Challenges to imperial rule in China (1736–1911)

1736–1796, one of the longest reigns in Chinese history.

Qianlong's favourite official from the 1770s who used his power to sell offices and take bribes, amassing a huge fortune before being forced to suicide in 1799.

A secret religious sect promising salvation, whose followers led a major rebellion (1796–1804) in the Sichuan/Hubei/Shaanxi border region.

Corruption had weakened Qing armies, and mountainous terrain let rebels scatter and hide, forcing reliance on costly local militias.

Han Chinese settlement onto Miao lands in Guizhou/Hunan and unfair Qing taxation and administration, sparking major revolt from 1795.

A policy from 1757 restricting all Western maritime trade to the single port of Canton, managed through the licensed Cohong merchant guild.

A 1793 British diplomatic mission seeking more open ports, a permanent ambassador, and eased trade restrictions — rejected by Qianlong.

Qing China saw Britain as a tributary state paying respect; Britain wanted equal sovereign diplomatic relations — the two worldviews were incompatible.

Britain, needing to fix its silver trade deficit under the Canton System, increasingly smuggled opium into China from the late 1700s, despite it being banned.

Qing: China is self-sufficient, foreign rulers are tributary. Britain: trade should be equal and mutually beneficial, expanding markets is progress.

It shows the roots of Qing decline (corruption, rebellion, rigid diplomacy, opium) well before the nineteenth-century crises like the Opium Wars.

A guild of licensed Chinese merchants at Canton who held the sole legal right to trade with foreign merchants under the Canton System.

Lin Zexu's confiscation and destruction of British opium stocks at Canton, after the Daoguang Emperor ordered the opium trade stopped.

The Qing commissioner sent to Canton in 1839 who blockaded foreign traders and destroyed over 20,000 chests of opium, triggering the First Opium War.

Ended the First Opium War; ceded Hong Kong to Britain, opened 5 treaty ports, imposed a $21m indemnity and fixed tariffs — the first Unequal Treaty.

A right letting foreigners be tried under their own country's law, not China's, while on Chinese soil — it directly undermined Qing legal sovereignty.

The Arrow incident of 1856, when Chinese officials boarded a Chinese-registered ship flying a British flag, giving Britain (and France) a pretext for war.

British and French troops looted and burned the Qing Emperor's Summer Palace near Beijing as a reprisal during the Second Opium War.

Failed civil-service exam candidate who, after visions, declared himself the younger brother of Jesus Christ and founded the Taiping movement.

The 'Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace' — the rebel state Hong Xiuquan founded, based at Nanjing (renamed Tianjing) from 1853 to 1864.

Confucian scholar-official who raised the regional Xiang Army from Hunan province, which played the key role in defeating the Taiping Rebellion.

They shifted military and financial power from Beijing to regional leaders, weakening central Qing authority and foreshadowing later warlordism.

An estimated 20–30 million deaths from fighting, famine, and disease (1850–64) — more than the First World War — devastating the Yangzi valley.

Opium Wars: loss of sovereignty and territory via Unequal Treaties. Taiping Rebellion: catastrophic loss of life and destabilised regional power balance.

The regent who dominated Qing politics from 1861 to 1908; she crushed the Hundred Days' Reform and backed the Boxers.

An 1860s-90s drive to adopt Western technology (weapons, ships, some industry) while keeping Confucian government and the monarchy unchanged.

Ended the First Sino-Japanese War; China recognised Korean independence and ceded Taiwan and the Liaodong Peninsula to Japan, plus a huge indemnity.

It proved the Self-Strengthening Movement had failed, since China lost to a smaller neighbour, Japan, that had modernised more completely.

Emperor Guangxu's burst of edicts (June-Sept 1898) attempting government, education, economic and military modernisation, ended by Cixi's coup.

Scholar-reformers who drafted the Hundred Days' Reform; they fled abroad after Cixi's 1898 coup.

An anti-foreign militia society rose against missionaries and foreigners; Cixi backed them and declared war, but an Eight-Nation Alliance crushed the revolt.

A huge indemnity on China, the right for foreign troops to be stationed in Beijing, and execution of officials who backed the uprising.

Nationalism (end foreign/Manchu domination), democracy (representative government), and people's livelihood (economic/land reform).

The revolutionary alliance Sun Yixian formed in 1905 by merging earlier anti-Qing groups, mostly organised among students and Chinese abroad.

An accidental bomb explosion at a revolutionary cell in Wuchang exposed a planned uprising, so the plotters revolted immediately; provinces then rapidly declared independence.

The Hundred Days' Reform was elite-led modernisation from the top, stopped by Cixi's coup; the Boxer Rebellion was popular anti-foreign resistance from below, stopped by foreign armies — both failed and pushed China toward revolution.

After the Xinhai Revolution spread in 1911, Yuan Shikai negotiated the last emperor Puyi's abdication in February 1912 in exchange for becoming president himself.