Chapter 9: Empires in Collision: Europe, the Middle East, and Asia

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Reading 9.1

Key Terms:

Taiping Uprising - Massive Chinese rebellion against the ruling Qing dynasty that devastated much of the country between 1850 and 1864; it was based on the millenarian teachings of Hong Xiuquan.

Opium Wars - Two wars fought between Western powers and China (1840–1842 and 1856–1858) after China tried to restrict the importation of foreign goods, especially opium; China lost both wars and was forced to make major concessions.

Commissioner Lin Zexu - Royal official charged with ending the opium trade in China; his concerted efforts to seize and destroy opium imports provoked the Opium Wars.

Unequal Treaties - Series of nineteenth-century treaties in which China made major concessions to Western powers.

Informal Empire - Term commonly used to describe areas that were dominated by Western powers in the nineteenth century but retained their own governments and a measure of independence.

Self-Strengthening Movement - China’s program of internal reform in the 1860s and 1870s, based on vigorous application of traditional principles and limited borrowing from the West.

Boxer Uprising - Antiforeign movement (1898–1901) led by Chinese militia organizations, in which large numbers of Europeans and Chinese Christians were killed. It resulted in military intervention by Western powers and the imposition of a huge payment as punishment.

Chinese Revolution of 1911-1912 - The collapse of China’s imperial order, officially at the hands of organized revolutionaries but for the most part under the weight of the troubles that had overwhelmed the imperial government for the previous century.

Guiding Questions:

  1. Be able to compare responses to Western imperialism between China, the Ottoman Empire, and Japan by the end of the chapter
    - Western imperialism towards China greatly damaged the economy, tensions between commoners and the government increased, and the fall of the Chinese empire.

  2. Why did China see so many peasant rebellions in the 19th century?
    - The Chinese government had let Western influence in and wreck havoc without repercussions leading to rebellions by peasants to take back their government.

  3. How does Chinese governance in the 1800s compare to previous dynasties?
    - The Qing dynasty was regarded as the worst dynasty because of the unchecked Western influence.

  4. To what extent did actions by westerners lead to political decline in China in the 1800s?
    - Westerns smuggled opium to crash the economy and cripple citizens by getting them addicted to opium. That led to this epidemic that made the Westerns control China —> China was defeated due to no industrial revolution to advance their weaponry + economy.

  5. How does the European presence in Asia compare with its presence in Africa in the same time period?
    - They both conquered new lands in order to out compete rivals by gathering as much land and resources as possible without regards to the inhabitants beforehand.

Reading 9.2

Key Terms:

“The Sick man of Europe” - Western Europe’s description of the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, based on the empire’s economic and military weakness and its apparent inability to prevent the shrinking of its territory.

Tanzimat - Important reform measures undertaken in the Ottoman Empire beginning in 1839; the term “Tanzimat” means “reorganization.”

Young Ottomans - Group of would-be reformers in the mid-nineteenth-century Ottoman Empire that included lower-level officials, military officers, and writers; they urged the extension of westernizing reforms to the political system.

Sultan Abd al-Hamid II - Ottoman sultan (r. 1876–1909) who accepted a reform constitution but then quickly suppressed it, ruling as a despotic monarch for the rest of his long reign.

Young Turks - Movement of Turkish military and civilian elites that advocated a militantly secular public life and a Turkish national identity; came to power through a coup in 1908.

Guiding Questions:

  1. What geographic features made the Ottoman Empire attractive to Europeans in the 19th century?

  2. In what ways were China and the Ottoman Empire similarly affected by Western industrialism?

  3. How did the Ottoman state respond to these new global challenges in the 1800s? What were the goals and outcomes of the Tanzimat reforms?

  4. In what ways do we see nationalism emerging in the Ottoman empire in this period? How does it reflect similar changes happening in Europe?

  5. In what ways were the declines of the Chinese and Ottoman empires similar?

Reading 9.3

Key Terms:

Tokugawa Japan - A period of internal peace in Japan (1600–1850) that prevented civil war but did not fully unify the country; led by military rulers, or shoguns, from the Tokugawa family, who established a “closed door” policy toward European encroachments.

Meiji Restoration - The political takeover of Japan in 1868 by a group of young samurai from southern Japan. The samurai eliminated the shogun and claimed they were restoring to power the young emperor, Meiji. The new government was committed to saving Japan from foreign domination by drawing upon what the modern West had to offer to transform Japanese society.

Russo-Japanese War - Fought over rival ambitions in Korea and Manchuria, this conflict ended in a Japanese victory, establishing Japan as a formidable military competitor in East Asia. The war marked the first time that an Asian country defeated a European power in battle, and it precipitated the Russian Revolution of 1905.

Guiding Questions:

  1. What factors helped Japan become more powerful than China in the 1800s?

  2. To what extent were leaders of the shogunate in Japan successful in maintaining traditions in the 17th through early 19th centuries?

  3. How does the fall of the Tokugawa regime compare to the downfall of other governments in world history?
    - Falls apart in the 1800s & replaced by a more powerful, unified government (no civil war). Compared to the other empires such as Qing

  4. What is the significance of the United States in Japan’s growth as a world power? How is the United States growing as a world power itself in this period?

  5. What kinds of changes did modernization bring to Japanese society? How did it contribute to changing gender roles?

  6. How does industrialization in Japan compare with industrialization in places like Russia, the US, and Western Europe?

  7. Why did Japan seek to become an imperial power? What challenges did they face compared to other imperialist countries like China and Russia?