Alex said 3/4 for Thursday...

Today we learned about the 3 rebellions/ movements that happened in china. The Taiping Rebellion, the Self-Strengthening movement and the boxer rebellion all happened while the british and other european nations were in China. Their influence strained the imperial government and their support, which is what triggered the rebellions/movements. The Qing government focused to much on political stability and not enough on the people and their poverty.

The first rebellion was the Taiping rebellion, which was a religious rebellion. They wanted to overthrow the manchu government completely. They were militarily organised and took over manking. In 1864 they were forced to flee south due to the imperial army threatening them, which ended the rebellion. However, in the time that they rebelled there were 30 million casualties, and while they failed in overthrowing the manchu's, they helped in the downfall.

The self-strengthening movement was a bunch of reforms mainly for 2 things. One reason was to adopt western culture and technology, but another reason was to keep their old confucian government of merit and honesty. This was to balance the new technology and culture with keeping chinese nationalism. However, this movement wasnt very effective, as there wasnt much unity. Mostly it was practiced by the regional lords, so it was hard to unite every one for one purpose as the power was spread out pretty widely.

The last thing is the boxer rebellion, which another religious society. They received aid from the government, as well as the imperial government hiring secret agencies to move the British out of china. However, this rebellion was different from the Taiping rebellion in that instead of rebelling against the imperial government this was against the foreigners.

The last thing we did today receive a worksheet and on it, there were a few events that were going on during the reign of the last emperor. We had to give him advice on how to rule and keep his power, for example, make programs to support peasants, be more open-minded to the British trading requests try to support the nationalism of your country. Everyone remember to study for the quiz tomorrow on 1750-1914 and to do the homework. The next poster will be Grace.