Question

HISTORY QUESTION

(5-6 sentences)

Why were the Ottoman and Qing Empires vulnerable to Western pressure in the nineteenth century?

Answer 1

Most of the subjects of the Ottoman, Russian, and Qing rulers did not think of European pressure of competition as determining factors in their lives during the 1st half on the 19th centuries. They continued to live according to the social and economic institutions they inherited from previous generations. By the 1870s, however, the challenge of Europe had become widely realized. The Crimean War, where European allies achieved a hollow victory for the ottomans and then pressured the sultan for more reforms, confirmed both Ottoman and Russian military weakness. (The Opium War did the same for China, unlike the other empires, was also stricken by rampaging civil war and regional uprisings.) At the time, what most impressed the Ottomans, Russian, and chines was European military superiority, as demonstrated in the Greek war of independence, the Crimean War, and the Opium War.