Blog #8

Addicted! the Opium War started because British merchants smuggled opium to china for non medical purposes.  12 million Chinese people were addicted.

A Reason Worth Fighting For. The Taiping Rebellion was started by a guy named Hong Xiuquan from Guangdong. The Taiping Rebellion was started because Hong and his recruit's wanted to build  a "Heavenly kingdom of great peace." In this kingdom all Chinese would share China's vast wealth and no one would live in poverty. Hong created a million man army, but even with all these people the rebellion has failed at the end because they had to fight off the Qing imperial troops, French, and the British. They also had to fight within themselves which led to there fate.

More Land and trade! China had signed the treaty of Nanjing which gave Britain the island of Hong Kong. After signing another treaty  U.S. and other foreign counties had gained Extraterritorial rights.

Widespread Frustrations. Poor peasants and workers did not like the special privileges granted to foreigners. They also did not like Chinese Christians, who had adopted foreign faith. These people were soon called Boxers.

Many ports opened. Matthew Perry took four ships to what is now Tokyo. The huge black ships powered by steam surprised the Japanese. The shogun came to realize that he had to receive Matthew Perry. Perry had brought the letter from the president of the U.S. to give to the shogun. Perry had delivered it with a threat, however. he would come back in a year with a larger fleet to receive Japan's reply. The reply was the Treaty of Kanagawa. This opened two ports for the U.S. to trade and receive goods. Later on several ports were open to other foreign countries.

War over Manchuria. Japan and Russia were the two major powers. Japan wanted to share Manchuria if Russia would stay out of Korea. Russia refused the deal and they went to war. Japan surprised attacked a fleet of anchored Russian ships which started it. Japan then got Russian out of Korea, and captured most of Russia's Pacific fleet.