In 1800, the Qing or Manchu dynasty (1644 –1911) appeared
to be at the height of its power. China had experienced
a long period of peace and prosperity under
the rule of two great emperors, Kangxi (1661–1722) and
Qianlong (1736 –1795). Its borders were secure, and its
culture and intellectual achievements were the envy of
the world. Its rulers, hidden behind the walls of the Forbidden
City in Beijing, had every reason to describe their
patrimony as the Central Kingdom, China’s historical
name for itself. But a little over a century later, humiliated
and harassed by the black ships and big guns of the
Western powers, the Qing dynasty, the last in a series that
had endured for more than two thousand years, collapsed
in the dust (see Map 3.1).
Historians once assumed that the primary reason for
the rapid decline and fall of the Manchu dynasty was the
intense pressure applied to a proud but somewhat complacent
traditional society by the modern West. There
is indeed some truth in that allegation. On the surface,
China had long appeared to be an unchanging society
patterned after the Confucian vision of a Golden Age in
the remote past. This, in fact, was the image presented by
China’s rulers, who referred constantly to tradition as a
model for imperial institutions and cultural values. That
tradition was based firmly on a set of principles that were
identified with the ancient philosopher Confucius (551–
479 b.c.e.) and emphasized such qualities as obedience,
hard work, rule by merit, and the subordination of the individual
to the interests of the community. Such principles,
which had emerged out of the conditions of a continental
society based on agriculture as the primary
source of national wealth, had formed the basis for Chinese
political and social institutions and values since the
early years of the great Han dynasty in the second century
b.c.e.
When European ships first began to arrive off the coast
of China in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
they brought with them revolutionary new ideas and values
that were strikingly at variance with those of imperial
China. China’s rulers soon came to recognize the nature
of the threat represented by European missionaries and
merchants and attempted to expel the former while restricting
the latter to a limited presence in the southern
coastal city of Canton. For the next two centuries, China
was, at least in intent, an essentially closed society.
It was the hope of influential figures at the imperial
court in Beijing that by expelling the barbarians, they
could protect the purity of Chinese civilization from the
virus of foreign ideas. Their effort to freeze time was fruitless,
however, for in reality, Chinese society was already
beginning to change under their feet—and changing
rather rapidly. Although few observers may have been
aware of it at the time, by the beginning of the Manchu
era in the seventeenth century, Confucian precepts were
becoming increasingly irrelevant in a society that was becoming
ever more complex.
Nowhere was change more evident than in the economic
sector. During the early modern period, China was
still a predominantly agricultural society, as it had been
throughout recorded history. Nearly 85 percent of the
people were farmers. In the south, the main crop was rice;
in the north, it was wheat or dry crops. But even though
China had few urban centers, the population was beginning
to increase rapidly. Thanks to a long era of peace and
stability, the introduction of new crops from the Americas,
and the cultivation of new, fast-ripening strains of
rice, the Chinese population doubled between the time of
the early Qing and the end of the eighteenth century.
And it continued to grow during the nineteenth century,
reaching the unprecedented level of 400 million by 1900.
Of course, this population increase meant much
greater pressure on the land, smaller farms, and an everthinner
margin of safety in case of climatic disaster. The
imperial court had attempted to deal with the problem by
a variety of means—most notably by preventing the concentration
of land in the hands of wealthy landowners—
but by the end of the eighteenth century, almost all the
land that could be irrigated was already under cultivation,
and the problems of rural hunger and landlessness
became increasingly serious. Not surprisingly, economic
hardship quickly translated into rural unrest.
Another change that took place during the early modern
period in China was the steady growth of manufacturing
and commerce. Trade and manufacturing had existed
in China since early times, but they had been
limited by a number of factors, including social prejudice,
official restrictions, and state monopolies on mining
and on the production of such commodities as alcohol
and salt. Now, taking advantage of the long era of
peace and prosperity, merchants and manufacturers began
to expand their operations beyond their immediate provinces.
Trade in silk, metal and wood products, porcelain,
cotton goods, and cash crops such as cotton and tobacco
developed rapidly, and commercial networks began to operate
on a regional and sometimes even a national basis.
With the expansion of trade came an extension of
commercial contacts and guild organizations nationwide.
Merchants began establishing guilds in cities and market
towns throughout the country to provide legal protection,
an opportunity to do business, and food and lodging
for merchants from particular provinces. Foreign trade
also expanded, with Chinese merchants, mainly from
the coastal provinces of the south, setting up extensive
contacts with countries in Southeast Asia. In many instances,
the contacts in Southeast Asia were themselves
Chinese who had settled in the area during the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries.
Some historians have interpreted this rise in industrial
and commercial activity as a process that would have led
under other circumstances to an indigenous industrial
revolution and the emergence of a capitalist society such
as that already taking shape in Europe. By this reasoning,
the arrival of Western imperialism in the nineteenth century
not only failed to hasten economic change but may
actually have hindered it. If this is the case, the challenge
that the Manchu rulers faced was as much from within as
it was from abroad.
Still, the significance of these changes should not be
exaggerated. In fact, there were some key differences between
China and western Europe that would have impeded
the emergence of capitalism in China. In the first
place, although industrial production in China was on
the rise, it was still based almost entirely on traditional
methods of production. China had no uniform system of
weights and measures, and the banking system was still
primitive by European standards. The use of paper money,
invented by the Chinese centuries earlier, had essentially
been abandoned. There were few paved roads, and the
Grand Canal, long the most efficient means of carrying
goods between the north and the south, was silting up. As
a result, merchants had to rely more and more on the
coastal route, where they faced increasing competition
from foreign shipping.
There were other, more deep-seated differences as
well. The bourgeois class in China was not as independent
as its European counterpart. Reflecting an ancient
preference for agriculture over manufacturing and trade,
the state levied heavy taxes on manufacturing and commerce
while attempting to keep agricultural taxes low.
Such attitudes were still shared by key groups in the population.
Although much money could be made in commerce,
most merchants who accumulated wealth used
it to buy their way into the ranks of the landed gentry.
The most that can really be said, then, is that during the
Qing dynasty, China was beginning to undergo major
economic and social changes that might have led, in due
time, to the emergence of an industrialized society.
World History
