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Rethinking the origins of ‘Western’ imperialism in China, 1790-1860: global constellations and imperial policies
In the light of recent scholarship, this article revisits the conventional understanding of the origins of ‘Western’ imperialism in China. I argue, in particular, that global factors must be taken into account to explain the silver crisis that precipitated Qing China’s conflict with the ‘West’, as well as the British decision to go to war and ‘Western’ military performance in the two Opium Wars. Utilizing concepts from New Qing History, I will further demonstrate that although Britain and other imperialist powers tried to impose their concept of sovereign equality on the Qing Empire by force, the treaty port system that evolved from the Opium Wars also owed a great deal to Qing Imperial policies of border control and legal arrangements. Instead of Chinese passivity, I emphasize Qing agency in the establishment of ‘Western’ transnational imperialism in China.
History
School
- Social Sciences
Department
- Politics and International Studies
Published in
History CompassVolume
10Issue
11Pages
789 - 801 (13)Citation
KLEIN, T., 2012. Rethinking the origins of ‘Western’ imperialism in China, 1790-1860: global constellations and imperial policies. History Compass, 10 (11), pp. 789 - 801.Publisher
© Blackwell Publishing LtdVersion
- VoR (Version of Record)
Publisher statement
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Publication date
2012Notes
Closed accesseISSN
1478-0542Publisher version
Language
- en