AHC: China remains significantly strong by the 1800s

Wrong. The Qing, in their arrogance, decided the rest of the world had nothing to offer. Britain tried to establish trade relations in the 18th Century, and they would only consent if King George III himself came to Beijing and prostrated himself before the emperor. The problem with considering yourself the center of the world is that you surround yourself with people who want to see you taken down a peg.

You make it seem that if only the Qing dynasty was more open to outside influences and trade, it would have advanced and became strong. You have to remember though that even in the year 1800, European power and influence wasn't that pronounced or noticeable in the Sinosphere. There was no reason for the Qing court to change its policies, which had worked so well to pacify China's enormous population. Why change something, if it isn't broken? Of course, a decade or two after that, it was broken beyond repair and the dynasty's decline and demise became inevitable with European intervension.

But that's besides the point. What's more important is what evidence do you have that an outward looking, mercantile country was able to successfully modernize and withstand European encroachment? At the time of its conquest, Malacca was one of the richest and most powerful state in Southeast Asia and its capital was one of the biggest centre of Maritime trade in the world. Still, the Sultanate did not survive its encounter with the Portuguese.

What about the most the only Asian country that emerged from the 19th century as a modern power - Japan? Prior to Matthew Perry's arrival in the with his "Black Ships", sakoku isolated Japan even more than the neighbouring Hermit Kingdom of Korea. Yet, with the political unity and will it displayed after the Boshin War, it was able to modernize and contend with the Europeans.

Another fact when looking at late-Qing China is the declining power of the dynasty. Qing dynasty of the First Opium War is far-removed from even the Qing dynasty of 1800. The Qing administration arguably faced more internal problems in the war than against the British. Even then it was often ignored that the war wasn't as lopsided as often protrayed. The British were in fact repelled several times at Canton and Amoy and it wasn't until after their successes in the Yangtse that the British were able to capture the two ports.

Even were the Chinese to "modernize" in the mid-18th century in order to meet the OP's original timeline of 1800, the factories that allowed the mass-production of pricision parts essential for the mass-production of things like breech-loading rifles weren't available until the 19th century. If the Chinese still had a failing government, this "modernization" would do nothing to impede its exploitation by the Europeans. In fact, an uprising like the Taiping where the rebels are armed with early-modern weaponry could make it that much easier for the Europeans to balkanize and split China into spheres of influence.

The fact is, this subject is extremely nuanced and you can't really place China's failings in the one and a half century leading up to WWII on any specific factor. What can be said is that those countries close to the epicentre of industrial revolution capitalized on this development and became world powers. If China had been one of those countries, it likely would have turned out the same.
 
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What about the most the only Asian country that emerged from the 19th century as a modern power - Japan? Prior to Matthew Perry's arrival in the with his "Black Ships", sakoku isolated Japan even more than the neighbouring Hermit Kingdom of Korea.
On a side note, it didn't. Japan still had trades open with Korea, the Ryukyus, and I believe South East Asia, China, and one or two European powers.
 

RousseauX

Donor
What made you think the Ming dynasty was averse to innovation? Does closing foreign trade necessarily stifle innovation? You should know that Ming China also had one of the world's lowest tax rates and was a hotbed for internal investment (similar to what some may call... capitalism). Similarly, people seem to underestimate the size of musketry and artillery corps in the Ming military (and indeed in all non-Western militaries... I wonder why...) and their willingness to adopt foreign weapons. In fact, not long after seeing the effectiveness of Dutch cannons in battle, the Ming authorities dredged up sunken Dutch ships to recover them for copying. Not long after, natively manufactured "Red Barbarian" cannons played a crucial role in repelling the Manchus in the north.

In my opinion, Europe pulled ahead because the industrial revolution happened in England - and that's due to economic development and policy more than anything else. The steam engine had been invented several times and was present as gizmos in numerous courts as far back as a thousand years before it changed the world.

Kenneth Pomeranz in "The Great Divergence" basically says that China and England were at parity in 1750. And it was only due to the IR that England pulled ahead.

But any discussion as to "why" is unfortunately going to be England-centric than China-centric, for the simple reason I think that "Why China fell behind" isn't really the right question to ask but rather "why did Europe pulled ahead".

Who's to say that a scientific revolution couldn't have happened in China had there been a need for it? The key for this challenge would then be to create a need for such a revolution to take place in China either as a parallel to the one in England but something entirely different but just as potent.
The Scientific revolution didn't have much to do with the first phase of the industrial revolution. The biggest factors were, IMO, the commercial revolution and the agricultural gain through colonialism.
 

RousseauX

Donor
Wrong. The Qing, in their arrogance, decided the rest of the world had nothing to offer. Britain tried to establish trade relations in the 18th Century, and they would only consent if King George III himself came to Beijing and prostrated himself before the emperor. The problem with considering yourself the center of the world is that you surround yourself with people who want to see you taken down a peg.

Basically I don't think "openness" to the west is the primary determining factor in industrialization.

If "Openness" is required, then why did the states which were open to the west, like the Indian princely states or Persia not industrialize? Why did even states within the western system like the Ottomans or Spain fail to industrialize until after WWI?

Why was it that the only successful non-western country to industrialize was Japan, which incidentally was the one most CLOSED to foreigners. And which even the Meiji restorers fought under the banner of "expel the barbarians"? Even if they did open up in the 1870s-80s, why did they do better than states which were ALWAYS open to the west?

The actual determining factor seems not to be "openness" per se, it's a political elite, overseeing an efficient centralized government, who are united in their determination to modernize and industrialize. That is the best determinant of industrialization.
 
You are confusing the Tang with the Qing, the founder of the Tang can trace his ancestry to Han dynasty generals.
Yes and no, the ancestry of the Tang imperial house when it was founded in 618 CE is considered to be part Xianbei in ancestry, and its genealogies constructed for political purposes. But I am of the opinion that this doesn't make the dynasty any less Han Chinese, since both "Han" and "Chinese" can be multi-ethnic labels that are periodically obscured by modern nationalism and misconceptions. The Tang ruling house didn't consciously separate themselves from the majority of population, never referred to itself as a separate ethnicity, and after the first few emperors, dropped the non-Chinese elements of language and culture from their daily life. So it's true that the Tang imperial family wasn't an old family of Chinese descent when they came to power. However, I see no evidence that this made them less Han or Chinese.
 
Yes and no, the ancestry of the Tang imperial house when it was founded in 618 CE is considered to be part Xianbei in ancestry, and its genealogies constructed for political purposes. But I am of the opinion that this doesn't make the dynasty any less Han Chinese, since both "Han" and "Chinese" can be multi-ethnic labels that are periodically obscured by modern nationalism and misconceptions. The Tang ruling house didn't consciously separate themselves from the majority of population, never referred to itself as a separate ethnicity, and after the first few emperors, dropped the non-Chinese elements of language and culture from their daily life. So it's true that the Tang imperial family wasn't an old family of Chinese descent when they came to power. However, I see no evidence that this made them less Han or Chinese.

My understanding was that Han refers to the ethnicity which historically populates China proper, and forms 90% of the population of China, while the label of Chinese refers to all the Chinese peoples, including not only Han, but also Tibetans, Uighurs, Mongols, Manchus, plus the various other ethnicities. Essentially, the concept of Chineseness is inherently multiethnic, but Han are a specific ethnicity. The waters tend to be muddied somewhat by how language was a common determining factor for ethnicity, but many minority languages, such as Manchu, are essentially dead.
 
Wrong. The Qing, in their arrogance, decided the rest of the world had nothing to offer. Britain tried to establish trade relations in the 18th Century, and they would only consent if King George III himself came to Beijing and prostrated himself before the emperor. The problem with considering yourself the center of the world is that you surround yourself with people who want to see you taken down a peg.

This is not true. I'd recommend: China and Maritime Europe, 1500–1800: Trade, Settlement, Diplomacy, and Missions, by John E. Wills, Jr., for a description of how this went down.
 
My understanding was that Han refers to the ethnicity which historically populates China proper, and forms 90% of the population of China, while the label of Chinese refers to all the Chinese peoples, including not only Han, but also Tibetans, Uighurs, Mongols, Manchus, plus the various other ethnicities. Essentially, the concept of Chineseness is inherently multiethnic, but Han are a specific ethnicity. The waters tend to be muddied somewhat by how language was a common determining factor for ethnicity, but many minority languages, such as Manchu, are essentially dead.
That's how it works now, but it's a poor way to project ideas of ethnicity to the past. What we call the Han Chinese today were probably just "Chinese" long ago since I don't think the term "Han" was used that often. Han Chinese today works because of modern principles of self-identification, and it's no longer on descent. If you went to Hunan or Guangxi and told the Han Chinese there that they weren't really Chinese, but Sinified Man (蠻) people, they would probably give you strange looks. Same if you went to Shandong and said to the Han Chinese there that they weren't really Chinese because of Yi (夷) intermarriage from 1000 BCE. If we used this criteria, then the only Chinese people would be those who could trace their ancestry to 1200 BCE Henan and show that their patriline extended back to the Shang Dynasty.

That's what it means for me to say the Han Chinese today are multi-ethnic, because it's not like they've been Han Chinese since the Han Dynasty, but have been joined by other ethnic groups. The Han Chinese are one ethnicity because they all think of themselves as one ethnicity, not because they are one homogenous group that has been in a static existence for two millennia. Similarly, it's a similar issue with Chinese-ness: there were a host of other ethnicities in China during the Tang period: but I don't see how that makes them less Chinese.
 
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