Why was the Qing Dynasty so weak? History of China 1644-1839 Documentary 1/10

[Music] for centuries long before the opium wars europeans have been making their way over to china there were of course some travelers like marco polo which i'm sure you are aware of but even before him there were the radonites these were jewish merchants who traveled the length of the silk road setting up from europe sailing to egypt crossing overland to the red sea and onwards to china and in fact there was a jewish community living in kaifeng until the 17th century christianity also made its way over to china in the dark ages and their church the historian church was one of the first to split from rome however trapped behind islamic empires it began to fade away and one other notable case of early exploration of china came in the 6th century when byzantine monks looking to end the chinese monopoly of silk travelled to china to steal silkworm eggs but throughout medieval times it was largely the muslims who dominated trade between east and west and there were large populations of persians and arabs living within china so large in fact that in the 9th century they began to be blamed for the country's ills and the chinese massacred them numbers are disputed but it was probably over a hundred thousand muslims that were killed in guangzhou in 878. then the mongols invaded china and welcomed the traders back but once again tensions boiled over and they were massacred again after the ispa rebellion in 1357 so the outside world was very aware of china and china was well aware of the outside world then by the 15th century the mongols had been driven back up north and the ming dynasty ruled china and they were initially open to the idea of international exploration notably they sent zhonghu on a voyage across east africa asia and arabia but china didn't trade in the same way as the europeans they relied on the tributary system where the smaller countries would hand over tributes as a gift almost this not only brought the smaller powers peace but helped create the idea of cynocentrism the belief that china was the centre of the world and it wasn't just the chinese who bought into this the koreans did especially and so too did the japanese and vietnamese to a lesser extent this idea of cyanocentrism wasn't just cultural but rather quite literate at times way jun had for instance complained about european maps saying mateo richie puts china not in the center this is altogether far from the truth for china should be in the center of the world which can be proved by the single fact we can see the north star resting of the zenith of the heaven at midnight but throughout china's long history the tributary system included hundreds of states across southeast asia the steps of central asia and beyond this worked well for the chinese as they produced enough food to feed their population and most of the luxury goods that the world wanted like porcelain silk and tea plus by avoiding open international trade this tributary system allowed the government to keep control of prices within their empire so jonghyun was not so much looking for trading routes but rather collecting tributes then in the early 16th century the portuguese discovered a route to india and diplomatic relations were finally opened up but not for very long this is partly because piracy was a major problem for the ming specifically japanese pirates known as the woku so the ming began to close their country to international trade to protect against this new threat plus the portuguese began to enslave chinese people and they were only driven back at the battle of shan kawan in 1522 yet this just encouraged the europeans to join the japanese in launching pirate raids elsewhere some europeans especially the spanish made detailed plans on conquering china from their base in the philippines they expected an army of just over 20 000 spaniards japanese and filipinos would be enough to do the job and although this may seem like a ludicrous plan it should be said that the ming dynasty was far from strong their problems began nearly a century before this when at the battle of tumu 20 000 mongols defeated and massacred half a million chinese troops this costly campaign left them unable to deal with threats from the sea plus the fear of mongol attacks made them rebuild sections of the great wall at a great expense however this proved to be pretty pointless as in 1550 the mongols crossed the great wall and sacked beijing and the ming could barely muster together an army of 50 000 men to drive them back so the ming will weakened and had a feeling like they were under siege as they rebuilt the wall in the north they also imposed a sea ban to try and prevent any threats from the sea this stopped anyone from landing in or sailing from china essentially closing the country off yet as the portuguese agreed to help crush the pirates they were given macau and allowed to trade there further threats to china would come from japan who had just unified under toyotomi hideyoshi and he in the 1590s looked to invade korea and march right onto china but thankfully for the chinese the korean navy defeated the japanese and ended the imjin war preventing a japanese invasion of china but this didn't give them peace for very long as around the same time the churches in the north began to unite under nurachi and he began launching invasions of northern china and even korea the churchians who were later known as the manchus were considered barbarians by the chinese and koreans so the koreans initially refused to pay tribute to them but this just resulted in another invasion in 1636 and this tribute continued for centuries yet in korea they would develop the idea of sojung war or little china believing that they were the last bastion of civilization after the ming dynasty fell to the barbarians meanwhile as the churches were pushing south peasants in china led by lee cheng sacked beijing in 1644 the last ming emperor committed suicide and lee became the first and only emperor of the shun dynasty and a little interesting fact for you when trying to stop the peasant forces the ming dynasty deliberately flooded the yellow river and destroyed the town of kaifeng and this is believed to have ended the jewish community in china as no real traces exist of them afterwards ming generals angry with the peasant takeover threw open the gates of the great wall and the churchians who i'll be calling manchus from here on out swept south and captured beijing the following year the qing dynasty under the sunci emperor had thus come to power in china and as the ming had already been defeated this made their path to claim the right to rule or the mandate of heaven far easier but they were still outsiders in this country in some regards their outsider status helped them out as they gained favor with the tibetans and mongols plus their imperial examinations provided opportunities for people from all ethnicities to climb the social ladder however there were of course still ethnic tensions between the manchus and the majority han population for instance they required all han chinese to adopt their hairstyle the queue which was met with resistance but the qing dynasty responded brutally to descent and often massacred whole towns like in zhang yin plus the manchus also built a willow palisade around manchuria in order to prevent han chinese from moving into the region the manchus also brought their military organization into china and this was previously created by nurachi when he united the manchus and to briefly summarize them every household was sworn to a company and every company was sworn to a different coloured banner by 1614 there were just four yellow white red and blue but as nurachi began uniting the tribes and invading parts of china more banners were added by just adding a border around the outside of them these were the banner armies and the yellow banner which nurachi personally led was the basis of the flag of the qing dynasty further banner armies were created for the mongols and the chinese so in total there were 24 and initially the emperor just controlled a few of them but over time they were all brought under the emperor's direct control to avoid coups and challenges to the throne but the banner system wasn't just important for the military as it affected most aspects of life and bannermen would often live strangely secluded from the rest of the population this is because the bannermen were essentially nobility and received annual pensions and land from the government but the issue of ethnicity in the banner system was a bit complex for instance some han bannermen adopted manchu names before the invasion of beijing but afterwards many manchu bannermen became more chinese marriage rules between han and manju depended on whether they were in a banner or not and sometimes manchu bannermen adopted hand children into their households creating a further complication as to who belonged where plus importantly the manchus lacked the numbers so sometimes han families were just brought up to the rank of manchu given manchu names and took up the position of a manchu it was all pretty complicated yet in the 17th century this banner system was initially very successful and they held the highest ranks within the military but under them was the green standard army this was a far larger army working more like a police force in an army in one and it was mainly made up of han chinese and on this i think i should take a little time just to explain the ethnic groups in china obviously you had the manchu's hands mongols and tibetans which i've already mentioned but in southern china you also had groups that speak languages in the meow yau family group these were groups like the meow humong and diao also in the south you had the cantonese who would later fight against the hakka then there's the zhuang who lived in guangxi province and the yi people who lived around sichuan and it should be said that the regions that they lived in changed drastically over time notably most of these people moved further south in the 19th and 20th centuries and to avoid persecution many of them left the country to southeast asia and even beyond in the west of china there's turkic groups like the wages who are muslim but at this time they were more often called taranti and there's also a group of chinese muslims known as the hue and they went by many names like the dungan or sometimes the panthai so sometimes it's a bit confusing when looking at away rebellions because the names of them often changed and bear all of these groups in mind for the 19th century as they would all rise up at different points but these are just some of the many many ethnic groups within china many of them are just branches of a larger ethnic group for instance there are the tanka people who traditionally live on boats around the southern coast and they were and still are seen as social outcasts and can be compared to the traveling community in europe anyway it was the green standard army which although was han was instrumental in putting down the early ming loyalist revolts the first major uprising was the revolt of the three feudatories this was caused when the emperor decided to take back provinces he had rewarded to hand generals who defected from the ming and joined in the invasion the green standard army proved effective at crushing the rebels but ming loyalists elsewhere got involved and formed a base in taiwan this by the way is something you can draw a later parallel with later on in the 20th century like when the nationalists fled to taiwan to escape communist drool so here you had ming loyalists escaping to taiwan to escape qing rule but taiwan at that time was predominantly austronesian not really chinese at all and before this the first major nation to settle there were the dutch who arrived in the early 1620s so the ming loyalists had to drive the dutch out however unlike the nationalists later on the ming loyalists did not find security on the island as the qing dynasty sailed to taiwan to mop up the rebellion thus bringing taiwan into their empire then the sunji emperor died in 1661. and was replaced by the kangchi emperor and under his 61-year rule the qing dynasty experienced a great deal of growth they drove back russian incursions in the north and brought mongolia into the empire they continued to fight with the jungles in the west for many decades but when the jungles invaded tibet the chinese also invaded tibet thus turning it into a protectorate and later bringing it into their empire however the qing dynasty not only maintained the isolationist policy of the ming but stepped it up a gear out of fear of ming loyalists this is because the ming had been pushed further south and off the mainland so the qing banned anyone from living on coastal areas in certain provinces so for a couple of decades nobody could live within around 25 kilometers of the coast and this the great clearance of cost restricted international trade and smuggling while also turning some former trading hubs into wastelands but the europeans were allowed in china they were after all present in the imperial court running the observatory and helping provide artillery for campaigns in exchange they were allowed to practice christianity in china and lead their missions while over in japan they had already been banned but this all changed in the early 18th century because pope clement xi refused to allow chinese christians to continue practicing confucian rights so the kangshi emperor while saying that the westerners were petty responded by banning europeans from preaching in china this essentially closed china for good but their quest for further expansion was not over kang shi's successor the yongzheng emperor continued the wars against the jungles in the west but these proved incredibly costly and by the end of his reign in 1735 half of the treasury had been spent on the military the yongjiang emperor by the way could be described as an early cosplayer dressing up as the dalai lama a persian a european fighting a tiger and a host of other things his successor the chan long emperor ruled from 1735 until 1796. he finally crushed the koshered mongols and then launched the 10 great campaigns the first of which finally conquered the jungles and this ended with a genocide which often goes unmentioned four during the pacification of the region around 450 000 people or around 80 percent of the population was eliminated otherwise nepal attacked a bet and forced the tibetans to pay tribute so the chinese counter-attacked and forced nepal to once again pay tribute to the qing empire so in these two examples the qing were successful but their military prowess was tested elsewhere for instance their numerous attempts to take burma were driven back so too was their invasion of vietnam and the remaining campaigns were largely fought against rebels showing that long before the humiliation of the 19th century china was facing a number of problems some of these were ethnic tensions like the meow rebellion of 1735 which centered around guadezo and the tibetan revolt of 1750 there were also religious uprisings during this time notably sufi sex in xinjiang and gansu and these muslim revolts would often brew up until the 20th century plus there were secret societies which were a powerful force in china for centuries for instance there was the tian di hue which formed in fujian but moved around the country gaining supporters and occasionally robbing people to fund their revolutionary activities while they in the 1780s rose up in taiwan under lee shuang wen this rebellion included pro-ming loyalists and people just angry at the manchurian corruption and rule and they were able to field an army of around 50 000 people while declaring lin the new king but elite troops in beijing were able to crush them within just a couple of years yet a lot of the activities and origins of these secret societies remain a mystery like the shaolin monks may have participated in some of them after the qing dynasty closed down their monasteries due to their pro-ming allegiances this it is said led to five elders traveling around the country and spreading their martial arts which aspects of these stories are true exaggerated or just completely false as hard to tell but martial arts would without doubt be important in the anti-ching and anti-foreign movements in the 19th century another group which had mysterious origins was the white lotus society these allegedly formed under the mongol yuan dynasty and led the red turbine rebellion which ushered in the ming dynasty how they survived during the ming dynasty until the late 18th century it's hard to say but in the 1770s wang lung a martial artist began teaching people in shandong he taught them how to fast for long periods of times how to meditate and about the coming of maitreya this is to simplify a buddha who would come to earth and achieve complete enlightenment maitreya in this case can probably be best compared to the second coming of christ because just as in europe especially in the 17th century many took up arms to usher in the new world the same was happening in china the belief in the coming of a new world is called millenarianism and again was a recurring problem for the qing dynasty although the government managed to crush wang lund's small following in changdong a much larger white lotus rebellion broke out in the 1790s in the mountains of sichuan herbe and shaanxi this time the rebels fought a guerrilla campaign and drove back numerous ching attempts to restore their authority eventually it was suppressed thanks to the use of local han militias but the rebellion lasted for years the struggle of fighting against guerrilla force led to widespread atrocities against civilians and government control was forever weakened in these regions plus although the qing reached its greatest extent under the chang-long emperor his 10 great campaigns were incredibly costly somewhere in the ballpark of 120 million tales whereas the annual revenue was only about 40 million plus during his reign it was already apparent that the banner armies had become redundant and just a curse on the state as all their expenses still had to be covered in theory the government would get their support during a war in exchange but over time the bannermen had become a little bit decadent and squandered their money on luxuries think of them like the janissaries in the ottoman empire a once proud fighting force that had become militarily useless but politically strong even the green standard army proved to be just a means of income for the commanders and soldiers as during wang long's rebellion many of the soldiers could not even fire their weapons so the changlong emperor tried to bring back the old martial ways of the manju by reinstating royal hunts but this was already centuries out of date what's more the solo on people in the north and the borders of russia were apparently starting to use guns while hunting however the changlong emperor was angered by this and forced them to return to their old ways with bow and arrow so the few people who were continuing to fight and even modernizing their methods were prevented from doing so otherwise the sea ban and costs of subduing rebellions had left their fleets which largely discarded the coasts incredibly underfunded and neglected and to further worsen the situation corruption was rife and there's no better way to illustrate this than talking about her shen he gained favor with the emperor and essentially could act with complete freedom as such in the late 18th century he and his followers looked to artificially extend military campaigns to continue receiving money which they took for themselves by stealing public money and raising taxes which he also took he amassed a fortune equivalent of just under 300 billion in today's money or around 15 years income for the state he was later executed by the jia ching emperor but his rampant corruption diverted a great deal of wealth from the government meaning the canals running trade to the heart of china went unmaintained and the yellow river flood defences were never repaired this of course would have disastrous consequences again in the 19th century but more than that the culture of corruption led to rebellions incredible waste lack of modernization and later on opium arriving in the country but on the europeans they were still only allowed to trade in canton modern day guangzhou and to a lesser extent shia men but extortion in the region was commonplace so james flint with the east india company decided to sail north to chan jin to petition the emperor to open other ports this was highly illegal and flint was quickly captured and brought south to canton and the chinese people accused of helping him write the petition were publicly executed for aiding the barbarians so trade and jammin was restricted and the canton system for trade was put in place this meant all international trade at canton had to be done through the 13 trading companies known as the kohong of course the east india company found this too restrictive for their growing trade so persuaded the british to send an embassy to meet with the emperor this the mccartney expedition of 1793 was ultimately unsuccessful as the chinese still had no real reason to trade with the westerners and still feared christianity as the emperor wrote to king george our celestial empire possesses all things in prolific abundance and lacks no product within its borders there is therefore no need to import the manufactures of outside barbarians in exchange for our own produce so the opportunity to modernize from a position of strength was rejected and when the jia ching emperor took over in 1796 there were more miao rebellions and the continuing white lotus rebellion to deal with these were crushed but there were yet even more white lotus rebellions in 1813 when lin ching led his branch around shandong in revolt now he was probably inspired by a comet spotted in the sky and believing this to be an omen rose up to prepare for the end of the world but there was another recurring problem in china throughout the 19th century and that is famines it is said that over the past 2 000 years 1 800 famines have been recorded in china however i find it quite hard to verify this number but preceding the white lotus rebellion there were two significant ones in 1810 and 1811 and although a lot of people died these would be minor compared to famines in later decades which would kill millions so the rebels gained followers in the midst of these omens and famines and very nearly succeeded their troops marched straight onto the forbidden city and entered the gates and they only retreated when the future daoguang emperor helped lead the defense by firing muskets at the crowd with all these internal problems china was losing its international clout fewer and fewer nations were sending tributes and some of the old states in their tributary system were falling under the influence of europeans for instance at the beginning of the 19th century the british invaded nepal bringing yet another nation further out of their sphere furthermore during all of this there was a rapid population increase this happened because compared to previous centuries there was relative peace and the importation of crops like potatoes created the right conditions for the population to climb from 100 million to 300 million throughout the 18th century but the government responded poorly to this population increase and many people were left hungry so many han chinese began to cross the will of palisade in the north and into manchuria the only place with free land available to farm so the rebellions continued when the daogong emperor took over in the 1820s muslims in the west took yakand kotan and the likes and the only reason this rebellion subsided is because their leader was betrayed and imprisoned and these successive rebellions had depleted treasuries once again and to raise money the qing imposed heavy taxes especially on merchants so the kohong merchants in guangzhou seeing their income slashed were more open to dealing with foreign merchants and one money maker for them was opium now opium had always been in china however as it only arrived via the tribute system it was always a luxury for the rich the east india company however ended that looking to end their trading deficit with china they began growing opium in india and selling it to the chinese in 1730 they sold around 1 000 crates a year to the chinese but by the 1770s they were selling over 4 000 crates various emperors tried to ban the sale of opium but the kohong were willing to ignore this they met the british merchants at sea brought opium back to the mainland and sold it across the country so by the 1820s and 30s over 30 000 crates were arriving in china annually and finally the east india company had reversed the deficit it wasn't just opium that began arriving in the south however it was also christianity early missionaries like robert morrison translated the bible into chinese and converted a very small number of locals although this christian community wouldn't really have an impact for decades successive emperors issued edicts against the practice of the religion but back to opium the emperor sent lindsay shoe to end the opium trade and he began seizing stockpiles and destroying them in 1839 many british people did not particularly defend the sale of opium and in parliament many spoke against the trade but the british had recently underwent a great shift in mindset when it came to international trade spurred on by the writings of adam smith and political events like the repeal of the corn laws britain wanted to trade freely around the world so the destruction of opium and following skirmishes persuaded the british to get involved and the first opium war broke out on paper china could have fielded around 800 000 men with around 200 000 of them carrying some form of firearm but more often than not governors had taken money to train and equip an army on paper but in reality this didn't occur and they took the money for themselves so it was probably more likely they had around a hundred thousand men ready to fight the few soldiers they did actually have were far from battle ready and it would take months for them to mobilize from the far-flung reaches of the empire and be deployed to the battlefield the british on the other hand fielded around 5 000 soldiers and around 7 000 marines and sailors in theory this would still make them fiercely outmanned but if you look at various battles fought the odds weren't stacked so much against them for instance at chin high a couple thousand veteran british soldiers backed up with royal navy cannon fire defeated around 8 000 chinese so they were still outnumbered but not as much as what you'd expect the chinese also placed command of their troops in the hands of some pretty inept generals they were of course given their titles because of their bloodlines not skill but more than that china hadn't really fought an international war in decades and of course never a modern war so they just didn't have the experience there was also a fear that if they failed they would be put to death and this resulted in a more cautious approach to war often various leaders would refuse to fight or aid their fellow leaders elsewhere as it was far safer to keep to yourself and preserve your life a lot of them however were a bit cowardly and a bit corrupt take the example of yi shan he was tasked with fighting the british in guangdong but he distrusted the local cantonese people instead he recruited soldiers from fujian and beyond further delaying any real action he could take and in the meantime he just spent his days dining and partying with other officers he tried to launch a sneak attack on the british in guangzhou in may 1841 but when this failed he retreated back into the city and refused to fight them from there on out he would however still send reports to the emperor that all was going well and the british could easily be defeated while inside the city the poor logistics in the army resulted in militias fighting over supplies and he surrendered to the british shortly afterwards signing the treaty of guangzhou that same month and he wasn't the only general who made peace with the british without authorization from the emperor jishan for instance had done the same back in january that year to put this in some form of context imagine if during world war ii british generals in africa made peace with the germans handing egypt over to them without informing churchill or on d-day just one-tenth of the promised men had actually turned up to fight some of the generals refused to take part supplies were fought over on a first-come first-served basis and after the first casualties they made peace with the germans again it would of course have been a nightmare to actually win that war and it was the same for the chinese what's more inside the court there was a feeling of almost indestructibility they after all still saw china as the center of the world and they looked at the british as rebels not seeing them as a foreign power for instance lindsay shoe wrote in his diary i hear that the english rebel ships have already forced their way to the fort at leerte and of course most importantly the british navy was far better equipped than anything the chin could throw at them the chinese had after all spent little on their navy after dealing with so many rebellions and instead relied on their coastal thoughts to defend them plus what will again be a problem throughout the 19th century their navy was divided by region there were a few in total like at fujian in guangdong this meant they were not only underfunded but also uncoordinated and once again many leaders would seek to preserve their own fleet rather than help the other fleets so the british had an easy job concentrating their force and picking off small navies and attacking relatively undermanned thoughts and defenses after fighting in guangdong they captured kotal forts like ningbo and even sailed up the yangtze river to cut trade along the grand canal meanwhile to the far west there was a war that not many people actually know about the sikh empire tried to invade tibet so the chinese were forced to sign the treaty of nan king in 1842 and this allowed them to deal with the sikh empire however they had to hand hong kong over to the british and end the canton system but most importantly they had to open themselves to the outside world outside of hong kong the british were allowed to live in and trade in five other ports shanghai ningbo xiamen fuso and guangzhou other major nations began to follow suit in demanding trading ports be open starting with the french and the americans and then strangely norway sweden because of this christianity started making ground within china and one of the early convicts was hong-ji chuang after failing the imperial examinations he began to claim that he was the brother of jesus and in 1850 launched the taiping rebellion one of the most deadly wars in human history and a catalyst for further rebellions so to recap the qing dynasty came to power in the middle of the 17th century but quickly became corrupt and ineffective at governing over such a large population as foreigners within their own country the manchurians faced opposition from the majority hand population secret societies conquered muslim populations in the west and many more upon entering the 19th century a huge population boom mixed with the poor government led to widespread famines and natural disasters would only make the problems worse yet when people discuss the fall of the qing dynasty they often just sight the opium wars fast forward a bit and that's it but going forward you will see that half of the country was rebellion in the 1850s and 60s and tens of millions would die millions more would die further famines floods and the likes and all of that would of course lead to the fall of the qing dynasty but i'll discuss that series of unfortunate events next episode you

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Keywords: History of China, Qing Dynasty, Chinese Empire, Opium Wars, British China War, Fall of Qing Dynasty, Ming Dynasty, Qing China, History China, Chinese HIistory, qing dynasty, history of china, history of china documentary, chinese history, why did the qing fall, yuan shikai, collapse of the qing dynasty, why did the qing collapse, what ended the qing dynasty?, qing collapse, the last emperor

Id: w3gelZhbFoY

Length: 30min 55sec (1855 seconds)

Published: Wed May 26 2021