Chapter 3 Shadows Over the Pacific: East Asia

 By 1800, the Manchu people of the Qing Dynasty had ruled successfully for almost 200 years  They had:  secure borders  peace and prosperity  cultural and intellectual achievements

 But by 1900 the Qing Dynasty was near collapse  Why?  They could not withstand the incursions of Western powers like the British  They were an unchanging society  They believed the Chinese people were superior to all other peoples

 The Portuguese were the first to reach China in the 16 th century  Chinese rulers were afraid of the influence these Europeans would have on there people, so they confined the Portuguese to the port of Canton  For the next 200 years this worked, and China remained a fairly isolated society  In the mid-19 th century their isolation was ended by force

 Why? How?  The Chinese population kept growing; 400 million by 1900  To supply their needs, farming, manufacturing, and trade increased both internally and externally with foreigners

 The Chinese first traded with other Asians  By 1800 British merchants began applying pressure on the Qing Dynasty  They wanted access to other Chinese ports  The British were buying more from the Chinese than the Chinese were buying from them – trade imbalance  The British had to find a good that the Chinese would buy and become dependent on

 They found it - opium from India  The result was drug addiction in China  The trade imbalance was reversed; more money was leaving China and they were taking in  The Chinese ruler tried to prohibit opium  The British responded by talking about free trade and then declared war on the Chinese – the Opium War, 1839 – 1842  The British won

 The Treaty of Nanking  opened 5 new ports to the British  limited the tariffs placed on British imports  granted extraterritoriality rights to the British; this unequal treatment system was in effect until 1943  China paid all costs of the war to Britain; China fell into debt to Britain  China ceded the island of Hong Kong to the British and remained in British hands until 1997

 By the end of the 19 th century, extraterritoriality evolved into spheres of influence, zones where the interests of a particular nation took precedence  Because the Treaty of Nanking was applied to all western nations, foreign powers were now taking chunks of China

 By the mid-1900s China  couldn’t keep foreigners out  was in debt to foreigners  had pressing internal economic problems  These factors led to a rebellion of the poor in Taiping Rebellion ; 20 million died

 The French and the British took advantage of this rebellion by pressing for more concessions in 1856  This resulted in the Treaty of Tianjin in 1860  opium was legalized  restrictions on missionaries and on ports were lifted  the British took Kowloon

 Some Chinese thought China needed to learn from the West in order to survive  Eventually the royal court began to listen and called for self-strengthening in the 1860s  western technology would be adopted  Confucian principles would remain in tact  the military would be modernized, and they would set up new railroads, weapons arsenals, and shipyards

 Foreign incursions increased from the 1880s onward  Japan took Taiwan  Russia took territories in Siberia  France took Vietnam  Britain took Burma  Germany took the Shandong Peninsula

 Foreign powers agreed to an Open Door policy in China which calmed the foreigners fears about one another  China had no say in the matter  Resentment towards foreigners in China grew  The Chinese saw foreigners as the cause of their economic woes  This resentment led to the Boxer Rebellion

 The Boxers  an athletic group  a secret society  resented foreign residents in China and attacked them  Rebellion was put down by an international military force in 1900  Chinese lost all faith in their government

 The Qing thought if they made more reforms, they could save themselves and China  But the revolution could not be stopped  It was led by Sun Yat-sen ( )  born to peasants  educated in Hawaii  returned to China to be a doctor

 1905 – Sun Yat-sen helped to found the United League  revolution broke out when government was going to nationalize the railroads on terms favoring foreigners. The assemblies protested and then declared their independence  national military forces helped to overthrow Qing Dynasty; Sun Yat-sen assumed the presidency of the Chinese Republic

 The United League became the National People’s Party or the Guomindang (GMD)  It found gaining control of all of China to be difficult  SunYat-sen turned over his office to a military man who could gain control, Yuan Shikai  Yuan turned into a dictator but dies before he could declare himself emperor  GMD finally got control in 1928 but were challenged by the communists

 Set of small islands  Possessed few natural resources  Borrowed from Chinese culture for centuries  Fairly homogeneous people  Did not wish to have foreigners pollute their society

 Japanese ruling system:  Emperor at the top  Shogun  Samurai  Daimyos

 Portuguese reached Japan in 16 th century  For the next 200 years Japan was considered a closed country and only allowed the Chinese and the Dutch into one port  That changed in 1853 and again in 1854 when Commodore Matthew C. Perry of the United States visited Japan to open trade with them  The Japanese lacked the technology to keep him out

 The Shogun was forced to make treaties with the United States and then with other nations  Foreigners gained extraterritoriality privileges  Economic disruption followed  Samurai discipline collapsed and the Emperor and the Shogun had their authority questioned  The Shogun fell  The Emperor held on but had to make changes

 The changes were called the Meiji Restoration ( the emperor was called the Meiji)  The true power was in the hands of the rebels who introduced changes that marked the beginning of a modern Japan

 Changes:  capital was moved to Tokyo  land belonging to the daimyos was returned to the emperor; it was then divided into prefectures  modern army and navy were created  money was kept in Japan; no borrowing from foreigners

 agricultural growth  improved schooling  central government: Council of State and Ministries  by 1900 industry was diversified and strong  Japan had modernized in a 50 year period  they adopted Western ideas that would help them progress By 1914 Japan had risen from semi-colonialism to virtual equality with the then Great Powers They even had overseas dependencies