China's International Attitude of Withdrawal During the 19th Century (2015)

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Geopolitics, History, and International Relations Volume 7(2), 2015, pp. 134–172, ISSN 1948-9145

CHINA’S INTERNATIONAL ATTITUDE OF WITHDRAWAL

DURING THE 19TH CENTURY

ALEXANDRE SCHIELE [email protected]

Department of Political Science, University of Quebec, Montreal

ABSTRACT. On occasion, China’s international attitude still runs counter to expected international attitude, understood as the dominant political values and their associated modes of sociopolitical behavior in the conduct of foreign affairs. Yet, this means that in the past China’s attitude was even more “erratic.” This raises the following question: is the expected international attitude spatially and temporally universal? Relying upon the tools provided by historical sociology we sought to historically ground the European Nation-States’ and the Chinese Empire’s international attitudes. Nearly two millennia separates the formation of the Chinese Empire’s and the Euro- pean Nation-States’ international attitudes. We identified two related but ultimately different historical trajectories, which accounts for both the differences of attitude, but also the rapid worldwide diffusion of the European attitude. If both went through a process of modern State-building, only 19th century Europe went through a concomitant transition to industrial capitalism, which radically transformed its domestic environment materializing the threat of Revolution. Balancing the individual interest of rival dynasties with their collective interest, the preservation of the Dynastic Order, led to the materializing of the so-called “Westphalian system,” to which the Great War put an abrupt end after a century of peace.

Keywords: international relations; Westphalian system; China; Europe; industrial revolution; national revolution

How to cite: Schiele, Alexandre (2015), “China’s International Attitude of Withdrawal during the 19th Century,” Geopolitics, History, and International Relations 7(2): 134–172.

Received 28 August 2014 • Received in revised form 24 February 2015 Accepted 1 March 2015 • Available online 1 August 2015

1. Introduction From 1850 to 1864, the Taiping Rebellion raged across Southern China. During these fourteen long years, imperial troops scattered as cities fell in

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front of the advancing rebels. It was only when the Qing dynasty1 received Western military support that it finally stopped their advance, took back lost cities and finally overwhelmed Nanjing, Hong Xiuquan’s2 (1814–1864) last stronghold and capital of the Great Peaceful Kingdom of Heaven. The scope of the rebellion against the Empire and its equalitarian ideology made it a critical moment in the timeline of revolts3 that periodically engulfed China until the 1911 Revolution. These fourteen years of hope, zeal, weariness, terror and massacres cost the lives of more than twenty million (Platt 2012: 358)4 and made hundreds of millions more refugees.5 Furthermore, because of its duration and scope, it is the greatest revolutionary upheaval of the 19th century. All through its history, China was swept by large millenarian movements,6 and the Taiping Rebellion along with its specific ideologies echoed the sudden transformation of China’s international environment.

In the mid-19th century, the Chinese Empire, here referred to as a sociopolitical structure, faced potentially fatal contradictions: overpopulation and the fall of agricultural production; growing numbers of candidates for a fixed number of government offices (Balazs 2012);7 unprecedented corruption levels; increasing tensions between the Manchu aristocracy and the Han bureaucracy; and finally, as economic actors shied away from productive activities, arbitrariness replaced rule by law. Furthermore, peasant revolts and uprisings by subject peoples8 undermined the foundations of the Empire while burdening its finances. Although the Manchu banners always won in the end, each military campaign stretched on longer and longer. All these signs, from peasant uprisings to foreign invasions, seemed to herald the end of a dynastic cycle9 if the Qing dynasty did not pull itself together. Since the Manchu firmly held all the frontier regions from which invasions could come – a major worry for every Chinese emperor considering that the real threat to the integrity of the Empire always came from its land frontiers10 – the Qing dynasty had all the time it needed to bring back order, or so it thought.

Beginning in 1834, modern fleets gradually forced the opening of its ports and cities to foreign trade, and by way of consequence, to Western values. The powerful Manchu armies were powerless in the face of this new threat. The Empire had no choice but to concede to the extraterritoriality11 of Western powers in order to safeguard its integrity, yet the Western powers sought only new products and new markets. Some were not satisfied with concessions and therefore would try to carve out colonies (Spence 1991: 183).12 On the other hand, the Empire sought to limit Western influence on its margins, but trade was only the first step and unacceptable demands would soon lead to war again. For local populations, the Western presence was devastating because it radically transformed economic, political, and social relations, as well as the values that were organically linked to them. This is why, para- doxically, Western presence was also accepted as a vehicle for the emanci-

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pation of the marginalized groups of the Empire. It was from this contra- diction that the Taiping Rebellion partially stemmed from.

From this context of unprecedented economic, social, political and cultural change in Chinese History, a new millenarian movement was born, organizing itself and facing the reigning dynasty and Confucianism. Against legal dis- criminations,13 the Taiping propagated a sinicized version of “Christianity.” In the span of a few years, the movement attracted poor intellectuals and peasants whose lives were unsettled by the First Opium War (1839–1842) – the Second Opium War (1856–1860) took place during the Rebellion. The Empire tried to repress the movement out of the fear that it would ally itself with the Western powers but it backfired: on the one hand, the Empire had to resist the Western invasion forces which enjoyed logistic, technological and military superiority; on the other hand, it had to face a revolution that drew its inspiration from Western ideals and culture, offering nothing less than to rebuild China from the bottom-up. The Empire was literally caught short: as the Taiping were rapidly reform- ing newly liberated territory, Western armies took the capital, Beijing, with lightning speed (1860) and pillaged it – the first such incident in more than two centuries. However, far from wishing the dismemberment of China, Western powers were seeking the best trade benefits for themselves. Yet, the fanaticism and the proselytism of the Taiping, as radical Christians, threatened the very gains made by the Western powers during the Opium wars.14 Fur- thermore, in reaction to the Rebellion, local Han-dominated patronage networks strengthened themselves by levying their own armies, and threatening the hold of the Qing dynasty over South China. This is why, as smoke still rose from the churned remains of the capital, an alliance was forged between the reigning Qing dynasty and the Western powers.

Western navies immediately started patrolling the Yangzi River to cut off South China from the rest of China, then entire Western battalions, officers and men, with their own equipment and discipline, were transferred to the Imperial high command.

Four years after the end of the Second Opium War, Nanjing, the last Taiping stronghold, fell and the rapid reinstatement of the Imperial order satisfied both the Qing dynasty and the Western powers. Yet, the Western-trained and Western-equipped Chinese units that were decisive in the defeat of the Rebellion were the first to be disbanded. The Empire sought to return to the status quo ante bellum, to the conditions that prevailed prior to the start of the rebellion, even to the point of repressing local initiatives. However, the conditions that nurtured the rebellion had worsened during all those years of bitter fighting…. While the Empire defended the status quo at all cost, Western-run concessions developed rapidly, constantly attracting new immi-

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grants wishing to escape the yoke of the Imperial system. Only a genuine revolution – the 1911 Revolution – would reinvigorate China.

2. Research Question and Methodology The Empire’s attitude once the Taiping Rebellion was suppressed raises a critical issue.

How to explain such a withdrawal at a time when China’s international environment was undergoing irreversible transformations; transformations that diminished the Empire’s importance within the geopolitical arena? This question can be reframed as such: how could China remain withdrawn into itself until the 1911 Revolution (Fairbank 2006) when, from 1834 on, its international environment was turned upside-down by the arrival of the West- ern powers (Ferguson 2002; Westad 2012)?

Both the Opium Wars and the Taiping Rebellion marked the watershed moment when the Western powers burst into East Asia. From then on, their regional influence would only grow, while China mostly stood idly by. Thus, it is only seventy years after the intrusion of the west that China resolutely engaged itself on a path of reform. However, it was only after the overthrow of the Qing dynasty in 1911, decades after its neighboring countries, such as Japan (Reischauer 1997), had willingly adopted or been imposed, through colonization, such as Indochina (Hobsbawn 1987), the Western mode of development. However, it is only from 1949 on, the year of the founding of the People's Republic, and truly from 1978 on, the year of Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms, that China genuinely reformed itself. 2.1. Historical Sociology and International Relations First of all, it must be stated that this is a research in the fields of political science and international relations that delves into historical matters, not a work of history.

International Relations as a field of research, has as a subject inter-State relations within the international system. This system can be characterized as “the combination of a structure and units constantly interacting with each other” (MacLeod et al. 2010: 114). The lack of an overarching authority over the system is posited to allow for a greater permissiveness (classical realism), or even constituting the “ordering principle of the system” (neorealism) (MacLeod et al. 2010: 113). Thus, States, guarding their sovereignty jealously, act in order to, or are even compelled to act in order to, maximize their power in pursuit of greater security through defensive (Brooks, 1997) or aggressive behaviors (Mearsheimer 2001). As a result, balance of power (whether multipolar, bipolar or, even, unipolar) is the sole guaranty of inter-

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national stability. If for neorealists the international system naturally tends towards the balance of power (Waltz 1979: 118), then for classical realists it can only be a foreign policy orientation (Aron 1984: 568). Thus, inter-State relations fluctuate between cooperation and opposition (Waltz 1988: 620). However, there is no consensus among scholars as to which tendency, cooperation or opposition, prevails. For realists, egoism prevails, thus preventing long-term cooperation (Poundstone 1992: 118); for liberals, if strong inter- action and interdependence between actors yield benefits transcending their respective interests (trade, common values, democracy, etc.), then long term cooperation is likely as long as they value it (Kant [1795] 1991: 73–131). According to neorealists, the international system leads to opposition, whereas for neoliberals it leads to cooperation.

These debates are grounded upon the definition of the State commonly accepted in International relations, as derived from Max Weber’s five criteria (1919): 1) a populated territorial unit, 2) internationally recognized continuous borders, 3) the monopoly of institutionalized legitimate violence, 4) the monopoly of institutionalized sovereignty within its borders and, 5) legal equality with every other unit of the international system (MacLeod et al. 2010: 85). However, this definition is questionable: Weber himself posited that the combination of all five solely constituted the form of the “Contem- porary State” (Weber 2005: 125). Thus, other combinations are possible, their combination constituting a special form, or even an historical form. Today, instead of “Contemporary State,” we would probably speak of the “Nation-State” to qualify this historical form.

Historical sociology, “at the junction of theoretical trends combining multidisciplinary and historical approaches to social processes, structural changes and social institutions” (Dufour & Lapointe 2010: 379), sheds new light upon the concept of the State. In the same spirit, Teschke (2009) demonstrated that dynasties, enjoying the monopoly of legitimate violence upon heterogeneous political units, were the building block of the European political landscape on the eve of the French Revolution, and that the European system was dominated by inter-dynastic relations, characterized by marriage or financial transactions and not only by treaties, that should not be confused with contemporary international relations (Teschke 2009: 225–227). The only concern of dynastic powers is territorial expansion, since in a pre-capitalist and pre-industrial system, without long-term growth, expansion is the only mean of acquiring new wealth. Thus, in the inter-dynastic system there cannot be long-term recognition of borders (Merrington 1976: 179), nor balance of power. If dynastic power is monarchic, embodied in a single individual (Anderson 1974: 39), then not all dynasties enjoy the same dignity, derived from the official title of the reigning family. This hierarchy of dignities translates into the legal inequality of the constituting units of the

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system (Hatton 1969: 157). Succession wars became the dominant type of wars in the late 17th and 18th century, when living European sovereigns, or nobles for that matter, struggled over their inheritance rights after the death of an heirless relative and fellow sovereign. Teschke (2009: 189) even posits that the dynastic system is nothing more than transposition on a larger scale of the feudal system.

According to Historical Sociology, history is a succession of systems with their own inner consistency, characterized by their own structures, formal and informal rules and values, which were shared by every actor. Historical Sociology sheds light on the formation of the State during the Modern era (1492–1789) and the associated inter-State system. In contrast to the preceding centuries, which saw an ever-increasing number of major battles, 19th century Europe experienced a major reduction in their numbers and thus enjoyed a long peace.15 This reversal cannot be explained unless we accept the idea of systemic change, of the transition from the inter-dynastic system to the international system. If at the end of the 18th century Nation-States were the exception, then the Nation-State and the international system must have their origins in the changes that characterized the 19th century. Yet, the 19th century is also characterized by imperialism and worldwide European domination. Thus, the international system was a regional phenomenon and not a global one, contrary to what is commonly assumed. Therefore, how legitimate is it to judge 19th century China according to the characteristics of 19th century Europe?

Europe in the 19th century willingly went through an unprecedented process of modernization. Yet, in the face of Western technological and military superiority, China did not act as a “unitary, egoist and rational actor jealous of its sovereignty,” as would posit the dominant paradigm in International Relations. China did not seek to maximize its power to increase its security, while being smug at the same time, even as encroachments upon its sovereignty multiplied as the technological gap with the Western powers increased.

Until now, the debate was about China’s attitude towards its international environment and two major schools of thought contend: the first being those who assert the aggressive attitude of the Empire (Johnston, 1995), and the second being those who assert the Empire’s peaceful attitude (Kelly, 2011). However, the former fix their sight upon the “frontier” beyond which changing alliances between tribes and clans dominate, while the latter fix theirs upon the relationships among the “Confucian and largely Sinicized States” of Korea, Vietnam and Japan, even though its insular nature raises analytical problems. Few, besides historians (Hobsbawn 1975, Fairbank 2006) indirectly studied China’s international environment from a global standpoint.

Constructivism, which investigates the intersubjectivity of international actors (Ruggie 1993), is better equipped to understand China’s attitude

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towards its international environment, because as Wendt (1992) decisively realized, “Anarchy is what States make of it.” However, if long-lasting and slow changing Imperial ideology and bureaucracy (Balazs 1967, Fairbank 2006) can account for regional intersubjectivity, constructivism cannot explain the dramatic consequences of the military and cultural shock that was the burst of the Western powers into the Sinosphere.

Nonetheless, it seems that the concept of long cycles (Weber [1904–1905] 2002; Braudel 1979; Lieberman 2003) is best suited to shed light upon the characteristics of China’s 19th century attitude towards its international environment. The comparison of China’s and Europe’s international history should highlight their specific dynamics and the differences between their international attitudes. Among these differences, it is important to stress the duration, surface area, population size, political centralization, cultural homo- geneity of the elites and bureaucratization that characterized the Chinese Empire in contrast to the incomparably smaller European political units at turn of the 19th century (Hobsbawm 1992; Anderson 2006). Again, if China’s and Europe’s historical trajectories have nothing in common until the 20th century, then how can theoretical models developed from the 19th century European experience be applied to 19th century China?

Therefore, prior to understanding China’s withdrawal into itself, the emergence of the Nation-State must be clarified in order to contrast it with the processes taking place in China and East Asia, since they were directly in- fluenced by the changes taking place in 19th century Europe. Only in this way can the specific European and Chinese attitudes towards their international environments be highlighted, as well as the issues raised by the Taiping Rebellion be decisively tackled and the convergence of European and Chinese evolution be accurately evaluated.

To illustrate this approach, let’s focus on the different meanings ascribed to the concept of empire in European and in Chinese History. In the early 19th century, the Chinese Empire is mainly bounded by natural borders. Its political borders will be definitively imposed with the introduction of the treaty system by Western powers at the Treaty of Nanking in 1842.16 Furthermore, the relationship between the ruling dynasty and its neighboring countries is one of a suzerain to its vassals, as China always saw itself as the heart of an empire that morally stretches all over East Asia, if not all over the world. In contrast, if the Roman Empire was centrally administered, as the Chinese Empire was, it would leave varying degrees of administrative and legal autonomy to the multiple pre-conquest political structures (Grimal 1981: 97–129), whereas most dynasties ruling the Chinese Empire simply assimilated the territories it annexed within China proper. Thus the mutual surprise of the British envoys led by Lord Amherst and of the Jiaqing Emperor (1760–1820) in 1816 is understandable. The former expecting the United

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Kingdom to be treated as an equal but the latter expecting tributes and a show of submission from a vassal. Therefore, investigating the nature of the relations between Europe and China requires a political, historical and socio- logical perspective, without them, it would be nearly impossible to charac- terize the evolution of the trajectories of Europe and China.

3. The European 19th Century and the Birth of the International System British historian Eric Hobsbawm nicknamed the period lasting from the 1780s to 1914 the long 19th century, during which Europe underwent two concomitant revolutions and two radical departures from the preceding eras: the national revolution and the industrial revolution (Hobsbawm 2003d). On the one hand, the national revolution characterizes the rapid sociopolitical changes that accompanied the introduction of constitutional regimes. Regimes of arbitration by law rather than custom, of meritocracy in the attribution of public offices and the gradual depersonalization of power.17 On the other hand, the industrial revolution characterizes the transformation of the production regime by the introduction of the steam engine, which has the potential to create unlimited motive power and, thus, limitless growth. These irresistible dynamics transformed economic, social, cultural, political and, inevitably, inter-State relations.

On the far eastern shore of Eurasia, China stands in sharp contrast with its centralized bureaucratic State, founded by the First Emperor (lived 259–210; reigned 247–210), and which survived more than two millennia of dynastic changes and invasions. Even the Manchu, who conquered the Ming dynasty in 1644, left the imperial system intact. At the turn of the 19th century, the Empire differed very little from its founding days, although the Tang dynasty professionalized its administration and introduced a standardized examination system to select the best candidates for office in the 7th century. As the literati’s hold on power increased with the professionalization of the State, reform movements were reined in. Whereas technological development characterized both the Tang (618–907) and Song (960–1279) dynasties, it stopped and was even reversed, because of the ingrained disdain, not to say distrust, of the literati for technical and commercial enterprises.18

In short, at the very moment Europe was undergoing tremendous social and economic changes that was transforming its society and states, China did not feel compelled to reform itself. Quite on the contrary, it devoted all its resources to change as little as possible, even after 1840, when European encroachments on its sovereignty multiplied.19

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3.1. The Systemic Problems of the Ancien Regime and of the Empire At the close of the 18th century, Europe’s economy was overwhelmingly agrarian, the majority tilling land in service of their lord, and their relationship dictated by custom and inequality. The yield of the land, inalienable and collectively worked, stagnates in the best condition, limiting population growth (Braudel 1979).20 Only territorial expansion can increase production (Hobsbawm 2003a: 187), yet absolute monarchs21 had gradually deprived their vassals of their military capabilities (Teschke 2009: 126). On the one hand, if individual lords could not expand their domain, they were free to exploit their serfs as they wished, on the other hand, dynasties incessantly battled to increase their possessions and for the monopoly of the luxury items trade.

In 1789, the European dynastic system seemed to be there for good, however the cost of war was mounting22 to the point that States advanced quickly towards bankruptcy. The Kingdom of France, the first continental power, was bled dry by its support to the American revolutionaries, and therefore was the first to fall. Around the same time, China was also overwhelmingly agrarian and faced similar financial problems but, contrary to Europe, it was unified. To accommodate population growth, the Imperial bureaucracy should have expanded in order to preserve the Imperial order, however the Manchu, lacking legitimacy as a foreign invader, shied away from enacting the much needed reforms, probably at the recommendation of the Han literati themselves.

As the 19th century progressed, population growth outweighed resources, especially since the Qing dynasty closed the rich Manchu heartland to Han colonization in order to preserve its racial purity. To off-set the fall of Im- perial revenues, taxes were raised up to the point it became more advan- tageous to become the tenant farmer of an official and his clan, meaning both the tenant and the official were not legally liable to taxation, than to remain a free peasant (Balazs 2012: 124). Furthermore, as the pool of Imperial examination candidates greatly exceeded the total number of official posts available, failed but highly competent candidates turn to landownership with the help of their families, of which at least one member always worked for the State. To raise their revenues, landowners and free peasants then increasingly turned to semi-industrial production, to the benefit of the merchant class but at the expense of the literati elite and the State (Fairbank 2006: 179). With the fall of Imperial revenues, corruption, already widespread, became endemic while local powerbrokers increased their autonomy and bullied their inferiors. Tensions between merchants and literati rose as the latter firmly held the State and upheld a conservative, not to say reactionary, ideology that legitimized their hold on power but at the same time cut them from the evolution of society.23

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3.2. The Two Revolutions that Made Contemporary Europe The major financial crisis that the French Monarchy faced, led to the con- vening of the Estate Generals, which at that time was dominated by a well-organized bourgeoisie.24 The combination of peasant insurrections pushed by widespread famine and of the concerted political action of the bourgeoisie, led to the rapid fall of the Ancien Regime and its society of orders (clergy, nobility and the third-estate) and privileges, substituting to them the principles of political equality and individual liberty. The new regime had no choice but to wage war upon European absolute monarchs, who were already massing forces to restore French absolutism, and free Europe from their yoke. Despite revolutionary fervor, it quickly becomes evident that only the Army, as an institution of the State, could preserve the conquests of the Revolution (Furet 1988: 223). Napoleon Bonaparte, an officer of the artillery corps (one of the few professional corps of the Army), centralized power and codified the principles of the Revolution; principles he then imposed everywhere his armies triumphed. The United Kingdom, France’s geopolitical rival for nearly a century, quickly became the main backer of the continental anti-revolutionary and anti-Napoleonic alliances. Her navy ruled the waves and annexed, at will, the colonies of France and its allies, opening new markets to its domestic products (Hobsbawm 2003a: 51). However, although the United Kingdom finally defeated Napoleon, his fifteen years of conquests and domination (1799–1815) irreversibly transformed Europe and its absolute monarchies had no choice but to reform themselves. The restored monarchies were staunchly conservative, yet because they were weak and broke, they were not blind to the benefits of both revolutions. By following France’s example in strengthening the State, they sought to rationalize their political and legal system and to grant offices and assign- ments according to meritocratic procedures. While following the United King- dom’s example, which enjoyed sustained growth and economic development,25 they sought to industrialize and institute property rights (Hobsbawm 2003a: 115–116).

Nevertheless, these two revolutions had to be imposed from above, thus bringing into conflict conservative-minded landlords who only sought to protect their privileges and improvement-minded landlords (Hobsbawm 2003a: 184). The former were to be gradually displaced by the success of the latter, as both were increasingly subjected to market imperatives. According to Wood (2002: 36), markets imperatives are: competition, lowering of prices, maximization of profits, reinvestment of profits in the improvement of productivity, the development of the means of production, means of transport and communication, and the creation of new products.

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Resulting in ever increasing competition that leads to greater standardization of production, products and, inevitably, lifestyles (Wood 2002: 36). Further- more, endogenous crises increasingly replaced exogenous crises: resulting in the elimination of inefficient enterprises and pushing an ever greater number of peasants looking for employment towards rapidly growing urban centers, while subjecting them to “artificial” schedules, and setting the conditions for a new cycle of economic expansion (Valier 2005: 119–120). Thus, this new dynamic, in contributing to agricultural development, forces the State to favor the entrepreneurs over landlords clinging to their inherited privileges. In contrast, top-down industrialization leads to the rise of a new class within society, the capitalist entrepreneurs. Their power grows with that of the flow of dispossessed peasants looking for urban employment, whom make up at the same time the capitalist entrepreneurs’ ever larger workforce and their ever larger consumer base (Wood 2002: 142). As the industrial sector becomes more dynamic, local markets increasingly merge into a unified national market (Hobsbawm 2003a: 166), leading to increasing tensions with the agrarian sector. In the United Kingdom, these tensions are emphasized by the voting of the Corn Laws in 1815 and their 1846 repeal. The Corn Laws protected agrarian capitalists by levying high taxes on foreign, and especially, cheap Irish corn imports, while the 1846 repeal allowed industrial capitalists to lower wages since the cost of subsistence fell. However, if economic structures evolved quickly after the fall of Napoleon, such is not the case for political structures. The European Order crafted at the Congress of Vienna (1814–1815), would have been weakened by the rapid transformation of political relations, but only the violent blow of 1848 would transform the political order to suit the interest of the bourgeoisie. As the bourgeoisie organized itself, the proletariat, who owns nothing but its labor force, overcrowded cities in wretched conditions. Traditional power structures, already undermined by two revolutions, were helpless while the rising bourgeoisie turned a blind eye. Furthermore, as society quickly secularized, new forms of solidarity emerged in opposition to bourgeois values, of which the labor movement was the most resilient (Hobsbawm 2003a: 260). As its ideology, organization and discipline radicalized, the labor movement posed an unavoidable threat to the post-1848 bourgeois order. 3.3. The Plurimillenary Empire Although Napoleon failed after fifteen years of successful military campaigns in 1815, the modernized State of Qin succeeded in conquering all the Warring States in 221 B.C.E. and purged their ruling elites. While Napoleon nominated family members and friends to lead the conquered States, Qin Shi Huang dissolved them in order to found the first Chinese State, which was

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the first state unified by a centralized bureaucracy.26 Although rapidly over- thrown, the Han dynasty (206 B.C.E.–220 C.E.) that replaced it quickly realized that it could not rule the Empire without enlisting the help of the bureaucracy it created and the literati that filled it. This bureaucracy replaced existing political, economic and social hierar- chies. Officials drew their revenues partly from state salaries and partly from the production of agrarian land not liable to taxation, worked by a subjugated workforce. The Emperor imposed his will through the monopolization of power and the ability to impose punishments and grant rewards, mobilizing the whole population in service of the State. Finally, four social classes (in descending order: literati, peasants, craftsmen and merchants) were subjected to class-specific duties and unequal privileges: the former being the most privileged and the latter the least. Since, legal injunctions granted limited access to education and State offices to non-literati classes, the Empire instituted a new cast system (Ch’ü 1986: 128). To legitimate its rule, a Confucian-inspired imperial ideology, derived from the Classics, was designed. It prescribed the mutual but specific duties to respect when different classes interacted, when inferior and superior officials interacted, all the way to the Emperor. The aim of this new ideology was to make the formerly persecuted Confucian elite allies of the new dynasty.27 Four legal provisions curbed any potential opposition to the dynastic-bureaucratic order: a class-specific legal codification of daily life down to the minutest detail; the legal minority of inferiors toward their superiors; the legal or illegal seizing of assets and property; the legal extortion and arbitrary revocation of operating licenses by the State; an omnipresent and tentacular bureaucracy at all level of society down to the most remote areas of the Empire, subjecting each and every one to its yoke (Ch’ü 1986: 41); and, finally, the strict control of cities, the nodes of bureaucratic power, preventing the constitution of an urban opposition (Balazs 2012: 23). A powerful bureaucracy and literati elite was the only bulwark against regionalization, disintegration, civil war and foreign invasions, and their power grew with each new dynastic change. Notably, the Tang sponsored (617–907) the standardization of education and the development of Imperial examinations, which were vehicles for the uncritical reproduction of the imperial ideology that ensured the social and ideological cohesion of the literati elite. The hierarchical Imperial system was built upon an inequalitarian ideology that classified subjects according to age, kin according to familial ties with the clan head, caste according to their usefulness to the Empire, and States according to their degree of sinicization, while the Emperor remained at its apex. This hierarchy was heralded as Heaven’s creation: thus, the Empire is the center of the world, the heart of civilization, surrounded by sinicized

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States that submitted to its will and were to be gradually assimilated, and barbarian tribes, whose way of life was a constant rebellion against the Empire and Heaven (Balazs 2012: 18). In the same spirit, the State, which exerted constant pressure upon society, ensured the conformity and the respect of established customs by examination candidates and officials, and severely penalizing any negligence, however minor. The literati elite’s social and cultural capital, acquired through a long training process and numerous examinations, bounded them to an ethos that tolerated no transgression. Thus, the literati elite’s power derived both from their orthodoxy and their exercise of monopoly power over education and knowledge (Balazs 2012: 154). 3.4. International Relations in Post-Napoleonic Europe At the Congress of Vienna (1815), the allied but weakened dynasties quickly understood that they were not the only powerbrokers in Europe anymore: the French Revolution had made the European peoples political actors in their own right. Because renewed inter-dynastic warfare would undoubtedly raise the specter of a new continent-wide revolution, the Congress sought to suc- ceed in balancing the individual interests of dynasties and the preservation of the Ancien Regime (Hobsbawm 2003a: 127). Preserving the balance of power in Europe thus became paramount, while the seas were de facto left to the United Kingdom. An undisputed victor thanks to its economy and technological advance, the United Kingdom was then the dominant military power, a position that permitted the constant opening of new markets wherever its ships went, even by force if necessary. Furthermore, its economy could not grow without expansion,28 a limitless expansion that would lead its ships all the way to China. Aware of the United Kingdom’s lead, European powers were forced to industrialize and introduce a market economy. Yet, this was a slow process and Europe remained largely agrarian and prone to food shortages. And the last European famine, at the end of the 1840s, awoke all the fears of the ruling dynasties. In the spawn of a few months in 1848, most European regimes were swept by the largest revolutionary wave of the 19th century. If the ruling dynasties rolled back the wave and reestablished themselves in power within two years, then they would quickly realize that they could not resort only to counter-revolutionary terror. The new class structure and the nucleus of national consciousness that emerged in the preceding decades made political rule more complex and delicate: the dynasties had no choice but to bring on board these new groups and interests, if only to monitor them more closely (Hobsbawm 2003b: 40).

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Unexpectedly, the economic boom that followed the economic recovery strengthened rather than weakened the restored order. Even the staunchest reactionary regimes had no choice than to become the vanguard of economic liberalization, which in turn, stimulated growth and development (Ferguson 2011: 218–219). With their newfound standing, the capitalist entrepreneurs started advocating reforms rather than violent change.29 Economic development continued unabated for a generation (1850–1875), the unification of markets going hand in hand with the forced unification of nations (Italy, 1866; Germany 1871), without unleashing continent-wide warfare. However, the internal contradictions of capitalism and the European international situation pushed the Parisian working class into the last great revolution of the century: the 1871 Commune. Although crushed in a matter of weeks, the threat was only postponed, because everywhere the proletariat grew daily. At the same time, China also suffered from a famine that led the Miao in Guizhou (1850–1872), the Nian in Anhui, Henan, Jiangsu and Shandong (1853–1868), the Muslims in Sichuan, Yunnan, Gansu, Ningxia and Shaanxi (1855–1874) and the Taiping to revolt against the dynasty, if not, against the Han, although they were all crushed between 1864 and 1874 (Fairbank 2006: 206–216). Thus, the Taiping Rebellion, a civil war in itself (Fairbank 2006), was part of wider movement that affected all of China, but to which the dynasty intended neither to yield to, nor to accommodate itself. In contrast to China, European regimes from London to Saint Petersburg wished to understand the root causes of revolutionary movements in order to enact the political, social, and economic reforms necessary to prevent them. The European States had to modernize cities for the purpose of crowd control, introduce various degrees of democratic representation and establish their popular legitimacy. Furthermore, in order to instill patriotic and nation- alist values as well as to satisfy the needs of the growing economy for a literate and specialized workforce, public schooling (compulsory in England since 1870 and in France since 188130) was democratized. The State, in spite of itself, was increasingly associated to economic and social development (Hobsbawm 2003b: 357), fueling the key debate about the extent of its intervention. Because the two decades that followed the Commune were characterized by the first transnational endogenous economic crisis, the Great Depression of 1873–1896, this debate became more acute. By enacting protectionist measures to mitigate the crisis, the State was inevitably drawn into the daily management of the economy. However, as the economic crisis worsened into a social crisis, the specter of the revolution reappeared. Since the development of capitalism proceeds by the permanent conquest of new markets, unthinkable without prior capitalist industrialization (Fer- guson 2011: 13), militarization gained pace. However, because any European

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war would have unleashed the revolution feared by all European States, expansion had to proceed overseas. This new form of colonialism, imperialism, was intended to solve three issues vital to capitalist accumulation: provide a secure source of raw materials, create captive markets and provide immi- gration opportunities for European excess population. Until the Great War, imperialism ensured social stability and economic development, while in- stilling patriotism (Arendt 1975: 151). However, it could only be a temporary fix. Rising economies hungered for raw materials and markets were on a collision course with the two dominant imperial powers, the United Kingdom and France, as well as a handful of minor powers that shared the world among themselves. The intermittent global conflicts and crises that lasted from the 1910s to the 1950s spawned into two new rival international systems (Wallerstein 2002: 57). 3.5. The European 19th Century and the Westphalian System of States (1815–1914) Preservation of the established order remained the purpose of the State, however the nature of this “Order” was dramatically transformed during the course of the 19th century.

From the Congress of Vienna until the Great War, European economic, social and political structures underwent fundamental changes at an unprecedented pace and scale, although they paled in comparison to those of the 20th century: the economy transformed itself from patrimonial to market-based; local markets, until then mostly isolated, merged into a single, national market; the pious society of orders secularized as it was sidestepped by classes; heredity was replaced by individual merit and wealth; rural flight urbanized the population while compulsory education made it partially literate; the constraints of nature were gradually rolled back, nature increasingly subjected to society and society to a consciously Man-made Order; the State, once the tool of the reigning dynasty in improving its status, was increasingly mobilized to support economic growth and social development; and finally, economic and political structures, until then based on personal relationships, were depersonalized. Thus, it was necessary to channel the rise of the new and powerful economic and political forces. This is why new modes of population management were designed, especially by associating them to the exercise of power. In short, feudalism and absolutism gave way to the Nation-State.

Under the constant pressure of markets, European dominance extended worldwide, imposing its increasingly homogenous civilization to regions and civilizations that until then had very limited contact among themselves. In foreign politics, the long discussed concepts of “borders” and “territorial

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sovereignty” became indisputable realities for the sake of preserving the established order and preventing revolution. Thus, diplomacy replaced war in the management of crisis,31 not only for great powers but also for lesser ones. In times of crisis, overseas expansion was preferred to European war, especially at the time when the extra-European world grew increasingly weak in the face of capitalism-driven European development.

Without the threat of revolution and without the common agreements of the Congress of Vienna, the major transformation that forever changed Europe in the 19th century would have been scarcely conceivable since they rested upon the absolute territorial sovereignty of the State within its borders and foreign non-interference in their domestic affairs. In this radically new context, competition lead to imitation rather than war since all States had to model themselves on their stronger, more developed, neighbors lest they wanted to grow weak. This is why the Great War (1914–1918) enacted a radical break with the dynamics of the 19th century, though its seeds were sown by Imperialism and the rivalries it sparked. Moreover, some historians even qualify the 1914–1945 period, thirty years of continuous wars, social movements, uprisings, revolutions, massacres, economic crises and their massive flux of population, as the Second Thirty Years War, comparable to the 1618–1648 period (Nolte 2000). This period is fundamental since it marks another transformation of the Western international order in order to face the great threat posed by its systemic rival. Absolute territorial sovereignty of States was replaced by international cooperation, sustained by the aggressive transnationalization of markets and the creation of international organizations in order to peacefully solve international crises. This new dynamic was even leading to the regional integration of Western Europe. In short: the European Order born at the Congress of Vienna, the so-called “Westphalian System,” perished with the Great War, barely a century later.

4. The Foreign Relations of the Chinese Empire The “Westphalian System” remained a European exception. By comparison, the Eastern tip of the Eurasian landmass, the Chinese Empire was the complete opposite of Europe: a centralized government enforcing its will through an omnipresent and tentacular bureaucracy on a unified territory the size of Europe, encircled by natural frontiers and weak States, twice as populated but culturally homogeneous.

By the 19th century, the Empire felt that it had no equal in Asia. His- torically, its natural borders protected it from foreign invasions, with the exception of the northern border. Yet, it must be stressed that the northern border, that approximately marks the limit of arable lands beyond which steppes spread as far as the eye can see, marks the separation between the

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Southern Chinese agrarian-sedentary lifestyle and the Northern “barbarian” pastoral-nomadic lifestyle. North of the border, a scattered population dominated by clans and tribes constantly fought each other for control of scarce resources. Though their mounted-warrior culture gives them a tactical advantage when they raid border regions (Gernet 2005: 82–83), they did not pose a strategic threat to the integrity of the Empire. Even if they united behind a charismatic leader, such as Genghis Khan (1162–1227), allowing them to swarm the known world, they could not directly administer their conquests. They could only be the supreme suzerain of States and territories that preserved their own institutions (Schurmann 1956: 304–389).

On the other hand, the Chinese Empire could not extend north since its bureaucracy rested upon an agrarian economy and a dense network of cities, neither of which existed in these territories. Even the Mongol Yuan dynasty (1271–1368) which exercised centralized rule over China, once pushed back north of the border by the Han Ming dynasty (1368–1644), quickly lost its power to ever changing alliances of clans, becoming nothing more than a figurehead still clinging to the “Mandate of Heaven.” Thus, the Empire had no choice but to fortify its Northern border against nomadic raids by building the Great Wall, which effectively marked in their mind the impassable border between Humanitas and Barbaricum. As long as the border was secured, the disorders that punctuated the lives of clans and tribes did not affect the border regions. But, the border could only be secured as long as the bureaucracy closely controlled the administration of the Empire, to which it devoted its entire energy.

The Empire being without rivals, the bureaucracy and the literati elite cared little for what happened beyond its borders, or even for what happened beyond the walls of the capital. The Empire was the cultural apex of the world, the further a region was, the less civilized it was. Thus, the adoption of “barbarian” practices or ideas by the Empire could only lead to a cultural regression. Moreover, since the Empire was, by the benevolent will of Heaven, the most perfect regime, the adoption of “barbarian” practices or ideas could only engulf the Empire in chaos. In short, to learn from “barbarians” was not only without interest, it was dangerous (Fairbank 2006: 219). If “barbarians” were peaceful, they were to be subjugated by moral example, if not, by war to the point of extermination if necessary (Johnston 1998: 212).

At least, this is what the official archives relates, since the literati systematically expurgated all mentions of the contribution of other castes and peoples limiting their roles in history. If they were mentioned at all, it was mainly as criminals and rebels (Balazs 2012: 132). The power of the literati rested upon their monopoly of education and knowledge. Tradition was overly glorified while change was vilified. Last but not least, the reigning dynasty is beyond criticism since it holds the “Mandate of Heaven,” thus it

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embodied Heaven’s benevolent will, transforming the Empire and the World by virtue of its moral example alone while foreign peoples spontaneously submitted to it, modeled themselves on it, and patiently awaited their admis- sion within the Empire.

By contrast, its enemies, foreign or domestic, such as the previous dynasty, were rebels in the eyes of Heaven, and rebellion was mercilessly crushed, and rebels and their clans mercilessly executed (Balazs 2012: 17). It is striking and revealing that, regardless of dynastic changes, barbarians were always referred to by their geographic origin, regardless of their specific features: “Di” in the North, “Man” in the South, “Rong” in the West and “Yi” in the East. Safeguarding the unity of the Empire has always been the priority of reigning dynasties. Though, at times, they effectively cut China from the rest of the World, the frontier was always very dynamic and Chinese history is filled with mutually beneficial transborder exchanges.

In times of disunity (220–581; 907–1271; 1369–1644), successor States to the united Empire, each with the support of a fraction of the bureaucracy and of the literati elite, claimed for themselves the Mandate of Heaven, accusing their rivals of inciting rebellion. Their only priority was the reunification of China and the restoration of the Empire.

If from one crisis to the next, the reconquest of China was possible, conquering territory North of the border remained impossible for at least three reasons: supply lines would have become overstretched and vulnerable to attacks; conquered territory would not have submitted easily to Imperial administration in the absence of a network of towns (Fairbank 2006: 132); and finally, the institutionalized contempt of the literati elite for the military high command: they constantly downplayed the importance of the army, while making sure that it remained firmly under their control, in order to prevent its political independence (Fairbank 2006: 111).

With the reunification and consolidation of the Empire under the Tang dynasty (618–906), the emerging agrarian and urban societies of Korea (Ch’oe et al. 1997: 63), Japan (De Bary et al. 2001: 63) and Vietnam (Dutton et al. 2012: 11), developed themselves in the cultural shadow of the Chinese Empire. They literally adopted the Chinese imperial system with its dynastic system, its meritocratic bureaucracy, its imperial examinations, its ideology and literary corpus and, especially, its writing system. These top-down revolutions transformed them into States that survived until the early 20th century, enjoying stability and longevity as few European polities did. In exchange, Korea and Vietnam accepted the suzerainty of the Chinese Emperor, guaran- teeing by the same token sustained exchanges and their genuine autonomy. However, the relationship with Japan was always more conflictual, though its insular nature limited real clashes (Zhang et al. 2012: 3–36).

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The spread of the Chinese civilization and the emergence of literati elites playing a similar role in each society, contributed to the emergence of a community of values in East Asia. In practice, this meant that they never reconsidered their oath of fealty to the Chinese Emperor as long as the reigning dynasty retained the Mandate of Heaven, except perhaps during their all too rare dynastic changes. In contrast, new Chinese dynasties not only had to submit to the Empire but also enforce the oath of fealty of their vassals. That being so, the relationship between the Empire and the Sinicized Asian States were, on the whole, peaceful when compared with the infinitely more bellicose relations with the “barbarians” (Kelly 2011: 407–430). Since a long “Confucian Peace” seems to have characterized the Sinosphere, the literati elite convinced themselves of the pacifying nature of their values. However, it must be stressed that if these top-down revolutions reinforced these polities and legitimatized their sovereigns, they could never have successfully challenged the Empire, even when it was fragmenting. Not only did they aim to preserve the status quo, they always abided by their oath of fealty by sending regular tributes to the Imperial capital (Fairbank et al. 1941: 135–246). Reciprocally, the Empire militarily helped Vietnam against France (1884) and Korea against Japan (1894-1895), though without much success. 4.1. Confucian World, Hierarchical World: “International” Filial Piety Backed by censorship and a merciless judicial system resting upon collective punishment, the literati’s worldview became unchallenged and unchallen- geable. Furthermore, Imperial examinations and bureaucratic promotion mechanisms heavily relied on the Classics and their official commentaries while the system encouraged paraphrasing and exact quotations rather than critical thinking, favoring the most conformist and less critical of candidates. Finally, since the literati, and thus their family and clan, could only find wealth, status and privileges in civil service, their social reproduction became in- separable from their cultural reproduction. Thus, the cultural capital of the literati elite expressed itself in a staunch conservatism: every situation or event, however unusual or trivial, was interpreted under the light of this orthodoxy. With the enlargement of the Sinosphere, commercial networks expanded, reaching their largest extent during the Ming dynasty (1368–1644). Yet, the institutional contempt for commercial activities led to the strict control and regulation of “international trade” transforming it into highly ritualized “tributary relations”, all mention of trade being expurgated. Thus, the Empire classified individuals, groups and States between vassals, who had to pay homage, and rebels, who had to be mercilessly crushed. Until the 19th century, not only could the Empire enforce its illusions within

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its border, to some extent, it could even impose them beyond, reinforcing its belief that it ruled over a hierarchic “international” society (Zhang et al. 2012). However, the unprecedented transformations taking place in Europe would relativize the Empire’s importance, which from the dominant power within a hierarchy of States would in a matter of decades become a semi-colonial dependency barely escaping Africa’s fate, entirely carved out by a few European powers. Contrary to European States and, more critically, contrary to Japan, the Empire did not reformed itself as Western powers consolidated their presence in Asia and as their intervention into its own domestic affairs became more systematic. From the repeated defeats against the United Kingdom and France (the two main European powers at the time) during the Opium Wars (1839–1842; 1856–1860), to the First Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895) (Japan had remained a marginal power until the Opium Wars), not only did the Empire weaken in the face of Western powers, but also in its own sphere of influence. Finally, it is only with its defeat by Japan that the first calls for reforms were made. For nearly fifty years, the Empire was blind to the transformations of its “international” environment and deaf to calls of reforms, mercilessly enforcing tradition. Its management of the Taiping Rebellion (1850–1864), a millenarian yet modernist movement, high- lights the withdrawal of the Empire into itself.

5. The Taiping Rebellion and the Short Asian Century (1834–1895) To understand the sequence of events that lead to the Taiping Rebellion, the historical context must be briefly introduced.

While the Ming dynasty (1368–1648) withdrew into itself, in the North- east, wedged between the steppes and the remains of the Mongol Empire in the West and the Great Wall in the South, the agro-pastoral Manchus were patiently building their proto-State. At the beginning of the 17th century, all the Manchu clans were united and organized into an effective fighting force by Nurhaci (1559–1626). As a pastoral people, they could overcome the mounted archers of the Mongols, and as an agrarian people, they could administer the Chinese Empire, especially since, as descendants of the Jin dynasty (1115–1234), they mastered and perfected the bureaucratic practices (Gernet 2005: 217–219). Pursuing their conquest ever westward, they submitted the Mongols in 1636 and then the Chinese Empire in 1644. Although, following the Mongol example, they ruled newly conquered territory by terror while maintaining their existing administrative systems in place, they always submitted them to their own administrative rule as well.

In other words, the Manchus did not solve the systemic problems of China, on the contrary, they added a “racial” dimension to the caste system. If the Manchu monopolized for themselves and the minorities that were culturally

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close to them the top levels of the bureaucracy and the army,32 they severely limited the access of other minorities and of the demographically important South Chinese population to top administrative positions (Ch’ü 1986: 201). If the violence of the conquest hid for a time the systemic contradictions of the Empire, they became more acute with the population growth that accompanied the return to stability. During the last decades of the Qing dynasty (1644–1912), as new powers destabilized the regional balance of power, the problems became insufferable. The withdrawal of the Ming dynasty into itself had been the root of its downfall at the hands of the Qing dynasty, which, after successfully pacifying both sides of the Great Wall, also fell into the same trap. However, it must be acknowledged that they had no rivals until the 19th century. 5.1. The Systemic Contradictions of the Late Qing Dynasty The Empire’s history was cyclical for the two thousand years of its existence. First, the imposition of a powerful centralized government over a unified territory unleashed a period of population and economic growth. Second, the Empire encouraged the colonization of new agricultural land, a vehicle for their sinicization, thus truly imposing its rule within its natural borders: the sea in the East, the Himalayas in the West and the semi-desert steppes in the North. Before the Qing dynasty, the Empire seldom dominated the Northern steppes (Fairbank 2006: 147). Third, when the population started exceeding available resources, the size of cultivated parcels shrunk; hunger became endemic; State revenues fell; the number of candidates to Imperial examinations far exceeded the number of available posts; and finally, corruption and nepotism already endemic became the only efficient mean to run the day-to-day affairs of the Empire. Fourth, the combined effect was the weakening of the Imperial State and the growing anomie as officials grew increasingly tyrannical, merchants and landowners increasingly predatory, pushing the peasantry to revolt. Civil war, after centuries of peace, loomed again as millenarian movements sprung in the most hard-hit areas, while military commanders dispatched to crush them turned into warlords, fighting each other for supremacy, making the Empire an easy prey for the “barbarians”.

However, even in this state of disintegration, the literati elite always managed to maintain its power and influence since peasant leaders, warlords and victorious “barbarian” chieftains could not rule, let alone safeguard their conquests, without the Imperial bureaucracy. Furthermore, the new masters were more than happy to be granted the legitimacy of ruling over “all under Heaven” in exchange for leaving the day-to-day running of the Empire to the literati elite and the Imperial bureaucracy, thus guarantying continuity between

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one dynasty to the next, even in times of crisis and disintegration of power (Balazs 2012: 159).

These destabilizing elements became critical at the end of the 18th century. If the Qing dynasty had expended the State apparatus it would probably have strengthened the Empire and the literati elite, but at the expense of the Manchu aristocracy. Yet, by not expanding the State apparatus, the dynasty rapidly lost power to local powerbrokers, especially the great literati families who were also the great landowners.

As the merchants were increasingly pressurized by the local powerbrokers they sought to bribe them, while the local powerbrokers, fearing the rise of a merchant class organized opposition to their rule, co-opted them by allowing them to illegally buy land,33 a less productive investment but a safer one (Fairbank 2006: 180). In this way, rich merchants gradually joined the local elites and the literati class and, from then on, just as them, would only seek to expand their landholdings, thus further diminishing Imperial revenues.

In the South, where the agrarian question was the most acute, peasant rebellions encouraged by equalitarian and millenarian beliefs multiplied. In the Northwest, with the expansion of the pre-industrial Russian Empire, border tensions intensified. The powerful Manchu army was increasingly bogged down in long suppression campaigns against rebellions, and could not swiftly repel foreign invasions. The Qing dynasty was thus doubly weakened by a fiscal crisis and a legitimacy crisis, which are symptoms of the end of a dynastic cycle of foundation, expansion, stagnation and disintegration. In other words, the days of the dynasty were numbered and they were aware of it. Although the Mandate of Heaven was not as secure as it used to be, the Qing dynasty still grasped it firmly: the Empire was self-sufficient and its army, although the campaigns were more difficult than ever, still won battle after battle (Gernet 2005: 250).

Yet, illegal opium trade with the West, and especially the United King- dom, was responsible for the massive exit of silver from the Empire, resulting in massive inflation that further worsened the fiscal crisis and disorganized the economy, especially in the South. 5.2. The Capitalist Challenge to the Tributary System (1834–1850) Far removed from the Imperial capital, which had been founded in order to better coordinate the military operations against the Northern “Di” barbarians, a single harbor on the South China Sea was open to Western “tributes.” A Manchu official, directly appointed by the Emperor, supervised the merchants who had been granted the Imperial monopoly of trading with the West. A great many luxury commodities entered the Empire at a severely reduced price, while cheap goods exited the Empire at high price. The Imperial offi-

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cials and the monopolist merchants fixed prices according to their interests. Among the Western traders was the British East India Company (1600–1874), which enjoyed the monopoly of British trade with the Orient. It exported to China an ever-greater number of goods, products of the industrial revolution, yet ran a balance of trade deficit with the Empire. Furthermore, in British domestic politics, free-trade advocates had just scored a major victory by revoking the trade monopoly of the Company in 1834 (Spence 1991: 149). Thus, a new trade agreement was to be brokered with the Empire, and twenty years after the Congress of Vienna, they expected to deal on an equal footing (Westad 2012: 40). However, two major obstacles prevented the normalization of trade relations between the Chinese Empire and the United Kingdom. First, the institutionalized contempt of the literati elite for commercial activities: they could not stoop so low as to discuss such a vulgar topic; furthermore, the Empire never negotiated, it ordered. Second, the British envoys and merchants came from the South and the East, they were nothing more than “Yi” barbarians, and as such had to submit and send tributes, because to ask for equal treatment was an inadmissible affront. Already in 1816, just in the wake of the Congress of Vienna, the British envoys led by Lord Amherst were lucky to leave the Empire unharmed (Fairbank 2006: 197). In addition, another element strained the relations between the Chinese Empire and the United Kingdom beyond repair. Up until the 1830s, the Empire alarmed itself over the massive exit of silver from its borders. The Company had been selling opium from its Indian plantations within China, which was the only mean to restore its balance of trade.34 From the late 1790s on, the Empire had banned opium, yet this decision only pushed prices up and encouraged smuggling. With the end of the monopoly of the Company, the number of actors implicated in the illegal trade surged (Gernet 2005: 300). In 1839, the Imperial army moved inside the Western concession, arrested the smugglers, seized the opium and destroyed it. However, by doing so, they were assaulting official representatives of the United Kingdom. In reprisal, the new free-trade British government sent the Royal Navy to sue for reparations, just as its official representative in China imposed an embargo. Tensions between the British refugees in Hong Kong and the local Chinese population flared up as the Chinese defenses were strengthened: clashes multiplied. When the Navy finally arrived in June 1840, it limited its role to blockading Chinese ports. The Nemesis, the first British iron warship, running on steam, joined the British fleet in 1841 and took part right away in military operations. It was during these operations that the Empire had its first taste of the contribution from the industrial revolution on military technology. Its losses were unbearable while the British ensued very little. Although the Manchu armies were numerous and battle-worthy, they could not resist the onslaught

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of modern armament, which allowed a small force to impose major losses to a numerically superior enemy. Thus, the British forces rapidly occupied strategic positions along the South coast of China (Spence 1991: 147–158). As war costs mounted and Imperial armies went from defeat to defeat, trade and production were further disorganized in South China. The Empire had no choice but to sue for peace at all cost (Westad 2012: 44). In 1842, it opened a limited number of ports to foreign trade and ceded the island of Hong Kong to the British, then, in 1843, it granted them extraterritoriality rights. Far from submitting to the Eastern barbarians, the Empire dealt with them in the same way it solved the problems on its Western border: by granting foreign envoys limited trade, legal and consular powers. Thus, the Empire preserved its unity and Moral Order while neutralizing the “barbarians’” bellicose tendencies (Fairbank 2006: 200). From then on, a great number of capitalist powers would peacefully negotiate similar agreements. If sustained trade allowed the Chinese to familiarize themselves with West- ern customs and habits, then industrial production lead to cultural invasion (Fairbank 2006: 198). As more cities and ports were opened to foreign trade and extraterritoriality granted to a growing number of countries, a large numbers Westerners flocked to China for longer periods of time. In the cities where they worked, their activities imposed their economic models, their production methods and, inevitably, their values and ideals. Thus, these ports on the margins of the Empire became the most dynamic regions, attracting the local rural population to its factories and docks. Furthermore, wealthy Chinese settled in the concessions as much as to escape the caste system and the arbitrariness of the literati elite, as to profit from new opportunities. As a result of their rapid growth the development of these towns had to be rationalized and this duty fell to urban notables – first to the literati, and then to the merchant class – who acted as intermediaries between the Chinese population and the Westerners (Westad 2012: 56). From the West arrived urban planners, administrators, engineers, bankers, teachers, and translators to fulfill this task. Thus, the values and sociopolitical models most adapted to a market economy could develop without any hindrance. Each new dis- covery and innovation was adopted in the concessions as early as they were in the West. Although the literati and the merchants living within the concessions came under the influence of these models and values, their diffusion beyond the boundaries of the concessions was severely limited by the dominance of the Imperial orthodoxy and the hostility of the literati elite (Westad 2012: 71). Nevertheless, these influences were not without effects.

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5.3. The Taiping Rebellion (1850–1864) Hong Xiuquan (1814–1866) was a young candidate to the Imperial examinations in Guangzhou, at a time when the pool of candidates far exceeded the number of offices in the Imperial bureaucracy. Two elements defined this era: corruption trumped ability; and Southern Chinese were officially discriminated against (Ch’û 1980: 201). By 1836, Hong Xiuquan had repeatedly failed the provincial examinations, being too poor to bribe the examiners. From then on without a future and the shame of his family, his entire life having being devoted to passing the Imperial examinations, the only mean of individual and familial promotion, he had a nervous breakdown (Reclus 2008: 30). During his recovery in Guangzhou, the only port opened to Westerners at the time, he read Protestant propaganda handed out by missionaries. The message was simple but effective: God is above Men; Men are equals among themselves; faith in God and Jesus Christ is the only path to salvation. It was a total reversal of the Imperial ideology. For a poor scholar from a discriminated majority, it was more than a personal shock, it was a revelation (Fair- bank 2006: 207). In the wake of the First Opium War, presenting himself as the younger brother of Christ, Hong Xiuquan spread his faith in the equality of all in the eyes of God, first to fellow failed candidates, then to poor peasants. The war had worsened the already disastrous economic conditions of the Southern peasants. Full of hate for the Manchu oppressors and their literati lackeys, they saw in Hong Xiuquan’s message hope and the possibility to rebuilt China upon new foundations, since it was the first genuine revolutionary ideology in over a thousand years (Balazs 2012: 151). By trying to suppress the movement, the Empire only emboldened it. In 1850, Hong founded the Great Peaceful Kingdom of Heaven, an ancient Taoist equalitarian utopia, and went on the offensive with his followers. For fourteen years, his armies laid waste to the South of the Yangzi River, winning new followers and gaining the support of the liberated population with every victory. Unstoppable, his armies conquered cities after cities until they finally took Nanjing in 1856, the first capital of the Han Ming dynasty. They destroyed all pagan institutions and their symbols, exterminating officials, landowners and monks. Implementing his equalitarian vision, he divided the land equally among his followers (Reclus 2008: 92).

It was not the first time that a millenarian movement spread across China: the Taoist Yellow Turbans (184–205) hastened the fall of the Han dynasty and the Buddhist Red Turbans (1351–1368) played a part in the expulsion of the Mongols from China. Yet, two factors were responsible for their failure. First, the Yellow Turbans rejected the systemic nature of the Imperial orthodoxy, preferring pure irrationality. Second, the Red Turbans promoted

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a “barbarian” religion, thus they never managed to amass sufficient numbers of followers. The first Emperor of the Ming dynasty (1328–1398) managed to gain the support of the people and, strategically, that of the bureaucracy and the literati by posing as the standard-bearer of the Imperial orthodoxy and exterminating all his religious opponents. By comparison, though the Taiping were a “barbarian” sect, they gained the support of the most discriminated Han populations of the Empire. Furthermore, their “Christianity” was a simple but highly coherent ideology. They maintained the bureaucratic structure of the liberated territories but replaced the Confucian-trained officials with loyal followers well versed in the Bible (Fairbank 2006: 210). Finally, as “Chris- tians,” the Taiping could potentially receive Western military and administrative support.

During the first years of the rebellion, Western powers remained neutral: they had just gone through the revolutionary wave of 1848 and the major European powers were rapidly entangled in the Crimean War (1853–1856) to counter Russian Expansionism in Southern Europe. Nevertheless, after the 1847 economic crisis that affected the whole of the nascent capitalist world and especially after the rise of the bourgeois order, the thirst for new markets became insatiable. They remained neutral until the moment it became evident to all that the Manchu army had lost its effectiveness after decades of financial mismanagement, corruption and lack of professionalism.

The United Kingdom, France, Russia and the United-States, tempted by dreams of empire, engaged a new war against the Empire (1856–1860). This war was fought on sea and on land, and relied on industrial military technology as no war ever had before, but only to be surpassed by the American civil war a few years later (1861–1865). With the advance of Western armies, the foreign concessions were annexed to their Home States and run as such while new ports were conquered. Finally, Beijing, the Imperial capital, was conquered and pillaged (Westad 2012: 56–57). The rooted Manchu armies were demoralized since the victorious “Barbarian” armies had struck at the very heart of the Chinese civilization, destroying its symbols. Furthermore, Western powers forced the opening of a greater number of cities and ports, of official legations in the capital, the granting of the right of passage for all foreigners within the Empire and acceptance of a permanent foreign military presence on Chinese coasts, rivers and foreign concessions. In the North, the Empire conceded and transferred Manchuria, the native land of the Manchus, to the Russian Empire.

However, if the Qing dynasty was weakened and humiliated, the Empire and its civilization remained since it was too large to be directly administered by Western powers, which only aimed to open new markets (Fairbank 2006: 201). Thus, they required that the Empire be strong within its newly delimitated borders, in order to guaranty the stability and security without which

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trade cannot flourish, but weak in international relations, so its actions could not extend beyond its borders.

If Western powers profited from the disorganization caused by the Taiping, then the rebellion threatened their commercial endeavors. Furthermore, the dynasty had to restore its rule in the South where the Southern elite, directly threatened by the rebellion, levied militias that they merged into large provincial armies outside Imperial supervision. Thus, increased provincial autonomy meant a strengthening of the Han bureaucracy against the Manchu aristocracy. For these reasons, in spite of the recent defeat, Western powers, the Manchu aristocracy and the Chinese elite started cooperating to crush the Taiping once and for all. First, Western navies occupied strategic positions along and patrolled coastal areas and rivers to block the Taiping advance. Then, they organized, trained and equipped Chinese military units led by Western officers but under the command of the Imperial High Command (Platt 2012: 266).

By comparison, although the Taiping were an efficient fighting force, after years of continuous battles without decisive victories, they were low on morale. Furthermore, their own contradictions were rapidly becoming insufferable: they lacked administrative experience and they alienated local powerbrokers. Therefore, the Taiping Rebellion was condemned, but it took another four year of relentless fighting.

After the bloodiest civil war in its history, the Empire had to rebuild itself on new foundations, and yet again it failed. 5.4. A Restored but Weakening Empire (1864–1895) In its struggle against the Taiping, the Qing dynasty reorganized itself around the intransigent defense of the Imperial orthodoxy. However, it also meant defending the Han bureaucracy and the literati elite who mastered its every cog, nook and cranny. Thus, the armies levied by the provincial officials and literati were organized around hierarchy and ritual, their command structure based upon seniority and conformity to one’s ritualistic duties. Although the dynasty would have preferred to reinforce its Manchu power base, the Han bureaucracy was indisputably loyal to the Emperor because of the mutual duties that presided over their relations. Thus, the Han bureaucracy and the literati had no choice but to serve the dynasty. Once the rebellion was crushed, the Han armies were disbanded and their commandants promoted as high officials in the South (Platt 2012: 356). How- ever, tensions were more acute with the military units organized by the West- ern powers, since they were equipped with modern military technologies, better trained and organized. As such, they were a direct threat to the Order that the literati sought to preserve, and thus were the first to be disbanded.

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For the bureaucracy and the literati, the preservation of the Empire implied its total bureaucratic and ideological restoration. The Empire expected the full obedience of its subjects and the absolute submission of foreign people (Gernet 2005: 365). However, this illusion could only fall short of its expec- tations for two reasons: first, the Empire conceded to the Unequal Treaty system, limiting its sovereignty within its own borders; second, it only restored its sovereignty over the South with the help of Western military support, which they only granted once their own demands were met (Platt 2012: 26–27). For the literati, the Empire was the cultural center of the world and only its benevolence could bring the world to respect their filial obligations towards the Emperor and Heaven, thus opening a long period of worldwide peace. The Empire thus faced a dilemma: Westerners were mistaken and threatened to bring the world along with them into their own self-destruction, if the Empire did not lead them on the right Way. Yet, Westerners enjoyed an undeniable technological advance that threatened the very survival of the Empire, and whose destruction would open up a long period of chaos. Thus, they came to the following paradoxical conclusion: the Empire had to modernize, but under the strict control of the bureaucracy and in strict accordance with the Imperial orthodoxy (Fairbank 2006: 217).

For Confucian reformists, it was only a superficial adaptation. Neverthe- less, a minority of provincial officials started building modern shipyards and arsenals in strategic ports35 with the help of Western specialists. Since China would need its own specialist in the future if it was to secure its independence, schools were opened where they could be trained in chemistry, engineering, mathematics, physics and so on, though, at first, they still had to recruit foreign professors. Furthermore, these industrial developments required resources for infrastructure modernization and production that the Empire did not produce or did not have in sufficient quantity. Thus, the reformists had to develop and modernize resource extraction and transportation to the different strategic sites. In addition, they had to develop efficient means of communication in order to quickly coordinate all the necessary operations to fulfill their projects. Again, they had to call upon Western experts and develop their own curricula before the Empire could dispose of its own (Gernet 2005: 338). Furthermore, as the complexity of its international environment increased rapidly, the Empire was integrated within the rapidly expanding European system of International and economic relations, which had only matured in the span of a few decades. Thus, Imperial agencies and departments in charge of foreign relations, and especially those with Western powers, had to familiarize themselves with the Western legal tradition on questions of borders, sovereignty, extraterritoriality and so on. Furthermore, in the wake

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of its defeats against the Western powers, the military high command understood it had to study Western strategic and tactical thought and adopt new military technologies (Spence 1991: 202). The Western-led reorganization of the Imperial Maritime Customs, notably the introduction of a toll on the entry and exit of goods, gave the Empire its first stable source of revenue in a long time. Still, it was not enough. It had to develop internal and external trade that it would tax, in order to gain new sources of stable revenue. Yet, again, it had to turn to Western specialists before disposing of its own (Spence 1991: 209). However, the materials for the training of specialists, which until then only had a very small readership, now had to be translated en masse into Chinese and Manchu. Some, like Prince Gong (1833–1898),36 launched great translation projects but were above all committed to form a body of officials fluent in the main Western languages. Candidates were selected very young, since they should not be overwhelmed by the study of the Classics, nor have acquired the attitude typical of Confucian scholars (Spence 1991: 202). The candidates were recruited against their parents’ wish in order to counter the literati’s contempt for technical and foreign knowledge. For these families, there could be no other path then the one to the Imperial examinations and the mastery of the Classics and their official interpretation. First limited to Manchus, Western training was gradually expanded to Hans, giving them new opportunities and a new worldview. Finally, the Chinese merchant class had to be associated to the modernization projects, which meant enhancing their social status in order to boost their entrepreneurship. In reaction, the Imperial bureaucracy and the literati elite, whose hostility towards innovation and foreigners was visceral, would try to stop by any means China’s modernization.37 Furthermore, the dynasty fearing a strengthening of the provinces did not support regional and local initiatives, which could not go forward without its financial backing. In addition to the conservative reaction against the reformists, the Manchu aristocracy resisted any loss of power to the Han bureaucracy. Thus, if the modernization movement was initiated, it lacked the necessary leadership. Conservatives and Manchu aristocrats gained the precious support of the staunchly conservative Cixi (1835–1908), the Manchu Dowager Empress. She promoted the most reactionary advisers while marginalizing the reformists including the conservative Prince Gong. Her endeavor was made easier by the natural death of one of the main provincial reformists, Zeng Guofan (1811–1872). As a consequence, the whole modernization movement now rested upon a single individual, Li Hongzhang (1823–1901). Finally, general- ized corruption and nepotism diverted the different projects from their original objectives (Fairbank 2006: 213).

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This obsession of the dynasty and of the elite for tradition, which they saw as the only guaranty of China’s moral power, worsened the very conditions that led to its repeated defeats by the Western powers. Thus, even before the Chinese armies were sufficiently strengthened and the new Im- perial fleet battle-ready, Cixi sought to restore the Empire’s suzerainty over Vietnam against France (1884). The new Southern fleet was sunk during a brief engagement in its homeport of Fuzhou, which lasted less than an hour38 (Spence 1991: 221). Thus, the Empire first lost its suzerainty over Vietnam and then over Burma (1885). Strangely enough, the bureaucracy, the literati and the Manchus were still not convinced of the need to modernize China. In spite of this latest defeat, the dynasty then turned its gazed towards Korea as Japan aimed to integrate it within its own growing sphere of influence (Ch’oe et al. 1997: 254). To counter Japanese influence, the Empire sought to nor- malize its relations with the Kingdom by negotiating Western-style treaties. However the suzerain-vassal principle of the tributary system prevailed during the talks and was integrated within the treaties (Hamashita 2003: 43–44). For the Empire, Japan was nothing more than a Félon, a vassal which failed to fulfill its duties, yet remained a minor threat. However, Japan understood that Asia had been turned upside down by the sudden burst of the Western powers within it, but only at the cost of a civil war among its ruling elite (1864-1877) that partly stemmed from it. The Empire’s blindness would not only be catastrophic for Korea, but also the cause of its own downfall.

6. Conclusion: Imperial Autism Before the sudden arrival of the Western powers in the early 19th century, the Empire never faced a genuine foreign threat. Furthermore, the Qing dynasty dominated all the regions from which foreign invasions had been launched in the past. It ruled over a territory as large as Europe, but twice as populated and, above all, culturally homogeneous. Finally, the Empire had survived globally intact through all the domestic crises and dynastic changes it faced, constantly reinforcing itself for over two thousand years. Thus, the literati who had administered it all along had no reason to doubt the immutability of the Empire and the indispensability of their social function. For the officials used to negotiating border settlements with the Western “barbarians,” nothing could lead them to believe that negotiating with the Eastern “barbarians” would be any different: granting a few concessions to a small number of Westerners on the Empire’s furthest margins out of “benevolence” could only neutralize any threat they posed.

From the end of the 18th century, China and Europe faced severe crises: famines and a shortage of financial assets. In China, the needs of a growing population exceeded the output of the agricultural lands while the shrinking

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size of individual holdings led to the shrinkage of tax-revenues for the State; the scholar-officials, whose assets were not taxed, constantly expanded their landholdings, further diminishing State-revenues. This situation led to numerous uprisings, always suppressed by the Empire, but never to a Revolution.

In Europe, the recurring wars dynastic rulers waged to expand their possessions weight heavily on their financial assets, stimulating the discontent of the bourgeoisie, their main financial backers. This situation led to a Revolution out of which a new State was born, characterized by the professionalization of the political and administrative apparatus and the depersonalization of power. In parallel, the Industrial revolution, pioneered by the United King- dom, gave Man the progressive mastery of energy, thus enabling sustained growth and a potential diversification of production, both of which could only take place in the context of economic competition between private actors whose activities were entirely market-driven. European commercial and political actors were rapidly subjected to market rationales during the 19th century.

From then on, resorting to inter-dynastic wars would have weakened and threatened the dynasties themselves since the Revolution had transformed the “people” into a full-fledged political actor. Furthermore, the Congress of Vienna tried to preserve the Ancien Régime by reconciling the individual interests of dynasties with their own collective interests. Thus, the gradual enshrining of the balance of power, characterized by the principles of the respect for borders and the absolute sovereignty of States within theirs, in- augurated a long period of peace in Europe, which guaranteed a long period of economic prosperity and staved off the threat of revolution.

Thus, two dynamics presided over the development of Europe during the 19th century, the permanent search for new markets and for the means of alleviating the social tensions created by the internal contradictions of the new economic system. In this context, the response of European States to preserve social stability was both economic and political. This is why they first expanded commerce all over the world, and then submitted it to their domination. The Chinese Empire could not understand the reasons that pushed the Western powers in ever greater numbers to its shores, nor anticipate their growing pressure.

To put an end to the First Opium War, the Empire was forced to open its market more widely to foreign trade, thus consolidating the Western presence by spreading Western values and hastening its own decomposition, especially in the South where the penetration of the foreign market was the largest. Though the Taiping Rebellion was part of a wave of unrest that affected the Empire, it differed from the others by its equalitarian Christian ideology and its radical transformation of liberated territory. It did not seek to restore the Empire upon its founding principle, as the other Han rebellions sought to accomplish, but to establish a new regime, based upon new foundations.

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The Taiping Rebellion thus posed a major threat to the dynasty and local powerbrokers. Taking advantage of the Empire’s weakness, Western States engaged themselves in the Second Opium War to force new concessions. However, the Taiping, in their zeal against private property and trade, also threatened Western commercial interests. Thus, as early as they obtained new concessions, they allied themselves with the Empire against the Taiping, each following their own agenda.

Regardless of the Western military support in the Empire’s victory over the Taiping, the Qing dynasty still did not grasp the scale of the changes taking place and, worse, even refused to. Once restored, the Qing chose to preserve at all cost the conditions that prevailed at the time of the conquest, nearly two centuries before. Even as internal contradictions intensified, the Empire imposed tradition by force, preferring repression to adaptation.

Whereas Western military, technical and political power grew daily, the Empire withdrew into itself more and more. Without institutional reforms, the smallest modernization drive was irremediably bogged down, victim of the Empire’s systemic deficiencies. Every reform failed since it rested upon those that would have lost the most from it, the literati.

The ossification of the Empire had dire consequences thirty years later during the First Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895): the new Northern fleet was short on ammunitions and the black powder for its shells was replaced with sand. Its funds were embezzled by the Qing dynasty itself, preferring to build a new Summer Palace and a large boat carved out of marble to decorate it, for its own pleasure. The height of absurdity was to give its command to an old Manchu cavalry officer who, during the Yalu River Battle, made it charge (Fairbank 2006: 220–221).

The destruction of the Chinese fleet by Japan, traditionally perceived as weak, was a terrible blow to the intelligentsia, which started to openly criticize the Imperial system. From then on, the literati were split between reformists and traditionalists, as the Empire stepped up its repression of the opposition.

At the turn of the 20th century, the Empire was but a shadow of its former self still clinging onto the Mandate of Heaven, while the colonial empires of the United Kingdom, France, Japan, Russia, Germany (in Shandong since 1898) and the United States (in the Philippines since 1898) laid a protracted siege, taking by threat or force what they wanted, and even what they did not want.

Only a Revolution under the banner of the Chinese nation, a political and economic revolution, would open a new era for Chinese international politics and international relations.

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NOTES

1. The Qing dynasty (of Manchu origin) conquered the Ming dynasty (of Han origin) in 1644 and held power until the 1911 Revolution. At the time of the Rebellion, the Manchu emperor Xiangeng (1831–1861) ruled. Upon his death, his son Tongzhi (1856–1875) was deemed too young to rule, and therefore one of Xian- geng’s concubines, the Dowager Empress Cixi (1835–1908), assumed the regency. Tongzhi died young and his successor Guangxu (1871–1908) was assigned to house arrest for sponsoring reforms that both Cixi and the Manchu aristocracy opposed. Cixi held real power in the Empire until her death (Spence 1991: 165–268; Fenby 2009: 17–78; Westad 2012: 87–122).

2. Hong Xiuquan, proclaimed Heavenly King by his followers, fomented and led the Taiping Rebellion.

3. China faced numerous revolts during its history: the Red Eyebrow Rebellion (17) which overthrew Wang Mang the usurper (45 B.C.E. to 23 C.E) and reinstated the Han dynasty; the Yellow Turban Rebellion (184–205) against the Han dynasty; the military revolt led by An Lushan (755–763) against the Tang dynasty (618–907); the Red Turban Rebellion against the Mongols (1351–1368); the White Lotus (1794–1804) and Nian Rebellions (1853–1868) against the Qing dynasty. We can also add the Boxer Rebellion (1897–1901) which was ended by military occupation of China by Western powers – the British Empire (including Australia and India), Russia, France, the United States, Germany, Italy, Austria-Hungary – and Japan.

4. This is a conservative estimate. Reclus (2008: 294–300) points out that no official death toll was compiled. These numbers were obtained by comparing the official population census after and before the rebellion: “taking into account natural growth rates, more than fifty millions are estimated to have lost their lives” (295). Other sets of data are mobilized by Reclus to estimate the lost, such as the population census of Hangzhou, which had a population of 2,075 million in 1794 but fell to 621 000 in 1882 (297). According to Platt (2012), the Taiping Rebellion is the deadliest civil war in history. By comparison, the death toll of the American Civil War (1861-1865) is a little over 620 000 (McPherson 1988: 854).

5. As a reminder to fathom this massive refugee flow: the population of the Shanghai British concession in 1853 was only 500, but jumped to 500 000 in 1862. At that time, Shanghai hosted three foreign concessions: British (1846–1863) and American (1848–1863), both of which merged into the “International concession” (1863–1946), and lastly, the French (1849-1946).

6. Most of the revolts listed in footnote 3 are millenarian because they all announced a radical social transformation and the coming of a new order.

7. Access to officialdom in pre-contemporary China was the only track for social promotion. Furthermore, successfully passing the imperial examinations not only brought wealth and privileges to the candidate but also to his entire clan (Ch’ü 1986).

8. For example the Miao (1850–1872) and Muslims rebellions (1865–1874). 9. Historically, dynastic and regime changes in China were provoked or accel-

erated by either of these factors, as the fall of the Han, Tang, Song, Ming and ultimately Qing dynasties bear witness. Balazs especially points out the importance of famines to their downfall: “[U]ntil recent times, there has always been a com-

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bination of traditional and revolutionary elements at those turning points in Chinese history when agrarian crisis accelerated events and all problems had to be solved at once within a few feverish years or decades“ (Balazs 2012: 159).

10. Before the arrival of Western powers, China was never invaded from the sea. 11. Extraterritoriality implies that foreign nationals in China are not subject to

Chinese law but rather to their own state’s law (Debbasch et al. 2001). 12. Spence especially points out the fact that the Russian Empire systematically

annexed the territories on which its Pacific Ocean-bound railway was built (Spence 1991: 183).

13. Ch’ü (1986), who made an extensive analysis of the Chinese Imperial legal system, shows that this system codified social inequalities, specifying in detail the duties and privileges, the DOs and DON’Ts of each rank, from the type of clothes they could wear, the objects they could own, the home decorations and improvements they could make – regardless of wealth – etc.; he also underlines the punishments faced by those who would violate these rules. Pre-contemporary China was thus a caste society, not a hereditary caste society as in India, but a society of castes created by legal segregation.

14. Not only did their proselytism angered Catholics and Protestants missionaries alike (Reclus 2008: 205; Spence 1991: 177), their equalitarianism lead them to denounce for-profit activities, and especially the opium trade, for which Western powers had already waged two wars against the Qing dynasty. As a result, the West- ern powers and the Qing dynasty united themselves against the Taiping to prevent them from taking over Shanghai, the heart of the Western presence in China (Spence 1991: 177).

15. “Quincy Wright suggests that there were 48 important battles in 1480–1550, 48 in 1550–1600, 116 in 1600–50, 119 in 1650–1700, 276 in 1700–50, and 509 in 1750–1800, before we see a significant reduction in the nineteenth century” (Teschke 2009: 221).

16. To be accurate, the Sino-Russian border, which remained stable until the mid-19th century, was delimitated by a series of treaties between the late 17th century and the mid-18th century (Spence 1991: 79).

17. This contrasts with the highly personalized power that characterized the absolute monarchies of the late 17th and 18th centuries (Elias 1985) of which France, Spain and Sweden were the greatest (Teschke 2009).

18. For example, Zheng He’s naval missions between 1405 and 1433, which explored the shorelines of South-East and South Asia as well as those of the Middle-East and Eastern Africa, bear witness to the sophistication of Chinese technology nearly a century before Columbus. However, the Zheng Tong Emperor (1427–1464) ended these expeditions and ordered the destruction off all ocean-going ships. Later, any mentions of Zheng He’s expeditions were underplayed, if not omitted, from official histories. Furthermore, international trade was severely restricted until 1567. According to Fairbank (1989: 79–80), other reasons played against technical development: pre-industrial China could not increase per-capita productivity and thus could not break free from the high-level equilibrium trap, because its high-level of technology sustained a circular motion of production and consumption that prevented

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investment in industrial development, especially since its large labor force made machines unnecessary.

19. Fairbank (2006: 203) points out that China paid only the slightest attention to the territorial concessions it made to Western powers, since it had thwarted the Western threat on its coasts as it had the barbarian threat at its Western border.

20. In his study of material civilization, Braudel demonstrates that population growth is closely linked to production capacity. In other words, its ability to feed the given population of a given territorial unit. It is only at the end of the 18th century that continuous overproduction compared to consumption level allowed continuous population growth (Braudel 1979: 52–71).

21. In his study of the development of modern international relations, Teschke (2009) distinguishes between the power of the monarch and the power of the State. In the Ancien regime, at best, power was monopolized by the dynasty, and at worst, by individual monarchs. In his study of the Court Society, Elias (1985) reached the same conclusion.

22. The cost of repeated wars, every five to ten years on average, was on the rise. As a reminder: the War of the Polish succession (1733–1738), the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–1748), the Seven Year’s War (1756–1763), the American Revolution (1775–1783).

23. “When we look at China in 1800 the first thing that strikes the eye is a re- markable paradox: the institutional structure of the society, especially the government, was showing little capacity for change, but the people and therefore the economy were undergoing rapid and tremendous growth. Until recently this paradox remained unnoticed” (Fairbank 1987: 48).

24. The dynasty only succeeded in centralizing power by co-opting urban elites free of feudal duties through the sale of offices and titles of nobility, which was the most rewarding investment for them. However, this new deal rebalanced the political power relations between the bourgeoisie and the nobility, leading the latter to take over the royal administration by all means possible and to systematically exclude the bourgeoisie from it (Wood 2002: 187).

25. The United Kingdom stood in sharp contrast with the rest of Europe as it had already transformed itself into a market economy (Wood 2002: 99). After the 1066 Norman Conquest, a small band of feudal lords held English lands. As they gradually lost their military and legal privileges, they had no choice but to look for market opportunities to maintain and increase their wealth. However, increasing competition led to the fall of prices, and they were increasingly compelled to reinvest their profits in the improvement of productivity. Thus, the values of economic efficiency, technological innovation and private property rights gradually became hegemonic (Wood 2002: 157). The revolutionary and Napoleonic wars gave the boost to British industry that allowed it to dominate foreign markets.

26. It must be stressed that the Qin dynasty repressed the intellectual effer- vescence that preceded their rise to power, destroying all non-technical literature and unleashing terror upon intellectuals, especially Confucians. In the meanwhile, technical knowledge became very closely controlled by the government. Furthermore, the powerful merchant class that rose during the centuries of inter-state warfare war was crushed and its freedom of movement severely limited and its activities monop-

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olized by the State. Soon after the death of Qin Shi Huang, a rebellion overthrew his dynasty (206 B.C.E.)

27. Thus, like the one it overthrew, the new dynasty not only reaffirmed the centrality of the bureaucracy in running the day-to-day business of the State, but its will to closely control society (Fairbank 2006: 62). In addition, it eased trade regulations, launching a period of sustained growth that would nonetheless have been impossible without the bureaucratic centralization of a unified and stable Empire. Yet, the caste structure was ruthlessly enforced: wealth accumulation by the merchants could not overshadow the power of the literati elite, whose power laid precisely in the unchanging nature of the Imperial structures.

28. Although the United Kingdom was the most modern power of the European State system, its transition to capitalism was not yet complete, as demonstrated by the forced deindustrialization of Egypt (1838), Ireland (for most of the colonial period) and India (1820–1840) (Hobsbawm 2003a: 51, 201, 221).

29. The conservative forces unable to marginalize them, had to fight them using their own weapons: newspapers, parties… Yet, capitalist entrepreneurs had become essential to the State, thus the conservative forces had no choice but to coopt with them (Hobsbawm 2003b: 292).

30. Prussia had introduced compulsory education in 1717, though it was difficult to implement before the second half of the 19th century.

31. It must be stressed that the Italian (1859–1866) and German (1863–1871) Unification Wars did not lead to continent-wide conflicts, as would have been the case a century earlier, thanks to the diplomatic skills of Cavour (1810–1861) and Bismarck (1815–1898), but also because European powers now preferred diplomacy to direct intervention.

32. The Manchu banners became the Empire’s main fighting force, while the Han armies were reorganized as regional forces without unified Han command (Spence 1991: 112).

33. The Empire severely restricted the land market, to prevent their accumulation by a minority of rich landowners and to optimize the productivity of peasant-size holdings to ensure the subsistence of the majority of the population, as well as to optimize tax revenues. Yet, it must also be highlighted that the size of large landholdings were fixed by law since they were awarded to top officials and their tax-free family and in perpetuity. However, since the officials were the main landowners, any enforcement of this policy would have been detrimental. These families sought to constantly increase their landholdings by pushing the greatest number of their members into civil service. Furthermore, as the main local powerbrokers, they constantly sought to acquire new lands locally that then became not liable to taxation, regardless of official policy, thus leading to a general impoverishment of the State. Therefore, State revenues were increasingly shouldered by free peasants, who only possessed small parcels (Balazs 2012: 116–117). Since merchants were officially relegated at the bottom of Chinese society, they could not lawfully acquire landholdings. If in practice, they did acquire landholdings, it was only at the price of the permanent bribing of local officials, whose arbitrary power could legally be exercised on this class at any moment (Ch’ü 1980: 128–169).

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34. Spence (1991) stresses that “[t]ensions on both side increased after the 1770s as British traders in particular, worried by the trade deficit that forced them to offer hundreds of thousands of pounds’ worth of silver bullion each year in exchange of Chinese silk, porcelains, and teas, began to ship opium grown in India to southern ports and to exchange it there for Chinese manufactures and produce” (121–122). The revenues from the sale of opium served to buy Chinese products that were then exported to the United Kingdom.

35. The majority on the Yangzi River, and in the provinces of Hunan and Jiangsu (Gernet 2005: 335).

36. Prince Gong was a complex character: conservative and viscerally xenophobic, yet pragmatic. He was one of the main architects of the normalization of the relations with Western powers and of one of the main initiators of the modernization movement (Spence 1991: 200).

37. For example: “[r]ailways were seen as a particular threat to the natural order, disrupting feng shui and disturbing the spirits of the ancestors. The first line, built by Westerners in Shanghai, was bought in 1877 by local authorities, which had the rails ripped up and the main station turned into a temple. Imperial censors warned that foreign countries were pulling up their rails because trains were so dangerous, and wanted to reduce their losses by selling tracks to China, thereby menacing the employment of coolies and cart drivers” (Fenby 2009: 40).

38. “The Chinese flagship was sunk by torpedoes in the first minute of battle; within seven minutes, most of the Chinese ships were hit: within one hour every ship was sunk or on fire and the arsenal and docks destroyed. The French counted 5 dead, the Chinese 521 dead and 51 missing” (Spence 1991: 221).

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China's International Attitude of Withdrawal During the 19th Century (2015)