CHINA'S ATTEMPT AT COURT-BASED REFORM

The Tongzhi Restoration

 

Tongzhi Restoration (1861-1873): (the Qing attempt at zhongxing or "mid-dynastic revival")

 

Yehonala or Empress Dowager Cixi (1835-1908): consort of the Xianfeng emperor (r. 1850-61), mother of the Tongzhi emperor (r. 1861-75), and adoptive mother of her nephew the Guangxu emperor (r. 1875-1908), who controlled the Qing empire for almost half a century.

 

Zongli Yamen (Office for General Management): opened in 1861 to deal with foreign affairs, with a staff filled by the Qing officials seeking peace with the Imperialist powers.

 

Guandu shangban: “government merchant enterprises” or joint ventures between gentry class and central government.

 

Robert Hart (1835-1911): English statesman employed by the Qing dynasty to run the Chinese customs bureau and to act as an intermediary for foreign merchants and governments.

 

THE FAILURE OF

THE SELF_STRENGTHENING MOVEMENT

 

Zhang Zhidong (1837-1909): Scholar, provincial official, and reformist intellectual architect of the Self-Strengthening Movement.

 

Ti- "essence" Yong- "practical use”

 

1894-95 Sino-Japanese War: a disaster for the Qing court and a poignant rejection of the Self-Strengthening Movement.

 

Treaty of Shimonoseki (April 17, 1895):  agreement at the end of the Sino-Japanese War that dictated China's territorial loss to Japan; a payment of a large indemnity to Japan and the opening of the ports of Shashi (river port in Hubei province), Chungking (Chongqing), and Suzhou (Jiangsu province) to Japanese trade.

 

 

 

 

 

The Response of the

Chinese Scholar-Official Class

POLITICAL REFORM

 

Kang Youwei (d. 1927): reformist Confucian scholar and leader of the One Hundred Days of Reform Movement (1898).

 

Datong or “Great Unity”

 

Guangxu emperor (r.1875-1908): nephew (and adopted son) of the Empress Dowager Cixi. The Guangxu Emperor gave Kang Youwei and his followers permission to implement their reforms, although Cixi and her supporters soon crushed this movement.

 

INTELLECTUAL REFORM

 

Yan Fu (1854-1921): student of British naval technology and a scholar who translated numerous western books (J.S. Mill, Herbert Spencer, Adam Smith, Rousseau, and Montesqieu, among others) for a wide Chinese audience.  Yan advocated the study of Western ideas and institutions to fully understand the nature of Western technological advances.

 

Social Darwinism: the notion popular in the late 19th - early 20th  century that peoples and societies are subject to the same laws of "natural selection" that Darwin argued had shaped the animal kingdom.

 

Herbert Spencer’s (1820-1903) popular scholarly author of A Study of Sociology; coins the phrase Social Darwinism and "Survival of the Fittest"