Modern Era
1750-1900
Taiping Uprising
This event was one the most important events in Chinese history. Corruption was an epidemic, and harsh treatment of peasants was common. The combination of these all these bad things gave a rise to the populations and caused the peasant rebellion. The leaders of this rebellion were more corrupt then the ones before. The leaders rejected all religions except for there form of Christianity. They also abolished all forms of private property.
Opium wars
When it was first founded it was used on a small scale as a drinkable medicine. It did not become a serious problem until the late eighteenth century, when the British began to use opium, grown and processed in India, to cover their persistent trade imbalance with China. Western merchants had found an enormous, growing, and very profitable market for this highly addictive drug. China had millions of addicts. Women, kids, students, even people in government. Imagine Borock Obama smoking weed, it would be a huge problem. But it was regular there in that time period.
Self strengthening
They tried to make China back to there Normal ways by recruiting new officials sought to be "good men". To support land lords and repair dikes. Coal mines were expanded and a telephone system was initiated. But the new industries were completely dependent on foreigners for machinery, materials, and expertise. The general failure of the self strengthening became apparent at the end when the boxing uprising erupted in northern China.
Boxer uprising
The boxer uprising caused the end of the self strengthening. The boxers killed numerous Europeans and Chinese Christians. Led by militia organizations calling themselves the Society of Righteousness and harmonious fist.
Lin Zexu
When the Chinese emperor decided to soppress the opium trade, he selected Lin Zexu to enforce this. Lin was the son of a poor but scholarly father. Lin got very good grades and passed the highest leval exams. He gained reputation as a series and honest official, immune to bribery. When he decided to attact this opium problem he used confucist teachings to his advantage. He used moral appeals, political pressure, and so many other things to not a armed conflict. By 1839, he confiscated some 50,000 pounds of opium and arrested some 1,7000 dealers. He destroyed the addiction of opium in China. While his reputation was destroyed in the 19th century, in the 20th he was called a hero.
The Ottoman Empire
In 1750, the Ottoman Empire was still the central political fixture of the Islamic world. It had its Turkish heartland in Anatolia, it ruled over much of the Arab world. It protected pilgrims on their way to Mecca and governed Egypt and coastal North Africa. They had a lot going for them. But by the middle, and certainly by the end, of the 19th century, the ottoman was no longer able to deal with Europe from a position of equality, let alone superiority. "The sick man of Europe" it was called. Could not even protect its nations of the Christians.
Tanzimat
The ottoman reforms began in the late eighteenth century when Sultan Selim the 2nd sought to reorganize and update the army to be different from Europeans techniques. Crushing the janissaries, and bringing the ulama more thoroughly under state control than elsewhere in the Islamic world. Then several decades after 1839, more far reaching reformist measures took place, known as the tanzimat. This happened in order to provide the economic, social, and legal underpinnings for a strong and newly recentralized state. Factories producing cloth, paper, and armaments. Western style law codes were enforced, basically they were westernized.