Sarah Paine

But to give you a sense of it, in World War II, it's estimated that 55 million people died.

So you're talking 20 million just in the Taipings, and I have no idea how all this adds up.

But it's huge.

The Chinese like to talk about these as being rebellions or uprisings.

Give me a break.

They're civil wars.

A whole bunch of them want to overthrow the dynasty in Beijing.

A whole other set of them want to secede from the empire, often these minority people who just want the Han, the predominant people to go away, or the Manchus in this era.

So some of these provinces are devastated for generations.

Okay, so that's point one, these civil wars.

Point two is

is this coincided with an era of accelerating European imperialism where Europeans and also Japan, Japanese are carving out massive spheres of influence for themselves.

So the Chinese are not gonna have sovereignty over their country, full sovereignty for a very, very long time.

And the story, the worst part gets even worse.

This happens to China because China loses a succession of regional wars.

It loses the First Opium War, the Second Opium War.

The Japanese snagged the Ryukyu Islands.

And then in the Sino-French War, China loses control over Indochina.

And then in the Sino-Japanese War, they're losing their tributary of Korea.

The Ili Crisis is up and Xinjiang goes a little better for them.