The Qing Empire (China), Imperialism, and the Modern World

Abstract

China has become the subject of increasing attention in the study of world history. However, many world history texts still place the last Chinese dynasty, the Qing, in the category of the ‘losers’: victims of Western imperialism whose inability to adjust to the times led to their demise. A re-examination of the Qing Empire reveals a dynamic, expansionistic empire worthy of comparison with the largest empires of the West. The Qing Empire’s experiences in the nineteenth century shed light on the practice of informal imperialism or semi-colonialism. The treaty-port system established in China became the template for similar practices of informal imperialism in Japan and Korea; it also demonstrated similarities to imperialist practices across the world. Despite being a victim of Western (and later) Japanese imperialism, the Qing Empire was also an able practitioner of both informal imperialism (in Korea) and the extension and consolidation and its formal imperialism in places such as Turkestan (Xinjiang) and Tibet. Unlike many of the empires to which it is often compared (including the Ottoman, Hapsburg, Mughal Empires), China successfully made the transition from empire to nation-state in the early twentieth century. Chinese leaders, both Republican and Communist, successfully worked to dismantle Western informal imperialism in China and maintain the borders claimed by the Qing Empire. Looking back from the perspective of the twentieth century, the Qing Empire/China is easily among the ranks of the most successful and durable empires of the modern period.