Non-European View of world history - Assignment Example

Driven by this self-acclaimed superiority, the emperors of the Imperial China in the 10th century started a tribute system that claimed that foreign visitors as well as merchants of other nations must pay tribute to the emperor since their emperor is the heaven’s representative and chosen by the heaven. A common Chinese view was that their country is at the center of the earth. Therefore they should be in the leading position and they were above the merchant class who were believed, in Confucian ideals, to be the most despised ones.

Therefore the merchants of the west were allowed to use Ports of Macau and Canton under strict Chinese supervision and regulation. The west could only receive smidgeons of respect from the Chinese Emperors by showing their knowledge in mathematics and astronomy in front of the Chinese Imperial authority. But the other branches of western knowledge, for the Chinese, were as useless and negligible as those of the barbarians. The western countries were, in the eye of a common Chinese, the habitats of some warring barbarians who, at any cost, were be neglected because of their barbarian behaviors.

These barbarians were so negligible that they did not deserve to be acknowledged as invaders or something that the Chinese should be afraid of. Yet the mass cultural construct was much friendly to the West. But after the First Opium War of 1839, the Chinese view of the West underwent the most significant transition. The Chinese self-acclaimed superiority began to dwindle in the face of the West’s technology based military superiority. The defeated experiences in the First Opium War was a severe blow that brought the heavenly Chinese superiority down, though not to earth.

Due to the Industrial revolution the economic growth and stability as well as military superiority was high in the mid-19th century. But in comparison with the west, the Chinese economy was eroding within itself. In the face of western technology-based economy, Chinese manual labor-depended production system and economy were less competent. So was the Chinese military power. Because of the industrial growth in the West China became more important for the western traders and merchants from whom the country was potential both a market and a raw-material feeder of the western industry.

Consequently conflict of interest grew between the self-acclaimed superior China and the challenging west and Opium war took place as a test for the Chinese claim. China was defeated by the overwhelming western warring capability and the ruling Qing was forced to sign the Treaty of Nanjing. The superior Chinese ego had yet diminished at the defeat. Rather the Qing Dynasty was trying diehard to reestablish its superiority. But though the Dynasty took initiative to adapt itself with the new trend of the age by the “Hundred Days’ Reform” and “Late Qing Reform” in the late 19th Century and early 20th century, it was too late to recover from the loss of Opium War, Taiping Rebellion, Panthay Rebellion, Dungan revolt, and a number of other adversaries.

Cotterell says that the end of the Napoleonic War, the growth of industrial revolutions and the European Colonial presence in the neighboring states of China allured the West