In 1874, Qing China and Meiji Japan were on the brink of war because of the territorial dispute over the Taiwan frontier. During that year, as one of many similar instances appeared in newspapers, a German merchant arranged 1300 rifles, ammunition, cannons, and even a battery to be transported to several places in Germany, France, and Britain before these weapons were shipped to Fuzhou and Shanghai in southeast China. In these Chinese cities, officials sought not only European or American weaponry but also foreign loans, a kind of international financial resource for war that was rather new for China at that time. These international elements indicate that this territorial dispute might not have been merely the issue between the two empires or the concerns among diplomats. Instead, global finance and military supplies played an essential role.
This presentation concentrates on the political and social effects of these critical financial and technological resources on China. In short, they made possible what could be called “internationally empowered Chinese frontier (re)conquest and empire rebuilding.” This phenomenon reveals the problem of framing the said 1874 Sino-Japanese controversy and, more broadly, China’s late-nineteenth-century survival and revival as struggles among states. In effect, global resources were conducive to China’s competition for borderlands and its subjection of highly autonomous and heavily indigenous regions in Taiwan and elsewhere. Notable consequences include the extension of Chinese civil and military administrations and civilian colonization, and China’s revenue reallocation for the purpose of loan repayments.
This poster presentation will use a map to show the global flow of capital and weaponry analyzed in this case. The map is particularly useful because it shows the far-reaching impacts of these resources on remote parts of the interconnected world. Images of firearms and guns are also possible to be displayed.