AP World History: Modern Premium, 2022-2023: Comprehensive Review with 5 Practice Tests + an Online Timed Test Option by John McCannon

Author:John McCannon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Barrons Educational Services
Published: 2021-12-10T00:00:00+00:00

Internal crises dogged the Qing at the same time. Worst was the Taiping Rebellion (1850–1864), which claimed between 20 million and 30 million lives, making it possibly the second deadliest war in history, next to World War II. The uprising was led by Hong Xiuquan, a Cantonese clerk educated partly by Protestant missionaries. Shocked by failing his civil service examination, Hong experienced visions that convinced him he was Jesus Christ’s younger brother, destined to establish a “heavenly kingdom of supreme peace”—the meaning of taiping—in China. An extraordinarily magnetic leader, Hong organized an effective modern army and appealed to millions of ordinary Chinese who resented the Qing’s high taxes and oppressive rule. The rebels also opposed practices like the binding of women’s feet. At their peak, the Taiping controlled a third of China, but Qing forces, assisted by foreign military units, recovered by the early 1860s. Hong committed suicide in 1864, and the rebellion collapsed.

Reacting to the Taiping chaos, elements within the Qing government attempted a reform campaign, the self-strengthening movement, starting in the 1860s and pursued sporadically over the next few decades. It was of limited impact because it confined itself to economic and military modernization without meaningful social change. It was also opposed by the leading figure in Chinese politics, the dowager empress Cixi, who governed as regent for her nephew, the Guangxu emperor, beginning in 1878, and controlled him even after he grew to adulthood. Conservative and oppressive, Cixi resisted all change and even placed her nephew under arrest when he launched a short-lived “Hundred Days’ Reform” in 1898. (His reformist advisors were executed.)

The price of Cixi’s stubbornness was internal decay and economic decline as well as continued humiliation on the diplomatic front. Outlying possessions and parts of China’s tributary system gained autonomy or fell into foreign hands. France seized Indochina after a short conflict with China in 1883. Even more embarrassingly, tiny Japan thrashed China in the Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895) and occupied Korea and Taiwan. In 1899, the United States’ Open Door Policy arranged equal access to Chinese markets for all Western nations, further increasing foreign intrusion.

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