Why did the British hold off the siege of Nanking towards the end of the Opium war?
They had assembled a sizeable force that could easily have taken the city with little resistance. If they took the city then they would control the Yangtze and the capital would be cut off completely, the emperor would be forced to surrender.
Why did they instead draw up a peace treaty rather than force a complete surrunder of the Qing dynasty to the British empire and force vassalage unto China as a province like that of India?
First Opium war
Jaxson Wilson
Angel Lee
Bump
Adrian Thompson
Every Imperial nation on earth including America wanted a piece of China. It was the big new promised market, ripe and just waiting to buy everyone's crap. If Britain had essentially annexed China, WW1 would have occurred much sooner.
Zachary Walker
I mean they were already annexing India, trying to control two humongous Asian empires would be too much even for them. They made a half-hearted attempt to divide Qing China with the other European powers during the late 19th century though.
The Opium Wars are some of my favorite bits of history btw, literally invading a country to get it addicted to drugs.
Caleb Ward
>literally invading a country to get it addicted to drugs
Laissez-faire capitalism is a beautiful thing.
Jackson Sanders
user this is 1842, there is no other Imperial power that can challenge Britain
Charles Bailey
the goal of the war was ending the canton trading system and opening up more cities to trade access, they kept the scope of the conflict narrow
Joshua Reyes
Yes but they just so happened to seize huge swathes of land on the way and found themselves in a position to force total surrender
Austin Hernandez
That would only succeed in toppling the regime, not China as a whole. This is why the bongs supported the Qing during the Taiping rebellion.
They wanted a regime in control of the entire country they could negotiate with.
Christian Nelson
>Why did they instead draw up a peace treaty rather than force a complete surrunder of the Qing dynasty to the British empire and force vassalage unto China as a province like that of India?
1) China was a bit more unified than India was. Britits couldn't literally play the same "Game of Princes" as they did with the Indian Rajs/Sultans/Princes/Emirs/Chiefs.
2) The point of British adventure in China wasn't to invade the place but open its market up.
3) What Britain did to do that wasn't only an asshole move to China: it was an asshole move versus other Europeans. Britain was the only European country Chinese didn't want to trade with. Largely because their merchants were assholes and British goods were nothing special. French, Portuguese, Spain, Netherlands, and Russia have all been trading with the Qing Chinese for quite a long time.
4) Related to the last point: the other Europeans themselves reacted to the sudden British cornering of the China market by demanding their own concessions from the Qing as well. As such the Brits had to compete with other Europeans for the Chinese market. It was the greatest fear of the Imperialist world that the Qing government would collapse and therefore create a "Scramble for China" in China and lead to a general European war. Therefore.
5) The Europeans propped up the Qing Imperial Government. Keeping it weak that it cant challenge them but strong enough so it wont collapse. Related to that.
6) Final point is the Qing themselves. They were weak but were still pretty wily actually. It knew that Colonial Powers competed for China and often it played them against each other. A good example of this was during the Treaty of Shimonoseki after the Sino-Japanese War, when Qing China prevented Japan from having Chinese concessions by telling them that the Europeans won't take that well.