China's century of humiliation: The Opium Wars

How did a powerful civilization, dominated for centuries by Confucian philosophy, suffer a crushing defeat at the hands of England, a small island nation, during the Opium Wars? How did it experience a century-long period of humiliation? Why was China, which at the time possessed the world's largest economy, most advanced bureaucracy, and richest production capacity, unable to achieve the Industrial Revolution? What lessons has China learned from that difficult period to this day?

CHINA'S IMPERIAL PAST

The China of the Ming Dynasty was one of the world's most advanced civilizations and economies in the early 15th century. Confucianism emphasized a merit-based bureaucracy, educated statesmen, social order, and central authority. Thanks to this understanding, the philosophical state of China had established a strong administrative structure and a stable management system, unlike many other states of the era. While Christian Europe was struggling with feudal wars and political fragmentation under religious dogma during the same period, the Ming Dynasty possessed a strong central state, an advanced bureaucracy, high production capacity, and the world's largest cities. In terms of population, industrial production, urbanization, engineering, and trade volume, China was far ahead of the West in the 15th century. Its population was around 70 million, and they produced more than 25% of global output. In the same period, England's share was around 2%, and the Ottoman Empire's share was around 4%.

MARITIME CHINA

Technologies such as paper, the printing press, the compass, and gunpowder had been developed in China centuries earlier. China was far ahead, especially in maritime affairs. It is worth remembering that China had a rich maritime tradition in the 16th century. They achieved the Celestial Atlas 500 years before Europe, the application of watertight compartments in multi-masted sailing ships and the stern-post rudder 300 years earlier, and the magnetic compass 100 years earlier. While Chinese shipyards were building multi-decked ships capable of carrying thousands of sailors, Europeans were still trying to discover the boundaries of the Atlantic Ocean. When we think of geographical discoveries, we think of the 15th-century explorations. This is actually a Western-centric, ideological concept. What is at stake here are the firsts of the Europeans, not of humanity. These continents were discovered by other civilizations beforehand. The sovereign and hegemonic West, relying on its later superiority, imposed its own firsts as the firsts of humanity and succeeded in doing so. For example, why did Portugal, which we know discovered India, fail to discover China? Because Westerners only discovered areas inhabited by tribes more primitive than themselves, or more accurately, areas they could colonize. When Portuguese sailors reached China at the beginning of the 16th century, the Chinese Emperor Wang Yang Mi, who saw them, said, "The barbarians have arrived." Faced with China's superior civilization, the Portuguese returned without being able to discover it.

During this period, a Muslim sailor, Admiral Zheng He (pronounced 'Cheng He' by the Chinese), commanded a fleet of 60 ships and 27,000 soldiers, applying naval and gunboat diplomacy in the Indian and Pacific Oceans for 28 years between 1405 and 1433. He was very successful. However, for inexplicable reasons, they did not continue this success in maritime affairs, and their maritime tradition could not evolve into an imperial one. Despite Zheng He's great success, the reasons for their withdrawal from the seas and the process of destroying the navy are still debated today. Among the reasons for their turning away from the sea are: the theory that the Emperor's soothsayers pointed to the navy as responsible for a series of disasters that befell him; the argument that China turned inward on the grounds that there was no 'Great Flower'—that is, nothing new that China did not already possess—in potential colonies; and the thesis that the navy's existence was eliminated because the autonomous administrative units that Admiral Zheng He and his close power circles would establish in overseas territories could eventually engage in a struggle for independence and power against the motherland.

CHINA'S DECLINE

In the early 18th century, despite stagnation in many areas, China was still one of the world's largest economic centers. Its population was larger than all the major European states, its domestic market was wider, and its production of tea, silk, and porcelain was unrivaled on a global scale. However, economic size and technological superiority were not the same thing. While China derived its wealth from agricultural production, crafts, and trade networks that had persisted for centuries, Europe, especially England, was undergoing a completely different transformation with the Industrial Revolution. Steam engines, modern shipyards, iron and steel production, mass manufacturing, and new weapons technologies were radically changing the West's military and economic power. China, believing it was the center of the world, continued to maintain its traditional order and could not sufficiently grasp the changing balance of power. In 1820, China accounted for approximately 37% of the world's population, 33% of the world's economy, and about 30% of global manufacturing output. In contrast, although England was the owner of the first industrial revolution, it accounted for only 6% of the world economy. However, England was far ahead not in economic size, but in technological and military power.

During the Qing Dynasty in the 18th century, China weakened rapidly during the years of modernization and breakthroughs that followed Europe's reforms, enlightenment, the French Revolution, and industrial revolutions, and turned into a colony of European imperialists led by England and Japan. This decline did not happen entirely through the intervention of external powers. Europe had become very strong through looting, colonization, and the transition of mercantilism to the stages of capitalism and imperialism. Eventually, China's manufacturing sector declined, technology could not be produced, and the industrial revolutions were missed. Despite having a state tradition of thousands of years, a strong bureaucracy, and a high culture, China was defeated by England, an island nation that came from several thousand kilometers away. Moreover, the subject of this war was not land, but opium. With the Opium Wars, China's period of humiliation began. This process completely distanced China from the seas, from which it was already disconnected.

BACKGROUND OF THE OPIUM WARS

In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, China's products such as tea, silk, and porcelain were in great demand in Europe. However, the Chinese administration showed limited interest in European goods, and trade was largely conducted in exchange for silver. This situation had created a serious trade deficit, especially for England. The Opium Wars would emerge as the most striking result of this contradiction. To solve the problem, England began to smuggle opium produced in India into China. The trade, which was limited at first, reached massive proportions in a short time. While millions of Chinese became opium addicts, the country's silver reserves began to melt away rapidly. State revenues weakened, corruption in the bureaucracy increased, and military discipline deteriorated. The opium issue was no longer just a health problem; it had become a crisis that directly threatened state security.

Before the First Opium War in 1839, a small portion of the Chinese population was addicted to opium. According to historians' estimates, out of a population of approximately 400 million, the number of regular opium users was between 4 and 12 million, that is, about 1–3% of the population, or at most 5% according to the highest estimates. However, the problem was not the number of users, but the effect of opium in collapsing the state's economic and administrative structure. As silver flowed out of the country through imports, the money supply contracted, tax collection became difficult, the tax burden on the peasantry increased, and Qing finances were seriously shaken. During the same period, opium use became widespread among officials, soldiers, merchants, and artisans, reducing labor productivity, and with the growth of smuggling, bribery and corruption increased rapidly among port officials, customs officers, and local administrators.

THE 1ST AND 2ND OPIUM WARS

The Qing Dynasty banned the trade to stop the devastating effects caused by opium. In 1839, the Emperor's special representative, Lin Zexu, seized and destroyed a large quantity of opium belonging to British merchants in Canton. The London administration viewed this incident as an interference with free trade and decided to use military force. The resulting conflict was not just about the opium trade. The struggle was a power imbalance between the West, which had realized the industrial revolution and become a global naval power, and China, which was trying to preserve its traditional order. The Qing Empire was caught unprepared against British military power supported by steam-powered warships, modern artillery systems, and industrial production. Thus, the tragedy that would drag China into the "Century of Humiliation" began exactly one year after the signing of the 1838 Treaty of Balta Liman, which reduced the Ottoman Empire to a semi-colony of England. (The collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the collapse of China contain great similarities.)

In the First Opium War (1839–1842), the Royal Navy quickly collapsed China's coastal defense, captured important ports, and advanced as far as Nanjing via the Yangtze River. With the Treaty of Nanjing (1842) signed at the end of the war, Hong Kong was ceded to England, five ports were opened to foreign trade, China agreed to pay heavy reparations, and the era of "Unequal Treaties" began. However, even this treaty did not satisfy England, the representative of brazen imperialism, and other Western states. About 14 years later, the purpose of the Second Opium War, which broke out in 1856, was no longer just to protect the opium trade, but to open China completely to foreign trade, to gain the right for foreign states to establish permanent embassies in Beijing, to make missionary activities free, and to provide much broader economic and legal privileges to Western merchants. Thanks to the massive superiority of the Royal Navy and the military support of France, which joined England this time, the allied forces captured Tianjin and then Beijing, forcing the Qing Dynasty to make much heavier concessions. The war ended after 4 years with a heavy military and political defeat for the Empire. British and French forces advanced to Beijing and occupied the capital, the Emperor was forced to flee the city, and the Old Summer Palace, the symbol of China's splendor, was looted and burned. With the Treaty of Beijing signed at the end of the war, China opened more of its ports to foreign trade, accepted that foreign states would maintain permanent embassies in Beijing, granted broad privileges to Christian missionaries and foreign merchants, agreed to pay heavy war reparations, and the opium trade was effectively legalized. This defeat, while seriously weakening the sovereignty of the Qing State, went down in history as one of the most traumatic turning points of China's "Century of Humiliation" period.

PHILOSOPHY, RELIGION, AND BECOMING MARITIME

The Opium Wars were not just a military defeat. More deeply, it was the result of a civilization's inability to adapt to changing world conditions. For this reason, historians and Chinese thinkers have been debating the same question for many years. Why could Confucius's morality, Buddha's wisdom, and China's thousands-year-old state tradition not protect China against the rise of the West? Furthermore, why could neither Confucian nor Buddhist teachings prevent 12 million of the Chinese population from using drugs? The answer to these questions should be sought not only in comparisons of military power, but in China's political culture, education system, approach to technology, and way of perceiving the world. This is also the center of gravity of the Opium Wars. Because the defeat that China experienced until 1949, the period when Mao's communist revolution ensured national integrity and secured its borders, revealed the crisis of a civilization model, not an army. Confucianism was essentially a state and social philosophy. Confucius's fundamental question, which centered on family, moral discipline, hierarchy, and loyalty to the state, was: "How is society kept in order?" But the problem revealed by the Opium Wars was different. The problem was no longer how society would be governed, but how the imperial powers that had experienced the industrial revolution would be stopped. The Confucian bureaucracy could diagnose moral corruption, but it could not respond to steamships, modern cannons, and industrial production. In other words, Confucianism could govern the state, but it could not transform the state in the industrial age. China's problem was not a lack of morality. It was that it was facing rivals with technological superiority. On the other hand, Buddhism was also very influential in China during the same period. Buddhism was looking for an answer to a completely different question. Buddha's focus was not the state, but the human; not society, but the individual; not war, but suffering. Buddhist thought advised humans to get rid of their desires, reach inner peace, and transcend worldly attachments. It was not equally functional in terms of state building, industrial policy, or producing military strategy. When British warships reached the Chinese coast, Buddhist monasteries could not build a modern navy. There was no direct link between the search for Nirvana and the industrial revolution. Therefore, Buddhism could give spiritual strength to Chinese society, but it could not produce a technological solution against imperialist aggression. Similarly, Buddhism could not prevent drug addiction. However, the fight against drugs was a problem not only for China but for the whole world, then as it is today. Therefore, the opium crisis cannot be explained solely as the failure of Buddhism or Confucianism. History shows that addictive substances like drugs cannot be prevented solely by the moral teachings of a religion or philosophy. Buddhist, Confucian, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or secular societies have all encountered similar problems in different periods. In fact, throughout history, states and great powers have used drugs as a geopolitical tool not only for economic gain but also to weaken rival societies. The Opium Wars are one of the most striking examples of this. Therefore, lasting success in the fight against drugs is possible not only with moral advice, but with strong state control, an effective legal system, quality education, a solid family structure, social values, and conscious public policy. Otherwise, even the most deep-rooted religions and the most powerful philosophical traditions cannot be sufficient on their own against economic interests and organized crime networks.

PRESERVING THE ORDER OR CHANGING?

The Ming and Qing Chinese dynasties, which ruled for 544 years, adopted the bureaucratic understanding of Confucianism that prioritizes stability as a state philosophy, and the approach of Buddhism that limits worldly ambitions in social culture. This mentality saw preserving order as more valuable than creating revolution and change. In contrast, Protestant Europe, especially England and the Netherlands, developed a cultural climate that accepted trade, individual initiative, profit, overseas expansion, and technological innovation as morally legitimate. The main difference here was maritime affairs. At the beginning of the 15th century, Admiral Zheng He's battle fleet was technically superior to the Europeans'. However, the Ming court did not see maritime affairs as the state's primary area of existence. China's wealth was already inside. Thanks to fertile agricultural basins, a huge population, and a large domestic market, there was no vital dependence on foreign trade. Maritime affairs were seen as a preference, not a necessity. For England and the Netherlands, the situation was the exact opposite. Small population, limited agricultural land, and island geography forced them into trade and the sea. Protestant ethics also supported this. As the German sociologist Max Weber pointed out, in Protestant culture, work, savings, capital accumulation, and worldly success became moral values and conditions for the path to heaven. This turned directly into shipbuilding, insurance, banking, overseas trade, and industrial investments. While China continued to train successful bureaucrats in the same period, Europe was training successful shipowners, merchants, and engineers, and giving life to the military power that would protect and support them.

China had not collapsed morally, but it had not been able to read the world's changing balance of power fast enough. England, thanks to the Protestant ethic that questioned the dogma of Christianity in the most radical way, had leaped much further than the Catholics and Orthodox, removed all obstacles in front of reason and science, been able to go beyond the horizon thanks to maritime affairs, and experienced the industrial revolution. On a tiny island, it was producing steel, steamships, and heavy ship cannons. It had a modern financial system, and thanks to its powerful navy, it controlled the global maritime trade network and the nodes of maritime trade. The combination of Protestant ethics and maritime affairs had created the largest and most powerful imperialist state the world had seen in those years. The British ensured that private entrepreneurs traded with state support through the East India and Levant Companies. By establishing the Royal Society (Academy of Sciences) in 1675, they brought science and reason alongside the Protestant faith against the dogma and conservatism of religion. Bacon, the founder of the "Royal Society," was a scientist and statesman who understood the importance of the seas very well. He also said the following about dominance over the seas: "It is certain that he who commands the sea is at great liberty, and may take as much and as little of the war as he will." Thus, by integrating Protestant ethics with trade and the navy, they grew continuously at sea.

OTTOMAN-CHINESE SIMILARITY

When the last two centuries of history of the Ottoman Empire and the Chinese Empire are examined, surprisingly similar geopolitical ruptures are seen. Both states existed as the most powerful political organizations of their continents for about five to six centuries, but after missing the industrial revolution, they faced the pressure of Western states that used naval power on a global scale. For China, this process began with the 1839-1842 First Opium War and the 1856-1860 Second Opium War; the firepower of the British navy forced China's doors open, and the Qing Dynasty was forced to make heavy concessions. Then, after the 1900 Boxer Rebellion, the Eight-Nation Alliance consisting of England, France, Germany, Russia, Japan, the USA, Austria-Hungary, and Italy entered Beijing and effectively suppressed China's political will.

The Ottoman State experienced a similar fate. With the 1838 Treaty of Balta Liman, it largely lost its economic independence against England; in 1807, the British fleet under the command of Admiral Duckworth came as far as the front of Istanbul and directly threatened the administration of Selim III; in 1878, the British navy entered the Bosphorus to stop Russia, and in return, it obtained the administration of Cyprus; in 1881, with the Decree of Muharram (Düyun-u Umumiye), Ottoman finances were left under the control of European creditors; in 1882, Egypt was occupied by England. Later, with the 1908 Reval Meeting, England and Russia discussed the future of the Ottoman geography among themselves, and the 1915 Gallipoli Campaign was the largest joint invasion attempt carried out by Western naval powers to capture the Ottoman capital. As a continuation of this process, the occupation of Izmir on May 15, 1919, represented the last major move towards the partition of Anatolia. The historical lifespan of both empires is remarkably close to each other. While the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) and then the Qing Dynasty (1644-1912) created an uninterrupted imperial tradition of about five and a half centuries in China, the Ottoman State ruled for about six centuries between 1299 and 1922. Both states were first weakened by external interventions, and then experienced major political transformations internally. The 1911 Revolution in China can be seen as a transition phase similar to the 1908 Second Constitutional Era and the Committee of Union and Progress period in the Ottoman Empire. However, the real establishment of modern states took place under the leadership of Sun Yat-sen in 1911 and Mao Zedong in 1949 in China, and Mustafa Kemal Atatürk after the National Struggle in 1919-1923 in Turkey. All three leaders transformed occupied, fragmented, and externally vulnerable states back into independent and sovereign nation-states.

However, after 1949, China and after 1952, Turkey followed different strategic paths. While opening up to the outside world, China attached great importance to protecting its state sovereignty, national industry, and geopolitical priorities; it tried to integrate into the global system on its own terms. Turkey, on the other hand, became an inseparable part of the Western security architecture with its NATO membership, and different evaluations have been made regarding the strategic consequences of this. In this respect, the common history of the Ottoman Empire and China is not just a history of imperial interventions; it is also the common memory of two great civilizations regarding how sovereignty is lost and how it is regained. The real lesson is that independence can be protected not only by military victories, but by building sustainable national power in economic, technological, maritime, and geopolitical fields. History points out that China has followed a long-term and state-centered strategy in this regard; and that it is important for Turkey to develop a balance policy that will constantly strengthen its strategic autonomy, based on its own historical experiences.

LESSONS LEARNED BY CHINA

Today, in many of his speeches, Chinese President Xi Jinping does not attribute China's decline entirely to the imperialist powers exemplified in the Opium Wars. On the contrary, he also points to the mistakes in its own history as one of the important reasons for China's weakening. In particular, he criticizes internal factors such as the closed-door policy seen in the late Ming Dynasty and then the Qing period, and its isolation from the world by not catching the scientific and industrial revolution in time. Xi uses this approach as one of the justifications for China's opening up today and its technological development. On the other hand, the official narrative of the Chinese Communist Party covers both internal and external factors. It criticizes Western imperialist powers and later Japan for taking advantage of China's internal weaknesses to impose unequal treaties. To understand the behavior of today's China, it is necessary to understand the psychological trace left by the Opium Wars. The Chinese do not see this period as a drug problem, but as a problem of lack of national power. Behind many strategic decisions taken in Beijing today, the shadow of the Opium Wars still remains. China is trying to create a country where no foreign power can ever show up at its door with opium ships again. For this reason, national unity, economic independence, technological superiority, industrial capacity, scientific research, and naval power are among the basic priorities of modern China. A significant part of the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party lies right here. The Party presents itself as the structure that ended the period of humiliation that began with the Opium Wars and raised China back to great power status. Ideology has come alongside philosophy. However, although the ideology is communist in theory, it has entered a transformation with state capitalism in practice. In this respect, China is an ideologically Marxist-Leninist state, but it applies a hybrid model that combines state capitalism with market mechanisms in terms of management culture, and is largely Confucian in terms of management culture.

LESSONS TURKEY SHOULD LEARN

The Opium Wars and the "Century of Humiliation" experienced by China are actually the story not only of China, but also of the Ottoman Empire, which shared a similar fate in the same period. Both empires had been great powers for centuries, but they could not read the changing world in time, and were late in grasping the industrial revolution, scientific transformation, and the decisive role of naval power. In the end, they were forced to retreat in the face of the West's technological and maritime superiority.

There are striking similarities between the attitude of the dynasties in China and the Mandarin bureaucracy, and the state approach of the House of Osman and the Enderun and central bureaucracy. Both systems trained the world's most successful state cadres during their establishment and rise periods, and created a strong ruling class based on merit. However, over time, both structures turned into institutions that protected the existing order rather than institutions that managed change. While the examination system based on rote memorization of Confucian classics in China trained bureaucrats rather than engineers and inventors, the Enderun and the religious establishment (ilmiye) in the Ottoman Empire prioritized military and administrative ability, and the conservative structure of religion pushed industry, engineering, and scientific research into the background by choosing transmission (nakil) in the dialectic of reason versus transmission. From the 17th and 18th centuries onwards, bribery, nepotism, the sale of offices, and personal interest relationships eroded state capacity in both states. While the devshirme system was a powerful mechanism that produced merit in the early periods in the Ottoman Empire, the deterioration of the system in later centuries, palace factions, and the strengthening of interest groups weakened central authority. In China, while the Mandarin bureaucracy resisted reforms, bureaucratic and military elites in the Ottoman Empire acted cautiously against many modernization attempts. As a result, both empires could not adapt in time to the great transformation in science, technology, industry, and maritime affairs while the teachings of Confucianism and Buddhism prevailed in one, and the Islamic religion in the other. For this reason, the West's superiority stemmed not only from stronger armies, but from state institutions that learned faster, produced innovation, and adapted to change, and from the decision-makers and implementers trained by these institutions.

Our Commander-in-Chief and eternal leader Mustafa Kemal Atatürk learned important lessons from historical collapses and built the Republic not only as a new state, but also as a project of civilization transformation. The Six Arrows, which form the foundation of the Republic, are not just a political program, but a comprehensive development model aimed at preventing the collapse of great states. Statism aimed to create national capabilities in industrialization and strategic sectors; Populism aimed to create an educated and productive society; Secularism aimed to remove dogmatic obstacles in front of reason and science; and Revolutionism aimed at continuous renewal to adapt to the changing world. Republicanism and nationalism created the nation-state and belonging to a superior identity. The decline of China and the Ottoman Empire in almost the same periods shows the same truth. Trying to preserve the order in the period when the first and second industrial revolutions were experienced in the climate created by the French Revolution cannot replace change. States that stand still while the world's balance of power changes fall behind, even if they possess the most deep-rooted civilizations. For this reason, the greatest legacy of the Republic is making reason and science the basic guide of state administration. Indeed, Atatürk's saying, "The truest guide in life is science," is a geopolitical development strategy.

The lesson to be learned in the global competitive environment that Turkey is facing today is the same. A strong state, a strong economy, advanced technology, qualified education, scientific production, industrialization, and maritime affairs cannot be thought of separately from each other. History shows that religions and philosophies can offer a moral framework to societies; but the decisive elements of being a great power are reason, science, technology, production, law, education, and state capacity. The founding philosophy of the Republic was built exactly on this truth. Turkey's future depends on continuing the contemporary civilization goal shown by Atatürk with a development understanding that is based on science and reason, constantly renewing itself, and opening up to the seas.