But in fact, if we look at the modern history of the world from a macro perspective, we will find that the tragedy of the late Qing Dynasty is helpless and even more embarrassing.
Throughout Asia at that time, India and Myanmar were wiped out by Britain, Vietnam was annexed by France, the Ottoman Empire collapsed after World War I, and Siam survived through diplomacy. In Asia in the modern world, apart from Japan, only the Qing Empire was able to maintain a certain degree of independence.
In fact, as early as the Ming Dynasty, the Spanish had a plan to conquer the Ming Dynasty with 100,000 musketeers-of course, this plan made contemporary people feel ridiculous, but it also showed that the western powers had the ambition to annex China as early as the Ming Dynasty.
Since the ambition of the great powers to annex China began as early as the Ming Dynasty, and Britain also annexed India, and Turkey also lost most of its territory, why did the Qing Dynasty leave more than 1000 square kilometers of territory to the Republic of China when it perished?
Personal feelings:
classify
From the perspective of world history, among Asian countries, India, the Philippines and the Malay Archipelago countries were the first to be annexed by the great powers. Relatively speaking, China and Viet Nam were later contested by the great powers. The reason is related to the system to some extent.
Take India as an example. Although the Mughal emperor of India was nominally the emperor of India, the situation in India at that time was quite similar to the Western Zhou Dynasty in China. The Indian emperor is equivalent to the emperor of the Western Zhou Dynasty, and there are many vassal states in India. This created conditions for the great powers to break through the vassal States one by one and annex the whole of India.
China, Viet Nam and other countries are centralized. The instructions of the imperial court can reach all corners of the country and effectively mobilize the strength of the whole country to resist foreign enemies. This makes the plundering of China's territory by the great powers only through the unequal treaties after the war, but not through the annexation of the whole territory. It can be said that the system of Qing dynasty was backward, but compared with more backward countries, this system delayed the loss of land.
huge
In the modern history of the world, there is a saying that Britain is the largest (there is no sunset in the British Empire), Russia is the second and the Qing Empire is the third. This shows the vastness of the Qing Empire.
Because of the vast territory of the Qing Dynasty, there was room for manoeuvre: even though some land was ceded because of the failure of the war, on the whole, due to the vast territory, by the end of the Qing Dynasty, there were still more land than ceded land.
electrical resistivity
During Eight-Nation Alliance's invasion of China, some countries tried to carve up China. However, after the German army was blocked in Shanxi and suffered heavy casualties, the powers also realized that China is a vast country, and the nationality of China people lies in their great patience on weekdays, but once it broke out, its power was very terrible. Therefore, the powers gave up the idea of dividing up China, and instead thought of supporting the Qing government and indirectly managing China with it. Therefore, in the last period of the late Qing Dynasty, the territory of the Qing Dynasty was basically not lost.
Three magic weapons to prevent the whale from devouring the late Qing Dynasty: system, vastness and people's resistance, which together ensured that the late Qing Dynasty left more than 10 million square kilometers of land to the Republic of China.
However, imperialist ambitions will not stop because of difficulties. Japan and Russia, for example, came up with a plan to annex China: first disintegrate China, and then gradually annex it.
So in the early years of the Republic of China, Russia instigated the independence of Outer Mongolia, and Japan established puppet Manchukuo and Mongolia, and returned China (unopened) and other vicious means.
Fortunately, the imperialist plot finally went bankrupt.