Why is modern Chinese history from 1840?

In 1840, the First Opium War.

The Opium War is modern Chinese history.

There are four reasons for this:

First, after the war, China's social nature underwent fundamental changes, from a backward, closed, but independent feudal country to a semi-colonial and semi-feudal society.

Second, the direction of China's development has changed, and before the war, China was a declining feudal power with a feudal system.

It is already decaying and slowly developing towards capitalism, and if there is no interference from outside forces, China will eventually have a bourgeois revolution like the Western powers.

Become a capitalist country.

After the Opium War, China's national capitalism could not have developed normally, and China could not have developed into a mature capitalist society, and finally chose the socialist road.

Third, the main contradiction in society has changed, the main contradiction in China before the war was the contradiction between the peasant class and the feudal landlord class, while the main contradiction after the war includes the contradiction between the peasant class and the landlord class and the Chinese nation.

The contradictions with foreign colonial invaders, that is, the main contradictions in society, are complicated.

Fourth, the revolutionary task changed, the original revolutionary task was to oppose the feudal forces of the country, but after the war, the task of opposing foreign colonial aggression was added, and the nature of the revolution changed from the traditional peasant war to the old nationalist revolution.

China before 1840 was a completely feudal society, with feudal production relations dominating and land highly concentrated in the hands of the landlord class. According to the records of the Great Qing Dynasty, nearly 40,000 peasants worked hard to plant more than 1,000 imperial villages and the land directly under the three banners of the royal family, and more than half of the grain and cotton harvested were owned by the landlords.

Before the Opium War, China was a country with a very low level of productive forces, a small scale of production, very backward production technology, and an extremely underdeveloped social division of labor and commodity economy. The vast number of laborers are still bound to the natural economy of "both workers and farmers", and the majority of peasant households live in poverty.

From the beginning of the Ming Dynasty until 1840, China was in a state of seclusion. The country as a whole has no diplomacy, and although it is still among the developed countries in the world, it has been surpassed by some European countries. From the Sui Dynasty to the Yuan Dynasty, China was at the peak of feudal society, and China was the largest in the Yuan Dynasty.

The Opium War is modern Chinese history.

There are three main reasons for the beginning.

First, after the Opium War, the nature of Chinese society changed, from a completely closed feudal society.

It gradually degenerated into a semi-feudal and semi-colonial society. After the First Opium War, China and Britain signed the first humiliating Treaty of Nanjing, which was humiliating in modern history.

Cession of Hong Kong Island to the British.

And compensate **21 million taels, open the treaty port, and lose the autonomy of the customs. This started the frenzy of the great powers to carve up China, and China gradually degenerated from a completely closed feudal society to a semi-feudal and semi-colonial society.

Second, China's social contradictions have changed. The main contradiction in Chinese society has changed from the contradiction between the feudal landlord class and the Lao peasants to the contradiction between the Western colonial class and the feudal landlord class. The Chinese people faced the oppression of both the feudal landlord class and the Western colonial class at the same time.

Third, the historical mission of Chinese society has changed. The task of the Chinese people has changed from the struggle against the feudal landlord class to the struggle for national liberation and the overthrow of the feudal landlords and the slowing down of class rule.

Changes in the nature of society: After 1840, the foreign powers opened the door to China by force, causing China to degenerate from a feudal society into a semi-colonial and semi-feudal society, and China was drawn into the world capitalist system.

Changes in social contradictions: After 1840, with the change of social nature, the main contradiction in Chinese society, from the contradiction between the landlord class and the peasant class, began to change into the contradiction between foreign capitalism and the Chinese nation.

Changes in revolutionary tasks: After 1840, the revolutionary tasks changed from opposing feudal rule in China to anti-aggression and anti-feudal dual tasks (the Sino-Japanese War began, anti-imperialist and anti-feudal), and China began the period of the old democratic revolution.

Changes in social relations of production: After 1840, the self-sufficient feudal small-scale peasant economy began to gradually disintegrate.

Modern Chinese history began in 1840 and ended in 1949. From the Opium War of 1840 to 1919"May Fourth"On the eve of the movement, it was the stage of the old democratic revolution; From 1919"May Fourth"The movement was on the eve of the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, and it was the stage of the new democratic revolution. But all belong to the category of bourgeois revolution.

The Taiping Rebellion of 1851 and the Boxer Rebellion that followed were revolutionary movements of the peasant class against imperialist aggression and feudal oppression, which dealt a blow to imperialism and feudalism to a certain extent.

In 1898, the bourgeois reformers stepped onto the stage of history, but due to the weakness of the bourgeoisie and the lack of strong organizational leadership, the imperialist powers had unrealistic illusions, and the reform lasted only 103 days, known as the "Hundred Days Restoration".

Sun Yat-sen in 1911.

The bourgeois-democratic revolution he led - the Xinhai Revolution.

It was the first anti-imperialist and anti-feudal bourgeois-democratic revolution in Chinese history, which overthrew the rule of the Qing Dynasty, ended the monarchy that had lasted for more than 2,000 years in China, and established a bourgeois democratic republic. It made the concept of a democratic republic deeply rooted in the hearts of the people and dealt a painful blow to the colonial rule of imperialism.

May Fourth Movement in 1919.

It marked the end of the old democratic revolution led by the bourgeoisie and the beginning of the new democratic revolution led by the proletariat. The founding of the Communist Party of China in 1921 gave the Chinese revolution a completely new look. The first Kuomintang-Communist cooperation gave impetus to the upsurge of the national revolutionary movement.

After the breakdown of the cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, the Communist Party of China carried out an armed revolution of workers and peasants in order to resist the rule of the Kuomintang, and began the arduous exploration of the road of the Chinese revolution.

The Communist Party of China led the Chinese people through the Northern Expedition, the Agrarian Revolutionary War, and the War of Resistance Against Japan.

and the National Liberation War.

Four stages, finally overthrown in 1948 to Chiang Kai-shek.

The rule of the Kuomintang led by the Kuomintang won the victory of the new democratic revolution. In 1949, the first Chinese Civil Affairs Association was held, marking the great victory of the Chinese People's Democratic Revolution.