Sarah Paine

They have governments coming and going in this period.

It's a difficult period, but they eventually figure it out by the time Mao reunifies China in 1949.

So I'm going to go through each of those examples in turn, starting with a really big one, which are the Opium Wars.

This is when Britain and France are coming at China in order to force China to trade on their terms.

And this corresponds with the two biggest rebellions of China's period of rebellions, the Taiping and the Nian Rebellion.

So here's a big chart that's a simplified chart.

The rebellions actually start in the late 18th centuries.

The rebellion's a misnomer.

These are civil wars.

Either people are like minority peoples who want out of empire.

They want to secede.

Other people who want to overthrow the government in Beijing.

The peak period is in red.

The really big ones are in white.

So China has got the two-front war problem, right?

It's got Europeans coming at them, plus all of this.

In fact, the Chinese have so many fronts that know how to deal with it.

So the Russians come on in to the Chinese and say, hey,

We can deal with the British and French for you and solve that problem, and then you can deal with all the internal stuff.

However, we need to have you sign a couple pieces of paper for us.