Ch. 19

This chapter was discussing the Empires in Collision in Europe, Middle East, and East Asia. One thing very interesting is just recently in 2011 the Chinese President Hu Jintao reminded the Chinese people about Britain's violent intrusion in the history of China just to sell opium to his people. The Chinese named this event as the "century of humiliation". In 1912 China's imperial state had collapsed and was transformed from a central presence in the global economy to a weak and dependent participant in a European dominated world. This is when Great Britain was the major economic and political player. At this time the Chinese thought they were the civilized center of the entire world and had a quite rude awakening. I think it is crazy how power can switch from country to country in a matter of a century or even less. It was interesting that China believed they were at the center of the world because I believe every country believes that about themselves. For example here in America most people probably believe we are superior to other countries just because of our "products" and our "goods". I think it would be a huge awakening if one day Americans didn't believe they were at the center of world. China had a substantial population growth from 100 million people in 1685 to about 430 million people in 1853. The reason there was so many people is because of the growing pressure on the land, smaller farms when there was a huge peasant population, and a lot of unemployment, impoverishment, misery, and starvation. They could not keep up with the population and they are still in the same predicament now. There population as of 2016 was up to 1.379 billion people! That is why with all of these problems in China and trying to control their population they made it a rule that each couple could only have one child. I do get why they put this rule into place but it is sad that they can only have one child. In 1750 the Ottoman Empire was still the central political fixture of the Islamic world. The Ottoman Empire was a very big empire and ruled over much of the Arab world but was unable to deal with Europe from equality and superiority. It was known as "The sick man of Europe". In the early twentieth century the Chinese and Ottoman Empire both ended.

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