But he actually reigned till his death in His court was successful early in his reign, but he later his greed set the empire on an unfavorable course. Qianlong's reign was the most prosperous in the Qing Dynasty, and the population grew quickly to about million. However foreign trade was restricted to only Guangzhou Canton at one point. The empire grew larger , as they subdued Tibet and the Xinjiang regions , inheriting Mongolia from the dynasties founders, and wiping out the Dzungars a large Mongolian tribe of hundreds of thousands.
The land area of the Qing empire was second only to the Yuan Empire's in size. The Qing era's main literary accomplishments were extremely large encyclopedias and compendiums of literature comprised of hundreds of volumes and popular novels. In the middle of their dynastic era, when the empire was at its height, one of the four great classic novels was written called Dream of the Red Chamber. See more on The History of Chinese Literature.
However, Emperor Qianlong grew greedy. After his victories in the west, he tried to conquer the kingdoms of Burma and Vietnam from to and failed at a great cost to the empire. In his later years he indulged in luxuries, sex, and palaces, leaving court matters to corrupt officials.
Discontent against Qing rule increased, and people arose in rebellion over heavy taxation. His isolationist actions towards Europeans kept the people from adopting technology and scientific knowledge, and set the stage for later inadequacy and invasions. During the s, the dynasty seemed somewhat successful because the population kept growing and the territory stayed intact, but the empire modernized too slowly, and the ruling court dealt poorly with a rapidly changing world and numerous uprisings.
Protestant evangelical Christianity was introduced by Western missionaries, and tens of thousands of Chinese converted. The missionaries set up numerous schools and hospitals, educating tens of thousands of students and educating doctors and nurses in Western medicine. They also set up colleges and universities. See more on Christianity in China. In the s, Europeans easily defeated the Qing army and navy, and forced the Qing to give them trading ports.
The British wanted greater Qing Empire trade, but the Qing court wanted to keep out British opium and influence. Britain defeated China twice in and the Opium Wars to force trade treaties, and gained Hong Kong until under the Treaty of Nanking of From until the end of the dynastic era, the Qing court faced rebellion after rebellion, but they defeated or thwarted all of them.
This was however at great cost to the population and the Qing grip on power. The leader of the Taiping Rebellion was Hong Xiuquan. His quasi-Christian movement had some forward-thinking ideals which the Qing Dynasty disagreed with he banned slavery, men using concubines, arranged marriages, opium use, foot binding, torture, and the worship of idols, and he wanted women to have more equality in society.
He made Nanjing his capital, and his army seemed ready to attack Beijing. However, Britain and France sent troops to aid the Qing army. In 13 years, about 25 million people died. It is thought to be the second bloodiest war in history after WWII. The Miao people also rebelled in Guizhou. It is thought that millions of people were killed in two wars around and from to The Hakka people and the Punti people in the southeast fought a long ethnic war between the years and The Panthay Rebellion was a Muslim rebellion in Yunnan that lasted from to , in which about a million people died.
Empress Dowager Cixi 's son Emperor Tongzhi "reigned" from to , and her nephew Emperor Guangxu "ruled" from to But it is said that she was the real ruler during this long and crucial period of time.
The Empress Dowager — started to rule after British and French troops attacked Beijing and destroyed the Summer Palace in It's said that Emperor Xianfeng then fell into a depression, and as a result died in , making Cixi his concubine and son's mother an empress dowager to help his son rule. To maintain and gain power at the top, Cixi was ruthless in a dangerous court situation where assassinations and plots were the way of life.
She had to maintain the traditional system, although this cost millions of lives and kept the empire from progressing. The Qing dynasty the last imperial dynasty of China, — Their history, language, culture, and identity was distinct from the Chinese population, whom they conquered in when China was weakened by internal rebellions. The Manchus forged alliances with certain Chinese and Mongol groups that aided their conquest of China.
Manchu man-choo ethnic group that lived for centuries in the northeast of modern-day China. In the seventeenth century CE, Manchu people conquered China and ruled there for more than years. They developed a style of rule befitting the multiethnic empire they commanded, of which the Chinese were the largest population.
The Manchu rulers modeled many of their government practices on those of the previous Chinese Ming dynasty a series of rulers from a single family. For example, they employed a civil service examination system much like in previous Chinese dynasties to recruit Chinese government officials.
In addition, the emperors were bilingual in Chinese and Manchu. Simultaneously, the Manchu rulers maintained and promoted many Manchu customs at court and within the general populace. The Qing ching dynasty, especially in the eighteenth century when the Qing empire was the largest and most prosperous in the world, saw prolific cultural and artistic achievements.
Three Qing emperors were responsible for the notable stability and prosperity the state of being wealthy or successful. They were Kangxi reigned — , Yongzheng yong jung reigned — , and Qianlong chee-en-long reigned — The ceramic pots and other articles made from clay hardened by heat. An immense variety of porcelains was produced, which included those for imperial relating to an empire, an emperor, or the home of royals. Japan stripped away Taiwan, took effective control of Korea formerly a Chinese tributary following the First Sino-Japanese War of —96, and also imposed unequal trade demands in the Treaty of Shimonoseki.
By , foreign powers including Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and Japan had established "spheres of influence" along China's coastal areas. There the foreign powers essentially controlled trade and the military, although technically they remained part of Qing China.
The balance of power had tipped decidedly away from the imperial court and toward the foreign powers. Within China, dissent grew, and the empire began to crumble from within. Ordinary Han Chinese felt little loyalty to the Qing rulers, who still presented themselves as conquering Manchus from the north. The calamitous Opium Wars seemed to prove that the alien ruling dynasty had lost the Mandate of Heaven and needed to be overthrown.
In response, the Qing Empress Dowager Cixi clamped down hard on reformers. Rather than following the path of Japan's Meiji Restoration and modernizing the country, Cixi purged her court of modernizers. When Chinese peasants raised a huge anti-foreigner movement in , called the Boxer Rebellion , they initially opposed both the Qing ruling family and the European powers plus Japan.
Eventually, the Qing armies and the peasants united, but they were unable to defeat the foreign powers. This signaled the beginning of the end for the Qing dynasty. Strong rebel leaders began to have major impacts on the ability of the Qing to rule. Others began to openly call for the overthrow of the existing regime and replace it with a constitutional rule.
Sun Yat-Sen emerged as China's first "professional" revolutionary, having gained an international reputation by being abducted by Qing agents in the Chinese Embassy in London in One Qing response was to suppress the word "revolution" by banning it from their world-history textbooks.
The French Revolution was now the French "rebellion" or "chaos," but in fact, the existence of leased territories and foreign concessions provided plenty of fuel and varying degrees of safety for radical opponents. The crippled Qing dynasty clung to power for another decade, behind the walls of the Forbidden City, but the Wuchang Uprising of put the final nail in the coffin when 18 provinces voted to secede from the Qing dynasty.
The Last Emperor, 6-year-old Puyi , formally abdicated the throne on Feb. Actively scan device characteristics for identification. Use precise geolocation data. Select personalised content. Create a personalised content profile. An addiction crisis followed. A ban was attempted, and smoking opium outlawed, but British traders worked with black marketers to bypass laws. Military confrontation became likely, and soon British forces shut down Chinese ports. Among many concessions during negotiations, China was forced to give up Hong Kong to the British.
A second Opium War was waged from to against the British and the French, bringing more unequal agreements. Christian missionaries were allowed to flood the country, and western businessmen were free to open factories there. Ports were leased to foreign powers, allowing them to operate within China according to their own laws, and opium addiction rose. The White Lotus sect was suppressed after an eight-year rebellion, lasting from to The Eight Trigrams sect rose up in , taking several cities and entering the Forbidden City before being defeated.
The most deadly was the Taiping Rebellion , lasting from to Put into motion by Christian religious fanatic Hong Xiuquan, the city of Nanjing was occupied by rebels for a decade and 20 million Chinese died in the conflict. The widow of Emperor Xianfeng, who ruled from to , Cixi was regent for her infant son Tongzhi from to , then for her three-year-old nephew Guangxu, who ruled for 46 years with Cixi considered the real power behind the throne.
In , Guangxu tried to take on the role of reformer in an attempt to modernize China, but this effort was squashed by Cixi after several months. The Boxer Rebellion ignited in , the work of the Harmonious Fist secret society. The group seized the property of Christian missionaries, attracting militant followers, then moved into the cities, attacking and killing foreigners. Western countries sent troops, but the Empress Dowager sided with the Boxers, declaring war on the West. Western forces defeated the Imperial Army and the Boxers in , executing government members who had supported the Boxers and imposing sanctions that weakened the Qing rule.
The Qing Dynasty fell in , overthrown by a revolution brewing since , when western-educated revolutionary Sun Zhongshan formed the Revive China Society in Hawaii , then Hong Kong. In , Sun united various revolutionary factions into one party with Japanese help and wrote the manifesto, the Three Principles of the People. In , the Nationalist Party of China held an uprising in Wuchang, helped by Qing soldiers, and 15 provinces declared their independence from the empire.
Within weeks the Qing court agreed to the creation of a republic with its top general, Yuan Shikai, as president. Xuantog abdicated in , with Sun creating a provisional constitution for the new country, which ushered in years of political unrest centered around Yuan.
In , there was a brief attempt to reinstate the Qing government, with Xuantog being restored for less than two weeks during a military coup that ultimately failed.
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