The Qing Dynasty

The Collapse of Qing Dynasty And
The Beginning of Chinese Modern History
After the Manchus established Qing dynasty in 1644, China experienced its last flourishing age “Kang-Qian flourishing age” before the ultimate collapse of Chinese imperial system. Despite the leaps in development in the early Qing, multiple layers of underlying shortcomings and problems emerged as the dynasty proceeded. Among a large number of factors that helped foster the increasing number of reforms and rebellions during late Qing, uncontrollable increase in population serves as the first element of a chain of factors which ultimately led to Qing`s final collapse. While the Opium War from 1839-1842 started the steep weakening of Qing’s power and led to a series of chaos,
The quick development in population in Qing dynasty not only is a crucial stage of the entire history of Chinese population changes but also serves as one of the main reasons of Qing`s ultimate collapse. From Qing’s establishment in 1644 to Qing’s destruction in 1911, population tripled from 150 to 500 million. Entering into Kang-Qian flourishing age in 1682, the dynasty began to stabilize and the economic development started to revitalize. Before Opium War broke out, especially from 1685 to 1840, China’s population grew at an unprecedented speed and for the first time, exceeded two hundred millions. As the population tripled and even quadrupled, land area being used merely doubled from 5 to 10 million. It is obvious that the growth of economy and agriculture could not feed the even faster growth of population. Such an imbalance between population growth and agricultural growth combined with various natural factors had led to a famine out of control, which trigger several of the first rebellions in mid to late Qing by the peasant
Nevertheless, despite the unequal treaty signed along with a series of other obligations and negativities on the defeat, the Opium war indeed opened the door of modern Chinese history, and is beneficial to China’s development from a different perspective. While the improvement in technology had largely improved people’s lives in Europe and spread the idea of liberty to the general population, China had yet to accept the trends of revolutions. Even though the majority of the reasons of Qing’s collapse are related to internal factors, the external forces helped stimulate the internal forces and push the country forward. Moreover, the break-out of the Opium War fostered the growth of emerging merchant class in China, which also set the foundation of self-strengthening and reform movements in later Qing. As five ports were forced to open in China after the Opium War, the foreign trade and other merchant activities became increasingly prosperous, especially in Canton and Shanghai. As China’s door was gradually opened after the Opium War, foreign technology, and more importantly, foreign ideas of democracy and liberty started to take roots in the land of China. As more and more young scholars became educated on the foreign ideas or were even sent abroad to study, further rebellions, reforms and revolutions have yet to take place. Therefore, the Opium War well