Alarming Crises/Enticing Possibilities: Political and Cultural Changes in Late Nineteenth-Century China

The years from the mid-1880s provided a tumultuous ending to China's turbulent nineteenth century. However disjointed this period appears, it was a pivotal time when growing numbers of China's scholar-elites began to question the Confucian heritage and imperial governance. Here I will emphasize two aspects of political and cultural change within Chinese urban elite society: the social and political effects of almost continual foreign crises from the mid 1870s onwards and, briefly, the accelerating cultural fascination with Western social practices, life-styles, material goods, and technologies during the 1890s. In both cases, the emerging news media played a defining role, intensifying the sense of alarm at foreign incursions, increasing the anger aimed at the court's policies, and stimulating the simultaneous fascination for the foreign and exotic. This interest developed most freely in Shanghai, but was spread elsewhere by travelers, traders, newspapers, and books.

This paper addresses the question of how the anxiety about foreign affairs and fascination with exotic material culture and life-ways interacted with the political reformism developing within society. The two phenomena do not seem to be inherently contradictory. Both anxiety and fascination reflected openness to change. Moreover, both contributed to the broadening of public space, encouraged formation of public opinion, and fostered new forms of social organization. The meaning of civilization began to change as some existing beliefs were abandoned, others were emphasized, and new types of knowledge and practices were embraced. The idea of the new (xin) was mixed with emerging notions of modernity that encouraged openness to worldwide tendencies largely coming from Europe and America, even while maintaining loyalties to Chinese culture.¹

The Impact of the Sino-French War

The problem of pacifying the huge Taiping and numerous other rebellions during the mid-nineteenth century occupied the court, officials, and many local elites during the mid-nineteenth century. Meeting these internal threats left little time, energy, and resources to oppose foreign incursions. China's defeats in the Opium War and the Second Opium War of the mid-1840s and 1850s had foreshadowed the later foreign difficulties by inaugurating the treaty port system, by the humiliating invasion of the capital during the Second Opium War, by the bitter criticisms leveled at officials considered responsible for the defeats, and by the organization of local militias in some coastal areas. Nonetheless, the task of suppressing internal uprisings overshadowed concern about foreign dangers. However, starting in the mid-1870s, the new modern press disseminated news about three incidents: the 1874 Japanese expedition against Taiwan, the 1875 killing of the British interpreter A. R. Margary in Yunnan, and the more serious dispute with Russia in 1879–81 over control of Yili on the far northwest frontier.²

These alarms were caused by brief events on the peripheries of empire. However, the modern press, particularly Shenbao, introduced a new level of popular awareness of dangers from abroad. Founded in 1872 by Ernest Major in Shanghai, Shenbao became a national newspaper by the end of the decade. Articles on these early incidents supplied worrisome information to readers and expressed editorial opinions. During the Yili crisis, editorials urged preparation against Russia and praised men in Ningbo who contributed money, showing that "the people" had an interest in coastal defense. Editorialists urged industrial development and military modernization, deplored official corruption, and suggested education to familiarize Chinese with foreign affairs.³

An editorial of December 18, 1880, clearly related modern self-strengthening to internal reform by pointing out that the people's "love of the country" is reciprocal to the government's "love of the people" and that by extension punishing grasping officials and eliminating likin fraud would unify peoples' hearts. Conservative literati might view internal order as sufficient defense against foreigners. This editorial, on the other hand, saw controlling corruption as an aid to self-strengthening and emphasized correcting likin fraud that hurt rich merchants who contributed to defense. Arguments were changing, but were still linked to the past via the invocation of older political vocabularies and assumptions.

Little time elapsed between the end...