Chapter 10 Historical Changes
During the Apocalypse, the **** of Wei Zhongxian's eunuch group accelerated the development of this process. Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 info to Chongzhen years, when the disaster and famine for many years, the Ming court due to financial bankruptcy, unable to pacify, the people have risen up, Houjin's army also broke through the Great Wall defense line, five into the pass.
In 1635, the Later Jin Emperor Taiji abolished the old clan name "Zhushen", which means Jurchen, and named the clan "Manchuria". In 1636, the Qing surrendered to southern Mongolia. In the same year, in the ninth year of Chongzhen of the Ming Dynasty, Emperor Taiji of the Qing Dynasty was called the emperor, and changed the name of the "Jin" country to "Qing", formally established the Qing Dynasty, and changed the name of the year to Chongde.
In 1640, the Battle of Songjin broke out in the Ming and Qing Dynasties. In 1642, Hong Chengchou was captured in Songshan, and Zu Dashou surrendered in Jinzhou. The Battle of Songjin marked the complete collapse of the Ming Dynasty's defenses in Liaodong, leaving only Ningyuan, an isolated city outside the pass.
In 1643, in the sixteenth year of Chongzhen of the Ming Dynasty, there was a "Black Death" in the capital, and a large number of officials and civilians died of illness. In the spring of the following year 1644, that is, the seventeenth year of Chongzhen of the Ming Dynasty and the first year of Shunzhi of the Qing Dynasty, Li Zicheng led the peasant rebel army to conquer Beijing and establish the Dashun Dynasty, which was named Yongchang. The last emperor of the Ming Dynasty, Emperor Chongzhen, was martyred in the coal mountain (now Jingshan), when the age was the seventeenth year of Chongzhen, and the Ming Dynasty was declared extinct.
The Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) was established by Zhu Yuanzhang, Taizu of the Ming Dynasty, and after 12 emperors, 16 emperors, 17 dynasties, and 276 years of Guozuo, it was the last feudal dynasty established by the Han nationality in Chinese history.
In 1644, Wu Sangui, a Ming general stationed at Shanhaiguan, surrendered to the Qing Dynasty. Dolgon, the regent of the Great Qing Dynasty, commanded the Eight Banners and entered the customs at the same time, with Wu Sangui as the leader, and defeated Li Zicheng's peasant army of the Great Shun Dynasty. In the same year, Emperor Shunzhi of the Qing Dynasty moved his capital to Beijing, and the Qing Dynasty replaced the Ming Dynasty as the new ruler of China. Then, the Qing army went south to kill the peasant army, and the landlords and bureaucrats in the north surrendered one after another, colluding with the Qing army to suppress the peasant army. At the same time, in the south, some Ming Dynasty remnants supported the establishment of several ****** by the imperial family, known as the Southern Ming Dynasty (Hongguang, Longwu, Shaowu, Yongli). In addition, there are Li Zicheng's Dashun and Zhang Xianzhong's Daxi regimes. The Qing Dynasty destroyed Dashun and Southern Ming Hongguang in 1645, Daxi, Southern Ming Longwu and Southern Ming Shaowu in 1646, Yongli in 1662, and the remnants of Dashun in 1664. After more than 20 years of war, the Qing Dynasty basically unified the whole country after more than 20 years of war.
On February 17, 1661, on the nineteenth day of the first month of the eighteenth year of Shunzhi in the Qing Dynasty, the 8-year-old Aixinjue Luo Xuanye ascended the throne and was known as the Qing Emperor Kangxi.
During the sixty-first year of Kangxi's reign, he put down the rebellion of the three feudatories, pacified the Zheng regime in Taiwan, established the Taiwan government, and reunified China. From 1685 to 1686, Kangxi ordered the Qing army to attack the Russian army entrenched in Yaksa twice, curbing the ambitions of Tsarist Russia to invade China, and in 1689, he sent representatives to sign the Treaty of Nebuchu with Tsarist representatives, demarcating the eastern border between China and Russia. In the same year, he put down the rebellion of the reactionary nobles such as Huijiang and Dzungaria. From the Kangxi period to the mid-19th century, China consolidated the unity of the whole country, strengthened the centralization of power, and became the most powerful country in the world at that time, starting from the Outer Khingan Mountains in the north, the Zengmu Shoal of the Nansha Islands in the south, Lake Balkhash and the Pamir Plateau in the west, and reaching the Sea of Okhotsk, Sakhalin Island, and Taiwan in the east.
In the last years of Kangxi, due to the abolition of the crown prince for the second time, the scene of the nine sons seizing the heir began to appear. In 1678, the sixty-first year of Kangxi, Kangxi's fourth son, Prince Yong, Aixinjue Luo Yinzhen, stood out from the nine sons and inherited the throne, known as Emperor Yongzheng of the Qing Dynasty.
Emperor Yongzheng ascended the throne in his prime and reigned for 13 years. He has carried out reforms all his life, which can be described as bold and quick. He straightened out the administration of officials, severely cracked down on corruption and bribery, and attached importance to financial auditing; returned fire consumption to the public and put an end to corruption; apportioned land to the peasants, basically gave up control over the peasants, lightened the peasants' burdens, and was conducive to population statistics and population growth; reformed the land and returned it to the stream, promoted the economic and cultural development of minority areas, and consolidated the southwestern frontier defense; strengthened the supervision of officials through the secret folding system; abolished untouchable status and eased class contradictions. A series of reforms of Emperor Yongzheng played an important role in the "prosperous era of Kang Yongqian".
In 1711, the thirteenth year of Yongzheng, Emperor Gaozongchun of the Qing Dynasty Aixinjue Luo Hongli ascended the throne and was known as Emperor Qianlong in history. He was the fourth emperor of the Qing Dynasty and the fourth son of Emperor Yongzheng. During his 60 years in power, he made achievements in cultural governance and martial arts, and made important contributions to the consolidation of China's unified multi-ethnic country and the development of the prosperous Kangqian era of the Qing Dynasty.
The Qing Dynasty began to decline in the last years of Qianlong, and its politics became increasingly corrupt. Emperor Jiaqing and Emperor Daoguang also lost the enterprising spirit of their early monarchs, and their ruling style became increasingly conservative and rigid. In officialdom, it is common to form parties for personal gain, dump each other, buy and sell officials, and bribe. In the army, the equipment is outdated, the drills are not diligent, the battalion work is lax, and the discipline is corrupt. Fiscally, the public treasury is increasingly running short and making ends meet. Class contradictions intensified, and peasant uprisings such as the White Lotus Sect and the Tianli Sect broke out one after another.
In 1840, Britain brazenly launched the Opium War of aggression against China. The Qing government was forced to sign the Treaty of Nanjing, the first unequal treaty in modern Chinese history, with the British invaders. In 1856, Britain launched the Second Opium War against China under the pretext of the "Yarrow Incident" and France under the pretext of the "Father Ma Incident". By 1860, the Anglo-French forces had forced the Qing government to sign the Treaty of Tientsin and the Treaty of Peking. Taking advantage of the fire, Russia seized more than 1.5 million square kilometers of territory in northern China from the 50s to the 80s of the 19th century. Under unequal treaties, China lost a great deal of territory, sovereignty and wealth, and Chinese society began to degenerate into a semi-colonial and semi-feudal society. As the burden on the people increased year by year, a series of peasant uprisings were triggered, the largest of which was the Taiping Rebellion that broke out in 1851, which for a time posed a serious threat to Qing rule.
In order to save their own fate and enhance their national strength, some Han people of insight within the Qing government launched the Reform Movement in an attempt to reform and strengthen the country, the most famous of which was the Westernization Movement that began in the 60s of the 19th century. With the development of the Westernization Movement, all parts of the country began to introduce foreign science and technology, set up mining and factories, built railways, erected telegraph networks, built new-style schools, and trained technical personnel; at the same time, new military industries were also established to gradually improve the weaponry and combat methods of the Qing army. Although the Westernization Movement achieved great results, due to the fact that most of the people at the time did not understand the contemporary international situation, and the urgency of the few people could not change the old thinking of the majority of the bureaucrats, the Qing Dynasty's Reform Movement ultimately failed to achieve the same results as Japan's Meiji Restoration, resulting in the defeat of the Sino-Japanese War in 1894 and the signing of the Treaty of Shimonoseki with Japan in 1895. Subsequently, the political reform movement led by Emperor Guangxu and Liang Qichao and Kang Youwei: the Wuxu Reform was placed under house arrest because of the opposition of the Empress Dowager Cixi and conservatives, and the reform failed because it was only 103 days, so it was also called the "Hundred Days Restoration".
In 1900, the Eight-Nation Coalition invaded Beijing. In 1901, the Treaty of Xincho was signed, which humiliated the country. In order to save the decline of the Qing Dynasty, the Empress Dowager Cixi intended to follow the reforms of Europe and Japan. The "New Deal" was introduced, and a series of reforms were carried out, including the establishment of a new army and the abolition of the imperial examination. Soon after, there was a dispute between the constitutional and revolutionary reform lines in China, and at first the constitutionalists prevailed, and the Qing government also promised and implemented the constitution, and in 1908 promulgated the "Outline of the King James Constitution" to establish a constitutional monarchy and establish a representative parliament. However, most of the members of the "Responsible Cabinet" formed in May 1911 were members of the Imperial Family, so it was called the "Imperial Cabinet", which caused dissatisfaction and disappointment among the constitutionalists. The fundamental problem with this reform is that the imperial family is reluctant to allow the secular elite to share power, and it is too late to delay until the Xinhai year, but it is the first constitutional monarchy in China's history.
In October of the same year, the Wuchang Uprising broke out, and the provinces subsequently declared their independence, and the rule of the Qing Dynasty began to collapse. The Qing government appointed Yuan Shikai, commander of the Beiyang New Army, as the prime minister of the cabinet, established a cabinet and commanded the Qing army. However, on the one hand, he oppressed the revolutionary army by force (Yangxia War), and on the other hand, he secretly negotiated with the revolutionaries. The Qing Emperor formally abdicated on February 12, 1912, and announced in the abdication edict that "Yuan Shikai will organize a provisional republican government with full powers" and ruled China for 268 years, and the Qing Dynasty, which had gone through twelve emperors, came to an end. This marked the official end of more than 2,000 years of monarchy in China.