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The Scramble for China: Foreign Devils in the Qing Empire, 1832-1914
From opium wars, conquest and rebellion to the end of the Qing imperial dynasty, the history of the European colonial 'scramble' for China is one of brutality and idealism, oppression and adventure --- a story that is still central to the country's image of itself today.
Robert Bickers's extraordinary book tells this epic story from both European and Chinese viewpoints, as 'foreign devils' gathered around China's weakened empire and tried to build a new world.
Robert Bickers's extraordinary book tells this epic story from both European and Chinese viewpoints, as 'foreign devils' gathered around China's weakened empire and tried to build a new world.
496 pages, Paperback
First published November 2, 2011
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449 people want to read
About the author
Robert Bickers
18 books27 followersRobert Bickers is Professor of History and Director of the 'Historical Photographs of China' project at the University of Bristol.
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October 25, 2021
This 2011 book is about the western forces at work in Qing dynasty China around the 19th century. Robert Bickers is a historian and professor at the University of Bristol UK. He studied at the SOAS in London and in Beijing and is literate in Chinese. Bickers is an academic but this doesn't read like a textbook. The writing is fluid and things are kept moving at a brisk pace. There is even dark humor to be found in the tragic absurdity of the events described. The book focuses on British treaty ports although other European countries and Chinese cities come into view.
The story begins in 1832 with life on a narrow stretch of land allotted to westerners for trade in Canton (modern day Guangzhou). A number of character studies are sketched, from East India Company traders who agitated for war, to Qing officials who dumped fabulous fortunes of narcotics into the South China Sea. The Opium Wars are summarily recounted, useful as either an introduction or a review of the events. The naval attacks are only briefly revisited. Another chapter summarizes the history and culture of Qing dynasty China to help set the stage.
The strength of this book is it's description of British China after the treaty ports of Shanghai, Canton, Ningbo, Fuzhou and Xiamen had opened in 1842. Hong Kong was ceded to Britain at the same time. The new settlements, the British settlers and their subjects from Malacca, Singapore and Calcutta are resurrected from memoirs and news stories. There is a wealth of information about the development of the ports and interaction with the interior. The other treaty countries, France, America, Russia and Germany are given more minor roles to play.
Piracy and smuggling was rife at the treaty ports. British traders flew flags of other nations to evade British customs, local traders flew British flags to feign British protection. Qing subjects emigrated to Australia, America and Africa during the gold rushes. Treatment of indentured servants and coerced laborers led to the term 'shanghaied'. All was supported by the extra-territoriality clauses in the Nanking Treaty shielding British and their collaborators from Qing law. Any affront to foreign honor was cause for further concessions and reparations.
Missionaries played a large role in expanding the western presence in China, translating on reconnaissance voyages and treaty negotiations, and traveling beyond the limits of treaty ports. Allowed to distribute religious materials they unwittingly seeded the Taiping Rebellion, a millenarian movement against the Qing dynasty in 1851. Some 30 million people died. Qing opium and British piracy crackdowns swelled rebel ranks until they reached the Yangtze river, seized Nanjing, and threatened Shanghai. The solution was to hire British and US mercenaries.
An 1856 Qing arrest of a Chinese crew (possibly smugglers or pirates) flying the union jack near Hong Kong led quickly to the second Opium War. The British bombarded Canton and an Anglo-French coalition attacked coastal cities and forts, looting and burning down the Summer Palace. Treaties added ten ports (with French, Americans and Russians crowding in), legations in Peking, interior travel and Yangtze river rights, missionary/convert rights and war reparations worth billions today. Russia sliced off northeast Manchuria securing the port of Vladivostok.
The book covers pre-WWI Japanese incursions into China. With US Commodore Perry's 1855 opening of treaty ports, Japan began to 'westernize'. Fear of colonization led to rapid militarization after the Meiji Restoration of 1868. The killing of Okinawan shipwrecked sailors by Taiwanese aborigines sparked a Japanese punitive invasion. Tensions over Korea became a case for war with the Qing in 1874. This led to the loss of Taiwan, the Dalian seaport and Liaodong peninsula. Ports were opened in Hangzhou, Suzhou and Chongqing, and more war reparations paid.
By the turn of the 20th century reform and revolution were in the air. As imperial powers picked at the carcass of Qing China Sun Yat-sen and others led cosmopolitan plots to overthrow the dynasty. The sick man of Asia was assailed from all sides, not least by famine and flood. Reactions to foreign intervention resulted in the 1899 Boxer Rebellion, threatening legation and mission alike. International forces invaded Peking, looting and raping on the way, and more money and land was extorted. A rising tide of nationalism spelled the end of the Qing monarchy in 1911.
In 1913 foreign interests backed the military autocrat Yuan Shikai over the newly formed democratic republic. As he ascended the dragon throne Japan captured Qingdao and demanded concessions. Like all things in life times change. Profits of trade diminished as opium was supressed. British taste in tea turned to Indian produce. Firms made more money in railroads, mining and finance. One idea of this book is that China and the world each sought trade but wanted it on their own terms. It's a shame that war was the best the west had to offer the game.
There isn't much moralizing about acquisition of ports by gunboat but this is not a justifying exercise either. Bickers recreates the actions and attitudes of the foreign community of the era. The book refutes some official communist history about a century of humiliation but largely supports it. On a more general level it shows what can happen when global commerce is enforced by worldwide military might. Britain didn't colonize China as it did in America, India and Africa, although the unequal treaties were an intermediate step in the growth of international capitalism.
The story begins in 1832 with life on a narrow stretch of land allotted to westerners for trade in Canton (modern day Guangzhou). A number of character studies are sketched, from East India Company traders who agitated for war, to Qing officials who dumped fabulous fortunes of narcotics into the South China Sea. The Opium Wars are summarily recounted, useful as either an introduction or a review of the events. The naval attacks are only briefly revisited. Another chapter summarizes the history and culture of Qing dynasty China to help set the stage.
The strength of this book is it's description of British China after the treaty ports of Shanghai, Canton, Ningbo, Fuzhou and Xiamen had opened in 1842. Hong Kong was ceded to Britain at the same time. The new settlements, the British settlers and their subjects from Malacca, Singapore and Calcutta are resurrected from memoirs and news stories. There is a wealth of information about the development of the ports and interaction with the interior. The other treaty countries, France, America, Russia and Germany are given more minor roles to play.
Piracy and smuggling was rife at the treaty ports. British traders flew flags of other nations to evade British customs, local traders flew British flags to feign British protection. Qing subjects emigrated to Australia, America and Africa during the gold rushes. Treatment of indentured servants and coerced laborers led to the term 'shanghaied'. All was supported by the extra-territoriality clauses in the Nanking Treaty shielding British and their collaborators from Qing law. Any affront to foreign honor was cause for further concessions and reparations.
Missionaries played a large role in expanding the western presence in China, translating on reconnaissance voyages and treaty negotiations, and traveling beyond the limits of treaty ports. Allowed to distribute religious materials they unwittingly seeded the Taiping Rebellion, a millenarian movement against the Qing dynasty in 1851. Some 30 million people died. Qing opium and British piracy crackdowns swelled rebel ranks until they reached the Yangtze river, seized Nanjing, and threatened Shanghai. The solution was to hire British and US mercenaries.
An 1856 Qing arrest of a Chinese crew (possibly smugglers or pirates) flying the union jack near Hong Kong led quickly to the second Opium War. The British bombarded Canton and an Anglo-French coalition attacked coastal cities and forts, looting and burning down the Summer Palace. Treaties added ten ports (with French, Americans and Russians crowding in), legations in Peking, interior travel and Yangtze river rights, missionary/convert rights and war reparations worth billions today. Russia sliced off northeast Manchuria securing the port of Vladivostok.
The book covers pre-WWI Japanese incursions into China. With US Commodore Perry's 1855 opening of treaty ports, Japan began to 'westernize'. Fear of colonization led to rapid militarization after the Meiji Restoration of 1868. The killing of Okinawan shipwrecked sailors by Taiwanese aborigines sparked a Japanese punitive invasion. Tensions over Korea became a case for war with the Qing in 1874. This led to the loss of Taiwan, the Dalian seaport and Liaodong peninsula. Ports were opened in Hangzhou, Suzhou and Chongqing, and more war reparations paid.
By the turn of the 20th century reform and revolution were in the air. As imperial powers picked at the carcass of Qing China Sun Yat-sen and others led cosmopolitan plots to overthrow the dynasty. The sick man of Asia was assailed from all sides, not least by famine and flood. Reactions to foreign intervention resulted in the 1899 Boxer Rebellion, threatening legation and mission alike. International forces invaded Peking, looting and raping on the way, and more money and land was extorted. A rising tide of nationalism spelled the end of the Qing monarchy in 1911.
In 1913 foreign interests backed the military autocrat Yuan Shikai over the newly formed democratic republic. As he ascended the dragon throne Japan captured Qingdao and demanded concessions. Like all things in life times change. Profits of trade diminished as opium was supressed. British taste in tea turned to Indian produce. Firms made more money in railroads, mining and finance. One idea of this book is that China and the world each sought trade but wanted it on their own terms. It's a shame that war was the best the west had to offer the game.
There isn't much moralizing about acquisition of ports by gunboat but this is not a justifying exercise either. Bickers recreates the actions and attitudes of the foreign community of the era. The book refutes some official communist history about a century of humiliation but largely supports it. On a more general level it shows what can happen when global commerce is enforced by worldwide military might. Britain didn't colonize China as it did in America, India and Africa, although the unequal treaties were an intermediate step in the growth of international capitalism.
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June 30, 2019Sometimes I think I am too critical in my reviews, and while this is an ambitious book that strives to be open and understanding of many parties over time interacting in complex ways, it is a very satisfying book that shifted my perspectives, and not too painfully.
The main thesis is that both the Chinese and the non-Chinese "read difference as inferiority" (p.218) and both sides were prickly and proud, quick to read their relations with the other in terms of humiliation and injury which was memoralised and made into history, but history for Bickers is always a story, or rather somebody in particular's story. History in his view is always more complex, and if I have a 'but' upon finishing this book, it is that there is a tension between complexity and narrative which results in a dense text which really could have surged off in altogether in different directions at any point, wandering like the Yellow river itself in search of a new way to the sea.
An early point is that it suits the humiliation narrative of both sides to believe that China was hermetically sealed and that something new, an opening, occurred in the nineteenth century and that a quasi-colonial experience transformed China, depending on your view point ,either as a result of resistance or through acquiescence.
However Bickers' point is that both sides wanted trade and interaction - but only on their own terms, compromise with the other party was felt as humiliation and as creating an insecure environment, leading to pressure on both sides for a readjustment of those terms in their own favour. Partly this was down to a brittle pride, partly ignorance. While in the preceding centuries Europeans had come to China with wonder and returned with admiration in the nineteenth century things would be different. One reason for this was particularly in the case of the British, was that the people arriving keen to trade in China were coming from a background in India where recent history they believed, taught them that a bit of violence could lead to vast riches.
The Indian connection shown in the vocabulary of the settlers, the chits, tiffin, verandas, and Griffins, as well as usages - hill stations to repose in from the summer heat, drafting in Sikhs as their police force, the early leading role of Parsee families in trade and in Opium (the leading trading product of the early day)s. Here again we note the ecology of empire: opium traded for tea, eventually tea plants and Chinese tea plantation workers transplanted to Northern India to establish that plant in new soil.
The opium trade already well established before the first Opium war the advent of the Europeans was significant for Bickers, in disrupting existing networks and relationships. This disruption spread slowly through Chinese society in different ways, both Taiping rebellion and Boxer movement, he says, were different reactions to that social impact. The Taiping an interesting case, initially the Europeans were excited by the Taiping, but relations with China and the Chinese had to be on the European's own terms, yes the Taiping prayed to God, and yes to a Protestant God, yes they followed the ten commandments, but they just weren't orthodox Christians from a European perspective and so that wasn't good enough.
On the other side Chinese were involved in the trade too, sometimes providing the capital and the capitalist know-how, the European providing just the company name to operate under and with it a flag of convenience and the privileges Europeans had under the treaties, also to the confusion of the Manchu authorities, straits Chinese turned up to join in the commercial opportunities in mainland China.
Christianity was one area in which I wondered about Bickers' approach, he points out very sensible material considerations for Chinese to turn Christian - protection from the foreign flag, material support from the missionary, however at the same time converts to Catholicism were far greater than the numbers of conversions to Protestantism, suggesting that something more was going on, perhaps something that was more intrinsically attractive about Catholicism or superior organisation and resourcing driving their efforts to achieve hundreds of thousands of converts as opposed to the bare few thousand who turned Protestant.
I was also curious about his treatment of the Chinese customs authority established which used Europeans to police European traders and assess customs revenue, all well and good, Bickers tells how those revenues were used to build lighthouses, collect metrological data, buy scientific instruments, establish arsenals and train soldiers- despite this the Qing armies were defeated by the French who then seized Indochina and 1895 by the Japanese who bit off Taiwan and Korea. Which suggests their efforts were more limited in their effectiveness than Bickers' narrative suggests.
Mind you the empire of the Manchus - the Qing dynasty, seems to have been a loose knit affair that was pushing in to pulling itself into closer bonds by the arrivals of the Europeans, regional revolts dragged on - difficult to crush in part because of the inroads that opium addiction made among the troops,so regional figures raised armies locally and disbanded them afterwards, meaning that demobbed soldiers contributed to loose government control through their own vigorous free market activities such as banditry.
Yet the surprise perhaps of the scramble for China was that a China, or eventually several Chinese central authorities managed to emerge into the twentieth century. I wondered if in contrast with India that the difference was that there were too many outside powers jostling for a slice of China, each more nervous of its rivals biting off too large a share to allow them to open their mouths too wide, Bickers also points out that apart from Japan, China was too remote from the interests of the other would be colonisers, British interests driven more by Anglo-Indians than by London.
However chunks of the coast regions in particular were semi-colonial and the various interlopers had various powers and exemptions from Chinese authority over the rest of the country. It was a free market colonisation effort marked by drugs, people trafficking prostitution, God, gun running, and Bible bashing. An extreme slice of nineteenth-century obsessions, always for Bickers marked by sliding scales of violence visited upon the Chinese, what was different about the Japanese sack of Nanking he argues, was that it stuck in historical memory, there was no difference in terms of the activities and savagery of the soldiers who suppressed the Boxers or who captured cities in the Opium wars.
Something that caught my eye was his argument that technological advances did not simply serve to strengthen the position of the interlopers, fancy modern rifles were sold to whoever had the money to buy them, and speedy communication not only meant that politicians and public in European capitals could be more speedily (mis)-informed about events in China, but that Chinese were also aware of world events too, the Boxer movement and the Chinese government's preparedness to side with it, he argues, has to be understood in the context of their awareness that Britain was bogged down on the South-African Veldt failing to crush the Boars, though presumably if they had been aware of their invention of the concentration camp that might have damped any fighting spirit.
An irony of all this, Bickers thinks, is that modern China wants to have its cake and eat it, at once officially teaching this period, particularly since 1989, as an uninterrupted national humiliation which under pins the governance of the Communist party, as only the Communist party saved China from this weak period and asserted national dignity through party unity and leadership, but also there is an assertion of the heritage from the period - the foundation of orchestras and breweries originally to service the spiritual needs of dominant Europeans but now co-opted by Chinese as their own heritage and tradition. Perhaps a new assertive synthesis will emerge in time out of those ideas currently in creative tension.
The main thesis is that both the Chinese and the non-Chinese "read difference as inferiority" (p.218) and both sides were prickly and proud, quick to read their relations with the other in terms of humiliation and injury which was memoralised and made into history, but history for Bickers is always a story, or rather somebody in particular's story. History in his view is always more complex, and if I have a 'but' upon finishing this book, it is that there is a tension between complexity and narrative which results in a dense text which really could have surged off in altogether in different directions at any point, wandering like the Yellow river itself in search of a new way to the sea.
An early point is that it suits the humiliation narrative of both sides to believe that China was hermetically sealed and that something new, an opening, occurred in the nineteenth century and that a quasi-colonial experience transformed China, depending on your view point ,either as a result of resistance or through acquiescence.
However Bickers' point is that both sides wanted trade and interaction - but only on their own terms, compromise with the other party was felt as humiliation and as creating an insecure environment, leading to pressure on both sides for a readjustment of those terms in their own favour. Partly this was down to a brittle pride, partly ignorance. While in the preceding centuries Europeans had come to China with wonder and returned with admiration in the nineteenth century things would be different. One reason for this was particularly in the case of the British, was that the people arriving keen to trade in China were coming from a background in India where recent history they believed, taught them that a bit of violence could lead to vast riches.
The Indian connection shown in the vocabulary of the settlers, the chits, tiffin, verandas, and Griffins, as well as usages - hill stations to repose in from the summer heat, drafting in Sikhs as their police force, the early leading role of Parsee families in trade and in Opium (the leading trading product of the early day)s. Here again we note the ecology of empire: opium traded for tea, eventually tea plants and Chinese tea plantation workers transplanted to Northern India to establish that plant in new soil.
The opium trade already well established before the first Opium war the advent of the Europeans was significant for Bickers, in disrupting existing networks and relationships. This disruption spread slowly through Chinese society in different ways, both Taiping rebellion and Boxer movement, he says, were different reactions to that social impact. The Taiping an interesting case, initially the Europeans were excited by the Taiping, but relations with China and the Chinese had to be on the European's own terms, yes the Taiping prayed to God, and yes to a Protestant God, yes they followed the ten commandments, but they just weren't orthodox Christians from a European perspective and so that wasn't good enough.
On the other side Chinese were involved in the trade too, sometimes providing the capital and the capitalist know-how, the European providing just the company name to operate under and with it a flag of convenience and the privileges Europeans had under the treaties, also to the confusion of the Manchu authorities, straits Chinese turned up to join in the commercial opportunities in mainland China.
Christianity was one area in which I wondered about Bickers' approach, he points out very sensible material considerations for Chinese to turn Christian - protection from the foreign flag, material support from the missionary, however at the same time converts to Catholicism were far greater than the numbers of conversions to Protestantism, suggesting that something more was going on, perhaps something that was more intrinsically attractive about Catholicism or superior organisation and resourcing driving their efforts to achieve hundreds of thousands of converts as opposed to the bare few thousand who turned Protestant.
I was also curious about his treatment of the Chinese customs authority established which used Europeans to police European traders and assess customs revenue, all well and good, Bickers tells how those revenues were used to build lighthouses, collect metrological data, buy scientific instruments, establish arsenals and train soldiers- despite this the Qing armies were defeated by the French who then seized Indochina and 1895 by the Japanese who bit off Taiwan and Korea. Which suggests their efforts were more limited in their effectiveness than Bickers' narrative suggests.
Mind you the empire of the Manchus - the Qing dynasty, seems to have been a loose knit affair that was pushing in to pulling itself into closer bonds by the arrivals of the Europeans, regional revolts dragged on - difficult to crush in part because of the inroads that opium addiction made among the troops,so regional figures raised armies locally and disbanded them afterwards, meaning that demobbed soldiers contributed to loose government control through their own vigorous free market activities such as banditry.
Yet the surprise perhaps of the scramble for China was that a China, or eventually several Chinese central authorities managed to emerge into the twentieth century. I wondered if in contrast with India that the difference was that there were too many outside powers jostling for a slice of China, each more nervous of its rivals biting off too large a share to allow them to open their mouths too wide, Bickers also points out that apart from Japan, China was too remote from the interests of the other would be colonisers, British interests driven more by Anglo-Indians than by London.
However chunks of the coast regions in particular were semi-colonial and the various interlopers had various powers and exemptions from Chinese authority over the rest of the country. It was a free market colonisation effort marked by drugs, people trafficking prostitution, God, gun running, and Bible bashing. An extreme slice of nineteenth-century obsessions, always for Bickers marked by sliding scales of violence visited upon the Chinese, what was different about the Japanese sack of Nanking he argues, was that it stuck in historical memory, there was no difference in terms of the activities and savagery of the soldiers who suppressed the Boxers or who captured cities in the Opium wars.
Something that caught my eye was his argument that technological advances did not simply serve to strengthen the position of the interlopers, fancy modern rifles were sold to whoever had the money to buy them, and speedy communication not only meant that politicians and public in European capitals could be more speedily (mis)-informed about events in China, but that Chinese were also aware of world events too, the Boxer movement and the Chinese government's preparedness to side with it, he argues, has to be understood in the context of their awareness that Britain was bogged down on the South-African Veldt failing to crush the Boars, though presumably if they had been aware of their invention of the concentration camp that might have damped any fighting spirit.
An irony of all this, Bickers thinks, is that modern China wants to have its cake and eat it, at once officially teaching this period, particularly since 1989, as an uninterrupted national humiliation which under pins the governance of the Communist party, as only the Communist party saved China from this weak period and asserted national dignity through party unity and leadership, but also there is an assertion of the heritage from the period - the foundation of orchestras and breweries originally to service the spiritual needs of dominant Europeans but now co-opted by Chinese as their own heritage and tradition. Perhaps a new assertive synthesis will emerge in time out of those ideas currently in creative tension.
June 19, 2015
I am not going to lie here, reading the first two chapters was really dry, in fact I cannot even remember what I read in that. Sure they had some interesting things but they were written pretty boringly. Not to mention that I sometimes had to wonder at the sentence structure and I am sure it could have used a few more commas here and there; I had to reread a few sentences to understand what they meant because they were so long.
However the third chapter started a bit more interesting and it was in my eyes an upward trend from there. I liked the information on the Qing and how they were and stayed quintessential Manchus and had not been thoroughly 'sinicized' as some still assume to explain how their tiny elite could keep control for 250 years. Also apparently the 1st Opium War was not simple fought because of trade but also because of "honor." At first I had my problems believing that, but then I realized that tons of people have started bloody conflicts because of their notions of "honor," which is often synonymous with prestige. In fact according to the book "Modern History of Hong Kong" it was indeed fought between Britain and China over their conflicting viewpoints on diplomatic relations, trade, and the administration of justice for foreign nationals.
It was pretty interesting to read about the development of the Sino-British trade (or better global trade) during that time, how the British had always relied on Chinese colleagues (especially Cantonese) and how the empire had its problems with British Chinese (e.g. from Singapore) whose status as British subjects basically put them outside of Qing law after the treaties and thereby gave them a lot of opportunities, so many in fact that some Qing subjects posed as foreign subjects to gain access to such privileges.
With the introduction of the Taiping Rebellion and the dawn of the 2nd Opium War (and thereby also the sacking of the Imperial Gardens), the book got more and more interesting. There were many things I did not know about, like the inclusion of Chinese laborers during the Arrow war on the British and French sites, the Indians as police officers, the Chinese migrations and the globalization. Also when you hear some authors write about this time you get the impression that the European imperial powers where everywhere in China at the time, but in fact for most of China they were a dark rumour from the coast, but maybe some misconceptions are understandable as many of the foreigners believed that they were now supreme (which is not really surprising for the ethnocentric British Empire or the exceptionalistic Americans, and the French weren't any better either) and this colored nearly all relationships with, and interactions between Chinese, Europeans and Americans. Also after reading so many awful and probably racist views on China in late Qing times, that are supposed to be positive, it is truly refreshing reading from an author who gives the Qing a significant role in the "scramble for China." It was very interesting how they portrayed themselves internationally through their foreign agents, ok it was still exoticized in the end, but that was not their goal. Also how they sought to modernize and "restore" themselves and how "unique" they thought China was (typical for empires). However, as interesting as all of the info about the Qing modernization and European imperial power creating their own spaces in Qing China is, I was curious as to when the Japanese will finally enter the stage. I was nearly halfway through the book and they were only rarely mentioned, they did appear later but it took some time.
It was also too bad that there wasn't much info on Eurasians back in those days apart from some hopes that they might form a good link to promote a more kindly feeling between European and Chinese while fact was that they were routinely caricatured and hated, and there was no Eurasian bridge. This lack of info is understandable to a degree as the marriage between Europeans and Chinese was unwanted and so not much reported about. And yes, the dislike came from both sides; there is no argument about that. Furthermore there was always the element of "don't marry 'our' women."
After this there was also information on Chinese prejudices and stereotypes towards foreigners, including gouging eyes out to make medicine out of them, which is also rooted in Chinese medicine that also used human fluids for medicine so for them it made sense that Europeans would do the same. And boy did it get violent in 1870 against the French. Also at this point the book had become so exciting that I forgot that it was boring once.
There was of course much more afterwards, like the building of lighthouses to make sea-routes safer and how they were manned and equipped (good fodder for movies by the way), as well as the collection of data and to see the connection of things we would today consider modern and archaic at the same time (e.g. collecting meteorological data in part due to the theory that disease is caused by gases) and how Chinese when gotten the chance adopted new technologies like trains and telegraphs, despite what stereotypes claimed. This also includes the world of the comprador – the maiban – who were the great traders of Hong Kong, Canton and Shanghai - powerful men, more than equal in splendour and pretensions to Dent's and jardines' taipans; a new class in Chinese society.
What I like especially when the Japanese finally turn up here and the book is at the 1st Sino-Japanese was this statement as to why the victory of the Japanese was so devastating to the Chinese:
But even though the Japanese demands were softened, the Qing lost. They lost Taiwan. They lost Korea. They lost Dalian and the Liaodong peninsula. They lost a fearful sum as an indemnity to Japan, and so also the use of those revenues thereby redirected. They lost the confidence and loyalty of a generation of their subjects, who howled with rage at this defeat and all it symbolized. The European powers had had the advantages of technology in 1842, in 1858 and 1860. The French had too, in 1884-5, though it was a harder fought war. Those defeats made a sort of sad sense. But Japan was an Asian neighbor, a former tributary state, itself still formally subject to the same style of foreign-serving treaty system as China's. It had only recently been as unprepared to deal with foreign aggression as the Qing, and like the Qing had set itself to restoration and to self-strengthening. But the 'dwarf pirates' - as officials still routinely called the Japanese, even when they were defeated by them - had smashed China's forces, and shattered its pride.
But sadly even here the book seems to follow the line of concentrating on Europeans in this scenario aka it does what so many others did before it. But at least there was some interesting information on the Sino-Japanese relationships.
Afterwards we get info on the Qing reformers, empress dowager Cixi back and the distracted court (and foreigners) when flood and the next year drought hit the empire, causing a chaos from which the violent Boxers emerged whose goal was it to wipe China clean of everything they regarded as foreign and that includes other Chinese. Unlike what so many popular myths claim the war was fought between Boxers and Christians, between the Qing armies with Boxer allies, and the 'Eight Power' allied expeditionary force. It was fought by British marines and Japanese infantry, as well as by Sikhs, Bengalis, Black Americans, Annamese, Algerians and a British regiment of Chinese from Weihaiwei. In fact the last few names I never heard in connection to the Boxer uprising. And due to the nature of the Boxers it didn't take long to read about a virulent strain of anti-Manchu thought that grew stronger: racist in form, drawing the attention of Han Chinese to the slaughters of the mid-seventeenth-century invasion as backing for lurid calls for arms and revenge.
It was truly interesting what the author wrote about the usage of the information of the time for romantic, imperialistic, nostalgic or nationalistic purposes. Or how the Chinese used the information for their own gains and to form an anti-foreigner attitude, even later in the 20th century having popstars singing about being reunified with Hong Kong or how now it shifted to see foreigners among scholars in a more neutral light.
The book ended for me on a high note when it stated how China was not colonized due to the squabble of European powers and the Qing machinations and how China never really mattered to any of them, except Russia and Japan, and it was Chinese people who actually mattered. The book stated in its last pages:
They mattered as opportunist migrants in California and Australia, and as the subjects of fierce political debate, pogrom, and exclusion acts. Their presence and their perceived threat galvanized their opponents to propose racially exclusive understandings of national identity, of being Australian, Canadian, American. Chinese were not, could never be, any of those. Canada was 'white', Australia was 'white', America's immigrant story excised and excluded the Chinese. This is a history not yet properly factored into histories of modern China, but diasporas generally get shorter shrift in the domestic histories of their homelands.
…
But in fact nobody could predict or understand the ways in which European power and thinking evolved. Change was too rapid, and too destabilizing of existing orders - political orders, technological orders, economic orders. The Europeans themselves were working through these changes, and China and the wider world bore the brunt of their capricious global experiments with violence and power.
But at the same time, however, another school of Chinese historians has been quietly factoring this foreign story back into its own accounts of modern China in a different way. For decades the foreigners in Shanghai were villains, but now they are in a more neutral fashion reinserted into narratives of the development of such cities.
Now before I end this I must say I can understand why some people might not like the writing style as it was not exactly written like a standard history book, it did have certain elements of popular culture, but then again, such books tend to be understood more easily by the general public.
So personally I would say you should read this book, but it's not perfect in my eyes.
However the third chapter started a bit more interesting and it was in my eyes an upward trend from there. I liked the information on the Qing and how they were and stayed quintessential Manchus and had not been thoroughly 'sinicized' as some still assume to explain how their tiny elite could keep control for 250 years. Also apparently the 1st Opium War was not simple fought because of trade but also because of "honor." At first I had my problems believing that, but then I realized that tons of people have started bloody conflicts because of their notions of "honor," which is often synonymous with prestige. In fact according to the book "Modern History of Hong Kong" it was indeed fought between Britain and China over their conflicting viewpoints on diplomatic relations, trade, and the administration of justice for foreign nationals.
It was pretty interesting to read about the development of the Sino-British trade (or better global trade) during that time, how the British had always relied on Chinese colleagues (especially Cantonese) and how the empire had its problems with British Chinese (e.g. from Singapore) whose status as British subjects basically put them outside of Qing law after the treaties and thereby gave them a lot of opportunities, so many in fact that some Qing subjects posed as foreign subjects to gain access to such privileges.
With the introduction of the Taiping Rebellion and the dawn of the 2nd Opium War (and thereby also the sacking of the Imperial Gardens), the book got more and more interesting. There were many things I did not know about, like the inclusion of Chinese laborers during the Arrow war on the British and French sites, the Indians as police officers, the Chinese migrations and the globalization. Also when you hear some authors write about this time you get the impression that the European imperial powers where everywhere in China at the time, but in fact for most of China they were a dark rumour from the coast, but maybe some misconceptions are understandable as many of the foreigners believed that they were now supreme (which is not really surprising for the ethnocentric British Empire or the exceptionalistic Americans, and the French weren't any better either) and this colored nearly all relationships with, and interactions between Chinese, Europeans and Americans. Also after reading so many awful and probably racist views on China in late Qing times, that are supposed to be positive, it is truly refreshing reading from an author who gives the Qing a significant role in the "scramble for China." It was very interesting how they portrayed themselves internationally through their foreign agents, ok it was still exoticized in the end, but that was not their goal. Also how they sought to modernize and "restore" themselves and how "unique" they thought China was (typical for empires). However, as interesting as all of the info about the Qing modernization and European imperial power creating their own spaces in Qing China is, I was curious as to when the Japanese will finally enter the stage. I was nearly halfway through the book and they were only rarely mentioned, they did appear later but it took some time.
It was also too bad that there wasn't much info on Eurasians back in those days apart from some hopes that they might form a good link to promote a more kindly feeling between European and Chinese while fact was that they were routinely caricatured and hated, and there was no Eurasian bridge. This lack of info is understandable to a degree as the marriage between Europeans and Chinese was unwanted and so not much reported about. And yes, the dislike came from both sides; there is no argument about that. Furthermore there was always the element of "don't marry 'our' women."
After this there was also information on Chinese prejudices and stereotypes towards foreigners, including gouging eyes out to make medicine out of them, which is also rooted in Chinese medicine that also used human fluids for medicine so for them it made sense that Europeans would do the same. And boy did it get violent in 1870 against the French. Also at this point the book had become so exciting that I forgot that it was boring once.
There was of course much more afterwards, like the building of lighthouses to make sea-routes safer and how they were manned and equipped (good fodder for movies by the way), as well as the collection of data and to see the connection of things we would today consider modern and archaic at the same time (e.g. collecting meteorological data in part due to the theory that disease is caused by gases) and how Chinese when gotten the chance adopted new technologies like trains and telegraphs, despite what stereotypes claimed. This also includes the world of the comprador – the maiban – who were the great traders of Hong Kong, Canton and Shanghai - powerful men, more than equal in splendour and pretensions to Dent's and jardines' taipans; a new class in Chinese society.
What I like especially when the Japanese finally turn up here and the book is at the 1st Sino-Japanese was this statement as to why the victory of the Japanese was so devastating to the Chinese:
But even though the Japanese demands were softened, the Qing lost. They lost Taiwan. They lost Korea. They lost Dalian and the Liaodong peninsula. They lost a fearful sum as an indemnity to Japan, and so also the use of those revenues thereby redirected. They lost the confidence and loyalty of a generation of their subjects, who howled with rage at this defeat and all it symbolized. The European powers had had the advantages of technology in 1842, in 1858 and 1860. The French had too, in 1884-5, though it was a harder fought war. Those defeats made a sort of sad sense. But Japan was an Asian neighbor, a former tributary state, itself still formally subject to the same style of foreign-serving treaty system as China's. It had only recently been as unprepared to deal with foreign aggression as the Qing, and like the Qing had set itself to restoration and to self-strengthening. But the 'dwarf pirates' - as officials still routinely called the Japanese, even when they were defeated by them - had smashed China's forces, and shattered its pride.
But sadly even here the book seems to follow the line of concentrating on Europeans in this scenario aka it does what so many others did before it. But at least there was some interesting information on the Sino-Japanese relationships.
Afterwards we get info on the Qing reformers, empress dowager Cixi back and the distracted court (and foreigners) when flood and the next year drought hit the empire, causing a chaos from which the violent Boxers emerged whose goal was it to wipe China clean of everything they regarded as foreign and that includes other Chinese. Unlike what so many popular myths claim the war was fought between Boxers and Christians, between the Qing armies with Boxer allies, and the 'Eight Power' allied expeditionary force. It was fought by British marines and Japanese infantry, as well as by Sikhs, Bengalis, Black Americans, Annamese, Algerians and a British regiment of Chinese from Weihaiwei. In fact the last few names I never heard in connection to the Boxer uprising. And due to the nature of the Boxers it didn't take long to read about a virulent strain of anti-Manchu thought that grew stronger: racist in form, drawing the attention of Han Chinese to the slaughters of the mid-seventeenth-century invasion as backing for lurid calls for arms and revenge.
It was truly interesting what the author wrote about the usage of the information of the time for romantic, imperialistic, nostalgic or nationalistic purposes. Or how the Chinese used the information for their own gains and to form an anti-foreigner attitude, even later in the 20th century having popstars singing about being reunified with Hong Kong or how now it shifted to see foreigners among scholars in a more neutral light.
The book ended for me on a high note when it stated how China was not colonized due to the squabble of European powers and the Qing machinations and how China never really mattered to any of them, except Russia and Japan, and it was Chinese people who actually mattered. The book stated in its last pages:
They mattered as opportunist migrants in California and Australia, and as the subjects of fierce political debate, pogrom, and exclusion acts. Their presence and their perceived threat galvanized their opponents to propose racially exclusive understandings of national identity, of being Australian, Canadian, American. Chinese were not, could never be, any of those. Canada was 'white', Australia was 'white', America's immigrant story excised and excluded the Chinese. This is a history not yet properly factored into histories of modern China, but diasporas generally get shorter shrift in the domestic histories of their homelands.
…
But in fact nobody could predict or understand the ways in which European power and thinking evolved. Change was too rapid, and too destabilizing of existing orders - political orders, technological orders, economic orders. The Europeans themselves were working through these changes, and China and the wider world bore the brunt of their capricious global experiments with violence and power.
But at the same time, however, another school of Chinese historians has been quietly factoring this foreign story back into its own accounts of modern China in a different way. For decades the foreigners in Shanghai were villains, but now they are in a more neutral fashion reinserted into narratives of the development of such cities.
Now before I end this I must say I can understand why some people might not like the writing style as it was not exactly written like a standard history book, it did have certain elements of popular culture, but then again, such books tend to be understood more easily by the general public.
So personally I would say you should read this book, but it's not perfect in my eyes.
September 1, 2015
Robert Bickers is without doubt the foremost historian currently working on the history of China's treaty ports. This book is very much his attempt at a 'grand narrative' within that frame, and its attempt at balance is perhaps best summed up in the jacket blurb that this was a clash of "two equally arrogant and scornful cultures." The history which Bickers narrates and reflects upon goes well beyond the subtitle's cut-off year of 1914, as he discusses the contemporary relevance of much that happened within China's "century of national humiliation" which is still very much of relevance today. Bickers' essential argument is that the way this history is currently being read is of more contemporary importance to China than it is to the West, something which we could do well to redress in our own reflections on the 'here and now' of such shared history in terms of its influence on the present and potentially the future too.
Empire Made Me: An Englishman Adrift in Shanghai was a tour de force in demonstrating how 'micro-history' can be employed to illuminate a bigger picture, however, The Scramble for China in some respects feels somewhat like looking down the opposite end of the same telescope. Given that this is such a broad canvas, for all the personal nuances of individual stories which Bickers manages to weave into his narrative, in some places it requires a rather broad brush to make certain necessary narrative leaps where we might otherwise wish he had space to go into more detail (eg - Taipings; Boxers, May 4th, etc). That said though, it is still an excellently crafted overview of the period of 'informal empire', told with Bickers' characteristically assured boldness and wit, which makes it an entertaining, as well as a thought-provoking and profitable read for anyone interested in Western Imperialism and modern (pre-Mao) China.
Empire Made Me: An Englishman Adrift in Shanghai was a tour de force in demonstrating how 'micro-history' can be employed to illuminate a bigger picture, however, The Scramble for China in some respects feels somewhat like looking down the opposite end of the same telescope. Given that this is such a broad canvas, for all the personal nuances of individual stories which Bickers manages to weave into his narrative, in some places it requires a rather broad brush to make certain necessary narrative leaps where we might otherwise wish he had space to go into more detail (eg - Taipings; Boxers, May 4th, etc). That said though, it is still an excellently crafted overview of the period of 'informal empire', told with Bickers' characteristically assured boldness and wit, which makes it an entertaining, as well as a thought-provoking and profitable read for anyone interested in Western Imperialism and modern (pre-Mao) China.
June 20, 2021
Enjoyed this book.
Want to read
February 25, 2021Found this whole looking for more details on the Boxer revolution. Looks interesting ... now to find this for less than a bazillion dollars.
May 23, 2021
This book is a history of foreign imperialists in China from its opening to the height of foreign imperialism in China. Particularly, it is about the British, as they were the ones who principally opened China to trade and held preeminence until the end of the period. The period is well-chosen. Until 1832, foreign trade with China was confined to the Canton factories, and in 1914, World War One ended most of the cooperation that had existed among the Europeans in their ventures, and began the preeminence of the Japanese. Also, by the end of the period, the Qing had fallen, China was modernizing, and the republicans in charge were becoming better able to resist and even roll back European pressure.
The book is primarily about the world of the expatriate communities in China. The book profiles the activities of the movers and shakers, the consuls and traders and military men. It also looks at some of the ordinary people, the police, prostitutes, and schoolteachers. What was it like to be a black American bar owner in the Shanghai international settlement in 1895? The book will give you an idea. China, however, is not treated as a blank slate upon which the Europeans could draw. A contemporary question is how much agency the Chinese could have, given their relative powerlessness. Certainly the Chinese were on the back foot in the face of superior European technology for war and its associated belligerency. However, there are extensive discussions in the book of how the Qing Imperial bureaucracy functioned, how Chinese religious life was organized, and how the European presence disrupted these ancient traditions.
The book is full of people: Hugh Linsday, the Daoguang Emperor, Lin Zexu, William Napier, Harry Parkes, Ye Mingchen, Chinese Gordon and the Ever Victorious Army, Robert Hart, and The Empress Dowager. There are places: Shanghai, Macao, Hong Kong, Canton, Taiwan. Terms: the cangue, Hong merchants, extraterritoriality, tea clippers, pidgin, the Chinese Customs Service, the bund, compradors. And there are events: the Opium Wars, the Boxer Rebellion, the unequal treaties, the Sino-Japanese War, the Taiping Rebellion. There is very good detail on how the opium and tea trades actually worked. On the other hand, the book covers almost one hundred years of a very big country, and so it doesn’t really go into detail about how exactly the British stormed the Dagu forts in 1859.
The British were forceful and disregarded Chinese law. “The predisposition to violence never left the story, from beginning to end.” It is not just an anachronism to condemn their behaviour. They were criticized at the time by other British people, but those on the ground could often force the situation, and then would be backed up from the metropole in the name of honour. Exhibit number one is the Opium Wars. A smaller but excellent example of the relentless pressure put on the Qing is the “Margary Affair” Augustus Margary was a young British diplomat who was sent through China from Shanghai in 1874 to meet a British exploratory party that was forging the route overland from Burma to China. Margary was carrying passports to them from the Qing, which had been obtained fraudulently. The explorers were represented as tourists rather than the military, British government-sponsored mission that it was. Margary made it to the border and met them, but on the way back, in February, 1875, Margary and his party were attacked, Margary’s head was lopped off, and the British expedition retreated back into Burma. The attack had probably been done by tribesmen who were only recently in open rebellion against the Qing. The British response was to threaten war. The Qing response was to negotiate, and the Chefoo Convention was signed in 1876. Four more treaty ports were opened up, an indemnity of silver was paid, an apology mission was sent to Queen Victoria, there were revisions to Customs regulations, new forms of etiquette were put in place to structure relations, and a 38-foot monument to Margary was erected in the foreign settlement in Shanghai. All based upon a fraudulent claim in a dangerous region.
I have two points that I want to make but can’t think of a different paragraph for. Although most Europeans were mercenary, not all were. Robert Hart ran the Chinese Customs service for years and was a dedicated civil servant of the Qing Empire who strengthened the state. He supervised others who did the same. Some missionaries, while problematic for other reasons, healed the sick and wounded very selflessly. Real love and feeling existed. Also, I was struck by how young some of the very influential were. Hugh Lindsay captained the Lord Amherst in 1832, the British ship that surveyed the China coast and insisted on opening ports there. He was 29. Harry Parkes was a 28-year-old British consul in Hong Kong when he started the Second Opium War.
A contemporary debate in 19th Century Asia was how much, if at all, to adopt Western ways in order to counter Western pressure. By 1900, that question had been answered by the Japanese. It was not enough to just buy Western ships and arms. It was necessary to change the education system to include physics, biology, and technical education. Governments had to be remade and ideologies imported. Western imperialism could only be countered by Western learning. In order to beat the West at its own game, it was necessary to play the West’s game. By the end of the period of the book, this was becoming apparent to the Chinese as well.
The last chapter of the book is entitled “History” and is a look at how the events of the book have been remembered in Britain but especially in China, to the political ends that past imperialism has been put to. This is an excellent discussion, but there are important things missing. This is not a criticism of the book, but rather a reminder that we need to keep a wider context in mind when we are thinking about the problems it raises. First, we are reminded that, when the British sent the Macartney mission to Peking in 1793, their request for open trade and political equality was refused, and that, given the military balance at the time, there was not much the British could do about it. By the 1830s, that had changed. Why? Why had Britain (and Europeans generally) grown strong and the Chinese (and other ancient empires generally) grown weak? That is an important question to answer. Second, the British Empire was colonizing the Qing Empire. That means that China was an empire, too. When we consider the actions that the British took in China, the Chinese had in fact meted out the same or much worse to others surrounding them. The Ming had only recently conquered the far west of China, the Xinjiang region, in the 18th Century, and they were in the process of conquering Taiwan all the way up to the point when the Japanese took it from them in 1895. The Qing were back footed and affronted by the treacherous, bullying British and the dwarf pirate Japanese, but that was at least partly because their own sense of moral, political and military supremacy had proved so fragile and evanescent.
There are those who claim that looking at imperialism from the imperialist’s point of view is always wrong, that we must always look at it from the perspective of the relatively powerless victims. This is wrong. It is wrong because it doesn’t tell the whole story. Think about it this way. Let’s say there is a crime committed, for example, a murder. Must we only look at it from the murdered person’s perspective? If we don’t consider the murderer’s perspective, why that person committed the murder, can we get the whole story? Can we possibly prevent another murder from happening by not analyzing how this murderer came to the conclusion that murder was necessary or desirable? Or by looking at the situation surrounding the murder that led to the sorry event? I would argue no. Looking at imperialism from the perspective of the imperialists is absolutely necessary. It is not the only story, but it is a necessary part of the story.
I took a course a few years ago on the British Empire. I once posed a question: Can we say that the British Empire was partly built on slavery and opium? If that is true, can we say that the moral campaigns that ended the slavery and opium trades actually damaged the financial sinews of the Empire and hastened its demise? I never got a satisfactory answer to that question, and I still don’t have one.
The book is primarily about the world of the expatriate communities in China. The book profiles the activities of the movers and shakers, the consuls and traders and military men. It also looks at some of the ordinary people, the police, prostitutes, and schoolteachers. What was it like to be a black American bar owner in the Shanghai international settlement in 1895? The book will give you an idea. China, however, is not treated as a blank slate upon which the Europeans could draw. A contemporary question is how much agency the Chinese could have, given their relative powerlessness. Certainly the Chinese were on the back foot in the face of superior European technology for war and its associated belligerency. However, there are extensive discussions in the book of how the Qing Imperial bureaucracy functioned, how Chinese religious life was organized, and how the European presence disrupted these ancient traditions.
The book is full of people: Hugh Linsday, the Daoguang Emperor, Lin Zexu, William Napier, Harry Parkes, Ye Mingchen, Chinese Gordon and the Ever Victorious Army, Robert Hart, and The Empress Dowager. There are places: Shanghai, Macao, Hong Kong, Canton, Taiwan. Terms: the cangue, Hong merchants, extraterritoriality, tea clippers, pidgin, the Chinese Customs Service, the bund, compradors. And there are events: the Opium Wars, the Boxer Rebellion, the unequal treaties, the Sino-Japanese War, the Taiping Rebellion. There is very good detail on how the opium and tea trades actually worked. On the other hand, the book covers almost one hundred years of a very big country, and so it doesn’t really go into detail about how exactly the British stormed the Dagu forts in 1859.
The British were forceful and disregarded Chinese law. “The predisposition to violence never left the story, from beginning to end.” It is not just an anachronism to condemn their behaviour. They were criticized at the time by other British people, but those on the ground could often force the situation, and then would be backed up from the metropole in the name of honour. Exhibit number one is the Opium Wars. A smaller but excellent example of the relentless pressure put on the Qing is the “Margary Affair” Augustus Margary was a young British diplomat who was sent through China from Shanghai in 1874 to meet a British exploratory party that was forging the route overland from Burma to China. Margary was carrying passports to them from the Qing, which had been obtained fraudulently. The explorers were represented as tourists rather than the military, British government-sponsored mission that it was. Margary made it to the border and met them, but on the way back, in February, 1875, Margary and his party were attacked, Margary’s head was lopped off, and the British expedition retreated back into Burma. The attack had probably been done by tribesmen who were only recently in open rebellion against the Qing. The British response was to threaten war. The Qing response was to negotiate, and the Chefoo Convention was signed in 1876. Four more treaty ports were opened up, an indemnity of silver was paid, an apology mission was sent to Queen Victoria, there were revisions to Customs regulations, new forms of etiquette were put in place to structure relations, and a 38-foot monument to Margary was erected in the foreign settlement in Shanghai. All based upon a fraudulent claim in a dangerous region.
I have two points that I want to make but can’t think of a different paragraph for. Although most Europeans were mercenary, not all were. Robert Hart ran the Chinese Customs service for years and was a dedicated civil servant of the Qing Empire who strengthened the state. He supervised others who did the same. Some missionaries, while problematic for other reasons, healed the sick and wounded very selflessly. Real love and feeling existed. Also, I was struck by how young some of the very influential were. Hugh Lindsay captained the Lord Amherst in 1832, the British ship that surveyed the China coast and insisted on opening ports there. He was 29. Harry Parkes was a 28-year-old British consul in Hong Kong when he started the Second Opium War.
A contemporary debate in 19th Century Asia was how much, if at all, to adopt Western ways in order to counter Western pressure. By 1900, that question had been answered by the Japanese. It was not enough to just buy Western ships and arms. It was necessary to change the education system to include physics, biology, and technical education. Governments had to be remade and ideologies imported. Western imperialism could only be countered by Western learning. In order to beat the West at its own game, it was necessary to play the West’s game. By the end of the period of the book, this was becoming apparent to the Chinese as well.
The last chapter of the book is entitled “History” and is a look at how the events of the book have been remembered in Britain but especially in China, to the political ends that past imperialism has been put to. This is an excellent discussion, but there are important things missing. This is not a criticism of the book, but rather a reminder that we need to keep a wider context in mind when we are thinking about the problems it raises. First, we are reminded that, when the British sent the Macartney mission to Peking in 1793, their request for open trade and political equality was refused, and that, given the military balance at the time, there was not much the British could do about it. By the 1830s, that had changed. Why? Why had Britain (and Europeans generally) grown strong and the Chinese (and other ancient empires generally) grown weak? That is an important question to answer. Second, the British Empire was colonizing the Qing Empire. That means that China was an empire, too. When we consider the actions that the British took in China, the Chinese had in fact meted out the same or much worse to others surrounding them. The Ming had only recently conquered the far west of China, the Xinjiang region, in the 18th Century, and they were in the process of conquering Taiwan all the way up to the point when the Japanese took it from them in 1895. The Qing were back footed and affronted by the treacherous, bullying British and the dwarf pirate Japanese, but that was at least partly because their own sense of moral, political and military supremacy had proved so fragile and evanescent.
There are those who claim that looking at imperialism from the imperialist’s point of view is always wrong, that we must always look at it from the perspective of the relatively powerless victims. This is wrong. It is wrong because it doesn’t tell the whole story. Think about it this way. Let’s say there is a crime committed, for example, a murder. Must we only look at it from the murdered person’s perspective? If we don’t consider the murderer’s perspective, why that person committed the murder, can we get the whole story? Can we possibly prevent another murder from happening by not analyzing how this murderer came to the conclusion that murder was necessary or desirable? Or by looking at the situation surrounding the murder that led to the sorry event? I would argue no. Looking at imperialism from the perspective of the imperialists is absolutely necessary. It is not the only story, but it is a necessary part of the story.
I took a course a few years ago on the British Empire. I once posed a question: Can we say that the British Empire was partly built on slavery and opium? If that is true, can we say that the moral campaigns that ended the slavery and opium trades actually damaged the financial sinews of the Empire and hastened its demise? I never got a satisfactory answer to that question, and I still don’t have one.
August 19, 2018
Although China is indisputably today among the world’s greatest powers — diplomatically, economically, and militarily – many Westerners are unaware of what an incredible transformation this represents in less than 70 years.
China’s long civil war, most of it waged at the same time that China was also fighting to repel Japanese invaders, ended in 1949 with the defeat of Chiang Kai-Shek’s Nationalist forces. But it was a poor nation, its people and resources exhausted from decades of war. It was also still largely a rural, agriculture-oriented society. Under the leadership of the Communist Party, and aided in the early years by the Soviet Union under Stalin, China began to rapidly industrialize and urbanize, achieving the kind of makeover in mere decades that took most other nations a century.
If we are to understand China’s deep reservations about Western — and US — motives and intentions we must be mindful of the two centuries of interactions between China and the West before our present time. China is a very ancient society with around 5,000 years of history, and her memory runs deep.
Two excellent books by Robert Bickers that cover the often unhappy relations between China and the West from the early 19th century to the present day are The Scramble for China: Foreign Devils in the Qing Empire, and Out of China: How the Chinese Ended the Era of Western Domination).
Bickers reveals how the West in the 19th century — Great Britain being the chief offender — repeatedly insulted China by firing upon her territory, occupying large portions of her coastal regions around key trading ports, and forcing her to agree to commercial terms far more favorable to them than to China. While it is customary for nations to regard others’ diplomatic stations as representing their nations’ own soil, the British — soon followed by the French, the Dutch and the Americans — took over entire neighborhoods as if they were their own; Chinese streets, alleyways and boulevards therein often became dangerous for Chinese ignoring posted notices warning against “trespassing.”
To be sure, this behavior was typical of how, in the latter part of the 19th century, Western nations also behaved towards other nations they deemed “lesser” as they competed among themselves for commercial advantage and colonial possessions. This hardly made the offenses less so in the eyes of the Chinese, though.
In addition to the impact that trade backed up by force had on China, it quickly became a magnet for another, in many ways even more unsettling, intrusion: the arrival of Christian missionaries. Some of these came, with similar faulty assumptions about China’s alleged “backwardness,” to “save the heathen natives,” still others to both share their faith and study the differences between their own societies and China’s. They often had a positive impact by their habit of establishing schools for local children and interested adults and in offering health care services that clearly helped more isolated areas. But their proselytizing, combined with their ignorance of Chinese religious practices, also offended many, especially when they interpreted Chinese reverence for their ancestors as a form of idolatry, calling it ancestor-worship.
From the early 19th century onward, however, many foreigners who journeyed to China quickly learned to admire and respect it for its culture, arts, and remarkable historical longevity. Whether they were missionaries, traders, soldiers, or diplomatic personnel, they did all they could to act as a buffer against the more vile or forceful intrusions of their own governments.
Nonetheless, in many ways, China’s earliest experiences with “the West” were both unhappy and destabilizing – for Chinese authorities as well as some of their institutions. Ever since there has been a back and forth between those in China who admire at least some of the institutions and practices of the West and, therefore, who push for China to adapt them itself and those who loath substantial elements of Western values and institutions because they undermine valued traditions and threaten Chinese interests.
Since there is a similar contest in the West, too, between those who admire China and wish to develop all possible friendly relations with her and those who regard her as the preeminent threat to the “order” established by the United States. This helps explain the repeating alternating cycles of hot and cold in the relations between China and the West.
The record in the 20th century remained a mixed one.
On the one hand, for example, the United States repeatedly sought to support Chinese independence from foreign interference, especially that posed by Japan. But, on the other, China’s delegation to the Versailles Peace Conference formalizing the end of World War I found that its pleas for assistance were overridden by the both West’s infatuation with Japan’s rapid rise and, because of Japan’s military power, inclination to appease Japan in order to keep the Pacific region stable. (Frances Wood and Christopher Arnander have examined the relations between China and the West during World War I in their book, Betrayed Ally: China in the Great War.)
Even the US’s much-praised Open Door Policy was designed as much to keep trade with China open to it on an equal footing with other great powers as to prevent predatory nations from reverting to their behavior earlier in the 19th century.
China also found that her own hopes during the Second World War for more vigorous Allied assistance in pushing back Japanese armies within her borders were subordinated to the West’s priorities, including Great Britain’s resource-squandering attempts to keep the Japanese out of other Southeast Asian countries in their hope to maintain their colonies there after the war’s conclusion.
With the end of World War II realizing the long goal of removing Japanese forces from Chinese territory, and the victory of the Communists over Chiang Kai-Shek's Nationalist forces in 1949, China embarked on a new phase of rapid industrialization and urbanization, dramatically transforming the country in less than 50 years.
With China's rapid ascension to great power status, economically and militarily, some old questions are once again new. Can China and the West find a way to live together in mutual respect without reigniting the territorial wars that characterized so much of the globe for most of the 19th and 20th centuries?
And can each side throw off old suspicions about the other to allow the reality of our current day to influence key decisions?
Only time -- and considerable luck -- will tell!
China’s long civil war, most of it waged at the same time that China was also fighting to repel Japanese invaders, ended in 1949 with the defeat of Chiang Kai-Shek’s Nationalist forces. But it was a poor nation, its people and resources exhausted from decades of war. It was also still largely a rural, agriculture-oriented society. Under the leadership of the Communist Party, and aided in the early years by the Soviet Union under Stalin, China began to rapidly industrialize and urbanize, achieving the kind of makeover in mere decades that took most other nations a century.
If we are to understand China’s deep reservations about Western — and US — motives and intentions we must be mindful of the two centuries of interactions between China and the West before our present time. China is a very ancient society with around 5,000 years of history, and her memory runs deep.
Two excellent books by Robert Bickers that cover the often unhappy relations between China and the West from the early 19th century to the present day are The Scramble for China: Foreign Devils in the Qing Empire, and Out of China: How the Chinese Ended the Era of Western Domination).
Bickers reveals how the West in the 19th century — Great Britain being the chief offender — repeatedly insulted China by firing upon her territory, occupying large portions of her coastal regions around key trading ports, and forcing her to agree to commercial terms far more favorable to them than to China. While it is customary for nations to regard others’ diplomatic stations as representing their nations’ own soil, the British — soon followed by the French, the Dutch and the Americans — took over entire neighborhoods as if they were their own; Chinese streets, alleyways and boulevards therein often became dangerous for Chinese ignoring posted notices warning against “trespassing.”
To be sure, this behavior was typical of how, in the latter part of the 19th century, Western nations also behaved towards other nations they deemed “lesser” as they competed among themselves for commercial advantage and colonial possessions. This hardly made the offenses less so in the eyes of the Chinese, though.
In addition to the impact that trade backed up by force had on China, it quickly became a magnet for another, in many ways even more unsettling, intrusion: the arrival of Christian missionaries. Some of these came, with similar faulty assumptions about China’s alleged “backwardness,” to “save the heathen natives,” still others to both share their faith and study the differences between their own societies and China’s. They often had a positive impact by their habit of establishing schools for local children and interested adults and in offering health care services that clearly helped more isolated areas. But their proselytizing, combined with their ignorance of Chinese religious practices, also offended many, especially when they interpreted Chinese reverence for their ancestors as a form of idolatry, calling it ancestor-worship.
From the early 19th century onward, however, many foreigners who journeyed to China quickly learned to admire and respect it for its culture, arts, and remarkable historical longevity. Whether they were missionaries, traders, soldiers, or diplomatic personnel, they did all they could to act as a buffer against the more vile or forceful intrusions of their own governments.
Nonetheless, in many ways, China’s earliest experiences with “the West” were both unhappy and destabilizing – for Chinese authorities as well as some of their institutions. Ever since there has been a back and forth between those in China who admire at least some of the institutions and practices of the West and, therefore, who push for China to adapt them itself and those who loath substantial elements of Western values and institutions because they undermine valued traditions and threaten Chinese interests.
Since there is a similar contest in the West, too, between those who admire China and wish to develop all possible friendly relations with her and those who regard her as the preeminent threat to the “order” established by the United States. This helps explain the repeating alternating cycles of hot and cold in the relations between China and the West.
The record in the 20th century remained a mixed one.
On the one hand, for example, the United States repeatedly sought to support Chinese independence from foreign interference, especially that posed by Japan. But, on the other, China’s delegation to the Versailles Peace Conference formalizing the end of World War I found that its pleas for assistance were overridden by the both West’s infatuation with Japan’s rapid rise and, because of Japan’s military power, inclination to appease Japan in order to keep the Pacific region stable. (Frances Wood and Christopher Arnander have examined the relations between China and the West during World War I in their book, Betrayed Ally: China in the Great War.)
Even the US’s much-praised Open Door Policy was designed as much to keep trade with China open to it on an equal footing with other great powers as to prevent predatory nations from reverting to their behavior earlier in the 19th century.
China also found that her own hopes during the Second World War for more vigorous Allied assistance in pushing back Japanese armies within her borders were subordinated to the West’s priorities, including Great Britain’s resource-squandering attempts to keep the Japanese out of other Southeast Asian countries in their hope to maintain their colonies there after the war’s conclusion.
With the end of World War II realizing the long goal of removing Japanese forces from Chinese territory, and the victory of the Communists over Chiang Kai-Shek's Nationalist forces in 1949, China embarked on a new phase of rapid industrialization and urbanization, dramatically transforming the country in less than 50 years.
With China's rapid ascension to great power status, economically and militarily, some old questions are once again new. Can China and the West find a way to live together in mutual respect without reigniting the territorial wars that characterized so much of the globe for most of the 19th and 20th centuries?
And can each side throw off old suspicions about the other to allow the reality of our current day to influence key decisions?
Only time -- and considerable luck -- will tell!
February 1, 2013
Fascinating subject matter but I thought this book was just a gloss over. I didn't like the author's writing style either. Disjointed and opinionated. Major events like the Boxer Rebellion or the downfall of the Qing Dynasty get covered in a page or two. One thing that is pretty clear though.....the Western powers (and Japan) treated China pretty damn shamelessly over the last 200 years. Their current xenophobic fears are not without foundation and precedent.
May 12, 2020
My grandfather was in the Service Corp and got posted to China in 1912 to Tiensin. In 1914 he was at theBattle of Tsingtoa where w fought with the Japanese against the Germans.
I read the book to get some idea of why Europeans would be fighting in a foreign country that was not a colony of either.
The book shows the stages of increasing influence of the Europeans as China owned up to the west. Unfortunately the west does not come out too well using violence to gain concessions. Book is very detailed and at times if hard work but ultimately worth it. The final chapter, summing up the past and the effects that it has on modern China is worth the wait.
Unfortunately the defaulted history end at 1912 when my grandfather arrived. 😑
I read the book to get some idea of why Europeans would be fighting in a foreign country that was not a colony of either.
The book shows the stages of increasing influence of the Europeans as China owned up to the west. Unfortunately the west does not come out too well using violence to gain concessions. Book is very detailed and at times if hard work but ultimately worth it. The final chapter, summing up the past and the effects that it has on modern China is worth the wait.
Unfortunately the defaulted history end at 1912 when my grandfather arrived. 😑
September 27, 2025
If I had to be more accurate with the rating, I would probably put it around 3.8-3.9.
For a seemingly thin book, it is a bit dense which is good and bad. I learned about many facets of foreign interaction with China, such as the foreign run Imperial Maritime Customs Service, but it also seem to drone one about some other stuff like putting up statues and monuments, which while important, takes up a bit much. Also for being a general history, you obviously get your brush strokes of events but random focuses on other stuff.
Overall it is not a bad book for why China can feel the way it does about the West.
For a seemingly thin book, it is a bit dense which is good and bad. I learned about many facets of foreign interaction with China, such as the foreign run Imperial Maritime Customs Service, but it also seem to drone one about some other stuff like putting up statues and monuments, which while important, takes up a bit much. Also for being a general history, you obviously get your brush strokes of events but random focuses on other stuff.
Overall it is not a bad book for why China can feel the way it does about the West.
June 19, 2021
Chinese against Qing, foreigners against Chinese and Qing, new republicans against all, foreigners for themselves--- It s a swashbuckling book, it is a manual for Chinese today how to conquer the world, and for other nations to learn from the errors the Chinese will do, or are doing now.
I love the style of this book and its message: Learn the history because YOU CAN LEARN FROM HISTORY.
And the history continues.
I love the style of this book and its message: Learn the history because YOU CAN LEARN FROM HISTORY.
And the history continues.
June 4, 2024
had to read this for uni and it was just so jarring. maybe the issue was that wer were supposed to read this book as if it was a textbook and were given no prior info and then Obvs It was hella difficult to grasp and a pain to get through
so maybe my problem but the nightmare of the module has meant this is one star. sorry.
so maybe my problem but the nightmare of the module has meant this is one star. sorry.
December 19, 2017
I really was looking forward to this one. But unfortunately another one of those instances where the writing style is just too dry for me. Seems well researched and all that, but I struggled a bit to finish.
December 18, 2024
I really enjoyed this book. My only critic is that it seemed to rush the last few years. I was disappointed that he went into such detail of the mid 1800’s but when it came to the 1900’s he seemed to accelerate to the end glossing over major events. But overall really good and informative read.
January 7, 2018
Horrible and unfocused. It simple cares too much about the wrong topics to be useful
October 25, 2019
Bickers does some interesting research but I find his writing style difficult to follow sometimes. This is the second book I've read by him and I had trouble both times.
February 2, 2025
Simultaneamente muito denso e disperso (!?), mas sobretudo pouco interessante.
August 16, 2025
Very interesting for anyone that wants to go deeper into Chinese history
January 12, 2013
Thorough and detailed, this book presents a comprehensive account of Western (British) intrusion into, and involvement with, the self-styled treaty port world of China. It is balanced in its assessment of the Westerners' treatment of Chinese and the Chinese state, taking into account that the same period was one of imperialism, and one of European domination across the world. Even so, it does not attempt to absolve the Europeans of the injustices they pepertrated against the Chinese, instead choosing to display the facts- both positive and negative- and demonstrate to the reader that ultimately, one must read past convenient and attractive one-sided views on the matter to truly understand China.
August 19, 2016
A good book covering the Western power's actions (commercial, political, and military) in China in the 19th and early 20th centuries. A fairly balanced chronological narrative, looking at the combination of misunderstandings and righteous actions which permeated both sides. The book does a good job of providing both Chinese and Western perspectives to the many incidences, some good, most bad, which occurred. The broad concentration is on the intense interaction of the two cultures and the slow but steady inclusion of Chinese professionals in the established Western institutions. The book ends with a fairly long homily on the importance to Westerners in understanding this history, as it plays such a central role in China's current worldview.
June 30, 2016
Good but tough-going. If you know something about China's history from the mid19th century to 1914, this is illuminating, impeccably researched and at times fascinating account of the lives and history of the "foreign devils". It is, due to its focus, light on the internal conflicts and struggles which tore at the Qing imperial structure during this time. The author has some great turns of phrase; there can at times be an excitement to the writing and at others a melancholy. I would recommend this as long as you are clear, as the title does maintain, that this is primarily a history of the foreigners in China rather than of China itself.
November 30, 2013
A popular history of the interaction between China and foreign powers from the first Opium War until the outbreak of World War I. An entertaining, even gossipy read, but it's a little too British-centric.
February 4, 2011
Not exactly an epic in historical analysis, but tells some interesting stories about the forebearers of modern expat life. His phrase "whining China coaster" has entered my lexicon.
July 1, 2016
2.5 stars
March 27, 2017
Bickers brings Chinese history to life with vivid writing and authoritative research. A must read for scholars of China.
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