I. Missionaries

The missionary presence in China presented some positive and negative influences. Schools opened giving education in Western medicine and technology. New revolutionary ideas about equality and freedom began to be talked about. Emancipation of women presented some new problems but set some additional seeds that still today began to germinate.

China's population rose to 430 million by 1850 and then dipped sharply in the 1860s and began to climb in the 1870s. As the population swelled, migration began to increase to Southeast Asia, South America and North America. Chinese often-received severe treatment, more often treated as slaves than as free labor. Some Chinese received harsh treatment due to their "foreignness" and people felt they would work for substandard wages. Laws discriminating against Chinese sprung up throughout the United States.

Sun Yat-sen got his education in Hawaii and volunteered his services to the Qing government. Rebuffed he decided to form a secret society, which he named the Revive China Society. Sun obtained backing eventually from a "Charlie" Soong whose family would play a very important part of twentieth-century Chinese politics. Meanwhile the Germans used a pretext of an attack on missionaries to occupy the port of Qingdao. The British took over the harbor at Weihaiwai and forced the Chinese to give them a lease on a large area north of Hong Kong now know as the "New Territories" for 99 years. This lease expired in 1997. The Russians took part of Manchuria; the French took other parts. Other nations lined up to slice China into pieces like a melon.