Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-j824f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-08T07:26:19.900Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chinese Intellectuals and the Western Impact, 1838–1900

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Earl Swisher
Affiliation:
University of Colorado

Extract

The Chinese scholar-official had long constituted a special type of iron-clad intelligentsia, firmly based on the Confucian tradition and accustomed to rule China with unchallenged authority. This tradition was threatened for the first time in 1838 with the outbreak of the “Opium” or First Anglo-Chinese War. Outwardly, this was a simple military defeat by a “barbarian” force on one frontier of China, remote from the capital and court at Peking. As such it was nothing new in Chinese history. Hsiung-nu, Toba Tartars, Mongols and Manchus had threatened and overrun Chinese borders through the centuries. To most articulate Chinese both this and successive assaults on China through the nineteenth century, were adequately explained by the traditional and reassuring formula.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1964

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Lien-che, Tu translates this “Lin, clear as the Heavens,” Eminent Chinese of the Ch'ing Period, Arthur Hummel, W., ed. (Washington, 1943), p. 511.Google Scholar

2 Translations in Chinese Repository, v. 8 (18391840), pp. 912, 497503.Google Scholar

3 Chinese Repository, v. 8 (18391840), p. 76.Google Scholar

4 Ibid, p. 77.

5 Ibid, p. 419.

6 Reviewed as “Statistical Notices of the Ocean Kingdom with Maps,” 50 ch., Chinese Repository, v. 16 (1847), pp. 417424.Google Scholar

7 Swisher, , Earl, , China's Management of the American Barbarians (New Haven, 1951), pp. 510511.Google Scholar

8 Ibid., p. 98.

9 Chen, Gideon, Lin Tse-hsu: Pioneer Promotor of the Adoption of Western Means of Maritime Defense in China (Peiping, 1934).Google Scholar

10 Ssu-yu, Teng, et. ah, China's Response to the West, p. 55Google Scholar; quoting Hai Km T'u Chih, of which the chapters on military affairs certainly reflect Lin's ideas and were probably written by him.

11 Ibid., p. 56.

12 Machair, H. F, Modern Chinese History, Selected Readings (Shanghai, 1923), p. 5.Google Scholar

13 Memorial of P'an Tsu-Yin, 05 28, 1858, in Swisher, op. cit., p. 680.Google Scholar

14 Hail, W. J., Tseng Kuo-fan and the Taiping Rebellion (New Haven, 1927), pp. 260–61.Google Scholar

15 Teng Ssu-yu, op. cit., p. 137.

16 Hail, op. cit., p. 333.

17 Teng Ssu-yu, op. cit., p. 126.

18 Quoted by Hail, , op. cit., p. 325, from Kawasaki, , To-ho no I-jin (Tokyo, 1890).Google Scholar

19 Chih-tung, Chang, China's Only Hope, translated by Woodbridge, Samuel I. (New York, 1900).Google Scholar

20 Macnair, op. cit., p. 575.

21 Teng, op. cit., p. 443.

22 Ibid., p. 449–450.

23 Ibid., p. 391.

24 Swisher, op. cit., p. 30.

25 Teng, op. cit., p. 414.

26 Teng, op. dt., p. 35.

27 Ibid., p. 37.

28 Hail, op. tit., p. 147.

29 Ibid., p. 347.

30 Teng, op. cit., p. 162.

31 Ch'en Tseng Kuo-fan, op. cit., p. 74.

32 Hummel, op. cit., p. XXVIII.

33 Teng, op. cit., p. 263.

34 Chih-tung, Chang, China's Only Hope, op. at., p. 75.Google Scholar

35 Teng, op. cit., p. 433.

36 Ibid., p. 489.

37 Cameron, , Meribeth, , Reform Movement in China, 18981912, (Stanford University Publications, History, Economics, and Political Science, v. 3, 1931), p. 27.Google Scholar

38 Teng, op. tit., p. 223–234.

39 Wieger, L., A History of the Religious Beliefs and Philosophical Opinions on China, translated by Werner, E. T. C. (Hsien Hsien, 1927), p. 241.Google Scholar