Prosperous Qing Dynasty From the Perspective of the British Side:"Prosperous Age"View of Macartney in Qianlong Dynasty
"Qianlong Prosperous Age"is the revival of Qing Dynasty at its peak.The image of decay hidden in this grand pros-perous age was observed by Western colonizers when Macartney came to China,which caused a great impact and change on the tradi-tional western impression of China.In the 58th year of Qianlong(1793),the British Macartney Mission visited China in the name of"offering birthday congratulations",hoping to promote the Qing Court to remove trade restrictions and bans and open the Chinese mar-ket through diplomatic negotiations,in order to comply with the opening of new shipping routes and Britain's global commercial needs and expansion after the Industrial Revolution,but Emperor Qianlong refused.Although Macartney failed to achieve the expected effect through diplomatic means,he took this opportunity to peek into the actual situation of Qing Dynasty and the living conditions of the peo-ple,and then explored the essence of the Qing Dynasty's external strength and internal power,laying the foreshadowing for Britain's brazenly launching a war against China decades later.This also fully exposed the fatal defects of the defense secrecy system of Qing Dy-nasty,which is an important reason for China's defeats in foreign wars in modern times.
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