Page:1902 Encyclopædia Britannica - Volume 27 - CHI-ELD.pdf/57

 mSTORY]

CHINA

follows we shall first take a brief survey of the condition of the empire at that period. The decade 1854-64 had witnessed lowwater mark in the political fortunes of the Manchu dynasty. The central provinces had been overrun and devastated by the Taiping rebels. Nanking, the ancient capital of the empire, was in their hands, and throughout the whole of the lower Yangtse valley, even down to Shanghai and Ningpo, bands of marauders burnt, pillaged, and murdered at their will. In the south-west the province of Yunnan was the scene of another rebellion. A Mahommedan tribe known as Panthays had risen in revolt, captured the city of Talifu, and proclaimed a chief Tu Win Siu as their sultan. In the north-west a similar Mahommedan rebellion broke out in the province of Kansuh. This was followed by a revolt of the whole of the central Asian tribes, which for 2000 years had more or less acknowledged the imperial sway. In Kashgaria, a native chief termed Yakoob Beg, otherwise known as the Atilik Ghazi, had made himself Ameer, and seemed likely to establish a strong rule. The fertile province of Kuldja or Hi, lying to the north of the Tien shan range, was temporarily taken possession of by Russia in order to put a stop to the prevailing anarchy, but with a promise that when China should have succeeded in re-establishing order in her central Asian dominions it should be given back. To add to all these misfortunes, and even when they were at their height, the Chinese Government embroiled itself in a foreign war. Redress being refused for longstanding grievances, a combined British and French expedition was sent to operate in the north. The emperor fled to Mongolia, Peking was surrendered, and terms of peace were dictated within the walls of the capital (24th October 1860). This last calamity, which might have seemed to some the worst of all, was in reality the salvation of the country. The foreign Powers had gone there for the sole purpose of establishing fair and equitable terms of trade—terms which would be just as advantageous to the people of China as to themselves. The treaty having once been made with the imperial Government, it was their interest to uphold its authority, and to see a speedy end to the forces of anarchy and disorder. No sooner, therefore, had the war with China been finished, than Great Britain and France proceeded to lend the Chinese active assistance. The services of General Gordon at this juncture are too well known to need further mention. With the first of his victories the tide began to turn, and from that time fortune smiled on the imperial arms. By degrees the Taiping rebellion was crushed ; indeed the movement had for some years been collapsing through internal decay ; and, with the fall of Nanking in 1864, it finally disappeared. The next ten years (1864-74) witnessed a general revival of the strength of the empire. The Panthay rebellion in Yunnan was put down in 1873, and order had been re-established somewhat earlier in the northwestern provinces of Shensi and Kansuh. The central Asian states still remained under the rule of the Ameer Yakoob Khan, and China was at this time strongly counselled by many to leave things alone in that region. Russia had in the course of the disorder possessed herselt of the khanate of Khokand, and it was pointed •out that a strong state like that of Kashgaria under Yakoob Khan might be a convenient buffer against farther progress on that side from the great western Power. This counsel, however, as will be seen, did not prevail. Such, briefly, was the state of affairs at the accession of the reigning emperor, Kwang Su, in January 1875. He was not then four years old, and his accession attracted little notice outside ox China, as the supreme power continued to be vested in the two dowager empresses whose long regency had been only nominally determined in favour of the emperor Tung Chi when the latter attained his majority in 1873—the empress Tsu An, principal wife of the emperor Hsien Fung, and the empress Tsu Tsi, secondary wife of the same emperor, and mother of the emperor Tung Chi. Yet there were circumstances connected with the emperor Kwang Su’s accession which might well have arrested attention. The emperor Tung Chi, who had himself succumbed to an ominously brief and mysterious illness, left a young widow in an advanced state of pregnancy, and had she given birth to a male child her son would have been the rightful heir to the throne. But even before she sickened and died—of grief, it was officially stated, at the loss of her imperial spouse—the dowager empresses had solved the question of the succession by placing Kwang Su on the throne, a measure which was not only in itself arbitrary, but also in direct conflict with one of the most sacred of Chinese traditions. The solemn rites of ancestor-worship, incumbent on every Chinaman, and, above all, upon the emperor, can only be properly performed by a member of a younger generation than those whom it is his duty to honour. The emperor Kwang Su, being a son of Prince Chun, brother to the emperor Hsien Fung, and thus first cousin to the emperor Tung Chi, was not therefore qualified to offer up the customary saci’ifices before the ancestral tablets of his predecessor. So profound was the prejudice created against the young emperor on this score, that fifteen years later, when, having reached the age of manhood, he proceeded for the

31

first time to the Temple of Heaven to perform the ancestral rites, one of the censors committed suicide in his presence as a protest against so grave a breach of the dynastic tradition. The accession of an infant in the place of Tung Chi achieved, however, for the time being what was doubtless the paramount object of the policy of the two empresses, namely, their undisturbed tenure of the regency, in which the junior empress Tsu Tsi, a woman of unquestionable ability and boundless ambition, had gradually become the predominant partner. The first question that occupied the attention of the Government under the new reign was one of the gravest importance, and nearly led to a war with Great Britain. The Indian Government was desirous of seeing the old trade relations between Burma and the south-west pi’ovinces, which had been interrupted by the Yunnan rebellion, re-established, and for that purpose proposed to send a mission across the frontier into China. The Peking Government assented and issued . passports for the party. Mr A. R. Margary, a young, A,r r and promising member of the China consular service, ^ was told off to accompany the expedition as interpreter. argary. All wrent well until the mission, which was under the command of Colonel Browne, was nearing the Chinese frontier, when rumours of trouble ahead began to reach them. Mr Margary, who had a month previously crossed overland from Shanghai with no difficulty, made light of the reports, but offered to ride on ahead and ascertain the state of affairs. He left, accompanied orily by his Chinese servants, and never returned. Two days afterwards news reached Colonel Browne that he had been treacherously murdered by Chinese at the small town of Manwyne, and almost simultaneously an attack was made on the expedition by armed forces wearing Chinese uniform (January 1875). Colonel Browne with difficulty made his way back to Bhamo apd the expedition was abandoned. Demands were made on the Peking Government for a thorough inquiry on the spot in the presence of British officers. The Chinese reply w^as that the murder and the attack were alike the work of irresponsible savages and hillmen, animated with a desire for plunder. Enough evidence was collected on the Burma side to show that this was not true, and it could not be doubted that the orders for the attack emanated from the provincial government of Yunnan, if not from higher quarters. After infinite shuffling and delay an imperial commission was despatched to hold an inquiry, three British officers being sent at the same time to watch proceedings. The trial proved an absolute farce. Eleven half-naked savages were produced as the culprits, and the only evidence tendered was such as. had manifestly been manufactured for the purpose. The British officials protested and withdrew from the burlesque. The trial, however, proceeded, and the eleven hillmen were sentenced to death. A report in that sense was addressed to the throne, and with this it was hoped the British sense of justice would be satisfied. Sir Thomas Wade, then British minister at Peking, promptly declared that if this report were published or acted on he would at once haul down his flag, lightly deeming that such a reparation was a greater insult than the original offence. Tedious negotiations followed, which more than once threatened to end in a rupture, but finally, more than eighteen months after the outrage, an arrangement was come to on the basis of guarantees for the future, rather than vengeance for the past. The arrangement was embodied in the Chefoo convention, dated 13th September 1876. The terms of the settlement comprised (1) a mission of apology from China to the British court; (2) the promulgation throughout the length and breadth of the empire of an imperial proclamation, setting out the right of foreigners to travel under passport, and the obligation of the authorities to protect them ; and (3) the payment of an indemnity. The convention comprised besides a number of clauses which, though meant to improve commercial relations, were severely criticized by the mercantile communities. The stipulation most objected to was one by which the Chinese Government were debarred from levying likin within the area of the foreign concessions, thereby implying, it was argued, the recognition of the right to levy it ad libitum elsewhere. Ratification of this article was refused by the British Government, and additional articles were subsequently signed in London relative to the collection of likin on Indian opium and other matters. While these events were going on the imperial authority had been re-established in the north-western provinces of Shensi and Kansuh under Tso Tsung-tang as governor-general, and preparations were made for the reconquest of Kashgaria. Money was supplied by a foreign loan for £1,600,000, being the first appearance of China as a borrower. It was a formidable expedition ; not so much from the warlike nature of the enemy, as from the immense distances to be traversed and the extreme difficulty of transport. Nevertheless after two years of dogged perseverance China succeeded. Manas, the last stronghold of the Jungaris, wag captured (November 1876), and the death of the Ameer Yakoob Khan in the following year greatly facilitated the com-