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Rethinking the origins of ‘Western’ imperialism in China, 1790-1860: global constellations and imperial policies

journal contribution
posted on 2015-07-02, 12:36 authored by Thoralf KleinThoralf Klein
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 Compass

Volume

10

Issue

11

Pages

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 Ltd

Version

  • 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

2012

Notes

Closed access

eISSN

1478-0542

Language

  • en

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