A Comprehensive History of Chinese Finance, Volume 2: The Period from the Opium Wars to the End of the Qing Dynasty

Author: Zhang Guohui
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-10-01
Features: This volume covers the period from the 20th year of the Daoguang reign of the Qing Dynasty (1840) to the 3rd year of the Xuantong reign (1911). It explores the historical changes in Chinese socioeconomic conditions over the 70 years following the Opium War, with a focus on trade and finance in the circulation sector. The Opium War marked the beginning of a series of invasions by Western capitalist powers against old China. The economic aggression of Western powers against China can be broadly divided into different stages. In the early phase, the economic aggression of Western powers was heavily characterized by violent plunder. The aggressors not only used the threat of gunboats to pressure the Chinese government into signing unequal treaties, demanding indemnities, ceding territory, and seizing various privileges, but also, leveraging the political prestige of their victorious wars, engaged in various illegal aggressive and destructive activities beyond treaty privileges: from smuggling opium and forced labor trade, to tax evasion and smuggling, to forcibly occupying concessions, leaving no stone unturned. All of these exposed the barbarity and cruelty of Western capitalist powers' aggression against China, completely reflecting the shameless nature of primitive accumulation during the old colonialism era.