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Opium War to the Treaty of Tianjin, 1842-58
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China – The End of the Qing Dynasty, 1842-1911
In this course, Dr Lars Laaman (SOAS, University of London) explores the history of China between the end of the First Opium War (1839-42) to the collapse of the Qing dynasty in 1911. In the first module, we think about the immediate aftermath of the First Opium War and the growing influence of the western powers up to the sweeping changes introduced by the Treaty of Tianjin in 1858. After that, in the second module, we shift our focus to two huge rebellions that took place almost simultaneously in different parts of the country – the Taiping Rebellion (1850-64) and the Nian Rebellion (1851-68) – before turning in the third, fourth and fifth modules to explore the three phases of the Self-Strengthening Movement (1861-72, 1872-85, 1885-95). In the sixth module, we think about the Hundred Day’s Reform – an abortive attempt to introduce sweeping cultural, political and educational reforms to the Qing Empire – before turning in the seventh module the causes, course and consequences of the Boxer Rebellion (1898-1900). Finally, in the eighth module, we look at the final decade of Qing rule, in which the Qing administration made one last attempt at reform before its final collapse in 1911.
Opium War to the Treaty of Tianjin, 1842-58
In this module, we think about the development of the power and influence of the western powers in China between the Treaty of Nanjing (1842) that ended the First Opium War and the Treaty of Tianjin (1858). In particular, we think about: (i) the key impact of the Treaty of Nanjing – the opening-up of treaty ports along the east coast of China and the system of ‘extraterritoriality’; (ii) the reason that the cities around Hangzhou Bay in particular – Shanghai and Ningbo – became so important; (iii) the extent to which the Treaty of Nanjing had an impact on the general population of China; (iv) the unpopularity of the Treaty of Nanjing among Chinese intellectuals and the governing classes; (v) the Arrow Incident of 1856; (vi) the extent to which the general population of China was unhappy with the Qing dynasty at this time, and the reasons for this unrest; (vii) the impact of the Treaty of Tianjin – especially in the hugely expanded access to both traders and Christian missionaries to the Chinese interior; and (viii) French colonial activities in Indochina in this period, and their desire for a legal settlement to consolidate their territorial gains.
Hello, My name is Lars Peter Lonmin.
00:00:05I teach history at the School of Oriental and African Studies Soas
00:00:08University of London and I mostly cover the history of late Imperial China
00:00:15Qing Dynasty and the consequences of these policies and
00:00:21policy changes on Central Asia and Eastern Asia.
00:00:26Today we will be talking about the 60 70 years between the end of the Opium
00:00:30War in the 18 forties and the final years final moments of the Qing Dynasty,
00:00:37Um in the around the year 1911 when we talked about the Opium wars.
00:00:44You may remember that we came to fairly abrupt end around the year 18 40 when the Qing
00:00:52Dynasty started to negotiate a set of treaties which
00:01:00would later be known as the Nanjing Treaty,
00:01:04which allows Westerners all Western traders,
00:01:07to trade in five so called treaty ports
00:01:12which stretched from Guangzhou up the Cantonese and Fujianese coastline,
00:01:16Fu Ju shaman
00:01:24and then further up to the north to Ningbo
00:01:27and to the city of Shanghai. Shanghai was in essence a creation
00:01:31of this treaty port system,
00:01:38which allowed Westerners to trade whatever commodities they were interested in,
00:01:40including opium.
00:01:46The
00:01:48just of the Opium War was, of course,
00:01:49that Westerners that British traders had tried to trade in a commodity that was
00:01:52prescribed by the by the Qing court and in order to get the permanent
00:01:58approval for the trade in this commodity and in any others that the Westerners
00:02:05were interested in the treaty ports allowed
00:02:11them what was known as extra territoriality.
00:02:14This term means that Westerners were immune from any prosecution.
00:02:17They were exempt from contact with the Chinese official system.
00:02:25And it also meant that Chinese people who wanted to seek refuge could do so
00:02:32very well in the within the walls of the treaty ports and in no city
00:02:39was this more obvious both in its advantages and
00:02:45disadvantages to China than in the city of Shanghai.
00:02:49Shanghai develops at a fairly slow pace initially,
00:02:54quite simply because it's in the shadow of the much larger, uh,
00:02:59city of Ningbo to itself where Chinese banking was concentrated.
00:03:04But it was this combination of fortunes that could be derived from, uh,
00:03:10banking industry in at the end of the the Youngster River Xiangyang
00:03:16and the freedom that Westerners had to set up shop
00:03:23and to trade whatever commodity they were interested in.
00:03:28And the combination of these two leads to the creation of
00:03:32Western trading houses who very quickly also established a banking business.
00:03:35And this is why
00:03:42until to this, uh, to this day,
00:03:44many of the banks which are established in the Western world,
00:03:47all the existence to the trade in Shanghai.
00:03:51But
00:03:55how do we get from a relatively, um,
00:03:56disadvantageous system for Western traders to one
00:04:01where Westerners can essentially make use of
00:04:05the entire Chinese market and also of the Chinese population for other purposes?
00:04:09Well,
00:04:16this is something which will take us from the 18 forties
00:04:17until the year 18 58 when the Treaty of Tianjin,
00:04:21uh, was to be signed, Um,
00:04:26in between a number of things happen which I need to refer to now because
00:04:29they are very important to the dynasty itself and to the position of the foreigners.
00:04:34Most importantly,
00:04:41the opium wars did not have an immediate backlash within the population.
00:04:43The population is relatively, um,
00:04:49I'm concerned about the, uh, the conditions which were imposed upon China
00:04:53in a way
00:05:01they soon began to profit from this because, of course,
00:05:02the free trade also meant that there were
00:05:06additional places for for Chinese people to work
00:05:09in in the harbours and then also in the cities which were created around them.
00:05:13So if there was no opposition from the side of the Chinese population,
00:05:18where did the unease within the dynasty come from?
00:05:25Well,
00:05:29it was mainly derived from the fact that many of the
00:05:30intellectuals intellectuals formed the basis
00:05:33of the Chinese official government system
00:05:36that they began to voice their disconcert earns.
00:05:41And these, uh, these voices of opposition,
00:05:45they often lead to the lack of implementation of the, uh, the Treaty of Nanjing,
00:05:49which had a number of,
00:05:57uh effects on the relationship between foreigners and Chinese.
00:06:00Uh,
00:06:05one example which is always, uh,
00:06:06which is always illustrated in the history books is the seizure of the arrow,
00:06:10which was a Chinese boat transporting opium,
00:06:16which had the British flag attached to the Union Jack
00:06:19and because of it was meant to be immune from,
00:06:22uh, any kind of official action.
00:06:26But this ship was seized, and it was, uh,
00:06:28it became the bone of contention between the Chinese authorities,
00:06:33the local Chinese authorities and the Westerners, especially the British.
00:06:39Um, this led to a number of, uh
00:06:44provocations,
00:06:50armed provocations which then quickly led to a
00:06:52a discharge of popular discontent against the dynasty.
00:06:56So what we should be careful not to confuse is the
00:07:04discontent which had built up in the population against the Qing Dynasty
00:07:10and that which later in the history books would
00:07:15be attributed to a rejection of the foreigners.
00:07:19The two are not linked per se.
00:07:23And in order to understand this,
00:07:26we need to look at the Taiping War which sets in around
00:07:28the year 18 50 so well before the Treaty of Tension.
00:07:32But we will do so in a moment. But first of all, what did the Treaty of Tianjin entail?
00:07:36The Treaty of Tianjin afforded Westerners, but especially the British,
00:07:43the right to use all the waterways in China in order to trade.
00:07:48And this was tremendously important because it allowed the treaty ports, uh,
00:07:52near the Youngster river,
00:07:59so nimble or and Shanghai to be linked up with the cities of the interior Nanjing,
00:08:00the whole of the lower youngster Valley,
00:08:08with cities such as Guangzhou and Hangzhou, but then also the cities of, uh,
00:08:11Sichuan,
00:08:18Chongqing and Chengdu. All of these were all of a sudden available for trade.
00:08:19The second most important concession was that the Qing Dynasty
00:08:24allowed Westerners to set up missionary stations in the interior.
00:08:29This happened very slowly,
00:08:35but it allowed them to follow the wake of the traders and
00:08:37to establish themselves until the end of the Republic of China.
00:08:43So until the creation of communist China, um,
00:08:49on a permanent basis in cities such as Wuhan or the three cities that lead to it,
00:08:53um chunking or Nanjing
00:08:59and these inland missions would then become
00:09:03very important for the development of education
00:09:06and medicine in late imperial China.
00:09:10But before we come to a conclusion,
00:09:15I have to say that the French forces were very much
00:09:18a force to be reckoned with in the late 19th century.
00:09:22They wanted exactly the same conditions as the uh the British had in fact,
00:09:27they begin to coordinate the movements with the British,
00:09:33and in 18 60 we get the follow up treaty, the Treaty of Beijing,
00:09:37which guarantees the rights of missionary stations,
00:09:41especially in places where the French were active
00:09:45in the same context.
00:09:49I should just add that the French around the year 18 58 had completed them, Uh,
00:09:50the conquest of Indochina.
00:09:58In other words, they were very keen to extend their influence beyond this region,
00:10:00which encompasses Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia
00:10:07northwards. And for this reason, they needed a new legal basis.
00:10:10So the treaty is the combined treaties of Tianjin
00:10:15and Beijing gave them precisely this precondition.
00:10:18
Cite this Lecture
APA style
Laamann, L. (2021, January 25). China – The End of the Qing Dynasty, 1842-1911 - Opium War to the Treaty of Tianjin, 1842-58 [Video]. MASSOLIT. https://massolit.io/courses/china-the-end-of-the-qing-dynasty-1842-1911/hundred-days-reform-1898
MLA style
Laamann, L. "China – The End of the Qing Dynasty, 1842-1911 – Opium War to the Treaty of Tianjin, 1842-58." MASSOLIT, uploaded by MASSOLIT, 25 Jan 2021, https://massolit.io/courses/china-the-end-of-the-qing-dynasty-1842-1911/hundred-days-reform-1898