This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience on our website. Learn more

History Notes Roads to Modernity 1789-1945 Notes

Modernity And The Wider World Revision Notes

Updated Modernity And The Wider World Revision Notes

Roads to Modernity 1789-1945 Notes

Roads to Modernity 1789-1945

Approximately 40 pages

Notes outlining the multiple peace settlements after WW1 and their weaknesses. Sections detailing aggression of what would later become the axis powers and the responses of other European countries alongside very detailed notes on the policy of appeasement and the events preceding the outbreak of war.

Includes a definition of what 'New Imperialism' is, notes on British imperialism, the social implications of imperialism and detailed historiographical interpretations including major theories s...

The following is a more accessible plain text extract of the PDF sample above, taken from our Roads to Modernity 1789-1945 Notes. Due to the challenges of extracting text from PDFs, it will have odd formatting:

Modernity and the Wider World: East Asia

Lecture:

The Tribute System:

  • China was surrounded by vassal states all whom paid homage to the Qing dynasty

  • Europeans were ‘allowed’ in East Asia by the three major powers China, Japan and Korea

    • The British had trade agreements with China and extensive control over India

    • Portuguese had Macau

    • Dutch had a trading port in Japan

  • However with the Russian empire expanding southwards in search of a port with year-round access to the sea, the British moving up through the South China sea and the USA expanding from the East, the Tribute system failed

The Treaty Port system:

  • After the first opium war 1839-42 Britain gained control of Hong Kong and negotiated the opening of five treaty ports in which British merchants were permitted to trade with Chinese merchants

  • American general Perry established the opening of treaty ports in Japan

  • 1860s saw the establishment of treaty ports in Korea

  • 1870s more treaty ports open in China

    • Spread into rivers and begin to dominate trade

  • The ports were a result of

    • ‘Unequal treaties’

      • Often the result of a military defeat; allowed European powers to impose unfair regulations on the East Asian powers

      • These treaties gave preferential treatment to European merchants

    • ‘Gunboat diplomacy’

      • Threat of military action and Western military superiority forced the Asian powers to sign unequal treaties

The Challenge of the West – China:

  • The English East India Company began to produce excess opium in India and imported it illegally to China

  • The Canton system

    • A way for China to control trade from the west within its own country

  • As opium demand increased throughout China, silver flowed out of China and increased the incentive for the British to continue trafficking opium

  • JK Fairbank

    • “the most long-continued and systematic international crime of modern times”

  • Commissioner Lin compounded British opium products

    • Forceful opposition to opium trade on moral grounds and considered to be the primary catalyst for the First Opium War

  • Molasses theory

    • Conflict not based solely on the opium trade, but primarily between the interests of British mercantile expansionism and Chinese containment policies.

    • Could have been over the compounding of any product: rice, molasses, it just happened to be opium

1839-42 First Opium War:

  • The industrial revolution underwent by Britain gave them the advantage

  • There was a massive technology gap between the British and Chinese forces

    • Steam powered warships were important to the British

  • Allowed the British to impose ‘unequal treaties’ on China

Unequal treaties (China):

  • 1842, Nanking, UK

    • 5 treaty ports

    • Hong Kong given to the British

    • ‘Fair tariff’

  • 1843, The Bogue, UK

    • Extraterritorial rights for the British

      • British law operated in the British treaty ports

      • Threat to Chinese sovereignty

  • 1844, Wanghia, USA

  • 1844, Whampoa, FR

  • All rights conferred to one Western power applied to the others

  • 1856-60 Second Opium War

  • 1858, Treaty of Tientsin, UK

    • Opened more Chinese treaty ports; permitted foreign legations in the Chines capital; allowed Christian missionary activity, and legalised the import of opium

Japan:

  • Tokugawa shogunate

  • Foreign policy

    • Sakoku ‘seclusion’ policy since 1639

    • The Dutch were the only European power permitted to trade

      • Dejima trading post, Nagasaki

  • Increasing number of foreign vessels in the 19th century

  • 1825 shoot on sight policy

    • Edict to Repel Foreign Vessels was passed in 1825 to the effect that all foreign vessels should be driven away from Japanese waters in an attempt to preserve the Sakoku policy

  • 1853-54 expeditions

    • Commodore Perry

      • Perry is given...

Buy the full version of these notes or essay plans and more in our Roads to Modernity 1789-1945 Notes.