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The Opium War In China

Decent Essays

The opium war of 1840, which breaks the isolated China and directly forces the Chinese to contact with the west, facilitated the formation of Chinese nationalism. Before that, China was more considered as an empire than a Nation State, which is integrated by a sense of national spirit and citizenship. This historic watershed transformed the Chinese empire, a feudal society into a modern state and more importantly, into a Nation. The same similar set of historical trends happened to Japanese as well: Tokugawa was one of the most isolated time in Japanese history. The “Black Ships” event forces Japan to open and facilitated Meiji Restoration which nurtured Japanese’s own nationalism and started the process of modernization. The background is …show more content…

The demand of Chinese good, especially tea, porcelain and silk in the European market in seventeenth and eighteenth century (M&L, 150) created an unbalanced trade and further leads to the Opium War from 1839 to 1842. The treaty of Nanjing in 1842 concluded with terms highly favorable to Britain: “opening of five ports to trade”, fixed tariff and large indemnity (Morton and Lewis, 154). Opium War not only represents the forced opening of Chinese market to foreign power, but also represents a series of wars and unequal treaties such as the second Opium war and Treaty of Tianjin, which aims to further open China, expand trade and guarantee some rights of foreigners in Chinese territory such as the right to ownership of land (M&L, …show more content…

China. China was ruled under the feudal system for about 5,000 years and she was in almost permanently dominant position within the world for a thousand years. With this superiority, the Qing dynasty developed the sense of “middle kingdom” [3]. The long history of dominance foster the belief in the “superiority of Chinese culture” (M&L, 160) and Confucianism. This belief attributes to China’s reluctance to change. It also makes abolishing the old Confucian ways of life and overthrowing the outdated feudal system much harder and longer.
Japan. A major difference between China and Japan is that Japanese reacted to western knowledge with more initiative than China did. Japan had a history of learning and “cultural borrowing” [5] from other “Dutch learning” since eighteenth century (M&O, 134) and the “cultural borrowing from nations. For example, the China” since 6th century [5], in which the Japanese integrated Dutch technology and Chinese Confucianism with Japanese society and culture. An important characteristic of Japanese is their “impartial selectivity” for study model (M&O, 152) and readiness to switch if a better model is

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