to sell to China if they were to open up trade relations. In 1816, they settled on opium. Opium was already familiar to China, produced in very small quantities in the far Southwest mostly as medicine. Its non-medicinal use had also been known and recognized for a long time, and had been regulated since the 1730s. What the British found was that as they colonized more of India, they opened up a very suitable environment to produce opium. They set off to aggressively destroy the local cotton industry so as to eliminate competition and turn it to opium production.

They then discovered they could market opium to the poorest classes of society in Southeast Asia and South China, and thus began to ship opium in ever-increasing volumes from Bengal through Southeast Asia and into the Guangzhou port where it was then offloaded into the domestic economy. Between 1816 and 1830, the volume of opium shipped to China increased every year without fail. The impacts were dramatic: millions of Chinese became addicted to opium. It became a tremedous social problem: people were not productive, crime rose, and on an economic level, the British were demanding payment for opium in silver. This had the very rapid effect of reversing the flow of silver out of China, leading to economic disruptions throughout the empire and causing ripple effects.

By the 1830s, there were shortages of capital for investment and prices were subject to dramatic fluctuations. At this time, this state of matter was starting to be taken very seriously by the Chinese government. The Qing State, however, was having problems dealing with these issues. The government had become increasingly unresponsive: conflicts, policy and debate within the Qing leadership had bogged down efforts to deal with problems, and were particularly frustrating because the bureaucratic mentality of "doing things the way they had always been done" was quite strong, but ultimately ineffective against such an unprecedented problem. Revenues were declining; the outflow of silver meant that taxes were not collected as extensively, and the capacity of government to maintain its normal functions (such as the infrastructure of the grand canal) began to diminish.

Opium trade

The British began trafficking opium into China in the 18th century to reverse the flow of silver. In 1729, the emperor banned opium imports, which were then about 14 tons per year. However, the trade continued and reached 320 tons per year by 1799.

The USA joined the opium trade in 1784, and U.S. capitalists created a factory in Guangzhou in 1801. Annual opium imports reached 2,800 tons per year in 1838, costing China 4,000 tons of silver each year.

Of course, the Chinese realized that the opium trade was at the heart of all these problems, both in its social and economic impacts. The Qing government repeatedly protested to British merchants and the king about the problem they had caused and its effects, and the emperor then called for a debate among his officials about how to deal with the influx of opium. Lin Zexu (林则徐, Lín Zéxú), the general governor of Huguang, made a proposal. He had served in Central Asia, dealing with the security problems there, and had distinguished himself as an official who was able to be flexible and creative in dealing with problems. His proposal to the emperor was a two-track approach: on the one hand, he advocated for rehibilitation programs to opium addicts to redress the epidemic. On the other, he urged strict prohibition in the sale of opium. This was already the existing law of China, but Lin Zexu wanted to enforce it stringently. By attacking the supply and demand of opium, he hoped that this would eliminate the problem.

The emperor was very impressed by the proposal and eventually, in 1838, Lin Zexu was tasked with becoming the Imperial Commissioner charged with eradicating the opium trade in Guanzhou. Lin travelled south from the capital to Guanzhou and, in 1839, launched a serious campaign directed at stopping the flow of opium into China. He took a very direct approach to the matter: in Guangzhou, the foreign traders had warehouses where their goods were brought ashore and stored before they were shipped off in the interior. Lin Zexu, in the spring of 1839, ordered that opium in these warehouses be confiscated: accordingly, a large quantity of opium was seized. He then had a large trench dug in the ground, the opium dumped into it, and lime spread over it and set aflame.

When the Chinese destroyed the opium supplies, the British merchants were of course quite upset and demanded that reparations be made. The British military representatives assured that they would be compensated by the crown, but Lin Zexu proved to be intent on keeping the trade shut down, and so the British—who thought that this was perhaps a one-time demonstration—were quite upset when they realized Lin Zexu had no intention of allowing the trade to resume. After a second round of destroying opium, the British decided they had to take action.

There was a long debate in Parliament over what to do over China—not over the opium trade specifically (as the British did not want to present themselves as a drug cartel), but over the free market. When war was declared and the British fleet was sent out to China, it was done not on the basis of making the world safe for drug dealers, but on the basis of promoting free trade.

Century of Humiliation

First Opium War

See main article: First Opium War

The British Empire attacked China in 1839 to open it to British drug traffickers, beginning the First Opium War. The British Empire sold opium to China throughout the 19th century even thought it was banned in Britain. The UK, France, Russia, and the United States and the Second Opium War against China from 1856 to 1860. By 1890, 10% of the Chinese population was addicted to opium, including 25% of adult males. The technologically backward Qing army was no match for the British, the Qing Dynasty was defeated in both wars and forced to sign unequal treaties, including the cession of Hong Kong to Britain.

Taiping Rebellion

The Christian mystic Hong Xiuchuan started the Taiping Rebellion in 1850 in an attempt to create a Heavenly Kingdom which would resemble utopian socialism. The rebellion had large popular support despite its corrupt leadership, and it took an intervention of foreign imperialists to put it down. 20 to 30 million people died in the rebellion, making it the bloodiest conflict in world history before World War II.

Second Opium War

In 1860 October, the British and French attacked Beijing. The British destroyed the Summer Palace and stole 1.5 million relics, many of which are still in Western museums. Britain and France forced China to legalize opium imports and Christian missionary work and to prevent Europeans from being tried in Chinese courts. By 1880, the British were annually sending 10,700 tons of opium to China from India. The opium trade made up almost 15% of British tax revenue.

Boxer Rebellion

In 1899, the Society of the Righteous Harmonious Fists began a rebellion against foreign imperialism with the support of the Qing government and Empress Dowager Cixi. 19,000 imperialists from Britain, France, Germany, Russia, Italy, and Japan invaded China in August 1900 to put down the rebellion. The USA proposed the Open Door Policy to make the imperialist powers collaborate instead of dividing China into separate colonial territories.

After the defeat of the rebellion in rebellion, the U.S. Navy created patrols in Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Hankou and a garrison in Tianjin.

References