[Page 147] PART III

CHINA IN TRANSFORMATION

[Page 149] CHAPTER XXVII

THE OPENING OF CHINA, A DRAMA IN FIVE ACTS—­GOD IN HISTORY

Prologue—­Act 1, the Opium War—­(Note on the Taiping Rebellion)—­Act 2, the “Arrow” War—­Act 3, War with France—­Act 4, War with Japan—­Act 5, the Boxer War

PROLOGUE

If one were asked to name the most important three events that took place in Asia in the last century, he could have no hesitation in pointing to the extension of the Indian Empire and the renovation of Japan as two of them.  But where would he look for the third?  Possibly to some upheaval in Turkey, Persia, or Asiatic Russia.  In my opinion, however, China is the only country whose history supplies the solution of the problem.  The opening of that colossal empire to unrestricted intercourse with other countries was not a gradual evolution from within—­it was the result of a series of collisions between the conservatism of the extreme Orient and the progressive spirit of the Western world.

Each of those collisions culminated in a war, giving rise to a cloud of ephemeral literature, in which a student might easily lose his way, and which it would [Page 150] require the lifetime of an antediluvian to exhaust.  I think, therefore, that I shall do my readers a service if I set before them a concise outline of each of those wars, together with an account of its causes and consequences.  Not only will this put them on their guard against misleading statements; it will also furnish them with a syllabus of the modern history of China in relation to her intercourse with other nations.

During the past seven decades the Chinese Empire has been no less than five times in conflict with foreign powers; and on each occasion her policy has undergone a modification more or less extensive.  Taking these five conflicts seriatim—­without touching on those internal commotions whose rise and fall resembles the tides of the ocean—­I shall ask my readers to think of the Flowery Land as a stage on which, within the memory of men now living, a tragedy in five acts has been performed.  Its subject was the Opening of China; and its first act was the so-called Opium War (1839-42).  Prior to 1839 the Central Empire, as the Chinese proudly call their country, with a population nearly equal to that of Europe and America combined, was hermetically sealed against foreign intercourse, except at one point, viz., the “Factories” at Canton.

This state of things is depicted with a few masterstrokes in a popular work in Chinese entitled “Strange Stories of an Idle Student.”  The first of these tales describes a traveller meeting in the mountains an old man, in the costume of a former dynasty, whose family had there sought a refuge from the anarchy that preceded the fall of the imperial house.  This [Page 151] old fellow had not even heard of the accession of the Manchu conquerors; and though he was eager for information, he disappeared without giving any clue to the Sleepy Hollow in which he was hiding.  The author no doubt intended a quiet satire on the seclusion of China, that had nothing to ask of the outside world but to be let alone.