00:00Welcome to History on the Run, where we take the long, winding sagas of the past and turn them into fast-paced journeys you can enjoy on the go.
00:12Today's story, one of the most dramatic rises and falls in world history.
00:18How China, once the world's richest, most powerful empire, lost its superpower status and endured what is remembered as the Century of Humiliation.
00:27This isn't just about battles and emperors. It's about walls, trade, opium, rebellion, and a stubborn refusal to change until it was far too late.
00:40Strap in, because this is a rollercoaster of invention, pride, collapse, and the slow road back.
00:48For centuries, China wasn't just a country. It was the country. The Middle Kingdom.
00:55The civilization that invented paper, gunpowder, the compass, and printing.
01:01It had bustling cities, intricate bureaucracy, advanced agriculture, and a population so large it dwarfed entire continents.
01:10From the Silk Road, caravans hauling silk and porcelain across deserts, to the Grand Canal moving grain north and south, to the magnificent Forbidden City at the heart of Beijing, China wasn't just surviving, it was thriving.
01:28While Europe stumbled through the Dark Ages, China had libraries, paved streets, fireworks, and a tax code.
01:36By the 1400s, under the Ming Dynasty, they even built the largest fleet in the world.
01:44Admiral Zheng He commanded treasure ships so massive, they made Columbus' ships look like toy boats.
01:52He sailed to India, Arabia, and Africa, bringing back exotic animals and gifts.
01:58For a moment, China had the chance to dominate the oceans.
02:04And then, they stopped.
02:06The court decided these grand voyages were a waste of money.
02:11They burned the charts, let the ships rot, and turned inward.
02:17This decision, more than almost any other, set the stage for what was to come.
02:22Because while China was closing its ports, Europe was opening theirs, and racing toward a global empire.
02:31China had always worried about outsiders.
02:35For centuries, it built walls, literally the Great Wall, to keep the nomads out.
02:42The Mongols, and later the Manchus, actually stormed in and took over, proving the walls weren't foolproof.
02:50But the habit stuck. Foreigners were a threat, not an opportunity.
02:55Trade was restricted to one port, Canton, and even there, foreign merchants had to follow strict rules.
03:03To the Qing Dynasty, Europeans were just another group of barbarians to be managed with ritual and tribute.
03:10The court believed China already had everything it needed.
03:13Unfortunately for them, Europe was about to show up with steamships and cannons that didn't care about rituals.
03:22By the 1800s, Britain had a big problem.
03:25Tea.
03:26The English were drinking oceans of Chinese tea, but the Chinese didn't want British goods in return.
03:33The silver drain was staggering.
03:37The solution?
03:38Opium.
03:38Grown in British-controlled India, smuggled into China, and addicting millions.
03:44The trade was illegal, but corruption and desperation made it unstoppable.
03:50Silver poured back into British coffers, while China was left with a population hooked on a deadly drug.
03:56The Qing court finally said enough.
03:58The emperor sent Commissioner Lin Zexu to Canton in 1839.
04:04Lin seized thousands of chests of opium and destroyed them in a public show of defiance.
04:12Britain, of course, was furious.
04:15To them, this wasn't about morality.
04:18It was about money and pride.
04:21And so the first opium war began.
04:24The war was short and brutal.
04:27China's outdated junks and cannons were no match for Britain's industrial navy.
04:32Steamships moved regardless of wind, rifled guns pounded fortresses, and the Chinese army was left scrambling.
04:40In 1842, the Treaty of Nanjing ended the war and began China's century of humiliation.
04:49Hong Kong was handed to Britain, five ports were opened to foreign trade, tariffs were fixed,
04:54and Britain gained extraterritoriality, meaning their citizens didn't even have to follow Chinese law.
05:02But humiliation wasn't a one-time thing.
05:06The second opium war in the 1850s was even worse.
05:10This time, Britain and France marched on Beijing, looted the capital, and burned the emperor's summer palace.
05:17The Qing dynasty, once the ruler of all under heaven, was reduced to signing treaty after treaty,
05:25each more humiliating than the last.
05:27As if foreign invasions weren't enough, China was tearing itself apart from within.
05:34The Taiping Rebellion 1850-1864 was led by Hong Xiuquan,
05:40a failed scholar who claimed to be the younger brother of Jesus Christ.
05:44His movement wasn't small.
05:46It built an entire rival kingdom with millions of followers,
05:50abolishing footbinding and promoting gender equality.
05:54It also led to one of the bloodiest civil wars in history, with tens of millions dead.
06:01Then came the Nyan Rebellion, the Dungan Revolt, and others.
06:06Each drained the empire's resources and revealed just how weak the king had become.
06:11The Boxer Rebellion at the turn of the century was the last desperate attempt to push foreigners out.
06:19Martial artists, the Boxers, believed rituals could make them bulletproof.
06:24Spoiler, they weren't.
06:26Foreign armies crushed them, marched on Beijing again,
06:30and forced China into yet another humiliating treaty.
06:35The Qing dynasty did try to modernize.
06:37During the self-strengthening movement, arsenals, shipyards, and modern schools were established.
06:44Western science and engineering were cautiously introduced, but it was never enough.
06:50Tradition held too tight a grip.
06:53Confucian exams still dominated, rewarding memorized essays instead of innovation.
06:59Reforms were often watered down or sabotaged by conservative officials.
07:04Meanwhile, Japan, once considered a junior student of China, was modernizing at breakneck speed.
07:12When the two clashed in the First Sino-Japanese War, 1894-1895, Japan crushed China, seizing Taiwan and establishing dominance in Korea.
07:24For China, this was the ultimate humiliation, losing to the very neighbor they had once considered beneath them.
07:31By the early 20th century, the Qing dynasty was staggering.
07:36Empress Dowager Sisi, the formidable power behind the throne, died in 1908.
07:43Her successor was a two-year-old boy, Pui Yi, the last emperor.
07:48Imagine it.
07:49A toddler on the dragon throne, while foreign powers divided China into spheres of influence,
07:56carving up railways, mines, and ports.
08:01It was symbolic of the dynasty itself.
08:04Ancient, elaborate, but fragile and powerless in a modern world.
08:09In 1911, revolution broke out in Wuchang.
08:13Provinces declared independence one by one.
08:16Sun Yat-sen, a revolutionary leader, called for the end of monarchy and the birth of a republic.
08:22The Qing, exhausted and delegitimized, could not resist.
08:27In 1912, the boy emperor abdicated.
08:312,000 years of imperial rule ended not with a grand final battle, but with a quiet signature.
08:39The dragon throne was empty.
08:41From the opium wars to the fall of the Qing, China endured a century of defeats, concessions, and humiliations.
08:50Foreign armies marched through its capital, foreign flags flew over its ports, and its people endured addiction, famine, and rebellion.
09:00But this period, painful as it was, also planted the seeds of modern China.
09:06Nationalism grew.
09:08Reformers and revolutionaries imagined new futures.
09:11The memory of humiliation became a driving force, one that still echoes today in how China sees itself in the world.
09:22So, how did China lose its ancient superpower status?
09:26By turning inward when the world turned outward, by clinging to tradition while rivals embraced change,
09:32and by underestimating the impact of industrial power.
09:38The Middle Kingdom, once the world's richest empire, was humbled into a fractured, semi-colonized state.
09:45But history never ends at humiliation.
09:48Out of collapse came the drive for reinvention.
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