The Opening of China Foreign trade was given through many battles. Until the 19th century, both China and Japan had remained isolated from the Western World. Enemies of all contact with foreign peoples, they were jealous conservatives of their culture , its traditions and its customs; and what is more:in the case of China, for example, they even came to consider Europeans as barbarians, that is, as culturally undeveloped. But it is, since the first half of the last century, that these nations are forced, through acts of force, to open their ports to the English, North Americans and French. The extraordinary development of the industry and the pressing search for markets in overseas territories, together with imperialist purposes, were the causes that generated such an attitude from Westerners.
The Wars
The declining Chinese Empire, which consisted of eighteen provinces, all nestled in the extensive and fertile valleys of the great Yangtze Kiang and Hoang Ho rivers, had the small ports of Macao, where the Portuguese were admitted, and Canton, to the English and the Dutch, with whom the Chinese maintained a very limited commercial activity. The desire of those foreigners was, therefore, to increase such exchange and open, likewise, greater zones of European influence. They would achieve this through violent military actions, which allowed them to open China's ports to international trade.
First Opium War (1839-1842)
This war had its origin in the opposition offered by China to the sale of opium in its territory by a British Trading Company, and also because the Peking government ordered the destruction of 20,000 crates containing the English-owned drug, deposited in Canton. The Chinese naturally complained that the reason for the conflict was to force them to consume opium, including through armed coercion .
England, faced with what happened, responded with powerful military actions, the same ones that caused the defeat of China, with the consequent signing of the Nanking Treaty of 1842 , by which five ports were opened to British merchants, including Canton and Shanghai, while the island of Hong Kong was also ceded to England. Shortly after, the United States and France would obtain similar concessions and franchises.
Assault China
Throughout the Modern Age, in the extreme east of Asia, the gigantic Chinese empire remained closed in on itself, sheltered by the Great Wall and separated from the rest of the world by the great Asian deserts, remaining totally oblivious to the progress of human history. . But with the awakening of Colonialism in the 19th century, the European Powers thought it opportune to reintegrate these vast and rich regions into the international arena. And very soon they found the pretext to do it.
Around 1840, the emperor of China, for moralizing purposes, had prohibited the use and trade of opium throughout the country. All complied with that provision except for a British Trading Company, which despite the order continued to smuggle the prohibited merchandise. On a certain occasion, a consignment of thousands of clandestine boxes was discovered, and the government ordered their destruction.
This totally legitimate measure unleashed the Opium War; England intervened immediately in defense of the Company's interests, bombarding the city of Canton and several other populous but fragile towns with its ships, causing thousands of victims. Faced with this brutal attack, China sued for peace. The 1842 Treaty of Nanking declared several cities in the country open to Europeans and handed over the island of Hong Kong to England. Ten years later, this measure was extended to the entire Empire:China thus ceased to be the Forbidden Continent .
Second Opium War (1858-1860)
This new conflict, which led to the occupation of Peking, the capital of the Chinese Empire, by the Anglo-French armies, resulted in the signing of the treaties of Tient-sin and Peking, by which the Chinese granted, to the English and the French, new free ports on the northern coast, just as they also opened the Yangtze River to foreign shipping.
At the end of the XIX century. China was defeated by Japan, a new power emerging in Asia, but was unable to obtain the fruits of its victory, because Russia promoted a joint intervention with Germany and France to defend the integrity of China (1895). Japan must have been content with the acquisition of the island of Formosa and the payment of compensation. All of these disasters seemed to lead to the disintegration of the Chinese Empire. The different powers then rushed to obtain new lands and new financial and commercial concessions. But in the year 1900 a nationalist revolution broke out in China, promoted by the secret society of the Boxers . An international army, made up of Europeans, North Americans and Japanese, defeated the Chinese, who had to pay an indemnity and recognize the concessions made until then. However, the allied powers guaranteed the integrity of China, which ended the partition attempts.
From that moment on, the Chinese government carried out reforms in the military, in the economy and in education. A democratic and nationalist party emerged, headed by the physician Sun Yat Sen. The Monarchy was abolished and the Republic was proclaimed (1912), and he was its first president.