Podcasts about chinese empire

Dan heads to China to discover the incredible story of Qin Shi Haungdi, the man who built the mysterious Terracotta Warriors, the Great Wall and founded China. Dan travels to the First Emperor's magnificent mausoleum complex in Xian, once the Ancient capital, to trace his rise to total power, conquering the neighbouring states to create one mighty Chinese Empire. Qin Shi Huangdi was as visionary as he was tyrannical, often remembered for his brutal punishment methods that enabled him to centralise power. He's also remembered for his obsession with immortality and the astonishing lengths he went to try and secure it...This is the first episode in a two-part mini-series. Part Two was released on Friday 23rd.This episode was produced by Mariana Des Forges and edited by Dougal Patmore. The translator was Ellen Xu and the fixer was Chao.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Sign up HERE for 50% off for 3 months using code ‘DANSNOW'.We'd love to hear from you - what do you want to hear an episode on? You can email the podcast at ds.hh@historyhit.com.You can take part in our listener survey here.

THIS WEEK! Morris Rossabi returns once again, and we discuss The Mongol Ruler "Khublai Khan". From the fall of Chingiss to the upbringing of Khublai. How did he rule his Chinese Empire? From the early life of Khublai to the siege of Vietnam, to the failed Japanese invasion,and how his death would end Mongol Rule in China. All this and more on "Well That Aged Well", with "Erlend Hedegart". Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/well-that-aged-well. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

"The First Emperor will die and his land will be divided….” The First Emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang, left behind him a monumental legacy: an Empire which would last millennia, the foundations of the Great Wall of China, and an eerie Terracotta Army - 8000 warriors who would protect the Emperor in the afterlife. His deeply autocratic reign, and the brutal tactics he used to conquer rival states and establish the Chinese Empire, have seen him cast as the archetype of the “bad emperor”. And when compared with Qin Shi Huang, Mao boasted that “when you berate us for imitating his despotism, we are happy to agree!”. But was Chinese unification under one empire inevitable, or did it need a ruthless figure to centralise power? And to what terrifying lengths did the first Emperor go to secure immortality…? Join Tom and Dominic as they discuss the fantastical First Emperor of China - one of the world's most powerful and formidable rulers. From warring kingdoms and ruthless suppressions, to necromancy, mythical beasts, doom-ridden prophecies, and even 20th century Chinese Communism.  *The Rest Is History LIVE in 2024* Tom and Dominic are back onstage this summer, at Hampton Court Palace in London! Buy your tickets here: therestishistory.com Twitter: @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Producer: Theo Young-Smith Assistant Producer: Tabby Syrett Executive Producers: Jack Davenport + Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In today's episode, Dr. Johanna Strong is joined by Dr Alison Miller and Dr Alban Schmid. Alison is an associate professor of Art History and the Chair of Asian Studies at The University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee and has published widely on Meiji Japan. She is the recipient of several distinguished fellowships, including being a Fulbright Fellow and an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral fellow. Alban finished his PhD in 2022, examining the constitutional framework of the Korean Kingdom and its institutional links to the Chinese Empire. Alison and Alban join me today to discuss Meiji empresses and Korean queen dowagers. -- Commercial FREE for patrons! Sign up Now! Love the Tudors? Read the stories of the Tudors on Tudors Dynasty! Shop Tudors Dynasty Merchandise -- Credits: Host: Dr Johanna Strong Guests: Dr Alison Miller and Dr Alban Schmid Editing: Rebecca Larson Episode Music: Tavern Loop One by Alexander Nakarada, Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/6282-tavern-loop-one, License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license, Artist website: https://www.serpentsoundstudios.com/ --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/rebecca-larson/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/rebecca-larson/support

Last time we spoke Hong Rengan, the cousin of the heavenly king made a long pilgrimage to get to Nanjing. When Hong Rengan finally made it to Nanjing, the heavenly king rejoiced and began showering him with titles. Hong Rengan soon became the Shield King, but this drew jealousy and resentment from the Loyal king Li Xiucheng. Hong Rengan quickly went to work restructuring the movement, making dramatic improvements and began a campaign to win over foreign support. A grand strategy was formed to break the encirclement of Nanjing and it succeeded in a grand fashion, bringing the Taiping closer to Shanghai where a large foreign community awaited. However rumors spread that the Taiping wished to attack Shanghai creating fear amongst the foreigners they sought to ally with. Could Hong Rengang turn the tides in favor for the Taiping? #30 This episode is The Taiping Rebellion part 7: Ward's Mercenaries & the Battle for Shanghai   Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on history of asia and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War. Shanghai was not a typical Chinese city, it had a complicated division of jurisdictions such as the international city with each nation having its own military force and each foreign citizen was liable only to their nations authorities. Trading vessels came and left, exchanging not only cargoe but crews from all around the world. People from all walks of life came to Shanghai and much like Mos Eisley, “you will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy”. Now in 1860, just 12 miles due west of Shanghai a group of irregular military men began to run drills in a muddy little village. There were around 200 Europeans and Americans in a unit, wearing a hodgepodge of uniforms. Some wore red coats and dark pants, typical British marine getup, other blue jackets with white bell bottoms, that of french sailors, others tattered fabrics of merchant crews. For weapons, many had colt revolvers others sharp repeating rifles and the reason they drilled was to capture the Taiping held town of Songjiang, 10 miles further away from Shanghai. Alongside Qingpu, Songjiang was a strategic walled town and a necessary stepping stone for one to invade Shanghai from Hangzhou or Suzhou. The motley crew of mercenaries were being paid for by a banker named Yang Fang at the incredibly high rate of 100 dollars per month per man. On top of their handsome salaries these men were promised rewards of a hundred thousand dollars if their unit was able to defeat the Taiping garrison at Songjiang alongside anything they could loot. The commander of this unit was an American named Frederick Townsend Ward. He was 29 years old, from Salem Massachusetts and had deep black eyes and a thatch of unruly raven like hair worn long over his ears.    Wards army was modeled on the so called filibusters, those American soldiers who frolicked in latin america in the 19th century. Ward was not drawn just by money but also the dream of establishing a new state to govern. Ward had been frustrated during his military career, he had failed to gain admission to West Point in 1846 and spent a year at Norwich university, a private military college in Vermont, without even graduating. His real military training came informally, in central america in 1852 when he enlisted with the infamous William Walker who led a small army of Americans to fight a civil war in Nicaragua to overthrow its government with the intent to form a new Yankee state. Ward fought hard for Walker, but left his camp to form his own, while Walker conquered Nicaragua and installed himself president in 1856. It was a short lived state to be sure, 4 years later the British captured Walker and arrested him for breaking neutrality laws. Meanwhile Ward traveled to Shanghai to launch his own venture against the Taiping, while his former mentor was executed by firing squads in Honduras.    The Taiping-Qing civil war was a fantastic opportunity for a would be filibuster and initially ward came to china to join the rebels and overthrow the Manchu. However upon making it to Shanghai, making contact with the Taiping proved difficult. Ward first found work aboard a french steamer named Confucius, hired by some wealthy Chinese merchants to protect them against Yangtze pirates. Eventually Ward and the captain of the Confucius found themselves employed by local military authorities, thus Ward ended up selling his sword to the Qing. They saw in him some leadership qualities and had him begin recruiting Europeans, Americans and Filipinos to create a mercenary force to defend the region outside Shanghai. His army was strictly illegal, a complete violation of the neutrality laws. His force of mostly deserters could not even be treated for wounds in Shanghai lest they be arrested.    Despite the small size of his force, the practically mythical belief in western arms being vastly superior led many of their enemies to simply surrender upon seeing a causasian opponent. Wards army was meant to be a spearhead for a 10,000 strong Qing force that followed behind it as they invaded garrisoned cities. Wards unit attacked Songjiang in april of 1860 and it did not go very well. With zero artillery to blast open the gates, Wards planned to sneak over the city walls under the cover of darkness using scaling ladders. Ward's men got so shit face drunk before their daring attack, that all their singing and swearing alarmed Songjiangs defenders when they approached. As they tried to climb, the Taiping cut them to pieces. After the failure ward sent men to purchase artillery pieces in Shanghai, managing to grab 2 pairs of half ton Napoleon field guns and Ward also procured a ton more men. Now he attacked Songjian again in July, this time with 500 troops, a great many being Filipino's. Under the cover of a fog, and less drunk the artillerymen bombarded the gate of Songjiang with 12 pound shells as the unit stormed the city. This assault proved to be a worse disaster than the last one. When they got through the outer gate, the found out the inner gate was undamaged. Thus Ward and his men were stuck in the wall, they couldn't get past the inner gate and could not bring their Napoleon cannons across the moat to hit it. The Taiping defenders were above them tossing stinkpots filled with burning sulfur all night long. Ward's men managed to budge the inner gate a couple of feet using bags of gunpowder, but they were being fired upon all the while. If it was not for their repeating rifles being so effective at close range, they probably would have not survived the night. Luckily they survived the night and soon their Qing backup showed up at dawn forcing the Taiping garrison to flee. Most of Wards 500 men were dead and all by 27 survivors were severely wounded.   It was a terrible victory, but the city was theirs and Ward set up his new HQ in a Confucian temple. With Songjiang as a base, he regrouped, recruited and set up a new offensive for August the 1st to hit Qingpu 10 miles northwest. It did not go well, turns out the Taiping in Qingpu had managed to assemble their own type of Ward army led by an English coastal pirate named Savage who rangled up several of his comrades along the Taiping to man some big guns. Wards Qing backup army also did not show up and during the fighting Ward took a bullet right through both of his cheeks. Wards extremely drunk lieutenant tossed the new recruits, made up of mostly greeks and italians to throw themselves at the walls of Qingpu again 2 weeks after the first failed attack, this time with the Qing backup showing up, but all they managed to do was stir up a Taiping garrison now reinforced to a whopping 50,000 men led by Li Xiucheng himself. Li led a surprise flanking attack that routed the Ward army, not only winning the battle for Qingpu but also threatening Songjiang as Li Xiucheng chased them all the way there. The Taiping harassed Songjians gates for over 2 weeks and the only saving grace for Ward was the fact Savage was alongside the Taiping and he got shot dead.    As we have seen, not all the foreigners were so hostile to the Taiping, Ward initially and Savage were willing to sell their swords to them. And in early july of 1860 as Ward had been preparing his attack on Songjiang, a small boat left Shanghai for the interior carrying 5 British and American missionaries who sought to contact the Taiping in Suzhou. One of them was Joseph Edkins and friend to James Legge, who was trying to find out if Hong Rengan had made it to Nanjing. The group ran into some Taiping units who told them Hong Rengan was the prime minister of Nanjing. The group were mortified when they got to Suzhou seeing the savagery committed there and as Griffith John described of seeing the ruined temples ““It is common to see the nose, chin, and hands cut off. The floors of these buildings are bestrewn with relics of helpless gods. Buddhist and Daoist, male and female. Some are cast into the canals, and are found floating down the stream mingled with the debris of rifled houses and the remains of the dead.” Li Xiucheng was in Suzhou at the time and he invited the missionaries for an audience. It was not a long meeting, but the missionaries found the man to be gentle, intelligent and he kept his soldiers well disciplined. They found themselves in agreement when it came to religious doctrine, but the missionaries knew the merchants of Shanghai cared for only one thing. Thus hey asked Li Xiucheng if he would allow the silk trade to continue under Taiping rule and Li Xiucheng replied that was exactly what the Taiping sought. Thus the group returned to Shanghai and countless newspapers in SHanghai began to publicize pro Taiping accounts. Edkins declared “They are revolutionists in the strictest sense of the term; both the work of slaughter and of plunder are carried on so far as is necessary to secure the end. These are evils which necessarily accompany such a movement, and are justifiable or otherwise in so far as the movement itself is so.” The idea the Taiping would be a state friendly to the west gained momentum. At the end of July, Edkins and Griffith returned to Suzhou for a second visit upon letters of invitation from Li Xiucheng and Hong Rengan.   This time they found an even warmer welcome, with Hong Rengan present draped in silk robes wearing an embroidered gold crown. Hong Rengan insisted they do not kowtow nor kneel as this was not the western fashion, but instead give him a hearty handshake, and he dismissed servants so they could talk informally. They talked of old times like old friends about missionary work, they prayed and sang hymns and talked of China's future. Hong Rengan said for his part all he wanted was to lead the Taiping towards a correct understanding of Christianity. The missionaries were delighted by all of this, a man they knew and worked with was in the seat of power and he wanted to bring real christianity to China. By November nearly all of the major missionary organizations in England joined together to sent a letter to the foreign minister calling for Britain to continue its strict policy of neutrality. In many ways the veil of the Taiping had finally been lifted and there gleamed a chance perhaps at some western support.    Now let us not forget, while the Taiping forces were launching this massive campaign to break the siege of their capital, the Qing were dealing with another campaign, the second opium war. Lord Elgin was writing back to Britain all the while and he had some interesting points to make. In one letter to Lord Russel in July of 1860 he wrote “We might annex the Empire if we were in the humour to take a second India into hand, or we might change the Dynasty if we knew where to find a better.” According to Putyatin, Elgin had privately said in his presence “Britain should recognize as Chinese Emperor one of the leaders of the rebel movement assuming he would agree to the favorable conditions of the Tianjin treaty.” He argued that it could give Britain the desired trade concessions, end conflict and perhaps prevent future wars. He took it a step further saying “if the capital of China were moved nearer to our military presence like Nanking … England could control the Chinese Empire with four gunboats.Let the north disappear or form a separate government, we don't have any trade interests there.”   Meanwhile his brother Bruce was anxious that the Taiping would still march on Shanghai. The two events were simultaneous, the war in the north with Elgins coalition marching upon Beijing and the loomed threat in Shanghai. Luckily for Bruce, Elgin showed up to Shanghai on June 29th of 1860 with a fleet of French and British gunboats. Bruce sighed with relief, surely his brother would look out for their interests in Shanghai. Yet the coalitionary forces had no intention of helping Bruce defend Shanghai, they were going to depart shortly to head north and hit Beijing. They departed and left a scant defensive force of a couple gunboats and some stray divisions of Sikh soldiers. The foreign community of Shanghai lamented they had been abandoned in their hour of need. Despite the work of the missionaries to present Hong Rengan as a friend and not foe, Bruce did not buy it. He assumed the missionaries were being duped, like he had been at the hands of the Qing. Despite his opinions of the Manchu, Bruce told those around him they were still the legitimate authority in China. Many tried to change Bruce's mind on the matter of the Taiping, but none succeeded.   In july of 1860 Bruce was brought a sealed letter addressed to the representatives of the US, France and Britain from Li Xiucheng. Bruce apparently refused to even open it. Then he received another letter, this time from Hong Rengan, but Bruce again refused to open it. These letters were fatally important, in the first Li Xiucheng notified the foreign authorities that the Taiping were on they way to Shanghai and intended to take possession of the Chinese held section of the city. He stated the Taiping had no quarrel whatsoever with their “foreign brethren” and pledged no harm to them nor their property. Any Taiping who harmed a foreigner would be put to death and he hoped the foreign representatives would call upon their people to stay indoors and hoist yellow flags above their doors to signify they were foreigners in said homes.    In the later afternoon of August 17th, the sky to the west of Shanghai suddenly grew dark with smoke. The next morning saw fleeing Qing soldiers rushing to the Shanghai gates pursued by Taiping cavalry. The British let in a few Qing in before they destroyed the bridge going across the moat. The Taiping advance guard surged forward as suddenly the British and French opened fire with their artillery. Alongside this, the Taiping were fired upon by a hodgepodge of differing muskets, rifles and such. The Taiping force was small, just a few thousand men, lightly armed with a few notable foreign mercenaries with them. The British and French gunners atop the walls, watched the Taiping hide behind buildings and other structures, with clear baffled faces. None of them shot back, then one Taiping detachment tried to advance forward waving Qing flags they had stolen, but they were shot at. Next another detachment rushed forward waving an enormous black flag that the Taiping used to drive reluctant troops with. One very lucky shell lobbed from half a mile smashed right in the middle of the unit flattening the flag bearer into the ground.   In a bewildered disarray the Taiping ran into houses for cover, but the wall artillerymen kept firing at them. As the night came upon them, word spread that Qing forces within Shanghai were executing Taiping POW's, prompting the British to demand they be surrendered over to them unmolested. Then the French frustrated it seems by the Taiping using all the houses for cover decided to simply start blowing them down with artillery. The next morning, French troops marched through the city firing their muskets at will. One eye witness reported to the North-China Herald “French soldiers were rushing frantically among the peaceful inhabitants of the place, murdering men, women and children, without the least discrimination. One man, was stabbed right through as he was enjoying his opium-pipe. A woman who had just given birth to a child, was bayoneted without the faintest provocation. Women were ravished and houses plundered by these ruthless marauders without restraint”. Another eye witness estimated the French left tens of thousands of Chinese homeless in the course of defending against 3000 lightly armed Taiping. The Taiping force retreated, but the suburbs of Shanghai burned for days as the Europeans claimed victory. The Taiping attack on Shanghai honestly did more to build sympathy for their cause, the news paper ran rampant stories about how the europeans fired upon a group who called themselves brethren and did not fight back.    Now we have not talked about a key player in all of this for awhile. On October 16th of 1860, General Zeng Guofan was in his HQ in Qimen of Anhui province sick out of his mind. He was vomiting heavily, suffering some bad heart palpitations, had a bad case of insomnia, just not doing all that great. At lunch he received a message that the emperor had fled to his hunting grounds in Manchuria and that the British and French armies were literally a few miles from Beijing. There was nothing he could do, he apparently broke down in tears feeling helpless. Zeng Guofan was stuck fighting a protracted rear action campaign against the farthest Taiping stronghold up the Yangtze river. Zhang Guoliang and He Chun were both dead, the siege camps around Nanjing were shattered. He knew he could do nothing to stop the european march on Beijing so he pulled himself together and focused on a task he actually could do something about.   Up until 1860, Zeng Guofan's Xiang army on the Yangtze played only a supporting role in the overall Qing campaign. Zhang Guoliang and He Chun's blockade of Nanjing was much more of a focus compared to that of Zeng Guofans offensives. Yet when victory seemed within grasp, Hong Rengan's daring plan was unleashed. The Taiping broke out of the encirclement and ran rampant marching east. In the leadership vacuum that ensued, Zeng Guofan's time had finally come. In June of 1860 Emperor Xianfeng appointed him as the governor general of Anhui, Jiangsu and Jiangxi the provinces most ravaged by the civil war. By late august the emperor named him imperial commissioner in charge of the military affairs in those 3 provinces and the new commander in chief of the Qing dynasty's forces in the Yangtze river valley. Boy oh boy the Chinese love bestowing so many titles on one person, that tradition just keeps living on. The frustrations of having to constantly provide for his Xiang army was beginning to ease as the desperate emperor had no one else to turn to. After years of scrambling to make his army's ends meet, while the Green Standard army enjoyed full funding and support, now Zeng Guofan was in charge of both military and civil administrations for the primary theater of war.    His years of service had shown him how ineffective the bureaucrats of the Qing government could be, how inexperienced and self-gratifying they could be, and he would not tolerate them to affect his campaign. He had refused orders in 1859 to chase down Shi Dakai into sichuan, and now in 1860 he was given new orders to abandon his campaign in Anhui and to rush over to instead protect Suzhou and Shanghai. He offered instead the excuse he did not have the forces necessary to help at the moment and would stay put where he was finishing his campaign. The strategy he was performing was one of encirclement. Now back in 1859 Zeng Guofan tried to explain to the Qing court that the dynasty was not facing one kind of rebel force, but rather 2. The roving bandits constantly moving, and the pretender bandits, those who actually sought to attack Beijing and take the dragon throne. Shi Dakai, the Nian rebels and numerous vagabond armies on horseback were roving bandits. The only way to fight roving bandits was to hold a position and try to blunt their momentum. But for the pretender bandits the most important being the Taiping with their capital in Nanjing, you could only defeat them by “severing their branches and leaves”. What he meant by this was you had to cut off their foraging armies, ie: their logistics, before crushing them. He pointed out that the Green stand army had failed to encircle Nanjing completely, there had always been a single pathway open. He argued Nanjing must be completely encircled and once that was met the Qing forces could gradually conquer the fortified cities along the Yangtze one by one. He sought to begin with the Brave Kings base of operations, Anqing in Anhui province. Anqing had been under Taiping control since 1853, and was the farthest stronghold up the Yangtze. It protected both the river and land approaches to Nanjing and thus was a major choke point. As long as it stood, the Taiping in Nanjing could not be properly sieged, Anqing had to be crushed.    Now this was not going to be any simple task, in 1860 Zeng Guofan had a force of 60,000 men while the Rebels had vastly more. Zeng Guofan could not contend with them in the open field. His intelligence reports indicated the Taiping were using irregular formations known as “crab formations”. This was a cluster of troops in the middle (the crabs body) and 5 lines reaching out on either side that could rapidly reconfigure itself as 2 columns, 4 columns or a crosslike configuration of 5 phalanxes, depending on the enemy. There was also the “hundred birds formation”, in which a large division would disintegrate into small clusters of 25 soldiers, each roaming freely, making it impossible for their enemies to figure out how large their force was. Then there was “crouching tiger”, usually applied to hill terrains where 10,000 troops would hide close to the ground in total silence and then ambush their enemy as they passed through a valley, suddenly leaping up like a tiger.   To defeat these innovative rebels, would require manipulation of the battlefield. In every engagement Zeng described the situation as being either a host or guest. The host always enjoyed the advantage, such as being defenders of a wall city. The same situation could be said of a fortified camp. If two armies were to meet in the open field, it was the first army to reach the site of battle that would be the host. Now having the weaker army, Zeng tried to ensure the Taiping would always be the guest, by trying to lure them into attacking his defensive works or if failing that to try and provoke them to make the first move. To that end he got his men to build up fortified camps always in close proximity to the Taiping in the hopes of drawing them in to make the first move. In June of 1860, when the Taiping were focused on their eastern campaign, Zeng Guofan had moved into Anhui from the west with his brother Zeng Guoquan who began a siege of Anqing. Guoquan had 10,000 Hunanese forces who pitched a camp near Anqing's walls, building high earth walls with 20 foot wide moats. The idea was simple, they protected their fronts to the city and their backs from Taiping relief forces. For further protection against relief forces, a 20,000 strong Manchu cavalry unit led by Duolonga was set up in Tongcheng, 40 miles north of Anqing while Zeng Guofan led naval forces to blockade the Yangtze river just a few miles below the city. In late July, Zeng took the rest of his forces, 30,000 men into the mountains south of Anhui where he formed his HQ in Qimen, which is in a valley around 60 miles southeast of Anqing.   However the summer of 1860 changed everything as the new war with the Europeans in the north erupted. Beijing sent orders on October 10th instructing him to send his best field commander, Bao Chao along with 3000 troops to help Prince Seng's banner forces fight the Europeans in the north, but Zeng Guofan believed without these men who would not be able to hold the encirclement of Anqing. It would take Bao Chao until January to reach the area of Beijing, far too late to be of help, thus Zeng reasoned it was useless. Alongside that, if the Taiping were allowed to break out of Anqing they could march upon Wuchang and threaten Hunan again. So Zeng cleverly sent word back to the Emperor asking him to choose another commander to come help in the north, and that message would take 2 weeks to get over to Beijing over 800 miles away thus earning him at least another 4 weeks time.   October was quite depressing and cold for Zeng Guofan. The Taiping in Anqing apparently had plentiful stores and could wait quite long for reinforcements. One of his most beloved commanders holding a garrison in the nearby town of Huizhou was overrun by Taiping raiders and reports indicated there were many Taiping forces encircling his base of Qimen. Then on November 6th, he received a letter from a colleague in the north, stating the Europeans had successfully invaded Beijing and burnt down the summer palace . Zeng wrote in his diary “I have no words to describe the depths of this pain,”. The eight banner army lost to the Europeans and now he was all alone commanding a breaking army, all he had left was this damn Anqing campaign. We will come back to the plight of Zeng Guofan soon, but now we will be venturing back to the Shanghai situation.   On August 21st, 2 days after his men were sent back from the walls of Shanghai by European grapeshot and shells, the Loyal King Li Xiucheng wrote a very angry letter to the British and American consuls there. “I came to Shanghai to make a treaty in order to see us connected together by trade and commerce. I did not come for the purpose of fighting with you.” Li Xiucheng accused the French of setting up a trap, stating a few of them had come to Suzhou earlier that year inviting the Taiping over to Shanghai to establish relations. He could not believe the French would be deluded by the Qing demons and betray them. He said he heard reports of the Qing sending large amounts of money to the French to defend Shanghai and it seemed they were sharing that money with the Americans and British since they opened fire on his men! He went on to say the event could be forgiven, in the case of his fellow protestants, but not the French, oh no there would be a day of reckoning for them when the Taiping took control of China. Yet he finished his angry letter swallowing his pride and said the Taiping still sought friendly relations with their christian brethren.    Though it was a letter from Li Xiucheng, in reality it was sentiment sent by Hong Rengan, whose entire strategy depended on gaining support from the British and Americans in Shanghai. They needed to buy steamships to control the Yangtze river. Yet Li Xiucheng hated Hong Rengan and began to talk within his inner circle about how foolish Hong Rengan was thinking the foreigners would ever help them. The unexpected conflict with them at Shanghai proved his point and thus a rift was widening more so between the 2 leaders. Hong Rengan for his part, blamed Li Xiucheng and not the foreigners, stating they must have heard of Li's belligerent attitude towards them before he showed up and thus they assumed he was going to attack. Despite the 2 men's bickering, they both knew Shanghai needed to be secured for its rich financial stores and to be a point of which the Taiping could purchase weapons from the west. It was now up to Hong Rengan to smooth things over with the foreigners.    A letter was sent to the foreigners of Shanghai stating they wanted to open up trade and that they had vast amounts of teas, silks and other desired goods. It asked why not make a treaty, perhaps with the United States? John Griffith went over to Nanjing and returned to Shanghai in December with an edict from the Heavenly King written in imperial vermillion ink on yellow satin, welcoming foreign missionaries to take up residence in Nanjing. An interesting gesture, given the British were so obsessed with having the same in Beijing only to be continuously thwarted by the Qing court. However the missionaries were reluctant to go, because no formal communications had been established between Nanjing and Shanghai, thus to go meant they would be at the mercy of the rebels. On December the 2nd, Lord Elgin returned to Shanghai in triumph after marching upon Beijing and getting Prince Gong to sign the treaty. He quickly learnt from his brother how the Taiping threatened the city. But the treaty had been signed with the Qing and the letters from Hong Rengan and the HEavenly king suggested the Taiping wanted no hostilities with the foreigners at Shanghai. Thus everyone expected no further conflict to occur and the European coalitionary forces that had marched on Beijing were disbanded and sent home. By the end of December, half the British forces were already returning to India and Britain with the others being stationed in Hong Kong, Tianjin and the Taku forts, just incase Beijing decided not to meet their end of the treaty terms yet again.    As for Shanghai, by the end of 1860, just 1200 British soldiers were left for the city and Elgin argued they were far too many. Elgin spent a good month in Shanghai before leaving China. Though his work with Beijing was over, he did have one last task before leaving, he wanted to gauge the possibility for Britain to form relations with the Taiping. The Taiping at this time controlled the riverway and thanks to the new treaty with the Qing, trade was finally open for business. Elgin was not too pleased to hear about the supposed defense that his brother erected against the Taiping. He was even more disgusted to find out about the damage caused by the French to the outer suburbs and population of Shanghai. Elgin tried to counsel his younger brother that the Taiping were not necessarily all bad, he said “as bad as the imperials and Taiping both are, the rebels might provide a brighter future. From what I have seen of the regions under their control, they exhibit honesty and power”. He also rebuked his brothers refusal to read the Taiping letters warning not to accede to any Qing requests for Britain to avoid contact with the rebels. “it will never do to come under any obligation not to communicate with them on the Yangtze. It would be wrong in principle … and impossible in practice.”    When winter came Elgin had to leave China, he had no time to make another voyage up the Yangtze, so he left orders for Rear admiral Hope to pay a visit to Nanjing to investigate if there might be a basis for relations between the rebels and Britain. Elgin knew it was a delicate situation, they had after all just signed a treaty with the Taipings enemy, thus he added a private note to Hope “at any rate it is clear that we must not become partisans in this civil war”. For his part General Hope after defeating the Manchu, was quite open to forming relations with the Taiping. Meanwhile the Taiping were consolidating their control over China's wealthy eastern province of Jiangsu. By September they controlled every county around Shanghai except for this under the protection of the foreigners. They were capitalizing on the people losing faith in the Manchu. They would make such proclamations as “The emperor of the Qing is the emperor of a lost country, and his ministers are all the ministers of a lost country. They extended their control over Jiangnan which encompassed the confluence of Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Anhui. Within Jiangsu province they held the capital, Suzhou along with the major cities of Wuxi and Danyang. They held Anqing, the capital of Anhui, and in Zhejiang they had the major trading city of Ningbo. I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me. Hong Rengans efforts to gain foreign support were falling to pieces. Zeng Guofan was building up his army hoping to capture Anqing, a major stepping stone to take Nanjing. Who was going to win the battle for the east?  

Pheasant Cap Master, Grand Unityand the Nine Augustans,Linking Politics and PhilosophyToReligionInAncient China The Author Dr Marnix Wells is a British Author living in Croydon a large town in South London in the UK. His fascination with ancient Chinese History, art, culture and religion goes right back to his childhood days influenced by a book his […] The post Heguanzi The Dao of Unity: In the birth of the Chinese Empire by Dr Marnix Wells appeared first on WebTalkRadio.net.

Last time we spoke the reluctant Lord Elgin took up the job as the new emissary to China. Alongside his french counterpart Baron Gross, both men would overlook their military coalitions expedition in China to force the Qing emperor to abide by their treaty and some new demands. They began with a bombardment and occupation of the grand city of Canton and then Ye Mingchen was hunted down and arrested. Ye was replaced with a puppet named Pih-Kwei who would be nominally controlled by the European forces. Now the coalition would fight their way to Beijing to force an audience with Emperor Xianfeng, but something lied in their way, the famous Taku forts at the mouth of the Bei He River. Could the coalition fight past these legendary forts and strangle Beijing  enough to get their demands met?   Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on history of asia and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War. #21 This episode is Part 3 of the Second Opium War: battles for the Taku Forts At high tide the Taku Forts were surrounded by water, the Bei He River became something like a natural moat. The entrance to the Bei He River was 200 yards in width, forcing the British and French warships into a bottleneck gauntlet with each shore holding 137 pieces of antiquated artillery. When the invaders arrived, the Qing forces quickly went to work creating earthwork walls with sandbags to bolster the defenses. The Qing forces presumed the European gunboats hulls were too deep and thus they would not risk entering the river until it was very high tide to avoid going aground. That presumption was a grave error as Seymour and Rigault were willing to risk it and mounted a surprise attack at 10am on May 20th. Elgin made one last ditch effort to get Tan to surrender peacefully, but Tan did not even bother to respond to Elgins message. Now in a similar fashion to the first opium war, as you might remember a large problem for the Qing was their outdated artillery. Their cannons were usually immobile, unable to aim at all degrees and angles. The Taku Fort cannons were aimed in such a way to hit warships at high tide, but the British-French force was going to attack during low tide. Alongside the Taku Forts cannons another defensive obstacle was a 7 inch thick boom made out of bamboo. The Europeans opened fire unleashed pure hell upon the forts and when the forts unleashed their own volley, literally all of their shots went over the European masts. To add insult to injury, the British sacrificed one of their ships, the Coromandel to ram into the boom which broke with ease. The Coromandal received a nasty gash in her hull, but the job had been done. As pieces of the boom floated away, the rest of the European armada began to steam through the gap while the Qing helplessly fired their cannons straight over their masts. The French ships Mitraille and Fusee alongside the British Cormorant fired upon 2 of the Taku Forts on the left bank while the French Avalance, Dragonne and British Nimrod fired upon the 3 forts on the right. The Chinese manning Gingalls had much better luck than the cannons, though it also came at the price of making the Europeans laugh watching men fall over from firing each shot. However not all was funny as Gingalls could be properly aimed unlike the cannons and managed to kill 5 British and 6 French while wounding another 61. Then tragedy happened when a gunpowder cache in one of the Taku forts accidentally exploded killing 100 Chinese. Alongside the invaders maelstrom of gunfire and the defenders despair at the futility of their cannons many began to panic. Even before many of the British and French forces began to land ashore, countless Qing forces were deserting the earthen parapet en masse. In desperation seeing his men flee, the Qing commander launched 50 fireboats stuffed with straw at the barbarian ships, only to see the fireships crash into the bank at the bend in the river. Not a single fireship was able to cause damage to the invaders. With the last ditch effort a complete failure, the commander of the Taku Forts went to the Temple of the Sea God and slashed his jugular vein with his sword killing himself.  The Viceroy of Zhili province was banished to the desolate border territory with Russia in the north. As he packed his bags, Emperor Xianfeng condemned the Viceroy's mismanagement of the Taku Fort defense as being “without plan or resource”. Elgin after witnessing the victory over the Taku Forts had a really interesting thing to say “Twenty-four determined men with revolvers, and a sufficient number of cartridges, might walk through China from one end to another.”  Back home in Britain Elgin was being praised and was rewarded likewise with carte blanche for all further military actions and negotiations. The new Prime Minister, Lord Derby, haha looks like those grand speeches worked out for him, well he sent Elgin a congratulatory dispatch “giving me latitude to do anything I choose, if only I will finish the affair.” The very same man who condemned British imperialism the year prior was now a warhawk. Lord Malmesbury became the new foreign minister replacing Lord Clarendon. Back in China, the European gunboats made their way up the Bei He River triumphantly towards the next Qing stronghold, Tianjin. Tianjin was around 30 miles away from Beijing. The 3 Plenipotentiaries stayed further behind at the Taku Forts for their own safety as Seymour and Rigault took the lead. As they steamed up the Bei He River, both the Fusee and Cormorant ran aground numerous time, but the Europeans found some very unlikely allies to help, the local Chinese. Turns out a lot of the populace absolutely hated their Manchu overlords and volunteered their tugboats free of charge to help the Europeans. Apparently when the Europeans tried to pay them many refused if it is to be believed.  On June 4th the European armada arrived at Tianjin without any resistance along the way. The Qing defenders at Tianjin morale was so low they were at the point of surrender. There was also a rumor spreading around that Emperor Xianfeng had been overthrown and replaced by a new dynasty who was willing to simply sign a new treaty with the Europeans. Seymour and Rigault advised Elgin he should stay at the Taku Forts for security, but he disregarded this and came up to the war party on May 26th. Elgin wrote in his diary as he made his way up the river. “Through the night watches, when no Chinaman moves, when the junks cast anchor, we laboured on, cutting ruthlessly and recklessly through that glancing and startled river which, until the last few weeks, no stranger keel had ever furrowed. Whose work are we engaged in, when we burst thus with hideous violence and brutal energy into these darkest and most mysterious recesses of the traditions of the past? I wish I could answer that question in a manner satisfactory to myself. At the same time there is certainly not much to regret in the old civilisation which we are thus scattering to the winds. A dense population, timorous and pauperised, such would seem to be its chief product. “ The Plenipotentiaries were quite surprised when they were met outside Tianjin by a detachment of local Qing officials and merchants who came looking for opium. Yes these were those types of middle men folks who were used to bribes and the lucrative business of moving opium. Despite the rumors, Emperor Xianfeng had not been overthrown, but he was willing to negotiate with the Europeans. Emperor Xianfeng sent commissioners to Tianjin in the hope of stopping the European advance to Beijing. Meanwhile with Tianjin not putting up a fight, Elgin wrote in his diary “[I have] complete military command of the capital of China, without having broken off relations with the neutral powers, and without having interrupted, for a single day, our trade at the different ports of the Empire.” The Europeans were treated with the utmost respect and the lavish temple known as the Supreme Felicity was used as headquarters for the Europeans. The Europeans transformed the temple by creating a bowling alley, they used its myriad of altars for washbasins and placed vanity mirrors in front of statues of the gods. This cultural vandalized would be an appetizer for events in the future. Two emissaries were sent by Emperor Xianfeng, both were commissioners, the first was the 74 year old Guiliang, a senior military officer. The other was a 53 year old Mongolian military officer. They met with the Europeans at the Temple of Oceanic Influences southwest of Tianjin. Elgin arrived on June 4th alongside 50 Royal marines and a band from the warship Calcutta to add some muscle.  The first meeting went…terribly. The commissioners had the authority to negotiate, but lacked carte blanche to finalize any deal. Elgin stormed out of the first meeting, completely blowing off this lavish buffet the Qing had set for the party to celebrate the new peace treaty. Elgin was well known to be courtes, but after spending 6 months in China had quickly learnt the only way to get Qing officials to act was to show some bravado. Elgin even wrote to his wife at the time “I have made up my mind, disgusting as the part is to me, to act the role of the ‘uncontrollably fierce barbarian.'” As Elgin stomped his feet walking off he made a threat that he would soon march upon Beijing, even though in truth the Europeans did not have the land forces to do so. Elgin left his brother to continue negotiations, Lord Frederick Bruce. One of Fredericks interpreters, Horatio Lay decided it was a good idea to use some Sturm und Drang and began to literally scream at the Qing commissioners whenever they talked about clauses in the new treaty. Lay even threatened to lay waste to Beijing and would slap the Emperor himself, this guy had some balls. Lay's abuse of the two commissioners became so bad, the men went around his head to speak to Putiatin and the American envoy William Reed. Reed sent a letter to Elgin asking him to help rein in the tyrannical Lay, but Elgin ignored the letter, wow. Putiatin asked Gros whom he knew had grown very close to Elgin, to intercede, but Gros declined to do so as he feared it would alienate his friendship to Elgin. The Qing then resorted to bribery, they tried to give Lay a horse, but Lay did not change his aggressive stance.  The negotiations were taking very long, it was the typical Chinese strategy of procrastination. Elgin was becoming livid and wrote in his diary about Reed and Putiatin “These sneaking scoundrels do what they can to thwart me and then while affecting to support the Chinese act as their own worst enemies.” Elgin also felt British parliament had failed to back him up. Elgin received a letter from the new Foriegn minister Lord Malmesbury on April the 9th, berating him for not concluding the peace treaty in due time. “A Cabinet has been held today and it is our anxious wish to see this Chinese business settled if it can be done without loss of honour and commercial interests as at present enjoyed. Our reputation is sufficiently vindicated at Canton and we do not look at the chance of a war with the Chinese Empire without much apprehension. I trust therefore that you will not engage us in a contest of this sort if you can possibly avoid it.” The negotiations over the terms of the new treaty stretched for 3 weeks and the Qing were rejecting two clauses the British absolutely wanted: free passage throughout China and for a permanent British and French embassy at the Qing imperial court. The two commissioners stated that accepting either of these would cost the men their lives. Gros and Putiatin began arguing that the permanent embassy point was not critical as long as their ministers had access to Beijing in some form. After much arguing the commissioners conceded to the two points and thus the Treaty of Tianjin was formed. The Europeans made sure to add a clause they henceforth they would no longer be called barbarians in official communications and treaties, though it should be noted the term used by the Chinese literally just meant “those who don't speak Chinese”.  The Treaty of Tianjin opened new ports for trade: Tianjin, Hangzhou and Nanjing. It should be noted the Qing were all too happy to toss Nanjing into the treaty as the Taiping were occupying it as their own capital. Perhaps if they were lucky, the Europeans would go to Nanjing, run into some trouble and attack the Taiping for them! Baron Gros raised concerns over the clauses as he argued Britain would have to bear even more military might to enforce the treaty. As Gros pointed out to Elgin, the Confucious principle, a promise made under duress does not need to be kept. Another item on the treaty clauses was the payment of 2 million taels of silver to Britain for the damage to their factories at Canton and another 2 million in general reparation. The French were to receive 2 million taels as well. Now the warnings Gros made concerned Elgin and he was having second thoughts. One major concern was the idea of extracting he enormous sums of money from what seemed to be an Empire on the verge of Bankruptcy. Elgin wrote back to the foreign minister, concerned that extracting the large sums of money would lead to the toppling of the Manchu rule “Everything we saw around us indicated the penury of the Treasury. To despair, by putting forward pecuniary claims which it could satisfy only by measures that would increase its unpopularity and extend the area of rebellion.” Elgin ended by saying the humiliating treaty would be a large beacon for the Taiping Rebels. William Reed recommended legalizing opium as a clause, arguing the tax revenue from it would benefit the Qing Empire. The British wanted a tariff of only 30 taels and the Cohong merchants supported this. Jardine & Matheson & co released a statement “The use of opium is not a curse, but a comfort and benefit to the hard-working Chinese.” Boy you can't get any more gross than that one. The French for their part performed a study of the opium problem in China. Baron Gros found that users who smoked upto 8 pipes per day had a life expectancy of only 6 years. Casual consumers could expect around 20 years after starting to smoke it, many died around the age of 50 or so. Opium addicts were found to be spending 2/3 ‘s of their income to feed their addiction. The Russians and Americans agreed with the French that the opium trade was horrible. The French however have little to nothing to say about another form of trade they took part in with China, the “pig trade”, that being the enslavement of coolies. Now you have to hear this one, this is so symbolic of the event as a whole. The translator for the treaty took forever because he was an opium addict. You just can't make this stuff up folks. The Russians agreed to the terms first on June 18th Putiantian signed off, making Elgin feel betrayed and abandoned because he still had qualms. What was really important to Russia was the border they shared with the Qing, it had been a source of much conflict. Thus Russia settled with a visiting ambassador to Beijing with no permanent status. Christianity received a formal toleration and the Russians got access to 2 more ports on Taiwan and Hainan. Five days later the Americans signed off on a similar agreement to the Russians. Both the Americans and Russians made sure to include the most favored nations clause in their treaties, which meant that whatever further concessions went to the British and French, they too would enjoy them. Thus the 2 nations who brought zero military aid and did basically nothing reaped the same benefits as the 2 nations shouldering everything, ain't that nice? Putiatin sent Elgin and Gros a copy of Russia's treaty urging them not to topple the manchu rule with too many humiliating concessions. Reed made a similar appeal. Gros reached an agreement on june 23rd and did not hesitate to sign the treaty because he did not want to undercut Elgin's negotiators, preferring to let them finish the job. The French also sought much less than Britain from the Chinese. A week after and the British had still not come to an agreement, Gros became impatient and sent Elgin a letter, that if the British did not sign soon the French would simply sail off. The British were stuck on two key issue; to have a permanent ambassador in Beijing and freedom to travel anywhere in China. The Chinese commissioners desperately sought the aid of Gros and Putiatin, indicating to them the Emperor was going to have them killed if they agreed to the two clauses. Elgin threatened to march on Beijing and it seems the commissioners were forced to give in. On June 26th the British Treaty of Tianjin was ratified. The Chinese would pay 5 million in war reparations, Christian missionaries would be allowed to work unhindered throughout China and 11 ports would be opened for trade. Taxes on imported goods would be set on a follow up meeting at Shanghai, and there 5% was agreed upon. Taxables goods would be silk, brocades and of course opium. The taxation agreement basically made opium legal in China, but without bringing the subject up. The Commissioners signed the treaty, but when they got back to Beijing, take a wild guess, the Emperor rejected the humiliating terms. Now Elgin failed to bring up the issue of the opium trade and its official legalization as were his instructions from Clarendon. Elgin probably felt since Clarendon lost his position he no longer had to respect the order. Clarendons successor Lord Malmesbury did not give a similar order. On July 3rd, 400 men and a naval band serenaded Elgin signing the Treaty of Tianjin at the Temple of Oceanic Influences under some paper lanterns. And despite the fact the commissioners, as they said it, were soon to be beheaded, they invited Elgin to a lavish dinner at the temple after the signing. At the dinner one of the commissioners, Hua Shan gave Elgin copies of some famous poetry. The next day, Baron Gross signed the French treaty but cheekily added some new demands that the commissioners were forced to abide by. He demanded the release of all Chinese christians imprisoned for their faith. Gros sent a triumphant report back home stating “Je suis heureux de pouvoir annoncer aujord-hui à Votre Excellence que la Chine s'ouvre enfin au Christianisme, source réelle de toute civilisation, et au commerce et à l'industrie des nations occidentales.” (“I am happy to be able to announce today to Your Excellence that China has at last opened itself to Christianity, the real source of all civilization, and to trade and the manufactures of the nations of the West.)” Back in Britain Elgins triumph was met with mixed reviews, though most were favorable. Elgins private secretary Laurence Oliphant, noted the impressive cost/benefit ratio of the casualties in his 1860 account of the campaign, ‘Narrative of the Earl of Elgin's Mission to China and Japan': “Hostilities with the Empire of China had terminated with a loss to the British arms of about twenty men killed in action...and a treaty had been signed far more intensive in its scope, and more subversive of imperial prejudices than that concluded fifteen years before, after a bloody and expensive war, which had been protracted over a period of two years.” Karl Marx, yes the Karl Marx, was working at the time as the European correspondent of the New York Tribune wrote a letter to his writing partner Friedrich Engels on some thoughts towards the conflict  “The present Anglo-Chinese Treaty which in my opinion was worked out by Palmerston in conjunction with the Petersburg Cabinet and given to Lord Elgin to take with him on his journey is a mockery from beginning to end.” Karl Marx would have a lot more to say about the Taiping Rebellion, which is quite interesting given the rebellion is considered a proto marxist one. Elgin himself was quite depressed over the ordeal, he wrote this in his diary “I have an instinct in me which loves righteousness and hates iniquity and all this keeps me in a perpetual boil. Though I have been forced to act almost brutally I am China's friend in almost all this.” To try and raise the celebration somewhat, Elgin decided to take 5 ships up the Yangtze River as a demonstration of Britain's naval power and to discourage the Chinese from going back on the new treaty. However news of some raids against Canton forced him to pull be short. The new Viceroy of Canton named Huang had incited a rebellion rallying Canton residents to quote “Go forth in your myriads, then, and take vengeance on the enemies of your Sovereign, imbued with public spirit and fertile in expedients.” In July a group of Cantonese got their hands on some artillery and began to shell the British resident at Whampoa. The Cantonese mob followed this up by performing a raid after they heard about the humiliating terms of the treaty of Tianjin. During a short conference in Shanghai, Elgin demanded Viceroy Huang be removed. On top of the Canton problem, the two commissioners, Guiling and Hua Shan had reneged on the treaty clauses about allowing British ambassadors in Beijing. They sent a letter to Elgin stating that had agreed to such clauses under duress and suggested that future British ambassadors visit Beijing from time to time as diplomatic business warranted. They argued that because of large scale xenophobia in Beijing, they feared for the lives of any British dwelling there. Then 4 days later they added another excuse; they said that to allow British ambassadors to live in Beijing would generate fear and a loss of respect for the Qing government. Such further humiliation might very well topple the Manchu and allow the Taiping to take over. Elgin was somewhat swayed by the Taiping excuse and said he would pass their message onto his foreign officer. Elgin was also in a tough position as the fact a rebellion was occurring in Canton made it seem clear that guaranteeing the safety of British ambassadors in Beijing would not be an easy task. The French concurred with Elgin, that to have ambassadors in Beijing would be dangerous now. In the meantime Elgin had set up a 2 month survey of the Yangtze River using 2 gunboats to demonstrate Britains new right of travel throughout China. The idea had been to see if the local Chinese would obey the treaty clauses. Elgins tour wound up going past the Taiping capital of Nanjing and it is alleged a single cannon perched on a Nanjing wall fired upon Elgin's ships. Elgin's reprisal was pretty brutal, he sent a volley knocking out the Taiping cannon then ordered a 99 minute naval bombardment of Nanjing before sailing on. Eglin had planned to finish the trip by meeting with the Emperor and giving him a letter from Queen Victoria, but the worsening of the Canton situation forced him to pull back south. In February of 1859 Cantonese rebels ambushed and massacred 700 British marines around the countryside of Canton. In retaliation, General van Straubenzee, the military commander of 3000 troops in Canton, hunted down the headquarters of the rebels which they found at Shektsing a few miles south of the city and completely annihilated all those there and razed everything to the ground. The destruction of the rebel camp seems to have worked quite well as suddenly the Emperor sent word to ratify the treaty of Tianjin's clauses and had Huang removed from power and demanded the rebels disband. While Elgin dealt with the renewed China problem, his brother Frederick Bruce returned to Britain with the signed Treaty of Tianjin. Lord Malmesbury rewarded Bruce by naming him the first ambassador to China, a post Elgin would have received, but he was too wary of the post given the circumstances now. Elgin left China in March of 1859, taking the chance to link up and meet his brother in Sri Lanka in April as Bruce was on his way back to China. Now Bruce was not lets say, as great as his brother. He had recently been the Lt-governor of Newfoundland, then the Colonial secretary of Hong Kong. In all honestly a lot of his appointments were merely a result of him being Elgin's brother. But Bruce did have working knowledge of Chinese customs. Bruce arrived back at the mouth of the Bei He River on June 18th of 1859 alongside a force of 16 warships. Admiral Seymour had returned to London and was replaced by Rear-admiral James Hope. Unfortunately it seems Hope was even more racist and hated the Chinese more than Seymour. 3 days later the new American ambassador showed up John E Ward aboard a steamer, the Powhatan. The French representative, Anton de Bourbelon brought 2 warships with him as the French fleet had remained close by in Indo-China. Now Emperor Xianfeng wanted above all else to keep the Europeans the hell out of Beijing. The Emperor suggested right away that they ratify the new treaty at Shanghai, but all 3 of the European powers declined this. Many of the Emperors close advisors wanted to resist the foreigners taking up residence in Beijing. Some of these high ranking officials gave orders for 3 large bamboo booms, 3 feet thick to be strung across the Bei He river to block the foreigners advance. It looked like war was back on the menu and in a vain attempt Bruce tried writing a letter to Beijing politely asking the booms be removed. Well Bruce got no reply and this prompted Admiral Hope to ask permission to blow the booms apart. On June 21st, Hope sent captain Willes aboard a steamer to break through the first boom which went successfully, but the other 2 proved unbreakable. The British tried using some gunpowder but it just couldn't do the job, then to add insult to injury during the night the Qing repaired the first boom.  On June 25th Bruce received a letter from the Viceroy of Zhili, Heng Fu. Heng suggested the ambassadors lodge at Beitang, around 8 miles north of Beijing, basically it was a face saving gesture. The British however were armed to the teeth and had just undergone 3 annoying and long years of negotiations and war and had no patience. Bruce told Admiral Hope to attack the booms again. That afternoon Hope took his flagship Plover and attempted ramming the boom, but this time hit ship was stopped cold. The Qing had learnt a lesson from the previous conflict and this time had made the 2nd and 3rd booms out of full sized tree trunks sling together with heavy chains. As the Plover staled and the other European gunships had to stop just before it, all of a sudden the forts portholes were cast aside to reveal a full complement of 40 cannons and they opened fire. The first salvo took the head right off Plovers bow gunner and 3 other sailors fell wounded. For 3 hours Plover was pulverized. Hope unwisely stood on his deck wearing a gold braid basically showing the Chinese he was a high ranking official. A Qing sharpshooter landed a shot hitting Hope in his thigh. Hope fell on deck and was bound up by a surgeon as the Qing retaliated. For a rather surprising change, the Qing cannons, though still immobile were better aimed and managed to blow Hope's second in command and 8 other sailors to pieces, 22 others were wounded. Plovers hull eventually burst sinking the ship into the mud and this would lead to the deaths of countless crew. Hope believe it or not got up and rowed over to another ship, the Opossum and began standing on its deck in plain sight. Because of his thigh wound he had to hold onto a railing to hold himself upright and that said railing was hit by a Qing cannonball. The railing collapsed and Hope fell breaking several ribs, ouch. This prompted him to turn command over to Captain Shadwell. The Qing volleys managed to disable 5 of the invaders frontal gunships prompting Bruce to order 7 more which were 8 miles away to come forward and replace the damaged ones. By the evening, 5 British warships had been immobilized and 2 had run aground and one was a sitting duck for fort cannons.  The fort guns went silent in the early evening and the British officers took it to mean that the forts garrisons had fled like they had in the previous year. The landing parties surged ahead as planned and that was when disaster struck again. It turned out to be a ruse to entice the landing parties to storm the beach. The landing party soon found out to their horror 2 trenches were dug in front of the walls, filled with water and mud and some large iron spikes behind them. That was bad, but immediately when the marines got off their barges the muddy banks seized their feet leaving them helpless as the forts unleashed carnage upon them. Those lucky enough to make it to the trenches found the muddy water was too thick to swim. Many men in despair clambered beside the base of a fort wall to escape the trenches and gunfire. The Qing began setting off fireworks to illuminate the trapped marines as they fired upon them. Although America said it would remain neutral, Commodore Josiah Tattnall aboard the USS Powhatan was trying to get past the booms as well when he ran into the conflict. Tattnal was a veteran of the war of 1812 and like pretty much any American at the time disliked the British. Tattnal received word that Hope had been shot and upon witnessing the horror show he suddenly cast neutrality to the wind. Tattnal was from Georgia, a loyal southerner with a lets say, strong sense of racial pride…yeah we will call it that. Whatever hate he held for the British was cast aside as he suddenly screamed out “blood is thicker than water, I'd be damned if I stood by and watched white men butchered before my eyes!”. Tattnals charge forward hardly turned the tide of battle, it amount mostly to him towing more British marines forward to their horrific death. Some of his men grabbed and operated some British guns firing at the fort while Tattnall personally tended to Hope. A single american died and the breach of neutrality could have caused a catastrophe, but one thing it did do was set a new tone for British-American friendship. As the London times wrote “Whatever may be the result of the fight, England will never forget the day when the deeds and words of kindly Americans sustained and comforted her stricken warriors on the waters of the Bei He.” Around 7pm, as the Qing set off fireworks to illuminate the area, Captain Shadwell with 50 royal marines and French seamen led by the French commander Tricault landed on some muddy flats outside one of the Taku forts. They clamored through knee deep mud as the defenders rained Gingall fire down upon them at short range. The British-Franco force found themselves literally stuck in the mud, unable to use their wall scaling ladders to get over the fort. Shadwell sent word back to his superior that he and his men were pinned down and requested reinforcements to storm the Taku walls. There was no more fighting men available however, he was eventually order to limp back to the ships. The British and French suffered high casualties. Shadwell was wounded, Tricault was dead, and of the 1000 men who took part in the battle around half were killed or wounded, 29 of them officers. Many men dragged themselves or limped through mud to get back to their ships. A lot of these men were veterans of the Crimean war and had never tasted such defeat. One veteran of the battle of Balaclava said he would rather have relived that battle three times over than suffer the Taku Forts again. The gunboats, Lee, Plover and Cormorant were disabled, the Kestrel sank.  Admiral Hope sent a dispatch to the Admiralty showing his shock at how the Qing performed “Had the opposition they expected been that as usual in Chinese warfare, there is little doubt that the place would have been successfully carried at the point of the bayonet.” To try and save face, Bruce reported back to Britain that the sudden military prowess of the Qing forces at the Taku forts was because Russians were helping them. He alleged based on eyewitness testimony that some men in fur hats and European dress had been seen directing operations atop a Taku fort, it was mere bullshit. The real reason for the Qing victory was because of Prince Senggelinqin. Senggelinqin was a mongol cavalry commander that had helped the Qing crush a large army of Taiping rebels. He was a member of the Borjigin clan and the 26th generation descendant of Qasar, a brother to Genghis Khan. He led Qing forces to smash the Taiping during the Northern Expedition in the southern suburbs of Tianjin. When the Second Opium War broke out he was appointed Imperial commissioner in charge of the defense of Tianjin. Seng rejoiced in his well earned victory. He wrote back to the emperor acknowledging the British and French might return with more ships, but asserted confidently he would thrash them again and again “the pride and vainglory of the barbarians, already under severe trial, will immediately disappear. When that happens, China can then enjoy some decades of peace. The barbarians, already somewhat disillusioned and repentant, may lend themselves to persuasion and be brought under control. If they of their own accord should wholeheartedly become obedient, then peace would be secure and permanent.” The Emperor responded with caution “the foreigners may harbor secret designs and hide themselves around nearby islands, waiting for the arrival of more soldiers and ships for a surprise attack in the night or in a storm” Emperor Xianfeng still shared a sense of relief and expressed hope the foreigners needs for Chinese goods would mean that they could sort out their problems in Shanghai and that there would be no need for ambassadors in Beijing nor new treaties. Seng also pointed out during the battle the Americans got involved. “Although the starting of hostilities was by the English barbarians, France and America's cooperation in the melee is also inescapable.” Seng based his claim off intelligence extracted from a Canadian POW named John Powers. John claimed to be a neutral American in an attempt to escape imprisonment. The Chinese did not free him and instead used him as proof the Americans had abandoned neutrality. Seng much like most Chinese at the time were weak on Western Geography and assumed Canada was part of the United States, sad Canadian noises. At one point an American missionary who spoke Chinese tried to explain to Seng the difference between English and French Canada and the United States, Seng described the experience in a letter to the Qing imperial court. “[The missionary] stated that America contained Englishmen and Frenchmen, and when there was fighting, the flag was the only criterion.” Eventually John was released after a month, the Qing simply did not want to add America to a list of growing enemies. I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me.  The battle for the Taku Fort was an absolute catastrophe resulting in humiliation for the Europeans for once. Prince Seng had a grand victory, perhaps now the foreign barbarians would learn their lesson and stop their war. Or perhaps the Europeans would like their wounds and come right back.  

Last time we spoke, the Qing dynasty had enjoyed the first half of the 18th century with relative ease and prosperity, however the end half and emergence of the 19th century would not be so fruitful. The White Lotus Rebellion of 1794-1804 took root during one of the most corrupt ridden times in Chinese history. One of China's most corrupt figures and one of the richest men in history, Heshen was executed by the new Jiaqing Emperor. Then the Jiaqing Emperor had to quell the White Lotus menace which cost the empire a possible 100 million taels of silver. Despite being successful, the White Lotus rebellion would spread a seed of destruction for the Qing dynasty that would grow overtime and bloom into multiple revolts and rebellions. Now we look to another aspect of China during the early 19th century, its struggle against the looming threat of western greed.    This episode is the A West meets East story   Welcome to the Fall and Rise of China Podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about the history of Asia? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on the history of asia and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel where I cover the history of China and Japan from the 19th century until the end of the Pacific War.   #11 The West meets East failure   Now while the last podcast highlighted the corruption of Heshen and his long lasting effect on the Qing dynasty during the late half of the 18th century, I intentionally avoided speaking about something. That something was the envoys sent by Britain to China to open up trade relations. The rationale was that I wanted to highlight why the White Lotus came to be and the British envoy stories would have derailed it, but in actuality, the corruption, White Lotus rebellion and British envoys all simultaneously play a very important role in the downfall of the Qing Dynasty. So let us go back in time a bit to begin what is quite honestly the emergence of one of the largest drug cartel stories of all time.    Lord George Macartney was a well seasoned diplomat with an extensive resume and a reputation for getting things done. He had that classic story of being raised in poverty, but rising to the top. He began his career as a barrister in England before entering the foreign service. He was no aristocrat, came from no significant family, thus earned his way through merit. His skills and intellect eventually landed him the appointment as an envoy to the Qing Dynasty to establish a British embassy in China. Up to this point in his life, everything he did was a success, but China would prove to be a hard nut to crack. In 1764 Macartney was knighted at the young age of 27 and sent as an envoy to russia. It was a rather scandalous rumor that he was sent as the envoy not merely for his skills and intellect, but because of his good looks as it was believed it would sway the Empress, Catherine the Great to the interests of Britain. After 3 years in Russia, Sir Macartney returned with the Empress's good affection, symbolized in a gem-studded snuff box. This bolstered Macartney into the social circles of the elites and by 1767 he was elected to Parliament and soon appointed the Chief Secretary of Ireland. After some years of service within the United Kingdom, Macartney sought out more adventure and took up a post as governor of the Caribbean Islands in the West Indies. He was soon awarded with the title of Bron and in 1780 received the appointment as governor of Madras India. He worked that office 6 years and became a viscount. Then in 1793 he sailed for one of the most illusive and exotic lands, that of China.   Viscount Macartney was given a simple orders from George III: establish a British embassy in the capital and get permission for British ships to dock at ports besides Canton. Now you might be asking, whats the problem with Canton? Nothing, except for foreign barbarians it was the only port of access for all of China at this time. For those who have never heard of this, the Canton System which began in 1757 was a trade system of the Qing dynasty. The Qianlong Emperor faced numerous problems when he inherited the empire, one being the threat of foreign trade. While trade obviously is a beneficial thing, it can sometimes cause harm, as such the Qing dynasty had some worries about trade with foreign lands. For one thing, the intrusion of missionaries had caused some pretty brutal conflicts in China. After this Emperor Qianlong ordered his court to make some changes to foreign trade to thus stop more conflicts from occurring. He bottled necked all foreign trade to go through Canton and they were to deal exclusively with a group known as the Cohong merchants. The Cohong were granted a monopoly over the foreign trade, but were also the primary representative link between the Qing government and the outside world. There were strings attached of course, the Cohong merchants were to take on full responsibility for any foreign persons connected with a foreign ship that did trade. The Cohong were of course expected to pay taxes to the Qing government for all the trade being done, but by far and large they were able to control how they would levy such taxes. A perfect recipe for corruption.    A event occured known as the Flint Affair, a situation in which a Englishman named James Flint serving the East India Company was repeatedly warned to remain in Canton, but in 1755 he went against the Qing administrative warnings and tried to establish trade in some ports in Zhejiang. He was caught and deported to Macau where he was imprisoned for a few years. The situation prompted Emperor Qianlong to enact 5 measures against the foreign barbarians who wished to trade. 1) Trade by foreign barbarians in Canton is prohibited during the winter. 2) Foreign barbarians coming to the city must reside in the foreign factories under the supervision and control of the Cohong. 3) Chinese citizens are barred from borrowing capital from foreign barbarians and from employment by them. 4) Chinese citizens must not attempt to gain information on the current market situation from foreign barbarians 5) Inbound foreign barbarian vessels must anchor in the Whampoa Roads and await inspection by the authorities   Trade with China was beginning to really boom, but it was being frustrated into the bottleneck of Canton. The British were very eager to open up more trade with China and Macartney had instructions to offer something to the Chinese to open up trade. He could offer to end the importation of opium from British held India, something that was officially illegal in the Qing dynasty, but in reality the Qing could not stop the illicit smuggling of it into China.    On the morning of september 26, 1792 the HMS Lion a 64 gun ship of the line, cast off for China. When Macarney landed on the coast of China, all of his retinue and baggage were transferred to Chinese junks by the order of Emperor Qianlong before he was allowed to travel up the Bei He River enroute for Peking. His ship had a large sign tacked to its mast by the Qing officials with large black letters reading “tribute from the red barbarians”. Remember at this time in history, China was basically the pinnacle of civilization at least from its viewpoint. China had felt superior to the rest of the world for quite some time. Gunpowder, paper currency, eyeglasses and the printing press all were developed in China long before the west had acquired such things. As such the emperor of China did not receive ambassadors per say, as exchanging emissaries would denote equal rank amongst nations, for which China had no equal. Those who did come as emissaries were treated as tribute bearers and identified as foreign barbarians. From the perspective of the Chinese, foreign barbarians did not come to negotiate or make dealings, they came as subjects to pay homage and tribute.    Macartney believed he was bringing gifts from one sovereign nation to another, but the Qing considered him to be a vassal paying tribute. The gifts he brought were the best of British technology: telescopes, brass howitzers, globes, clocks, musical instruments and an entire hot air balloon complete with a balloonist. That one always puzzled me by the way, did that mean the balloonist was just going to be some sort of lifetime servant? In all Macartney brought over 600 gifts for Emperor Qianlong and this all required an astonishing 99 wagons, 40 wheelbarrows drawn by over 200 horses and 3000 people. Macartney was instructed to display the gifts at the Emperor's summer palace before he would be given any chance at seeing Emperor Qianlong. The Qing court apparently were not that impressed with most of the gifts, though they did admire the wood pottery and were particularly interested when Macartney ignited sulfur matches. Unfortunately the hot air balloon never got a chance to take off. The viceroy of Pechili told Macartney that he would not be meeting the emperor in his palace, but in a yurt outside the Imperial hunting lodge in Rehe of the tartary lands. They would pass through the great wall and Macartney was astonished by it stating it to be “the most stupendous work of human hands, probably greater in extent than all of the other forts in the world put together. Its construction was a sign of not only a very powerful empire, but a very wise and virtuous nation”. They traveled into Manchuria until they reached the Emperor's summer quarters on september 8th. The journey had nearly taken a year since they departed England in 1792 and the success or failure of the embassy would be decided in the matter of just mere days. They stopped a mile from the imperial summer residence to make themselves presentable.    Macartney had prepared a colorful and grandiose outfit for the occasion as described by his valet “A suite of spotted mulberry velvet, with a diamond star, and his ribbon, over which he wore the full habit of the order of the Bath, with the hat and the plume of feathers, which form a part of it”. So try to imagine a man dressed up like a peacock, certainly it was going to leave an impression, which is what he wanted. The entourage formed a makeshift parade formation with as much British pomp that could be mustered. The British soldiers and cavalry led the way on foot followed by servants, musicians, scientists and other gentry. The parade arrived at 10am to their designated quarters, with no one at all to greet them. Macartney was bewildered, he had expected this famed Manchu man named Heshen to meet them. However Heshen was nowhere to be found, Macartney deduced he must be delayed for some reason and so they all simply waited. 6 hours passed by as they all stood there in formation waiting with no sign of an imperial official, thus they lost heart and went into the assigned residence to eat. In the end Macartney was forced to go find Heshen himself, quite an uncomfortable start to the venture. Over the course of several days the mountain of British gifts were exchanged. They presented things such as rugs to the Emperors representatives and in turn were given luxurious fabrics such as silk, jade, porcelain, lacquerware and large quantities of the finest tea, oh tea will play quite a role in all of this rest assured. The British tried to awe them with the products of their science, but soon were realizing something was not right.    You see this entire process was confused. For the British they were trying to impress the Chinese to gain the ability to negotiate for more advantageous policies in the future, IE: gain the approval to open a permanent embassy in the capital. But for the Chinese the situation was literally just trade, they were trading goods they assumed the British would want to take home and sell. Nations like Vietnam and Korea would regularly come to pay tribute to the emperor for his approval which legitimized their governments. They came and performed the famous “kow tow” before the Emperor. For those who don't know the “kow tow” is a ritual of 9 kneeling bows to the ground in 3 sets of 3 in the direction of the emperor. The envoys from places like Vietnam or Korea did this readily as their nations were official tributaries to China and thus the Emperor was the overarching figure for their nations as well as their own emperors. But when Macartney showed up he knew nothing of this entire process. Initially Macartney did not even realize he was supposed to prostrate himself before emperor and when this was explained to him he was unwilling to do it. Because despite the great admiration he had for the Qing Empire, he thought he was an envoy between 2 equal and sovereign nations, he assumed the King of England was on equal footing with Emperor Qianlong. Macartney had never done anything like the kow tow for his own king why should he for a foreign king?   So Macartney expected what he considered a mere ceremony to be waved off and submitted a request for that to be so, which he alleged later he received approval for. But when he arrived at Jehol, Heshen denied ever seeing this request and insisted Macartney must perform the kow two before the emperor. Qing officials at the scene assured Macartney that it was just “a mere exterior and unmeaning ceremony” urging him on. Things began to get messy, Macartney said he would kow tow readily if a Qing official would do the same before a portrait he had brought of King George III. No Qing official would do it, so Macartney tried to compromise, what if he simply bent the knee and head once before Emperor Qianlong. To Mccartneys relief the proposal was accepted. A few more days went by, then on September 14th he was informed he could meet the emperor.   Macartney got into his peacock suit and his entourage marched behind Macartney who was carried on a litter until they made it to the Emperor's ceremonial tent. Macartney entered, carrying a jeweled encrusted golden box containing a letter from King George III. In his own account, Macartney stated he knelt on one knee as agreed and presented the emperor the box and the emperor did not seem in the slightest to have made any commotion about the ritual not being performed. Macartney said “Emperor Qianlong's eyes were full and clear and his countenance was open, despite the dark and gloomy demeanor we had expected to find”. Do not forget as I mentioned in the previous episode, at this point in time the Emperor was its pretty safe to say, very senile. The letter from George III was translated into Chinese carefully by European missionaries who made sure to take out any potentially offensive references, like for example anything about chrisianity. The letter spoke about how Emperor Qianlong “should live and rule for 10s of thousands of years and the word China was elevated one line above the rest of the text whenever it appeared and the name of the emperor was elevated 3 lines above the rest. The letters translation thus had been done in such a way it really did not conform to the letter between 2 equals anymore. Meanwhile while Emperor Qianlong read this, Macartney was simply awed by the tent they were in. In his words “the tapestries, carpets and rich draperies and lanterns were disposed with such harmony, the colors so artfully varied. It was as if he was inside a painting. The commanding feature of the ceremony was the calm dignity that sober pomp of asiatic greatness, which European refinements have not yet attained”. Macartney also went on to mention that he was also not the only envoy present in the tent. There were 6 Muslim enovys from tributary states near the Caspian sea an a Hindu envoy from Burma and they had allow performed the kow tow.    Emperor Qianlong asked Heshen if any of the English could speak Chinese and the son of British diplomat George Staunton stepped forward. The 12 year old boy named George stepped towards the throne and according to his diary “I spoke some Chinese words to him and thanked him for the presents”. Emperor Qianlong was apparently charmed by this and took a purse from his own waist to give to him as a token of his esteem. That little boy became the first Englishman after James Flint to cross the wall of language between Britain and China and it would shape his life after. After the meeting, Macartney and his entourage were allowed to stay in Jehol for a few days and were fortunate enough to partake in the emperor's birthday banquet. On September 21st, disaster struck when a member of Macartney's entourage died, a gunner named Reid. It was the day before their departure date and apparently Reid had eaten 40 apples for breakfast, which I have to say is one of the most bizarre rationales for a death I've ever heard. Regardless, the Qing assumed off the bat the man died of some contagious disease and urged them all to leave with haste.    Meanwhile in Peking, the Balloonist/scientist Mr Dinwiddie had been busy prepared all the scientific instruments for demonstrations awaiting Emperor Qianlong's return from Jehol at the end of september. He had begun filling a grand hall of the imperial palace outside the city of Beijing with globes, clocks, telescopes, the air pump for the balloon and such. He had signed a contract basically stating he could never return home and would be stuck as a foreigner in a small part of Beijing. Regardless he got everything ready for the emperor's visit. When the emperor came on October the 1st he showed no particular emotion as he toured the hall according to Dinwiddie. Upon looking through a telescope for roughly 2 minutes the emperor alleged stated “it was good enough to amuse children” and simply left. Heshen and other Qing officials came to see the wonders and showed a bit more interest. Unfortunately the hot air balloon demonstration was to be the grand finale in the course of a few days but never came to fruition, because all of a sudden on October the 6th the Emperor ordered all the British to leave. Everything was hastily packed up and every man by October 7th was being pushed out as the embassy mission was sent away from Peking. Once on the road out of Peking it dawned upon them all the embassy mission was a failure. As one British servant put it “we entered Peking like paupers; we remained in it like prisoners; and we quitted it like vagrants”.    Macartney had no idea how much he had offended the emperor with his negotiations. Back on september 10th, 4 days before they met the Emperor, Qianlong was always fuming mad about the English ambassadors dragging of the feet about the kow tow. In fact at that time Emperor Qianlong simply told his officials he would keep the promise to have the meetings, but as far as he was concerned they best be gone afterwards. Qianlong prior had planned to have them stay a long time to enjoy the sights of Jehol but “given the presumption and self important display by the English ambassador, they should be sent from Jehol immediately after the banquet, given 2 days to get to Peking to pack up their belongs and go. When foreigners who come seeking audience with me are sincere and submissive then I always treat them with kindness. But if they come in arrogance they get nothing”. On October 3rd, just a few days before they were ordered out, Macartney received the official response to King George III's letter, unfortunately it was in Chinese and he was unable to translate it for some time. It stated that the request for the British ambassador to remain at the capital was not consistent with the customs of the empire and therefore could not be allowed. And here is the kicker in regards to trade and the gifts he said “I accepted the gifts not because I wanted them, but merely, as tokens of your own affectionate regard for me. In truth the greatness and splendor of the Chinese empire have spread its fame far and wide, and as foreign nations, from a thousand parts of the world, crowd hither over mountains and seas, to pay us their homage and bring us the rarest and most precious offerings, what is it that we can want here? Strange and costly objects do not interest me. We possess all things. I set no value on objects strange or ingenious, and have no use for your countries manufactures”. Oomphf there was a second little part after that went “we have never needed trade with foreign countries to give us anything we lacked. Tea, porcelain and silk are essential needs for countries like England that do not have such things and out of grace the dynasty had long permitted foreign merchants to come to Canton to purchase these goods. To satisfy your needs and to allow you to benefit from our surplus. England is but one of many countries that comes to trade in Canton and if we were to give Britain special treatment, then we would have to give it to all the others as well”.   Macartney was furious and wrote extensively enroute back home. “Can they be ignorant, that a couple of English frigates would be an overmatch for the whole naval force of their empire, that in half a summer they could totally destroy the navigation of their coasts and reduce the inhabitants of the maritime provinces, who subsist chiefly on fish, to absolute famine? We could destroy the Tiger's mouth forts guarding the river passage to Canton with just half a dozen boardsides and annihilate the Canton trade that employs millions of Chinese”. Yet despite all his military bravado talk, if Britain were at this time to make any aggression against China it would immediately result in them shutting down their trade. If that was allowed to happen both the economies of Britain and British held India would suffer tremendous economic damage. Thus Macartney knew the best course of action was to be patient and try try and try again.   So the Macartney mission ended in embarrassment. Macartney would tell those back in Britain “The empire of China is an old crazy first-rate man of war, which a fortunate succession of able and vigilant offers has contrived to keep afloat for these hundred and fifty years past; and to overawe their neighbors, merely by her bulk and appearance. She may perhaps not sink outright, she may drift some time as a wreck, and will then be dashed in pieces on the shore; but she can never be rebuilt on the old bottom”. Very dark and ominous words indeed. Prior to Macartney's report those had this perception of China to be the model of stable and virtuous government. But Macartney ranted that “the tyranny of a handful of Tartars over more than 300 millions of Chinese. And those Chinese subjects would not suffer the odium of a foreign yoke for much longer. A revolution was coming”. Macartney would elaborate further on what he believed to be the socio-political situation in China. “I often perceived the ground to be hollow under a vast superstructure and in trees of the most stately and flourishing appearance I discovered symptoms of speedy decay. The huge population of Han Chinese were just recovering blows that had stunned them they are awaking from the political stupor they had been thrown into by the Tartar impression, and begin to feel their native energie revive. A slight collision might elicit fire from the flint, and spread the flames of revolt from one extremity of China to the other. I should not be surprised if its dislocation or dismemberment were to take place before my own dissolution”. Please take note this is all coming from a bitterly anger man who, yes traveled the country for months, but he had not seen the interior of China. He could not speak or read the language and knew nothing of the culture. And yet he was almost 100% prophetic in what would occur.    Now as I went into with the past episode, the Qianlong Emperor was very old and going senile. When Macartney met with him, Qianlong had just turned 82 and had ruled for over 58 years an incredible reign. And despite the show the emperor had put on about never needing western trade, in reality he was deeply fascinated by western inventions. He cherished his collection of 70 British clocks and wrote poems about them and about western telescopes. Likewise he kept multiple western art pieces and employed many westerners in his court. Above all else he understood the value of China's foreign trade at Canton, because a significant portion of the tariff income fed his imperial household. The canton trade was also a primary source of silver import of which China was the largest importer of silver since the 1600s. Foreigners came and were forced to trade with silver if they wanted tea or porcelain. Tea, Tea is the crucial component of this story.   In 1664 King Charles II received 2 lbs of black, strange smelling leaves from China. Less than half a century later, tea became Britain's beverage of choice with an annual consumption of 12 million pounds per year. By 1785, Britain was importing 15 million lbs of tea per year from China. The people of Britain were literally addicted China's tea, which might I add is a mild stimulant. More so the British government became economically dependent on tea and the Exchequer levied a 100 percent import tax upon it whoa. Although China purchased some British goods like clocks, it was nothing compared to the British need for tea. Between 1710 to 1759 the imbalance of trade was enormous, literally draining Britain of its silver, because that was after all the only form of payment China accepted. During this time, Britain paid 26 million in silver to China, but sold only 9 million in goods.    Now lets talk a bit more about how this trade was being down in Canton. It was the East India Company who was given a monopoly over the tea trade in China. I mentioned the Cohong or sometimes called simply Hong merchants. They were directly in charge of the Canton trade, holding a monopoly over it. All western trade had to come through them, if you were a foreign ship, your cargo had to be guaranteed by a Hong merchant before it could sail up river to port Canton. Only a Hong merchant could rent you a warehouse or arrange for you any and all purchases for tea, silk and such. Personal relationships were thus key and having a friendship with any Hong merchant was immensely valuable. Hong merchants were accountable for the conduct of all foreing personnel. If some foreigner got drunk and beat up a local, the Hong merchant was held responsible, and this did in fact happen often. The Hong merchants were a small group, typically no more than a dozen any given time. As you can imagine with such a small group controlling the full trade between China and western nations, the opportunities for both sides merchants to become abundantly rich was enormous. However there was a ton of risk for the Hong since they took all the risk. Regardless the Hong merchants were some of the richest men in China, but they also went bankrupt regularly. Why was this, well because of their access to capital it made them primary targets for other government officials to squeeze.    You see despite their monopoly on the trade, the Hong merchants were almost always in a precarious situation. Their appointment and finance was done via the Hoppo. Also the social status of merchants within traditional confucianism was very low and the Hong merchants were at the mercy of other Qing officials. This led the Hong merchants to be forced to pay numerous bribes to said officials. More often than naught to get an appointment as a Hong came with a literal downpayment for the officials who got you the job! The Hong merchants were squeezed left right and center by countless officials in a pecking system built upon corruption and greed.    The senior superintendent of foreign trade at Canton was a Imperial customs commissioner known to the westerners as the “hoppo”. The hoppo reported directly to the board of revenue in Beijing and it was the Hoppo who was responsible for ensuring a proper flow of tariff income back to Beijing. The position of Hoppo was one of the greatest opportunities to get filthy rich.   Before the White Lotus rebellion the Qing silver surplus was a whopping 70 million taels, but over the course of the war it is estimated the Qing treasury would pay something like 100 million taels in silver. Then came another disaster.    The Napoleonic wars had a tremendous impact on the world, not limited to just the war itself. As the war grinding on, Britain was pressed for funds to finance its war against France and this led them to squeeze the East India Company harder. The British government began raising its tax on the company's tea in 1795, then again in 1802 where it reached 50%, then again in 1806 to a whopping 96% and by 1819 it would be 100%. The growing British tax on the company's tea led it to become a possible 1/10th of Britain's national revenue. As you can imagine with those numbers, the importance of maintaining the trade with Canton became a matter of national interest.    While the Qing dynasty spent millions of taels mobilizing armies to quell the white lotus rebellion, the British likewise spent millions during its war against france. Britain would spend around 12 times more than its previous 22 year war with France and ran up a monstrous national debt. By the time Napoleon was defeated, Britain had doubled the size of the royal navy and it was the most powerful maritime force in the world. Britain acquired more territories to expand its enormous empire. By 1820 the British Empire would control roughly a quarter of the world's population, almost rivaling China. The emperor of China, Jiaqing was forced to slash the budgets of things such as the military after the internal rebellion was over. In expectation for an era of peace for the empire, the emperor effectively had to mortgage the future improvement of China's military to simply stabilize the country.   Now Britain's tea fix needed to be met, but its silver was depleted. The Napoleonic war and the American revolution had drained Britain of its silver reserve, how was Britain going to get the tea? The British needed to find something the Chinese were willing to pay for in silver and the British would find what that in Opium. The British were not the first importers of Opium into China. Arab merchants had been selling opium cultivated in what is modern day turkey since the middle ages. It was primarily used for medicinal purposes, such as being used as a constipation drug to stop diarrhea, quite a useful thing to have to fight off dysentery which reeks its ugly head during times of conflict. In 1659 the East India Company began to export it in limited quantities from Bengal India. The East India Company had a monopoly over the trade with India and tried to prevent the business of opium importing to China since it was illegal and could interfere with the company's legitimate trade. However to get tea required silver and when the silver began to dry up the East India Company's tolerance for the illicit business began to loosen.    In 1782 the East India Company turned its eyes away and allowed the export of 3450 chests of opium. Each chest for reference weighed around 170 lbs, about the size of a small footlocker. 2 ships carried the illegal cargo and enroute 1 of them was captured by the French with the other arrived in Macao. The Chinese merchants refused to purchase the illegal contraband until the price was dropped to 210$ per chest. To break even the British needed to sell a chest at around 500$, it was a complete disaster. The British merchants ended up dumping most of their cargo at a loss in Malaysia for a price of around 340$. There were no eager buyers for opium in China in 1782 and this showcases the lack of users or better said addicts. Nonetheless the Qing government made a decree in 1799 condemning the illicit trade “foreigners obviously derive the most solid profits and advantages, but that our countrymen should pursue this destructive and ensnaring vice is indeed odious and deplorable”. The East India Company proclaimed it was forbidding British ships to carry the illicit cargo, because remember they had to make sure the Canton market remained open to britain. Yet this did not stop the East India company from selling opium within India to independent British and Indian merchants who in turn might smuggle the drugs into China. Its not the East India company after all and the company could see no other way to acquire silver to buy the tea Britain needed.    In 1773 opium earned the company 39,000 pounds, in 1793 opium earned them 250,000 pounds. The idea was working and the trade imbalance was soon shifting. By 1806 to 1809 China would pay out 7 million in silver for opium. During the first 2 decades of the 19th century opium addiction grew in China at a slow pace. The East India Company kept the price of the illicit substance artificially high, which meant only the upper class in China could afford it. The East India Company was doing its best not to antagonize the Qing government, IE: not rubbing their nose in the illicit trade, thus it did not increase imports and lower prices. Around 5000 chests were being sold per year and this stabilized the trade imbalance between Britain and China, no longer was Britain simply losing its silver to China, nor was China being depleted dry.    Then a technological innovation in Britain completely shattered the equilibrium. The invention of the steam engine in the previous century resulted in the mechanized production of cotton. Soon England had flooded the market with mass produced textiles and the surplus of this found its way to a very eager Indian market. Those merchants paid for the product in cash, but how do you think they got the cash? Bingo opium cultivation and with it the need to sell more of it. So as a result more and more opium began to flood into China, but it still had to go through the bottleneck of Canton.    Problems began to occur which affected the Canton trade. The Napoleonic wars began to send ripples throughout the world and one place that was affected was Macao in 1808. The British in Canton heard rumors that France was sending troops to occupy Macao. The British wanted to preemptively respond and sent a naval fleet under Rear Admiral William Drury in September of 1808. Drury sent a letter informing the Portuguese governor at Macao that he intended to occupy the city to which the governor refused him and began to appeal to the Chinese governor general for protection. On september 21st Drury landing 300 marines who quickly seized the shore batteries at Macao with no resistance being made by the Portuguese. However the Chinese governor general ordered a shutdown of the British trade in Canton, uh oh. The East India company had to pull full cargo ships out immediately and abandon their factory in Canton. Drury in response brought an additional 700 marines from India to occupy Macao. The Chinese governor general warned Drury if they did not withdraw, the fleet and all British residents in Macao would be cut off from food supplies. Drury panicked, he had not intended to start a war, nor were his orders remotely authorized to do so!   When Emperor Jiaqing got news of the British invasion of Macao he was furious to say the least. Emperor Jiaqing issued an edict to the governor general in Canton “such a brutal eruption at Macao indicates an affrontery without limit. To invoke such a pretext is to freely insult the Chinese Empire. It is important in any case to raise considerable troops, attack the foreigners, and exterminate them. In this way, they will understand that the seas of China are forbidden to them!”. So the governor general ordered 8000 troops at Canton to man the coastal forts in the vicinity in preparation for war. Drury got the news of this and knew the Canton trade could be shut off for good stating “it would exclude the English forever, from the most advantageous monopoly it possesses in the Universe”. So Admiral Drury backed down, refusing to risk war with China. Drury took the marines out, but left some ships in the hope trade in Canton would soon be restored. And thus 6 days later the Qing governor general restored trade in Canton, phew crisis averted.   Another rather unusual conflict occured when a British christian missionary named Thomas Manning attempted to enter into China by land. Manning had tried asking the Hoppo for permission to visit Beijing as a scientist envoy but it was refused as the Emperor had plenty of western scientists at his disposal. The frustrated Manning then began to climb aboard East India company ships going around Vietnam, to see if he could find a way to sneak into China via Vietnam roads. This did not pan out so he struck out at another place to get into China, Tibet. Manning went to Tibet pretending to be a Buddhist lama from India and would you believe it he got an audience with the Dalai Lama on december 17 of 1811. He climbed hundreds of steps and met with the Dalai Lama whom he described “His face was, I thought, poetically and effectively beautiful. He was of a gay and cheerful disposition; his beautiful mouth perpetually unbending into a graceful smile, which illuminated his whole countenance. Sometimes, particularly when he had looked at me, his smile almost approached a gentle laugh”. After meeting the Dalai Lama, Manning hoped to be granted permission to make the 1500 mile journey to Beijing, but this would not occur. In the holy city of Lhasa he was apprehended by the local Qing officials and quasi imprisoned until Emperor Jiaqing could be informed and send orders as to what to do. Orders finally came in February of 1812 to deport Manning and raise border security in response to this incursion.    Then in 1813 problems reeked their ugly head yet again for British-Chinese relations. The Emperor had reduced the number of Hong merchants that the British were allowed to do business with. The larger issue at hand was the War of 1812 which brought with it conflict between Britain and American ships around the waters of Canton. At this time the Americans were second only to the British in the size of their commerce in Canton. The US lacked cruisers to convoy their merchant ships and thus began arming the merchants ships into privateers. The US ships also tried to simply avoid the British by not landing at the same time intervals, but all of this would not avoid conflict. In march of 1814 the British frigate Doris captured a 300 ton American privateer, the USS Hunter and took her to Macao as a prize. 2 months later the Doris hunted down the USS Russel up the Pearl River near the Whampia anchorage just a few miles shy of Whampoa city. They fired upon another while another US ships the Sphynx was boarded and captured. More raids continued from both sides and the conflict greatly angered the Chinese authorities. Eventually the Qing governor general cut off supplies and suspended trade with both nations demanding they behave themselves.    The British merchants in Canton complained they had nothing to do with the Royal Navy, but the Chinese authorities would not hear it. Some minor conflicts occured in Canton and the British felt they had been wronged. The East India Company began to demand the British government send an embassy to remedy the entire situation. So Britain answered the plea and sent another embassy mission in 1816. Lord William Pitt Amherst, Earl Amherst of Arracan was born in 1773 in Bath. His father was General William Amherst and his uncle was Field Marshall Sir Jeffrey Amherst who had a distinguished military career including being the governor general of British north America after defeating Nouvelle France in 1760. Little Williams mother died and the widowed father would take care of William and his sister for awhile until in 1781 when he also died. William would end up living with his uncle in the Amherst estate in Montreal where I happen to live near. William would eventually go to oxford and became an accomplished linguist learning several languages. Eventually he landed a job as ambassador to Sicily and by the end of the Napleonic wars he was made a Privy Councillor. He proved to be able enough and was soon sent as Ambassador with Plenipotentiary to negotiate with the Qing Dynasty in 1816.    The China Amherst encountered in 1816 was very different compared to the one Lord Macrtney had visited. The Emperor was Jiaqing, the dynasty had quelled the White Lotus Rebellion, quite a few smaller revolts and had a real problem with pirates along the coast. Emperor Jiaqing had a loose hold over the empire and was not about to let some foreign power further threaten it.    Amherst was a bit of an odd choice to lead the mission. He was considered a dull, but well mannered man who was not very talented in public speaking. Neither brilliant nor particularly handsome, just hailed from an excellent family. Amherst brought with him 2 familiar faces, the former little boy who had courageously spoken to Emperor Qianlong, George Staunton, who was now an adult. George had been working for the East India Company in Canton and had mastered the Chinese language and learnt much of its culture. The second ws Thomas Manning after his great Tibet adventure. Amherst's departure would be 6 months after the Duke of Wellington's victory at Waterloo in June of 1815. Thus Amherst would be coming to China to inform them that the nearly continuous warfare between Britain and France for the past 22 years had finally come to an end. Amherst was instructed to make it clear to the Chinese that Great Britain was now the unrivaled dominant military power in Europe. The Amherst mission also was to remedy the Canton situation, but the perspective from Britain was quite off. They thought Emperor Jiaqing knew relatively not much about the ongoings in places like Canton, and if they simply came and complained about mistreatment that he would just offhand discipline the officials in Canton and place the British in a better position.The Emperor however was hardly oblivious to the ongoings in Canton, in fact he was paying a ton of attention to it. The Emperor had ordered investigation into the Canton situation over the past few years Emperor Jiaqing was particularly taking an interest into George Staunton who he viewed as a potential trouble maker in China, because the man had vast knowledge now of the language and culture and might induce more westerners to do the same. For certain the emperor was not pleased at all to find out Thomas Manning was coming as he had deported him and it was to be presumed Manning should never step foot back in China ever again. So the entourage was already doomed to fail.   As the entourage made their way, Amherst reported that the Qing dynasty seemed to have declined significantly compared to what Macartney had reported long ago. The entourage had learnt of the White Lotus rebellion and how suppressing it nearly bankrupt the Qing government. The entourage became rather bold and instead of waiting at the island of Chusan, Amherst ships, accompanied by 2 East India Company surveying vessels divided themselves into task forces and went to work dropping the embassy team off  at the White River. Soon some of the vessels began to explore the river networks going as far north to where the Great Wall meets the coast of Manchuria, sailed around the Liaodong Peninsula and parts of the Yalu river, very bold moves. They also took notes of the villages, populations and geology of their ventures. They particularly noted down the lack of military installations.    Both the Amherst mission and the Qing court intended to use the Macartney mission as a precedent, but neither communicated how they should go about it. What really loomed over the entire affair was the issue of the Kow Tow. Now Amherst was coming into this with less radical requests than Macartney. They were not asking for a permanent ambassador at the capital, nor the opening of new ports. They just wanted some kind of provision for direct communication between the East India Company staff in Canton and a high ranking official in Beijing in order to circumvent the troubles they had been having with the Hoppo and governor general of canton. They also wanted to be allowed to do business with others aside from the Hong merchants. Officials from Beijing met with Amherst as soon as the British ships anchored at the mouth of the white river in early august. They escorted him along the way, but also asked him to Kowtow in front of a piece of yellow silk that represented the emperor. They wanted to see that the man understood how to do the kowtow. Amherst was given instructions from the British government simply to do what he thinks best in the situation of the kow towing issue, but to make sure the mission was a success. Thus the first time he was asked to do it he refused and stated that since Macartney did not kow tow why should he. The Qing officials were confused and said as far as they knew Macartney did kow tow to the emperor in 1793. Then they reminded Amherst the Emperor Jiaqing was present in 1793 and would have seen it occur, best he kow tow as well. George Staunton told Amherst they were mistaken and that he never saw Macartney kow tow. As you can imagine it was now a case of Emperor Jiaqing's word against Staunton, a man the emperor did not like. Amherst was in a bad situation, so he simply stated he would do the kow tow when the time came, but stressed he would do it on one knee and not two. He tried to compromise by offering to kiss the emperors hand which utterly disgusted the Qing officials. The highest ranking Qing official escorting the foreigners was Heshitai, brother in law to Emperor Jaiqing. He told Amherst he had to bow on both knees or he would be expelled from the capital without audience.   The entourage made it just a mile outside Beijing where crowds of spectators began assembling on the sides of the roads to see their approach. They made their way to the eastern gate at night and the massive walls astounded them. They road in springless wooden carts, a quite uncomfortable ride at that. Amherst was told his audience would take place immediately and in fact he was actually late for it. Amherst panicked he was not ready, he was fatigued and unkept, his baggage had not even arrived yet which held his coronation robes for the occasion. He did not even have the letter from the prince regent to be given to the Emperor! Heshitai told him he had to go now, but Amherst refused. Amherst demanded they be given time to clean up, gather their baggage and rest. Heshitai eventually got another Qing official to grab hold of Amherst and dragged him to see the emperor.    It is here we get many conflicting stories about what goes down. In a classical one it is said, the Qing officials grab Amherst in the middle of the night when he is disoriented and try to force him to kow tow in a private room, hoping the half asleep man would just do it. Apparently Staunton grabs Amherst by the elbow before he can do the deed and they suddenly leave the place before seeing the emperor. A lot of unanswered questions to be sure. In another story the try to get Amherst to go see the emperor, but he simply refuses and him and his entourage basically fight their way out of their lodgings and leave on the evening of November 13. Regardless what is important to know is the British entourage and Emperor Jiaqing have no idea whats going on at all, they are both at the mercy of reports from the middle men, IE:  the escort officials like Heshitai.   During the slow journey back south to Canton, one of their ships, the Alceste had bombarded a Chinese fort guarding the Tiger's Mouth river entrance to Canton! Dozens of shots were fired and it is said 47 Chinese soldiers were killed. The Alceste had returned from surveying the Pearl river when the captain Murray Maxwell requested permission to sail up to the Whampoa anchorage so it could make repairs on the ship before picking up Amherst's entourage on their way back. Maxwell alleges he was taunted by the Qing representative to the governor general who told him that Amherst had been sent away from the capital without an audience. Murray Maxwell was thus denied permission to go to the Whampoa anchorage and was forced to wait on an outlying island. After a week of waiting, Maxwell had had it and decided to force up the river without permission. As soon as the Alceste began sailing it was confronted by a Chinese fleet and soon a fire fight. The Alceste began blasting away the Chinese coastal defenses, working her way up the river channel to get to Whampoa anchorage.    Both the British entourage and Emperor Jiaqing were mystified as to what happened. The Emperor sent his personal doctor to see to Amherst whom he had assumed must be very sick for missing the meeting only to find out the man was perfectly healthy. After some investigation the Emperor realized the entire debacle was the fault of the escorting officials, above all Heshitai! It turns out the Emperor had been lied to by the escorting officials and fed false reports. The British blamed the emperor for the entire misadventure. The Emperor was livid by everything, but there was a saving grace to the embarrassment on his nation's part, the embarrassment of the Alceste ordeal. When the Alceste made it to Whampoa the governor generals welcomed the ship as if nothing had ever happened. The Emperor sent conciliatory edicts and gifts for the King of England. The Emperor also sent a letter to the king, but he had written it before his investigation of all the matters and thus wrote that he blamed Amherst for the entire ordeal.   The mission was a catastrophe. Trade would continue unaffected, but now both nations had been humiliated. Now the Chinese would look with more suspicion at the British and the British hopes for extending trade outside the canton system were dashed. As quite a fitting end to the entire ordeal, the Alceste which was carrying Amherst and his retinue back to England slammed into a rock and sank. England's response to the Amherst mission was disappointment. The entire situation aided one group of people in Britain, those who sought to abolish the East India Company's monopoly over the China trade. One major critic of the Amherst mission was Napoleon Bonaparte exiled on Saint Helena in 1817. He thought it was ridiculous that such an ordeal came about because the British fretted over kow towing. But he ended his statements with this “It would be the worst thing you have done for a number of years, to go to war with an immense empire like China, what might happen if the dragon, as it were, should be awakened? You would doubtless, at first, succeed…but you would teach them their own strength. They would be compelled to adopt measures to defend themselves against you; they would consider, and say, ‘we must try to make ourselves equal to this nation. Why should we suffer a people, so far away, to do as they please to us? We must build ships, we must put guns into them, we must render ourselves equal to them.' They would get artificers, and ship builders, from France, and America, and even from London; they would build a fleet,and, in the course of time, defeat you.”    I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me.  The attempts at opening up more trade with China were disastrous and embarrassing for Britain. She needed her tea fix, but her silver reserves were depleted and thus the East India Company began to deal in opium. How could this possibly all go wrong?

The Chinese Empire lasted nearly four thousand years. It saw the rise and fall of numerous dynasties and hundreds of Emperors. But only one woman who would rise to sit upon the imperial throne and rule over all of China in her own name... Empress Wu Zhao According to ancient chroniclers she was a vicious tyrant, monstrous and inhuman. But modern archeological finds paint a more complicated picture: that of a woman who, ruling over the largest empire in the world, did what she believed was necessary for her own glory and the glory of China.

From the heart of the Mongolian steppe, to North China's loess plateaus; from the rugged edges of Northern India, to the hot sands of Syria and the Levant, to humid jungles in southeastern Asia, rocky islands off the coast of Japan, the high peaks of the Caucasus, Himalayas, Altai, Tien Shan and Carpathian Mountains, to the frozen rivers  in Rus' granting access to Eastern Europe, and everywhere in between.  Our series on the Mongol Empire has taken you across Eurasia, meeting all sorts of figures; the brutal Tamerlane, the indefatigable Sultan Baybars, the brave if shortsighted Jalal al-Din Mingburnu and his foolish father Muhammad Khwarezmshah; the cunning Jia Sidao, the silver-tongued Qiu Chuji, the thorough scholar Rashid al-Din, and travellers like John de Plano Carpini, William of Rubruck, and Ibn Battuta, to the exhausted but noble-hearted Yelü Chücai. And of course, the Mongols themselves: the powerful Öz Beğ, Khan of the Golden Horde; the thorough and pious convert Ghazan Il-Khan; the scheming Du'a of the Chagatais, the stout Qaidu Khan of the Ögedaids, to the Great Khans of the thirteenth century, the most powerful of men; Khubilai, whose hands scrambled for more until his body and empire failed his ambitions; his brother Möngke, whose steely determination sought to solidify the empire at all costs, no matter the bloodshed; Güyük, a reluctant and unfortunate man to ascend to the throne; his mother Törögene, whose fierce will forced her son to that same throne; Ögedai, a drunk who despite his failings built the infrastructure of the empire. And of course, Chinggis himself; once a scared boy in the steppes, turned into the greatest conqueror of them all. Today we end our journey with the Empire of the Great Khans, and reflect on the passage of the Chinggisids. I'm your host David, and this is Kings and Generals, Ages of Conquest.       Back in our first episode, we highlighted certain trends to look for over the course of this series. The first emphasized looking for the middle ground between the Mongols as inherently evil or good forces, but as people whose expansion was rooted in historical events and personages. The second was the struggles that came with the management of a world empire, and the need to rely on non-Mongolian subject peoples—Chinese, Central Asian Muslims, Persians, Turks and others. The third was the struggle for the purpose of the empire; should it be continued conquest, or consolidation and serving the needs of the imperial princes. This was the balance between the Khan and his central government, or the Chinggisid and military aristocrats. The fourth was the steady assimilation, particularly Turkification, of the Mongols outside of Mongolia, as Mongolian was replaced as the language of administration, legitimacy and finally, among the ruling family itself, even while retaining the Mongolian imperial ideology.        Regarding the first theme, we have sought to highlight in our many discussions of sources their often complicated, conflicting portrayals or events and persons. While authors like Ibn al-Athir, Nasawi and Juzjani had little good to say about the Mongols or Chinggis Khan, and fit well with the popular model the destructive brute, we've also looked at many sources which had more positive portrayals of the khans. Some of these are rather obvious, imperial-produced sources such as the Secret History of the Mongols, but even sources from outside the empire could give glowing reviews of Chinggis Khan. For instance, the fourteenth century English writer Geoffrey Chaucer, in the Squire's Tale of his famous Canterbury Tales, opens with the following lines:   At Tzarev in the land of Tartary There dwelt a king at war with Muscovy Which brought the death of many a doughty man This noble king was known as Cambuskan And in his time enjoyed such great renown That nowhere in that region up or down Was one so excellent in everything; Nothing he lacked belonging to a king.       Written at the same time as Toqtamish Khan of the Golden Horde was fighting for control of that Khanate, here Chaucher remembered Chinggis Khan not as a bloodthirsty barbarian, but as a monarch embodying all ideal qualities of kingship. Chaucer continues thusly;   As to the faith in which he had been born He kept such loyalties as he had sworn, Then he was powerful and wise and brave, Compassionate and just, and if he gave His word he kept it, being honourable, The same to all, benevolent, and stable As is a circle's centre; and in fight As emulous as any squire or knight. Young personable, fresh and fortunate, Maintaining such a kingliness of state There never was his match in mortal man, This noble king, this Tartar Cambuskan.        For writers in fourteenth century England, obviously distant from the Mongol Empire itself, it was not unbecoming to idealize the portrayal of Chinggis Khan. This is not to say that Chaucher's description is accurate, or necessarily reflects any actual qualities about the man or any of his descendants. But rather, it reflects historical perception. How an individual is perceived by contemporaries, history, and modern people often bears little resemblance to actual details of the individual.  Instead, people will contort an image for whatever use suits their current purposes, context and political climate. Thus, warlords from the late imperial, and post-Mongol world styled Chinggis' image to suit their needs. In Central Asia Chinggisid descent remained one of the most prestigious, and necessary, requirements for rulership up until the nineteenth century in some areas. This was problematic though with the spread of Islam, given that Chinggis Khan's actual life produced very few episodes to nicely accommodate an Islamic narrative. Certain Persian writings during the Ilkhanate sought to fix this by making Chinggis a Muslim in all but name. On the tomb of Tamerlane, an inscription likely added during the reign of his grandson Ulugh Beğ, makes Tamerlane a descendant of both the Prophet Muhammad and of Chinggis Khan. Later post-imperial authors had a more direct solution; simply making Chinggis Khan outright a Muslim. As the destruction of the conquests slipped further back in time, this became easier and easier to accomplish.    Religion was not the only aspect which can be molded, for Chinggis' very status as a Mongol becomes malleable in state efforts to construct national mythos, in both medieval and modern settings. Today, you can find countries where official propaganda, or influential theorists, incorporate Chinggis into the desired story of their nation-state. In China, there remains a significant Mongolian population, largely in what the Chinese call the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region, the land south of the Gobi desert but north of the mountains which divide it from the North China plain. The Chinese government has taken to presenting China's non-Han peoples, Mongols among them, more or less as Chinese minority peoples and actively encourages their adoption of the state-language, Mandarin, and Han Chinese culture. In this view, the Mongol conquests are sometimes presented as a period of national reunification rather than foreign conquest. The efforts of Khubilai Khaan to legitimize the Yuan Dynasty based on Chinese dynastic legal precedent becomes the quote-on-quote “historical evidence,” that Chinggis Khan was actually Chinese, or that in fact, the Mongol conquerors were fully assimilated into the Chinese population and culture. The borders of the Yuan Dynasty served to justify later Chinese territorial claims in Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, Manchuria, Tibet and Yunnan; places that were, before the Mongols, inconsistently in the Chinese sphere of influence, but since the conquests have often remained dominated by empires based in China. Not coincidentally, such narratives serve to support the narrative of 5,000 years of a continuous Chinese Empire, and remove the sting that may accompany the embarrassment of being conquered by perceived barbarians.    Likewise, various Turkic peoples, most notably Kazakhs, Tatars, and Anatolian Turks, have sought to claim Chinggis as their own, and there are even groups in Korea and Japan that will argue that Chinggis was actually one of theirs. The Japanese version has Chinggis as the Samurai Minamoto no Yoshitsune, who faked his death and fled Japan for the steppe! Khubilai's later invasions of Japan again become not foreign assaults, but attempts at national reunification or the efforts by Yoshitsune's descendants to return home. And of course, fringe groups even in Europe and Russia which, refusing to believe a barbarian horseman could conquer such great states, insist that Chinggis was actually a red-haired, green-eyed man of European ancestry. Such claims often include vague references to the mummies of the Tarim Basin, who bore some features associated with Caucasian populations. The fact that these mummies pre-date Chinggis by millenia is often conveniently left out. All of these people care much more about ethnic categorization than Chinggis himself likely ever did.        Just as religion or ethnicity can be forced to fit certain agendas, so too can portrayal as barbarian or saviour. In Mongolia today, Chinggis Khan's unification of the Mongols, his introduction of a writing system, religious tolerance, laws and stability are most heavily emphasized. For building a post-soviet national identity, obviously these are useful attributes to appeal to for the desired national character. But the Mongolian governmet also tends to gloss over the aspects less appreciated in the twenty-first century: namely, the destruction of people and property on a massive scale, mass-rapes, towers of skulls and wars of conquest. The fact that Mongolia's two neighbours, Russia and China, suffered particularly under Mongol onslaughts, also avoids some diplomatic hurdles to step past these military aspects. For most of the twentieth century during Mongolia's years as a Soviet satellite state, Chinggis was largely pushed aside, framed as a feudal lord. Instead, Mongolia's hero of the 1921 socialist revolution, Damdin Sükhbaatar, became the preferred national icon. After Mongolia was democratized in the 1990s after the fall of the USSR, Chinggis Khan has seen a massive resurgence in popularity. Today, Chinggis and Sükhbaatar remain national icons, with monuments to both throughout the country. Outside Mongolia's parliament, the main square has changed names from Sükhbaatar to Chinggis Square, and since back to Sükhbaatar square. An equestrian statue to Sükhbaatar sits in the middle of that square. More than a few foreign observers had mistakenly called this a statue of Chinggis. In fact, only a few metres away from the equestrian statue of Sükhbaatar sits a massive Chinggis Khan on a throne flanked by his generals, at the top of the steps leading into Mongolia's parliament. In a way it is metaphorical. No matter how prominent any later hero of Mongolia may be, he will always stand in the shadow of Chinggis Khan.  And that's not even mentioning the 40 metre tall silver monstrosity about 50 kilometres outside of Ulaanbaatar. Speaking of state narratives, much of the cost for this statue was covered by the company owned by Khaltmaagin Battulga, a former professional sambo wrestler who from 2017-2021 served as the fifth President of Mongolia.       Outside of Mongolia though, Chinggis and the Mongol Empire remain a top-point of reference to paint someone in the most unfavourable light. One of the highest level cases of recent years was when the President of Iraq, the late Saddam Hussein, compared former US President George W. Bush to Hülegü, Chinggis' grandson and conqueror of Baghdad. The American bombing and capture of Baghdad, and ensuing tragedies that Iraq as suffered in the aftermath of the campaign, have only solidified the connection for a number of Muslims.  Meanwhile Russian television and education tend to present the Mongols in a style comparable to Zack Snyder's film 300, such as the 2017 Russian film Легенда о Коловрате [Legenda O Kolovrate], also known as Furious. Like the Spartans in the film or Frank Miller's graphic novel, the Rus' soldiers are presented as formidable warriors fighting monstrous, untrained hordes from the east. Only through sheer numbers or trickery do the disgusting Orientals overcome the pasty-white heroes of the story— though few of the heroes in the Russian films have Scottish accents. Russia has turned the so-called Tatar Yoke into a catch-all to explain any perceived deficiencies compared to western Europe, from government absolutism to alcoholism. Not only the Russians have employed the comparison: “scratch a Russian and you'll find a Tatar,” Napoleon Bonaparte is supposed to have quipped. And in 2018 the Wall Street Journal released a particularly poorly written article, which compared the political machinations of current president Vladimir Putin as “Russia's turn to its Asian past,” accompanied by vague comparisons to the Mongols and an awful portrait of Putin drawn in Mongolian armour. In contrast, the Russian Defence Minister, at the time of writing, is Sergei Shoigu, a fellow of Tuvan descent who is alleged to enjoy comparisons of himself to Sübe'edei, the great Mongol general popularly, though inaccurately, portrayed as a Tuvan. The 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, essentially a good old-fashioned war of conquests accompanied by war crimes and destruction of cities, has also earned many comparisons to the Mongol conquests by many online commentators. Though unlike the Russians, the Mongols actually took Kyiv.   Somewhat surprisingly, most cinematic portrayals of Chinggis himself lean towards sympathetic or heroic. One of the most recent is a 2018 Chinese film entitled Genghis Khan in English, which features a slim Chinese model in the titular role, and one of his few depictions without any facial hair. In that film he battles a bunch of skeletons and monsters, and it could be best described as “not very good,” as our series researcher can, unfortunately, attest. One popular portrayal is the 2007 film Mongol, directed by Sergei Bodrov and starring a Japanese actor in the role of Chinggis. That actor, by the way, went on to play one of Thor's buddies in the Marvel movies.  Here, Chinggis is a quiet, rather thoughtful figure, in a film which emphasizes the brutal childhood he suffered from. Another sympathetic portrayal, and one perhaps the most popular in Mongolia, is the 2004 Inner Mongolian series where Ba Sen, an actor who claims descent from Chagatai and appeared in the previously two mentioned films, plays the role of Chinggis.       Hollywood does not tend to portray Chinggis Khan or the Mongols in films at all, but when it does, it really goes for a swing and a miss. Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure has Chinggis essentially only a step above a cave-man in that film. Other Hollywood endeavours are infamous for having non-Asian actors in the role, such as Egyptian-born Omar Shariff in 1965's Genghis Khan, Marvin Miller in 1951's The Golden Horde and the most infamous of them all, the cowboy John Wayne in 1956's The Conqueror. That film's theatrical release poster bears the tasteful tagline of, “I am Temujin…barbarian… I fight! I love! I conquer… like a Barbarian!” The film was also produced by Howard Hughes, founder of Playboy Magazine, and was filmed near a nuclear testing site.  As you may suspect, that film bears as much resemblance to the historical events as an opium-induced fever dream.        The appearance and depiction of Chinggis and his successors varies wildly. The internet today loves the stories of Chinggis being the ancestor of millions of people, and killing so many people that it changed the earth's climate. The articles that made both of these claims though, rested on shaky evidence. In the first, which we dedicated an entire episode of this podcast too, the study claimed that high rates of a certain haplotype among the Hazara of Afghanistan demonstrated that Chinggis himself bore that haplotype, and Chinggis was extrapolated to be the ancestor of other peoples bearing such a haplotype. But the historical sources indicate Chinggis and his immediate descendants spent little time in Afghanistan, and the associated Haplotype was probably one associated with various populations leaving Mongolia over centuries, rather than specifically Chinggis himself.  Likewise, the study which spawned the claim that the Mongols killed enough people to cool the climate, firstly did not make that claim itself, but moreso incorrectly made the Mongol conquests last from 1206 to 1380, and presented it as an almost two-century period of population decline brought on by Mongolian campaigns; despite the fact that the major destructive Mongolian military campaigns largely halted after 1279. While campaigns continued after that, they were never on the level of the great-campaigns of conquest. Thus it's irresponsible to claim that any atmospheric carbon loss over the fourteenth century was brought on by continued Mongol military efforts.       What these two popular descriptions lend themselves to, is one of extremes. The internet loves extremes of anything. For instance, since 1999 the Internet has always sought to outdo itself in declaring the latest Star Wars product to actually be the worst thing ever made. And the Mongol Empire, as history's largest contiguous land-empire, responsible for immense destruction and long-ranging campaigns and forced migrations, can easily slot in this ‘extreme manner.' A “top-ten” list where the author writes about how the Mongols were the most extreme and destructive and badass thing ever, repeating the same 10 facts, probably gets released on the internet every other month. Just as national-myth makers in Ulaanbaatar, Beijing and Moscow set how to portray the Mongol Empire in the way most suited to them, so too does the internet and its writers choose an aspect of the empire to emphasis; be it religious tolerance, free-trade, brutality, multi-culturalism, Islam, clash of civilizations, human impact on climate, the territorial expanse of a certain country or its national identity, or whatever argument the author hopes to make.        The Mongol Empire though remains in the past, and should be treated, and learned about, as such.  The events which led to the rise, expansion and fall of the Mongol Empire do not fit into nice, sweeping modern narratives, but their own historical context and situation. The Mongol Empire was not predetermined to ever expand out of Mongolia, or to break apart in 1260; had Chinggis Khan been struck by an arrow outside the walls of Zhongdu, or Möngke lived another ten years, in both cases the empire, and indeed the world, would look dramatically different. History is not the things which ought to be or needed to happen or were supposed to happen; it is the things that did happen, and those things did not occur simply for the purposes of the modern world to exist. A million choices by hundreds of millions of individuals, affected by climate and geography with a healthy dose of luck and happenstance, resulted in the world as we know it. Reading backwards from the present to understand the course of the Mongol Empire, and attempting to make it fit into the political narratives we like today, only does a disservice to history. It should be seen not as a virtuous force bringing continental peace justified by easier trade, nor as a demonic horde, but as an event within human history, in which real humans took part, where great tragedy occured in the pursuit of empire.     History is not just written by the victor of the actual battles; as we've detailed across this series, we have no shortage of historical sources on the Mongol Empire; imperial approved sources, sources by travellers passing through the empire, to sources written by the peoples the Mongols crushed. Instead, the history learned in schools and passed down through historical memory and media is built on top of preferred state narratives, those made today and in the past.   Our series on the Mongol Empire concludes next week with a final afterward on Mongolia after 1368, so be sure to subscribe to the Kings and Generals podcast to follow. If you enjoyed this was want to help us keep bringing you great content, then consider supporting us on patreon at www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. This episode was researched and written by our series historian, Jack Wilson. I'm your host David, and we'll catch you on the next one. 

Josh Jalinski, The Financial Quarterback, is joined by Mark Yusko, Founder, CEO, and Chief Investment Officer of Morgan Creek Capital Management. Prior to forming Morgan Creek in 2004, Mark was President, Chief Investment Officer, and Founder of UNC Management Company, the Endowment investment office for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, from 1998 to 2004. Until 1998, Mark was the Senior Investment Director for the University of Notre Dame Investment Office where he joined as the Assistant Investment Officer in October of 1993. In this segment, Josh and Mark discuss the rise of the Chinese empire and their plans to become a global superpower with chips and AI. Listen to the Financial Quarterback live every Sat/Sun 9am EST on WOR AM710. Follow Josh on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Visit Jalinski.org for more information, and pick up his latest book, Retirement Reality Check now.

Sophie (age 8) and Ellie (age 6) tell the story of Genghis Khan.----more---- Genghis Khan was born 800 years ago in Mongolia. Except he was not called Genghis Khan then. His name was Temujin. He was the son of a chief of a small tribe. His father was poisoned and Temujin and his tribe had to flee. Life was hard growing up. Already though, Temujin was proving to be a fierce fighter. When he brother stole some food, Temujin killed him. Then Temujin married a wife from another tribe called Borte. Together the tribes were stronger. However, a different tribe attacked them. They kidnapped Borte. Timojen asked another tribe to help and attacked the tribe who had kidnapped Borte. He killed them and rescued her. Now Timujin was getting powerful. However, people in his tribe disagreed over who should have the important jobs. Timujin thought that people should have the jobs if they would be good at them. Some people thought that only rich nobles should have the best jobs. Those people were lead by a man called Jamukha. The tribe split in two and war between Timujin and Jamukha started. Jamulkha won the first battle and burned Timujin's generals alive. Timujin escaped and promised he would never lose a battle again. In the next battle Timujin had some sneaky tricks up his sleeve and he defeated and later killed Jamulkha. Now Timojin was the most powerful man in Mongolia. He was in charge of all the tribes. They gave his the title “Genghis Khan” which meant “Ruler of everyone”. Genghis Khan now decided to attack the powerful Chinese Empire. After a long siege he attacked and conquered the capital which we now call Beijing. Then he turned his army west. He conquered every country until he got to Eastern Europe. Then he turned back to conquer the rest of China. After 25 years of rule he died. His body was buried in secret. Nowadays many people think of him as a bloodthirsty conqueror. However, he was more than that. He married so many people and had so many children that many ordinary people today are descended from him. He did not mind what religion you were, what your skin colour was or whether you were rich or poor. He only rewarded people and gave them good jobs if they deserved it. Finally, he made the roads safe for trading. He allowed a route between the East and the West called the Silk Road. People took amazing inventions from China to Europe – like the compass, paper and gunpowder. PATRONS' CLUB If you like this episode you might like to join our Patrons' Club. We have exclusive episodes there and next week are telling the history of the Soviet Union. You can join at www.patreon.com/historystorytime----more----

It's time for another very exciting edition of Life on Planet Porky with the Porkmeister himself, Mike Parry and the Rock Chick Writer Extraordinaire, Lesley-Anne Jones.  Topics today include: LAJ's pre-Christmas all-star lunch, the alleged Downing Street party, Allegra Stratton, the UK's drug crisis, taking LSD, Harry and Meghan being completely out of touch, Angela Rayner's sex appeal, Dylan Thomas' drunken antics, John Miles, the difficulty of organising a trip to Australia in the current climate, Barbados, the new Chinese Empire, Porky's Mick Jagger chase, why it was uncouth to share stories on Fleet Street, a disgraceful boating tale, the enduring appeal of the Beatles, and Kate Garraway's resilience. It's the podcast that stands the test of time, it's Life on Planet Porky.    Follow the show on Twitter: @PlanetPorky or Mike is: @MikeParry8 while you can find Lesley-Ann: @LAJwriter. Or you can email us questions or comments to: planetporkypod@gmail.com. We'd love to hear from you! 

Women in wars on land and sea, whether queens or foot soldiers, rarely get their due—yet their lives are at least as interesting as their male counterparts’, not least because they had to leap through so many hoops to fight. Historian Pamela Toler wants us to know their names, and her book Women Warriors is a global history covering everyone from the Trung sisters, who led an untrained, 80,000-strong Vietnamese army against the Chinese Empire, to Cheyenne warriors like Buffalo Calf Road Woman, who knocked General Custer off his horse. There are at least a hundred killer screenplay ideas lurking in the history books—if only we bothered to look. This episode originally aired in 2019.Go beyond the episode:Pamela D. Toler’s Women Warriors: An Unexpected HistoryRead an excerpt about the Russian First Women’s Battalion of DeathRead Toler’s piece for us on Peggy Hull, the first woman accredited as a war correspondent by the U.S. militaryLearn about the lady pirates time forgot, including one who gave birth in the middle of a sea battle (and still won) and Cheng I Sao, who negotiated a sweet retirement package with the Chinese government when the Navy couldn’t take her outAnd meet Njinga, the West African queen who fended off the Portuguese (start at minute 21:30)Tune in every week to catch interviews with the liveliest voices from literature, the arts, sciences, history, and public affairs; reports on cutting-edge works in progress; long-form narratives; and compelling excerpts from new books. Hosted by Stephanie Bastek. Follow us on Twitter @TheAmScho or on Facebook.Subscribe: iTunes • Feedburner • Stitcher • Google Play • AcastHave suggestions for projects you’d like us to catch up on, or writers you want to hear from? Send us a note: podcast [at] theamericanscholar [dot] org. And rate us on iTunes! Our theme music was composed by Nathan Prillaman. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Women in wars on land and sea, whether queens or foot soldiers, rarely get their due—yet their lives are at least as interesting as their male counterparts’, not least because they had to leap through so many hoops to fight. Historian Pamela Toler wants us to know their names, and her book Women Warriors is a global history covering everyone from the Trung sisters, who led an untrained, 80,000-strong Vietnamese army against the Chinese Empire, to Cheyenne warriors like Buffalo Calf Road Woman, who knocked General Custer off his horse. There are at least a hundred killer screenplay ideas lurking in the history books—if only we bothered to look. This episode originally aired in 2019.Go beyond the episode:Pamela D. Toler’s Women Warriors: An Unexpected HistoryRead an excerpt about the Russian First Women’s Battalion of DeathRead Toler’s piece for us on Peggy Hull, the first woman accredited as a war correspondent by the U.S. militaryLearn about the lady pirates time forgot, including one who gave birth in the middle of a sea battle (and still won) and Cheng I Sao, who negotiated a sweet retirement package with the Chinese government when the Navy couldn’t take her outAnd meet Njinga, the West African queen who fended off the Portuguese (start at minute 21:30)Tune in every week to catch interviews with the liveliest voices from literature, the arts, sciences, history, and public affairs; reports on cutting-edge works in progress; long-form narratives; and compelling excerpts from new books. Hosted by Stephanie Bastek. Follow us on Twitter @TheAmScho or on Facebook.Subscribe: iTunes • Feedburner • Stitcher • Google Play • AcastHave suggestions for projects you’d like us to catch up on, or writers you want to hear from? Send us a note: podcast [at] theamericanscholar [dot] org. And rate us on iTunes! Our theme music was composed by Nathan Prillaman. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This week on Royally Screwed, we're talking about Wu Zetian, the only woman in China's history to hold sole power over the Chinese Empire.Twitter: @DenimCreekProGet the RSS Feed: https://rss.com/podcasts/royallyscrewed/Music: Intro/Outro:“Life O' the Lavish” - Jules Gala"Reconcile" - Peter Sandberg"The Last Bar in Chicago" - Nicky Dowling"Mystery Garden" - Brendon Moeller"Mysterious Package" - Kikoru"Smooth Passenger" - White Bones"Dayfreak" - White BonesCopyright 2021, Denim Creek Productions

Trade is innately human. Whether it’s baseball cards, lunchbox items or recipes, people have been exchanging goods, services, practices, and ideas since prehistoric times. Driven by curiosity and power, or most commonly money, trade has created the modern, globalized world we know today. To better understand the past, present, and future of trade’s huge web of interconnectivity, we’re traveling back in time with Meat and Three’s first ever 4-part mini-series. We first look at history's most significant trade route: The Silk Road. We explore how the expansive caravan and maritime routes marked the first period of vast global interchange with Najmieh Batmanglij. We then dig into economics with Don Boudreaux to explain the implications of free trade and some central characteristics of our current globalized model. And don’t forget to stick around for the next three episodes as we take a deeper dive into the ingredients that make these routes so delicious. Subscribe to Meat and Three on your favorite podcast app.Further Reading:Get your own copy of “Silk Road Cooking: A Vegetarian Journey” by Najmieh Batmanglij hereKeep Meat and Three on the air: become an HRN Member today! Go to heritageradionetwork.org/donate. Meat and Three is powered by Simplecast.

In the late 19th century, as China declined in the face of internal struggles and foreign intrusion, Japan was on the rise. As the world moved on to the 20th century, China's loss of influence over Korea and the stunning victory of Japan in the Sino-Japanese War confirmed that China was no longer the premier power in the Pacific. With this victory, Japan, the former tributary state to the Chinese Empire, followed the example set by the Western powers and claimed territory from China. They forced China to sign another humiliating unequal treaty (Treaty of Shimonoseki 1895), which ceded Taiwan, the Penghu Islands, and the Liaodong Peninsula to the Japanese Empire. This was the beginning, but far from the end of the Japanese conquest in China. This conquest would eventually become one of the most destructive conflicts in world history, engulfing China in a storm of chaos and destruction and causing the deaths of millions and the loss of much of China's territory. Book Battle of Shanghai: ​The Prequel to the Rape of Nanking References 1. Holcombe, Charles. A History of East Asia: From the Origins of Civilization to the Twenty-first Century. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge UP, 2017. Print. 2. Kissinger, Henry. On China. New York: Penguin, 2012. Print. 3. Spence, Jonathan D. The Search for Modern China. New York: Norton, 1990. Print. 4. Taylor, Jay. The Generalissimo: Chiang Kai-shek and the Struggle for Modern China. Cambridge, MA: Belknap of Harvard UP, 2011. Print. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/pacific-atrocities-education/support

Melbourne is in lockdown again, while New Zealand has escapees from its quarantine hotels. It feels like we've seen it all before. The NZ National Party has seen a number of resignations and early retirements. All the while tensions are escalating with the Chinese Empire. Dieuwe de Boer and Tim Wilms discuss this and more on this week's Trad Tasman Talk. The Unshackled Links: Website: https://www.theunshackled.net Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TUnshackled Twitter: https://twitter.com/Un_shackled Gab: https://gab.com/theunshackled Minds: https://www.minds.com/The_Unshackled/ Telegram: https://t.me/theunshackled MeWe: https://mewe.com/p/theunshackled Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the_unshackled Bitchute: https://www.bitchute.com/channel/theunshackled/ Free eBook: http://theunshackledbattlefield.net/ Unshackled Productions: WilmsFront: http://www.timwilms.com The Report from Tiger Mountain: http://reportfromtigermountain.com/ The Uncuckables: http://theuncuckables.com/ Support Our Work:  Membership: http://www.theunshackled.net/membership Donate: https://www.theunshackled.net/donate/ Paypal: https://www.paypal.me/TheUnshackled Store: https://www.theunshackled.net/store/

In the mid-19th century, as one country in the West was on its way toward the most famous civil war, another country in the East was in the grips of one far larger and more significant than any that had come before or would come afterward, if only in terms of numbers. By the end of this conflict, known as China's Taiping Rebellion, over 20 million people would lay dead, and China's relationship with the West would never be the same. While the man who started this conflict--a self-proclaimed prophet and younger brother to Jesus Christ named Hong Xiuquan--was forming the seeds of this rebellion within his tortured mind, the man who would change the course of the Rebellion itself was coming of age and beginning his habit of traveling the world looking for adventure and action. That man's name was Frederick Townsend Ward, and his influence would be felt and then eventually forgotten across the world, thanks to his largely omitted place within the ranks of great men who fought in this great conflict. This is the story of Frederick Townsend Ward, as well as the story of the fall of China as everyone--including the Chinese--would know it for nearly 100 years. This is the story of how an American adventurer became an American mercenary and then became a citizen of the Chinese Empire, and more importantly, a hero to its people, namely those living in the growing port city of Shanghai, largely thanks to his formation of the greatest soldiers China had yet to see: the Ever Victorious Army, whose elite training at Ward's hand would shape the future of China's military forever. History Impossible has been made possible by the following generous supporters on Patreon and PayPal: Elias Borota Matthew Dakus Gavin Edwards Peter Hauck Jose Martinez Mike Mayleben Judy McCoid Kostas Moros Molly Pan John Pisano Edmund Plamowski PJ Rader Martin Reddin Mark Reed Stephen Roblem Sam Emily Schmidt Ricky Worthey Steve Uhler

Our guest on today’s podcast is the researcher and curator Mi You (Doc. Diss) who expands and extends our understanding of the Silk Road. Drawing on personal travels in Central Asia, and affiliated research by historians, Mi You speculates that the networks of the Silk Road were far more distributed and decentralised than traditional historiography accounts for. She examines paintings which evidence the smuggling of silkworms, deconstructs the contemporary Chinese state hagiography of Admiral Zheng He, and reframes the infamous tributary system of the Chinese Empire as exchange rather than donation. We end by hearing a bit about fermentation as a metaphor for cultural practices in Eurasia. Links: https://www.academia.edu/37890380/Silk_Roads_Tributary_Networks_and_Old_and_New_Imperialism_in_Extra_States_Nations_in_Liquidation_Cahier_4 https://global.oup.com/ushe/product/the-silk-road-9780190208929? https://casco.art/en/studylines/unmapping-eurasia

On this episode of the Sofa King Podcast, we look at one of the 7 Wonders of the World: The Great Wall of China. This incomprehensible war machine took centuries to build and maxed out at over 13,000 miles in total length. It is said that over a million Chinese conscripts died in the construction of the wall, and while it is now a place that fills Chinese people with national pride, it used to fill them with fear of forced labor and death. But it did its job of protecting the north of China from most invaders and served to help unify the country. The back story of how the wall was built really gets kind of Game of Thronesy. China was several warring sub kingdoms which had started to build massive walls as protection against other kingdoms. In 221 BCE, a man named Qin Shi Huang came along and unified the seven kingdoms into one Chinese Empire. It was the birth of the nation of China that still survives today. He was said my many historians to be a tyrant who ruled with spies and fear. He saw the North as a threat because of the Mongols and other forces, and he decided to unify all of the previous walls into one long, great wall. He gathered peasants and soldiers and forced them build his wall and protect his legacy and dynasty (all the while wearing a really dope hat!). But, as with all people, the emperor finally died, and the country fell into civil war. Eventually (after an epic battle that involves a lover, a sword dance, and a night of singing that broke the enemy morale), the nation was reunified in the Han Dynasty. Here, the wall was built even stronger (and some say through even more cruelty to the builders). As the Han Dynasty ended, the wall was built or abandoned by different emperors until the Ming Dynasty. Under the Ming Dynasty, the wall was reinforced and considered crucial. The images of the wall that survive today—the towering walls, the battlements, the brick construction—all came from the Ming rulers. The wall stood in this glorified state for a quite a while, until the invaders from the north merged with China, and the wall became pointless. Now, it is one of the greatest tourist destination in the world, and it is one that is danger. Corporate greed, soil erosion, theft, and lame tourists damage the wall every year. Over 30% has been lost to time and human interference, but the wall continues to be a symbol of China and overall stubborn emperors who aren’t afraid to break a few eggs (or a million slaves) to build an 13,000 mile omelet. Visit our Sources: https://www.ancient-origins.net/artifacts-other-artifacts/great-wall-china-0011155 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Wall_of_China https://www.chinahighlights.com/greatwall/fact/how-the-great-wall-was-built.htm https://www.chinahighlights.com/greatwall/ https://www.history.com/topics/ancient-china/great-wall-of-china https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/magazine/2016/03-04/the-great-wall-of-china/ https://www.ancient.eu/Great_Wall_of_China/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/the-great-wall-of-china-is-under-siege-825452/ https://mymodernmet.com/great-wall-china-facts/ https://www.factretriever.com/great-wall-of-china-facts https://adventure.howstuffworks.com/great-wall-of-china.htm https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=5&v=23oHqNEqRyo&feature=emb_logo Scared Sh*tless: 1003 Facts that will Scare the Sh*t out of You. Author: Cary McNeal. Perigree Press, 2012.

What would it look like if a modern army clashed with a medieval army on the battlefield? The First Opium War answers that question. In order continue their illegal opium trade in China, Britain engaged in a series of naval battles and fort assaults against the Chinese Empire, who was woefully underprepared for a modern war. When rifles meet bows and arrows, the result is devastating, and the consequences for the opium trade reached into the 20th century.

Hugh Hewitt invites Robert Kaplan, managing director at Eurasia Group, to share details from his article, "America Must Prepare for the Coming Chinese Empire."See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Women in wars on land and sea, whether queens or foot soldiers, rarely get their due—yet their lives are at least as interesting as their male counterparts’, not least because they had to leap through so many hoops to fight. Historian Pamela Toler wants us to know their names, and her new book, Women Warriors, is a global history covering everyone from the Trung sisters, who led an untrained, 80,000-strong Vietnamese army against the Chinese Empire, to Cheyenne warriors like Buffalo Calf Road Woman, who knocked General Custer off his horse. There are at least a hundred killer screenplay ideas lurking in the history books—if only we bothered to look.Go beyond the episode:Pamela D. Toler’s Women Warriors: An Unexpected HistoryRead an excerpt about the Russian First Women’s Battalion of DeathLearn about the lady pirates time forgot, including one who gave birth in the middle of a sea battle (and still won) and Cheng I Sao, who negotiated a sweet retirement package with the Chinese government when the Navy couldn’t take her outAnd meet Njinga, the West African queen who fended off the Portuguese (start at minute 21:30)Tune in every week to catch interviews with the liveliest voices from literature, the arts, sciences, history, and public affairs; reports on cutting-edge works in progress; long-form narratives; and compelling excerpts from new books. Hosted by Stephanie Bastek. Follow us on Twitter @TheAmScho or on Facebook.Subscribe: iTunes • Feedburner • Stitcher • Google Play • AcastHave suggestions for projects you’d like us to catch up on, or writers you want to hear from? Send us a note: podcast [at] theamericanscholar [dot] org. And rate us on iTunes! Our theme music was composed by Nathan Prillaman. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Women in wars on land and sea, whether queens or foot soldiers, rarely get their due—yet their lives are at least as interesting as their male counterparts’, not least because they had to leap through so many hoops to fight. Historian Pamela Toler wants us to know their names, and her new book, Women Warriors, is a global history covering everyone from the Trung sisters, who led an untrained, 80,000-strong Vietnamese army against the Chinese Empire, to Cheyenne warriors like Buffalo Calf Road Woman, who knocked General Custer off his horse. There are at least a hundred killer screenplay ideas lurking in the history books—if only we bothered to look.Go beyond the episode:Pamela D. Toler’s Women Warriors: An Unexpected HistoryRead an excerpt about the Russian First Women’s Battalion of DeathLearn about the lady pirates time forgot, including one who gave birth in the middle of a sea battle (and still won) and Cheng I Sao, who negotiated a sweet retirement package with the Chinese government when the Navy couldn’t take her outAnd meet Njinga, the West African queen who fended off the Portuguese (start at minute 21:30)Tune in every week to catch interviews with the liveliest voices from literature, the arts, sciences, history, and public affairs; reports on cutting-edge works in progress; long-form narratives; and compelling excerpts from new books. Hosted by Stephanie Bastek. Follow us on Twitter @TheAmScho or on Facebook.Subscribe: iTunes • Feedburner • Stitcher • Google Play • AcastHave suggestions for projects you’d like us to catch up on, or writers you want to hear from? Send us a note: podcast [at] theamericanscholar [dot] org. And rate us on iTunes! Our theme music was composed by Nathan Prillaman.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In the western world, our conceptions of Vietnam are often limited to the Vietnam War – that prolonged and devastating conflict in the mid-20th century that resulted in the deaths of anywhere up to 4.2 million people. As undeniably ruinous as that war was, it was ultimately just two decades in the history of a nation and a people that stretches back to the first millennium BC. Conquered and ruled by the first Chinese Empire, winning their freedom and taking their first steps as an independent nation, waging their own wars of expansion against the other kingdoms of Southeast Asia; the story of Vietnam is a long one often characterised by conflict and desire to carve out an identity of their own. In this episode, we look at their story and the associated significance of Đấu Vật – a grappling style centred around the most sacred holiday on the Vietnamese calendar, and inextricably linked to legends of their fierce resistance to foreign invasion.

Want more FOH? Visit footnotesofhistory.com/join Shownotes at footnotesofhistory.com/16 All Python references aside, the Taipeng Rebellion is probably one of the bloodiest events in the history of the world and is almost certainly the bloodiest of the nineteenth century. While the Opium Wars raged just off the corner of the Eastern hemisphere, a little-known peasant in the interior of the Chinese Empire was experiencing his first biblical visions. A short time later the supposed "Brother of Jesus Christ", Hong Xiuquan, marched at the head of a horde of self-titled demon slayers which had been convinced - one way or another - that they had been set the holy task of destroying the Qing dynasty of Imperial China. The period of the rebellion was one of Total War - which is a polite way of saying everybody and everything that got in the way would be killed. In this episode we'll look at the details of the rebellion and try to make some sense out of this semi-religious movement

Professor Haun Saussy, from the University of Chicago and a leading scholar of Chinese and comparative literature, delivers the third lecture in the 2014 De Carle Lecture series, History-Writing and Moral Community in China. The Chinese claim, seen with increasing frequency in current soft-power propaganda campaigns, of "5000 years of history" needs to be read in light of a process, over 2000 years long itself, of consensus-building by, of and for historians. How does such a thing as the Chinese Empire become, first an imaginary solution, then an inescapable reality, for a large part of humanity? The arts of rhetorical reading help us to see the successive articulations of what we now know as "China" or "Zhongguo." 2 October 2014

Professor Haun Saussy, from the University of Chicago and a leading scholar of Chinese and comparative literature, delivers the third lecture in the 2014 De Carle Lecture series, History-Writing and Moral Community in China. The Chinese claim, seen with increasing frequency in current soft-power propaganda campaigns, of "5000 years of history" needs to be read in light of a process, over 2000 years long itself, of consensus-building by, of and for historians. How does such a thing as the Chinese Empire become, first an imaginary solution, then an inescapable reality, for a large part of humanity? The arts of rhetorical reading help us to see the successive articulations of what we now know as "China" or "Zhongguo." 2 October 2014

Professor Haun Saussy, from the University of Chicago and a leading scholar of Chinese and comparative literature, delivers the third lecture in the 2014 De Carle Lecture series, History-Writing and Moral Community in China. The Chinese claim, seen with increasing frequency in current soft-power propaganda campaigns, of "5000 years of history" needs to be read in light of a process, over 2000 years long itself, of consensus-building by, of and for historians. How does such a thing as the Chinese Empire become, first an imaginary solution, then an inescapable reality, for a large part of humanity? The arts of rhetorical reading help us to see the successive articulations of what we now know as "China" or "Zhongguo." 2 October 2014

It is a Golden Age for the Eastern Han. After decades of tumult, famine, and civil war, the Chinese Empire is poised once again to reclaim its status as preeminent East Asian power. Retaking the abandoned Western Vassal Kingdoms, sending envoys to India and even Rome, and at long last finishing the 200 year old war with the rapidly disintegrating Xiongnu Empire to the north.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In the power vacuum left by the defeated Xin Dynasty's collapse, no fewer than six claimants to the long-vacant Throne of Han will vie for power... one backed by the Lülin Rebels, another by the Red Eyebrow Army, another a northern lord with an axe to grind, and a fortune-teller playing the role of a lifetime... who will emerge victorious to reunify the fractious Chinese Empire?  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the astonishing productivity of the Chinese Golden Age. 400 BC to 200 AD is known as the Axial Age, when great civilisations in Asia and the Mediterranean forged the ideas that dominated the next two thousand years. In China the equivalent to the Golden Age in Greece was the Warring States Period. It was a time of political turmoil, economic change and intellectual ferment that laid the foundations for the first Chinese Empire. Astronomy was systematised, the principles of Yin and Yang were invented, Confucianism grew and Taoism emerged, as a hundred schools of thought are reputed to have vied for the patronage of rival kings.Why was a period of war such a fertile age for culture and thought, what kinds of ideas were developed and how do they still inform the thinking of nearly a fifth of the world's population?With Dr Chris Cullen, Director of the Needham Research Institute at Cambridge University; Dr Vivienne Lo, Lecturer at the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine; Carol Michaelson, Assistant Keeper of Chinese Art in the Department of Oriental Antiquities at the British Museum.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the astonishing productivity of the Chinese Golden Age. 400 BC to 200 AD is known as the Axial Age, when great civilisations in Asia and the Mediterranean forged the ideas that dominated the next two thousand years. In China the equivalent to the Golden Age in Greece was the Warring States Period. It was a time of political turmoil, economic change and intellectual ferment that laid the foundations for the first Chinese Empire. Astronomy was systematised, the principles of Yin and Yang were invented, Confucianism grew and Taoism emerged, as a hundred schools of thought are reputed to have vied for the patronage of rival kings.Why was a period of war such a fertile age for culture and thought, what kinds of ideas were developed and how do they still inform the thinking of nearly a fifth of the world’s population?With Dr Chris Cullen, Director of the Needham Research Institute at Cambridge University; Dr Vivienne Lo, Lecturer at the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine; Carol Michaelson, Assistant Keeper of Chinese Art in the Department of Oriental Antiquities at the British Museum.