Li Hongzhang
Qing viceroy who steered policy toward Korea after 1882 and signed the Tianjin Convention and the Treaty of Shimonoseki with Itō Hirobumi
Qing viceroy who steered policy toward Korea after 1882 and signed the Tianjin Convention and the Treaty of Shimonoseki with Itō Hirobumi
A peasant army led by Hong Xiuquan rose to "destroy the Manchus and restore the Han", set up the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom with Nanjing as its capital and defied the Qing for fourteen years until Han Chinese militias and Western-led troops crushed it.
Han Chinese officials who had crushed the Taiping adopted Western arms and technology under the slogan "Chinese learning as substance, Western learning for use", founding arsenals, shipyards and modern enterprises. Defeats by France and Japan exposed its limits.
After the Imo Incident, Qing imposed trade regulations declaring Korea its dependency and letting Chinese merchants open shops in Seoul and trade inland.
China and France fought over suzerainty in Vietnam. China lost its claim to Vietnam, and in the meantime the Gapsin Coup broke out in Korea.
After the Gapsin Coup, Li Hongzhang of Qing and Itō Hirobumi of Japan agreed to withdraw both armies from Korea and to notify each other before sending troops again.
The treaty that ended the Sino-Japanese War gave Japan Taiwan and a huge indemnity, but the Triple Intervention of Russia, Germany and France forced it to return the Liaodong Peninsula. The powers then scrambled to lease Chinese territory.
Under the slogan "Support the Qing, destroy the foreigners", the Boxers attacked churches and railways and besieged the foreign legations in Beijing. An eight-nation alliance occupied Beijing, and by the Boxer Protocol China paid a vast indemnity and accepted foreign troops on its soil.
Han Chinese official who raised the Xiang Army to crush the Taiping and launched the Self-Strengthening Movement
First prime minister of Japan who forced the 1905 protectorate treaty and became the first Resident-General; shot by Ahn Jung-geun at Harbin
Founder of the God Worshipping Society and the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, who called himself the Heavenly King and made Nanjing his capital
Japanese foreign minister (1892–1896) who ended extraterritoriality through treaty revision with Britain and steered the Sino-Japanese War and the Treaty of Shimonoseki
Consort of the Xianfeng Emperor and mother of the Tongzhi Emperor who held real power in Qing China for nearly half a century and crushed the 1898 reforms
From the Opium War to the Boxer Protocol — sixty years in which China, Japan and Korea, forced open by Western gunboats, each tried to reform and went separate ways