chapter 19 empires in collision: europe, the middle east, and east asia

I: Reversal of Fortune: China’s Century of Crisis

A.

• In 1793, the Chinese emperor Qianlong rebuffed Britain’s request that China rescind or loosen restrictions on trade.

B.

• China was too large, victim of success
• Chinese bureaucracy did not keep pace with growing population 
• bandit gangs and peasant rebellions became common
• culmination of China’s internal crisis: the Taiping Uprising 
• posture towards women also revolutionary
• initial successes led to establishment of capital in Nanjing in 1853
• rebellion was crushed in 1864
• resolution of the Taiping rebellion consolidated the power of the provincial gentry even more 

C.

• the Opium Wars show the transformation of China’s relationship with Europe
• the British responded with the first Opium War (1839–1842) 
• second Opium War (1856–1858) 
• China was also defeated by the French (1885) and Japanese (1895) 
• Qing dynasty was deeply weakened at a time when China needed a strong government to deal with modernization 
• “unequal treaties” inhibited China’s industrialization 

D.

• the Chinese government tried to act against problems
  
• conservative leaders feared that development would harm the landlord class
  
• Boxer Uprising (1898–1901): militia organizations killed many Europeans and Chinese
  Christians, besieged foreign embassies in Beijing
  
• growing number of educated Chinese became disillusioned with the Qing dynasty
• the government agreed to some reforms in the early twentieth century, but not enough—the imperial order collapsed in 1911 

II. The Ottoman Empire and the West in the Nineteenth Century
A. 

• Both China and the Ottoman Empire:
• 1. felt that they did not need to learn from the West
• 2. avoided direct colonial rule, but were diminished
• 3. attempted “defensive modernization”
• 4. suffered a split in society between modernists and those holding traditional values

B. 

• 1750: the Ottoman Empire was still strong, at center of the Islamic world; by 1900, was
  known as “the sick man of Europe”
• region by region, Islamic world fell under Christian rule, and the Ottomans couldn’t prevent
  it
• central Ottoman state had weakened
• the economy was hit hard by Western developments
• had reached a state of dependency on Europe

C. 

• Ottomans attempted ambitious reforms, going considerably further than the Chinese 
• late eighteenth century: Selim III tried to establish new military and administrative structures
• after 1839: more far-reaching measures (Tanzimat, or “reorganization”) emerged 
• supporters of reform saw the Ottoman Empire as a secular state
• opposition coalesced around the “Young Turks” (military and civilian elites)
• military coup (1908) gave the Young Turks real power 

D. 

• by 1900 China and the Ottoman Empire were “semicolonies”
• both gave rise to a new nationalist conception of society
• China: the imperial system collapsed in 1911
• Ottoman Empire: the empire collapsed following World War I
• Chinese revolutionaries rejected Confucian culture much more than Turkish leaders rejected
  Islam