A Brief Modern Chinese History. Haipeng Zhang
at Beijing. In May, 1858, they took the strategic Dagu garrison, greatly threatening Tianjin. At this point, the Russians and Americans started to mediate and the Qing government was forced to hold peace talks. In the first half of June, Qing signed the Tianjin Treaty with Russia and the United States, which stipulated that both sides should demarcate a border as soon as possible. This laid the foundation for Tsarist Russia’s large-scale territorial seizures in China. In late June, the treaties involving China, Britain and France were signed; they stipulated that foreign diplomats should be given permanent residence in Beijing, that ten more treaty ports should be created, that custom duties be further reduced, and that China pay 4,000,000 silver dollars to Britain and 2,000,000 silver dollars to France in war reparations. Then, in November, the powers forced China to sign an additional treaty legalizing the opium trade and stipulating that the China’s customs should be guided by Britain. Emperor Xianfeng had no choice but to approve all of these treaties.
The next year, the British, French and American ambassadors travelled to China in their own fleets in order to sign the documents. On June 25, they launched an unexpected attack on the Dagu garrison. The defending force was commanded by the renowned Sengge Linqin, who destroyed ten enemy warships and annihilated more than four hundred enemy soldiers. The wounded British admiral and his American counterpart had to withdraw. For the first time, Qing had won a huge victory against the Western invaders.
Following the Dagu battle, China and the United States signed an agreement. Britain and France, on the other hand, were preparing for another war. They sent seventy-nine British warships and 20,000 or so British soldiers, together with forty French warships and 7,600 French soldiers. Colonial armies of this size had rarely been seen in world history. In April, 1860 the colonial troops successively captured Zhoushan (in present-day Zhejiang), Dalian (in Liaoning) and Zhifu (present-day Yantai, Shandong) and blocked the Bohai Gulf. One month later, the Russian and American envoys arrived. While officially mediating with the Chinese, in reality they were secretly helping the British and the French. In late August, the Americans and Russians occupied Tianjin. The Qing government agreed to start another round of peace talks; however, these failed due to the colonialists’ harsh requirements. At the Russian diplomats’ instigation, in early September the allied troops began attacking Beijing, which resulted in Qing’s defending forces, commanded by Sengge, finally being destroyed in late September. Emperor Xianfeng had to flee Rehe (present-day Chengde, Hebei). The British troops attacked Beijing in retaliation, looted and burnt Yuanmingyuan, the Old Summer Palace, which epitomized the brilliance of ancient Chinese art and culture. Today, one can see Yuanmingyuan’s broken stone pillars, which survived the attack carried out by the colonialists.
Intimated by the Western powers, Qing had to sign the Treaty of Beijing with Britain and France in late October. As part of the treaty, Tianjin was turned into a treaty port and a new piece of territory was added to Britain’s territory in Hong Kong, and more millions of silver dollars in war reparations were paid. After the Second Opium War, an imperialistic system was formally set up causing considerable damage to China’s sovereignty. The signing of the Treaty of Beijing marked the further decline of China.
Tsarist Russia: A Grabber of Chinese Lands
Russia intensified its efforts to grab land in the northeast and northwest of China after the First Opium War. In September, 1847, the Tsar appointed a general and diplomat as Governor General of East Siberia. The governor’s main duty was to seize China’s Heilong River. Two years later, the Russian navy invaded the river’s estuary and Kuyedao (Sakhalin). By 1853, Russia had expanded into the lower reaches of the Heilong River. At the beginning of 1854, the Tsar approved the Governor General’s decision to arm navigation along the Heilong River. In May, seventy Russian warships and 1,000 Russian soldiers crossed the Sino-Russian border and began to build garrisons in the lower reaches of the Heilong River. The next year, Tsarist Russia even started to transport armed settlers into the territory. In late 1856, the Tsar set up a new oblast (province) on the Heilong River’s lower reaches and Kuyedao.
In May, 1858, when China was facing Anglo-French aggression, the governor of East Siberia forced the Qing general supervising Aihui (present-day Heihe, Heilongjiang) to sign the Treaty of Aihui (Aigun). Under this treaty, Russia grabbed more than 600,000 square kilometers of Chinese territory north of the Heilong River and south of the Stanovoy Range. However, the Qing government disapproved of this treaty and punished the general of Aihui. Russia, however, took Hailanpao, the Chinese city on the north side of Heilongjiang, renamed it Blagoveshchensk and awarded the governor of East Siberia a noble title. Russia continued their expansion into the northwest China and the Tsar’s troops invaded the region east of Balkhash Lake as early as 1846. Then, in the 1850s, Russia crossed the Ili River and seized a huge piece of Chinese territory.
After the signing of the Treaty of Beijing, which involved China, Britain and France, Russia threatened a huge attack against China while also promising to help Qing crack down on the Taiping Rebellion.13 Due to the circumstances, in November, 1860, the Sino-Russian Beijing Treaty was signed under pressure from the Russian Empire. As a consequence, 400,000 square kilometers of Chinese territory east of the Wusuli River was ceded to Russia. In regards to the western Sino-Russian border, this treaty imposed a Russia-drawn border on China. Starting in 1862, China and Russia started to negotiate about the northwestern border. Russians arbitrarily changed China’s original western border to Balkhash Lake. By doing so, huge pieces of Chinese territory could be stolen by Russia. In order to achieve its goal, Russia threatened to attack Kashiga’er (Kashgar) and Yili (Ili). Negotiations resumed in 1864 and Russia stationed its troops outside Tacheng (Tarbagatai), where both sides met. In October, Qing was forced to sign the Treaty of Tarbagatai (勘分西北界约记). China, again, lost another 440,000 square kilometers of land east and south of Balkhash Lake to Russia. In any review of the Second Opium War, it must be recognized that Tsarist Russia grabbed the lion’s share of land, more than 1,440,000 square kilometers of Chinese territory.
The Taiping Rebellion in Its Late Phase: Zeng Guofan and the Hunan Army
The Qing dynasty was in an extremely difficult situation. The Taiping rebels posed the greatest threat to the dynasty. The aggression coming from the colonialists could be solved by making concessions. Qing therefore preferred to expend his efforts on quelling the Taiping Rebellion. In order to annihilate the rebels as quickly as possible, the imperial court chose to depend on the traditional bureaucrats who would play a pivotal role in the large-scale war against the Taiping Army. As Qing’s regular armed forces, the Eight Banners and the Green Standard Army, had already proved weak in their fighting capability, the central government allowed some senior officials to organize local troops. Zeng Guofan, a native of Xiangxiang in Hunan, was praised for his work. Late in the reign of Daoguang, he reached the ministerial level in the imperial service. He organized Hunan militias into a powerful local armed force known as the Xiangjun, or the Hunan Army. Next to this new army, Qing’s regular army paled in comparison. Soldiers of the Xiangjun came from the same town. When recruiting, the Xiangjun officer encouraged men with family ties to join the same camp. Camp members proved very obedient to the head of the camp, their own townsman. The whole of the Xiangjun remained loyal to Zeng. The Xiangjun followed orthodox Confucian ideology, were well-disciplined and well-paid. For Qing, a dynasty in twilight, the Xiangjun were indispensable and irreplaceable. However, in the years prior to 1857, the Xiangjun lost many battles against the Taiping Army. The Xiangjun headquarters, for instance, were destroyed in March, 1856 and, one month later, one of the founding generals of the Xiangjun was killed. Later the Xiangjun grew more powerful and became one of the Taiping Army’s greatest enemies.
Something unexpected occurred in the leadership of the Nanjing-based Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace. In June, 1856, the Taiping Army destroyed the Qing army’s Southern Barracks, successfully reversing the setbacks suffered, but it was still unable to guarantee the political stability of the Taiping government. After establishing its capital in Nanjing, the government’s innovative style of politics was gradually wound up and, regrettably, it reverted to feudal relations. The original brotherhood, comprising the leaders