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Oct. 2021 “CHINESE LEARNING FOR FUNDAMENTAL STRUCTURE, WESTERN LEARNING FOR PRACTICAL USE?” The Development of Late Nineteenth Century Chinese Steam Navy Revisited By Junyu Shao A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT OF WAR STUDIES SCHOOL OF SOCIAL SCIENCE & PUBLIC POLICY KING’S COLLEGE LONDON LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM AUGUST 2015 1 For my beloved motherland 2 Table of Contents Title Page 1 Table of Content 3 Table of Conversion, Chronological Periods and Note on Romanization of Chinese 4 Thesis Abstract 5 Chapter One: Introduction 6 Chapter Two: The ‘Fundamental Structure’ of the Qing Empire 28 Chapter Three: The Statesmen and the Politics of the Chinese Steam Navy 72 Chapter Four: The Officers of the Chinese Steam Navy 96 Chapter Five: The Ships of the Chinese Steam Navy 142 Chapter Six: The Use of the Naval Force 193 Chapter Seven: Conclusions 228 Bibliography 242 3 Conversion Tables Currencies: 1 tael = £ 1/3 (6 shillings 8 pence) (in 1894 the value of tael dropped to 3 shillings 2 pence) Weights : 1 shi = 60.453 kilograms Measures: 1 chi = 0.1 zhang = 14.1 inches Major Chronological Periods The Qing Dynasty (1644-1911): Daoguang 1821-1850 Xianfeng 1851-1861 Tongzhi 1862-1874 Guangxu 1875-1908 Xuantong 1908-1911 The Republic of China (1912-1949) Note on Romanization of Chinese This dissertation has used the Pinyin system throughout, except for a few spellings best known outside China in the Wade-Giles form, such as Sun Yat-sen (Sun Yixian in Pinyin). 4 Thesis Abstract The defeats suffered by the Qing Empire in the two Opium Wars revealed to the Chinese how their traditional armed forces were incapable of defending the country against Western aggressors. In the second half of the nineteenth century, a group of Chinese elites advocated that China needed to strengthen herself by pursuing a degree of military modernisation which, in effect, meant Westernisation. Under the banner of ‘Chinese learning for fundamental structure, Western learning for practical use’, a substantial Western-style steam navy was established and was considered one of the most powerful in East Asia. Yet despite this huge effort, this force invariably failed to fulfil its task of safeguarding the empire. The central argument of this dissertation is that the failure of the Chinese steam navy was inevitable, primarily because of the Qing Empire’s ‘fundamental structure’ being incompatible with the requirements of a modern steam navy. China in the second half of the nineteenth century was characterised by autocratic Manchu rule, decentralisation of provincial authorities, self-sufficient agrarian economy, and a social elite consisting of Confucian scholars. This research analyses in detail how such a ‘fundamental structure’ affected the development of the Chinese naval power in the facets of the statesmen behind the navy, the naval officer corps, the building and acquisition of ships and the way in which the naval power was used. On this basis, the dissertation draw the conclusion that a ‘fundamental structure’ such as that of the Qing Empire was not conducive to producing a powerful navy, and that the defeat of that navy was inevitable and not accidental. This research examines the development of the Chinese steam navy against the history of the nation during the late nineteenth century, and employs existing literature on seapower for analytical guidance. The main body of the dissertation is based on published and unpublished primary sources. 5 Chapter One Introduction 1.1 The Research Question and its Significance In the aftermath of the two the Opium Wars, some Qing Dynasty Chinese elites realised that challenges from the outside world were no longer avoidable, and the Qing Empire (AD 1644-1911) must change if it was to survive from foreign aggressions. In 1861, the Qing Empire embarked on a campaign known today as the Self-Strengthening Movement. Under the two banners of the movement: ‘learn barbarians’ superior techniques with which to repel the barbarians’1 and ‘Chinese learning for fundamental structure, Western learning for practical use’2 these elites embarked on adopting Western weapons to safeguard the Empire. As a key feature of the Self-Strengthening Movement, a Western-style steam navy (in fact four mutually independent navies) was established and given the task of warding off foreign seaborne aggressors. In the eyes of many Chinese and foreign observers it was a naval force of remarkable strength. In its heyday, the Chinese steam navy boasted sixty-five large warships and forty-five torpedo boats, and held the eighth place in the world in terms of its strength. 3 To the 1 ‘师夷长技以制夷’. Barbarians: the traditional Chinese worldview developed its particular image of the 2 ‘中学为体，西学为用’. There is no clearly stated definition of Western learning. Western learning included a wide range of knowledge imported from the West. The term was coined as opposed to China’s traditional scholarship – the Chinese learning. Western learning in a narrow sense denotes modern science and technology, and Western learning in a broad sense includes the political, economic, ideological aspects of Western thinking. 3 Immanuel Hsü, The Rise of Modern China, Third Edition, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), p. 340. Also see Benjamin A. Elman, ‘Naval Warfare and the Refraction of China’s Self-Strengthening Reforms into Scientific and Technological Failure, 1865-1895’. Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 38, No. 2 (2004), pp. 318-319. 6 disappointment of the Self-Strengtheners, the Chinese steam navy failed to fulfil its duty. It suffered catastrophic defeats in its two major tests: the 1884-1885 Sino-French War and the 1894-1895 First Sino-Japanese War.4 These two maritime defeats, the latter in particular, sounded the death knell for the Self-Strengthening Movement. The Qing Empire fell into an irreversible decline after the First Sino-Japanese War, and eventually collapsed and was overthrown by the Republican Revolution of 1911. The Self-Strengthening Movement is worth studying not merely because its failure exacerbated China’s security situation and contributed to a particularly chaotic era of modern Chinese history known as the ‘century of humiliation’; no less significantly, many legacies of the Self-Strengthening period are still with us today. One particular legacy that demands a re-examination of this period of history is the different understanding of the word seapower in Chinese and English languages. In the Oxford English Dictionary, the word seapower is defined as: (1) ‘a nation or state having international power or influence on sea’; and (2) ‘the strength and efficiency of a nation (or nations generally) for maritime warfare’.5 In the Chinese language, seapower as a word was introduced in the aftermath of the naval debacles of 1894-95 combining the characters hai and quan. Literally, hai means maritime or sea, and quan refers to, amongst other things, either power/strength, or legal rights, or advantageous position. The combined word hai-quan, therefore connotes, simultaneously, ‘strength at sea’, ‘legal rights at sea’ and ‘advantageous position at sea’. The traumatic outcomes of the Sino-French War and the First Sino-Japanese War became intertwined with the Chinese interpretation of hai-quan. Its definition came to represent the three elements that the Qing China had lost in the wars against the French and the Japanese – its strength at sea, its legal rights and its advantageous position at sea. Since the key reason for these losses was perceived as owning to the weakness of the navy, the Chinese word hai-quan began to associate itself exclusively with naval power, and not the holistic notion defined by the English word seapower i.e. ‘a nation or state having international 4 Before the First Sino-Japanese War, most Westerners thought China had the advantage. See Kwang-Ching Liu and Richard J. Smith, ‘The Military Challenge: The North-west and the Coast’ in The Cambridge History of China, Vol. 11: Late Ch'ing, 1800-1911, Part 2, Kwang-Ching Liu and John K. Fairbank eds., (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), pp. 268-269. 5 Oxford English Dictionary online version. 7 power or influence on sea’ and ‘the strength and efficiency of a nation (or nations generally) for maritime warfare’. By defining the word hai-quan purely on the strength element of seapower, in other words the strength of the navy, China became overly concerned with the consequences of possessing naval strength (that is, an advantageous position at sea, which others might contest) or losing it (thus losing one’s legal rights at sea).