S05: Imperial Decline

• Mid-century Crises: What challenges did the Qing face at home?
• The First Opium War: How did Qing lose? What were its legacies?
• The Great Divergence: Why didn’t China industrialize? Or is it a bad question?

• What do we see?
• What do we not see?
• What’s every life like in Suzhou?

The Empire of China is an old, crazy, first-rate Man of War, which a fortunate succession of able and vigilant officers have contrived to keep afloat for these hundred and fifty years past, and to overawe their neighbors merely by her bulk and appearance. But whenever an insufficient man happens to have the command on deck, adieu to the discipline and safety of the ship. She may, perhaps, not sink outright; she may drift some time as a wreck, and will then be dashed to pieces on the shore; but she can never be rebuilt on the old bottom.

• State involution
• Increased migration and resource competition
• Decreased agricultural productivity
• Ecological degradation: deforestation, silting of Yellow River, etc.
• Social dislocation: Talent glut

Bi-metallic system:

• Unminted silver bullion + Minted copper cash coins
• Market adjustment of relative supply of two metals in circulation
• Copper cash (mostly from Japan) contracted while silver (from the New World) grew

Before mid-19th century:

• Head tax (percentage of working-age males)
• Land tax (agricultural productivity)
• Monopolies: salt, iron, jade, porcelain, customs receipts from trading ports
• Personal income
• Commercial tax

Partnership with gentry elites:

• <1% population, 25% farmland, 5-8% of agricultural income
• Preferential treatment: Taxed at 20%-50% the rate of common farmers
• Gentry wealth to pay for local administrative costs

Kangxi
b. 1654-1722, r. 1661-1722

• Freeze basic land tax (1713)

Yongzheng
b. 1678-1735, r. 1723-1735

• Introducing silver meltage fee
• Folding head tax into land tax

Qianlong
b. 1711-1799, r. 1735-1796

• Tax reductions: lower grain assessments
• General remission of land taxes (1745)

• Costs of maintenance mainly shared among local elites
• Debate at court: Abandon or restore?
• Sea shipping after 1840
• Affected population as source of instability

• Apocalyptic messianism in its expectation of the day of judgment and the birth of a savior.
• Practices included medical healing, sitting and breathing exercises, martial arts, and the chanting of spells and charms.
• Synthesis of Buddhism, Daoism, and Manicheanism (religious movement founded in Persia in the 3rd century CE by Mani, who, as the “Apostle of Light”, predicts an eternal struggle between a good spiritual world of light, and an evil material world of darkness.)

Confucian Literati: “Bandits” / “Heterodox sects”

Marxist historians: “Opium for the masses”

• Importance of religion as key means of instigating popular revolt.
• Secret, but also stable and structured: kinship and lineage as organization
• Providing services and organization during economic and social decay

• The White Lotus Rebellion occurred in China from 1796 to 1804.
• Led by the White Lotus Society, which preached Buddhist teachings of Maitreya Buddhism promising the arrival of a savior to restore the faithful.
• The rebels aimed to overthrow the Qing government and restore the Ming Dynasty.

• What began as a local rebellion escalated into a serious political crisis due to Qing’s ill response.
• Officials tasked with suppressing the rebellion were often half-hearted and exploited the situation for personal gain.
• Hiring civilians became a way to misappropriate war funds, leading many dismissed troops to become rebels themselves and increasing the war’s costs.
• The rebellion foreshadowed the Qing’s disintegration in the mid-nineteenth century.

• Heshen was a young Manchu who gained favor from the Qianlong Emperor.
• Many officials became indebted to Hesen, allowing him to manipulate the system for his benefit.
• Within five days of Emperor Qianlong’s death in 1799, the Jiaqing emperor arrested Hesen, who later hanged himself a month later.

An examination of Hesen’s estate revealed his immense wealth, including:

• 800 million ounces of silver (half of the state’s annual income)
• 5.8 million ounces of gold
• Nearly 5,000 gold bowls and dishes
• 119 gold wash basins
• 600 silver pots

How should the young Daoguang Emperor tackle official corruption?

The troubles originated in the same population boom that founded the Qing success.

• Jobs were scarce.
• Success was nearly impossible in the tightly restricted (and corrupt) examination system.
• The bureaucracy failed to appoint sufficient administrators even as the population doubled.
• Taxes fell behind, as did the granary and canal system.

• Silver outflow: Trade surplus with England turned deficit in 1826
• Increasing opium smuggling
• Growing users and addicts: “the magistrate or governor who did not smoke opium was an exception”

The Daoguang Emperor (r. 1812-1850) opposed the operation of opium dens and appointed Lin Zexu as commissioner in 1838. Lin came up with a three-part plan:

1. Offer rehabilitation for addicts in government sanitariums.
2. Round up Chinese dealers and dismantle drug rings.
3. Confiscate opium from foreign sellers and require them to sign agreements to exit the opium trade.

• What is Lin Zexu’s message to Queen Victoria?
• How might his letter have been received in England?
• Does Lin Zexu’s letter to Queen Victoria treat the Queen as an equal to the emperor?
• Does he see Great Britain as of equal standing with China? Finally, with whom do you sympathize most in the letter? Why?

Lin’s Position

• Set up sanitariums and arrested over 1,600 Chinese dealers.
• Surrounded 13 warehouses, holding 350 Europeans hostage for opium.
• Negotiated with Elliot while denying ships food and water.
• Destroyed over 2.6 million pounds of opium after merchants complied.

British position

• Captain Charles Elliot, the British Superintendent of Trade opposed Lin’s methods and hostage-taking.
• Elliot refused to sign a bond subjecting British citizens to Qing law, but promised to reimburse merchants before handing over opium.
• Believed Canton system was inadequate for trade and sought formal diplomatic relations for unrestricted free trade.

• Lin’s hostage-taking seen as an act of war.
• Letter to Lord Palmerston, PM, infuriated the merchant lobby, who believed military response could enhance trade relations.
• First shots of Opium War fired on September 4, 1839, near Hong Kong.
• Opposition in England: A war more unjust in its origin, a war more calculated – to cover this country with permanent disgrace, I do not know, and I have not read of. (William Gladstone)

• Emphasized the role of class struggle and economic structures in societal development.
• China’s feudal system and lack of a capitalist class hindered industrialization.
• The absence of a revolutionary proletariat delayed modernization.

• High-equilibrium Trap: Traditional systems and practices are effective enough to prevent change, making capital investment for improving efficiency unprofitable.
• China’s economic and social structures were stable, leading to resistance against modernization efforts.
• Indicates that the self-sustaining nature of the agrarian economy limited the motivation for industrial advancement.

• Which theory do you find most convincing? Why? Do you have another explanation?
• China vs. the West: What are the appropriate temporal and geographical units of comparison?
• Are we even asking the right questions? “Why didn’t they modernize…”

• European exceptionalism: European culture, technology or institutional superiority inevitably led to Western dominance.
• Longue-durée perspective: 19th century as blip and return of China to power?