History Of China Between 1810 And 1911 - 2250 Words

Title: A century in the development of China The political progress in China between 1810 and 1911 was directly impacted by two sets of sentiments and a variety of western ideologies. Firstly, Western imperialistic forces exacerbated the domestic crises in China, engendering strong anti-foreign feelings. This resentment blended with the long existing anti-Qing (the last feudalism dynasty) sentiment, which had been fermenting since seventeen century among the majority Ethnic Han Chinese. These two sentiments facilitated the development of common national identity, which played an adhesive part in the political progress. Secondly, Western political ideologies were used as guiding frameworks for the Chinese political leaders in their†¦show more content†¦This is a process of different political experimentations with various Western ideologies to construct Chinese political systems, in the attempt to get rid of the ancient Confucianism orthodoxy and counter the western imperial forces. In the essay, I will first lay the groundwork for this discussion by introducing the background of late-Qing dynasty before the first opium war, mainly regarding to its ignorance and arrogance of the western powers and its lack of unified national identity. I will go on to analyze how the Opium War changed the Qing’s stagnant status quo, and how the changes led to major revolutions and reforms in this period, such as the Taiping Rebellion (1850-1864), the Self-Strengthening Movement (1860-1890), the Hundred Day’s Reform (1898), and the Xinhai Revolution (1911). I will use these historical events to illustrate how the political leaders used the two intertwined sentiments as fuel, and used the western political ideologies as frameworks for their political movements. The significance and radicalness of the political changes China went through after the Opium War and the impact of the Western ideologies cannot be fully understood if we do not take into account the endurance of the feudalism system. The feudalism system, as a central part of the Chinese civilization, had continued without interruption for a few thousand years. Indeed,