The Collapse of the Qing Dynasty Essays

The Collapse of the Qing Dynasty Essays The Collapse of the Qing Dynasty Essay The Collapse of the Qing Dynasty Essay Explain the key reasons for the collapse of the Qing Dynasty. The Qing Dynasty’s collapse was due to three main influences, with underlying reasons involved in each. The first being foreign intervention related strongly to militarism, gunboat diplomacy, imperialism and the rise of unequal treaty systems. The second influence was China’s failure to reform and uprisings, such as the boxer rebellion and lastly economic decline. These three factors ultimately resulted in the downfall of the dynasty. The Qing Dynasty relied heavily on the effectiveness of its fighting forces. However, due to corruption and loss of skills the military began to crumble. Militarism, the use of army for political advantage, became very influential for a large power as having military power gave huge stability and security to the empire. It was in conjunction with militarism that ‘gunboat diplomacy’, the practice of asking for something with no intent on agreeing to any other arrangement, occurred used more and more. The Manchu government lied about the number of soldiers that they had in their units in order to receive extra money for supplies and salaries, so by 1850 only half of the soldiers on the enlistment forms actually existed. Imperialism, or the practice of conquering and developing another area usually for trading purposes, was also a major contributor to the decline of the dynasty. The Sino-Japanese war was very humiliating for the Chinese people because it once again highlighted defeat on China by a foreign power, and as well internal troubles, this increased the xenophobic feeling toward outsiders, which resulted in a lot of resentment for foreigners, which meant that leaders such as Cixi who were opposed to foreigners and modernization gained a lot of support from the population. Unequal treaties, such as the ‘Treaty of Nanjing’ and the ‘Treaty of Whampoa’ and ‘Treaty of Wanghia’ impacted severely on China. When forced to sign the treaties, China was forced to agree to open up parts of China to western control and influence and this caused a lot of resentment and discontentment between the people of China and foreigners, this adding to the already xenophobic culture of China. This was a major example of imperialism as these treaties favored foreign trade but China didn’t gain any concession from the foreigners. This in turn weakening the economic power of china and the governments control over the country weakened. Failure to reform was mainly due to weak and ineffective leadership, the conservatives, and especially corruption of the dynasty and its officials. Ineffective leadership and very luxurious living of the emperors and government officials also led to the collapse of the Qing Dynasty. Officials were left in charge of the administration of the dynasty because the two emperors of the time, Tongzhi and Guangxu were still children, and this lack of imperial control gave Cixi the ability to ‘rule from behind the curtain’. Corruption was also throughout many aspects of the administration of the Qing Dynasty. Many officials increased their own personal fortunes by raising peasant’s taxes and by pocketing money, which was to be used for infrastructure, such as the river mitigation project. Finally uprisings and economic decline plunged the Qing Dynasty into failure because of the rebellions, peasant discontentment, which both resulted in resentment of the dynasty. Another factor influencing the economic decline was natural disasters. Irresponsible spending and the luxuries experienced by the emperor and officials lead to the erosion of the economy. This, as well as a shortage of silver, due to indemnities, led to extreme inflation of the economy and therefore to the decline of the Qing Dynasty. The peasant discontentment was mainly due to the increased taxes and the deterioration of living standards they were subjected to. The Qing Dynasty was severely weakened because of internal issues in relation to foreign modernization and the calls for china to do the same. The Boxer Rebellion was mainly aimed at Christian missionaries and foreign industrialists and contributed to the downfall of the dynasty because it ailed at its attempt to get rid of the foreigners from china. This failure cost the Chinese people lots of money, as well as weakening their territory, once again humiliating the population. Although this simplifies the decline and eventual collapse of the Qing Dynasty, it does provide some insight into the actions and consequences, which can be said to have led to the downfall of the dynasty, and it can be seen that the th ree main influences, being foreign intervention, failure to reform and uprisings and economic decline, led to the collapse of the dynasty and led to modernization of China.