Century of humiliation

Major powers plan to cut up China for themselves; America, Germany, Italy, UK, France, Russia , Austria are represented by Wilhelm II, Umberto I, John Bull, Franz Joseph I (in rear), Uncle Sam, Nicholas II, and Emile Loubet. Punch Aug 23, 1899, by J. S. Pughe

A political cartoon depicting Queen Victoria (Britain), Kaiser Wilhelm II (Germany), Tsar Nicholas II (Russia), Marianne (France) and a samurai (Japan) dividing China.

The century of humiliation (simplified Chinese: 百年国耻; traditional Chinese: 百年國恥; pinyin: bǎinián guóchǐ; Wade–Giles: pai³-nien² kuo²-chʻih³), also known by permutations such as the hundred years of national humiliation, refers to the period of intervention and imperialism by Western powers and Japan in China between 1839 and 1949.^[1]

The term arose in 1915, in the atmosphere of rising Chinese nationalism opposing the Twenty-One Demands made by the Japanese government and their acceptance by Yuan Shikai, with the Kuomintang and Chinese Communist Party both subsequently popularizing the characterization.^[2]

History

The beginning of the Century of Humiliation is usually dated to the mid-19th century, on the eve of the First Opium War^[3] amidst widespread opium addiction and the political unraveling of Qing China that followed.^[4]

Major events cited as part of the Century of Humiliation include:

• Defeat in the First Opium War (1839–1842) by Great Britain
• The unequal treaties (in particular Nanking, Whampoa, Aigun and Shimonoseki)
• The Taiping Rebellion (1850–1864)
• Defeat in the Second Opium War (1856–1860) and the sacking of the Old Summer Palace by British and French forces.
• Defeat in the Sino-French War (1884–1885) by France
• Defeat in the First Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895) by Japan
• The Eight-Nation Alliance suppressing the Boxer uprising (1899–1901)^[5]
• British invasion of Tibet (1903–1904)^[6]
• The Twenty-One Demands (1915) by Japan
• The Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945)

In this period, China suffered major internal fragmentation, lost almost all of the wars it fought, and was often forced to give major concessions to the great powers in the subsequent treaties.^[7] In many cases, China was forced to pay large amounts of reparations, open up ports for trade, lease or cede territories (such as Outer Manchuria and Outer Northwest China to Russia, Jiaozhou Bay to Germany, Hong Kong to Great Britain, Zhanjiang to France, and Taiwan and the Liaodong Peninsula to Japan) and make various other concessions of sovereignty to foreign "spheres of influence", following military defeats.

• 
  Capture of Chusan during the First Opium War in 1841
• 
  Imperialism 1900: The bear represents Russia, the lion Britain, the frog France, the sun Japan, and the eagle the United States.
• 
  Chinese generals in Pyongyang surrender to the Japanese during the Sino-Japanese War, October 1894.
• 
  U.S. Marines fight Boxers outside Beijing Legation Quarter, 1900. Copy of painting by Sergeant John Clymer.
• 
  Germans troops witness the execution of a Boxer
• 
  Chinese opium smokers in 1902
• 
  Casualties of a mass panic during a Japanese air raid in Chongqing (Chungking).

Implications

The usage of the Century of Humiliation in the Chinese Communist Party's historiography and modern Chinese nationalism, with its focus on the "sovereignty and integrity of [Chinese] territory",^[8] has been invoked in incidents like the US bombing of the Chinese Belgrade embassy, the Hainan Island incident, and protests for Tibetan independence along the 2008 Beijing Olympics torch relay.^[9] Some analysts have pointed to its use in deflecting foreign criticism of human rights abuses in China and domestic attention from issues of corruption, while bolstering its territorial claims and general economic and political rise.^[2][10][11]

Criticism

Jane E. Elliott criticized the allegation that China refused to modernize or was unable to defeat Western armies as simplistic, noting that China embarked on a massive military modernization in the late 1800s after several defeats, buying weapons from Western countries and manufacturing their own at arsenals, such as the Hanyang Arsenal during the Boxer Rebellion. In addition, Elliott questioned the claim that while Chinese society was traumatized by the Western victories, as many Chinese peasants (90% of the population at that time) living outside the concessions continued about their daily lives, uninterrupted and without any feeling of "humiliation".^[12]

Historians have judged the Qing dynasty's vulnerability and weakness to foreign imperialism in the 19th century to be based mainly on its maritime naval weakness while it achieved military success against westerners on land, the historian Edward L. Dreyer said that "China’s nineteenth-century humiliations were strongly related to her weakness and failure at sea. At the start of the First Opium War, China had no unified navy and not a sense of how vulnerable she was to attack from the sea. British navy forces sailed and steamed wherever they wanted to go. In the Arrow War (1856-60), the Chinese had no way to prevent the Anglo-French navy expedition of 1860 from sailing into the Gulf of Zhili and landing as near as possible to Beijing. Meanwhile, new but not exactly modern Chinese armies suppressed the midcentury rebellions, bluffed Russia into a peaceful settlement of disputed frontiers in Central Asia, and defeated the French forces on land in the Sino-French War (1884-85). But the defeat at sea, and the resulting threat to steamship traffic to Taiwan, forced China to conclude peace on unfavorable terms."^[13]

See also

• Anti-Western sentiment in China

References