THE CHINESE AND THEIR REBELLIONS. CHAPTER I. POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY AND ADMINISTRATIVE THE present Chinese Empire is composed of five great divisions, Manchooria, Mongolia, Turkestan or Little Bucharia, Tibet, and lastly China Proper. It is with the last only, which is occupied by the 360 millions of that peculiar people whom we call Chinese, that we have here almost exclusively to do. The first-named divisions are of great extent, are thinly inhabited, as compared with China Proper, and are each much less civilized. Manchooria is the country of the Manchoo Tartars, a half settled, half nomadic race which has attracted attention chiefly because it is that from which sprang the present Imperial dynasty of China. Mongolia is mainly composed of deserts; and is altogether occupied by veritable nomads, shepherds living in tents. They are the most believing of Lamaistic Buddhists. Turkestan is inhabited by a settled Turkish race of Mahommedan faith. It contains the two great and famed cities of Cashgar and Yarkand; besides a few smaller, bearing names less familiar to our ears. B Tibet is likewise inhabited by a settled people. It is the centre and stronghold of Lamaistic Buddhism; whose chief, the Dalai Lama, the incarnate Buddha, has his seat in its capital, Lassa. Each of these four great divisions is, then, inhabited by a distinct people, speaking each its own language, and each marked by peculiar national manners. To the mind of the Chinaman, more, perhaps, than they would be to us, these several territories are uncultivated, wild, "uncomfortable" regions; to him the languages are jargons and the manners "barbarous." Chinese mandarins (officials), who are (rightly or wrongly) held convicted of administrative faults, are sent by the Emperor to some high or low post in these portions of his dominions as a punishment. If our institutions permitted it, and Her Majesty were to send unsuccessful ministers to Capeland to "soothe " the Dutch Colonists and tranquillize" the Caffres, it would form a tolerably close parallel to what occurs frequently in China. So also, if one were put in charge of Ceylon with strict injunctions to repair past short-comings by future good services"—the stereotyped official phrase on such occasions. Still closer parallels are found in Russia, when the Emperor transfers one of his "mandarins "* from Muscovy to Siberia or Kamskatka. 66 In spite of this view taken of the "outer" dominions of their Sovereign, the redundancy of the population in China proper itself, together with the enterprising mercantile and colonizing spirit of the Chinese, is the cause that numbers of them are to be found throughout these very territories as settlers or as traders; by whom, and by the Chinese officials, Chinese ideas, and even Chinese words have been introduced, and have more or less (partially) modified the original manners and languages. Tibet and Turkestan have been the least influenced in this way. The latter, the latest of the * Chin is one of the names of the Chinese mandarins or chinovink. I may add that Russia appears to me to have borrowed many good administrative rules from China. "annexed" or conquered territories, holds a relation to China. very much like that of Algeria to France. In a last extremity, the Emperor might withdraw his garrisons from both to aid in extinguishing existing rebellions in China. Apart from this possibility, the two former Countries can exercise no influence on the march of events in the latter, and may, therefore, be left out of further consideration in this volume.* Manchooria and Mongolia have been somewhat more influenced by Chinese civilization; especially the former, whose original Tartar language has been nearly superseded by that of China. The Manchoos may be said to consist of the family and clan or tribe of the present Imperial House. It was their military support which placed it in possession of the Imperial Throne 210 years ago; and upon which it now greatly relies for its maintenance in that possession. Next to his own nation of Manchoo Tartars, the Emperor looks for assistance to the Mongols, which latter, as Tartars, have considerable affinity with the former; and whose Princes and Chief's moreover stand mostly in the relation of consanguinity to the present dynasty, in consequence of marriages during successive generations with daughters of the Imperial House-marriages ambitious on the one side, politic on the other. The Chinese, in referring to the above four territories, use in writing and in conversation the aggregate appellative "Kow wae, Outside of the gates or passes," because Manchooria * Since the above was written intelligence has reached us of an invasion of Thibet by the Nepaulese. The British public and our Indian government do not appear to be alive to the fact that this is as much an attack on the Emperor of China as an invasion of Algeria would be an attack on Napoleon III. or an invasion of British India an attack on Queen Victoria. It is really very likely that the Emperor Heen fung has been prevented by this Nepaulese attack from drawing forces from his Thibetan garrisons to aid him against the rebels in China. The Indian papers appear to be rather congratulating themselves on the fact of a somewhat dangerous neighbour being otherwise occupied than in annoying us. They do not however reflect that his present occupation may have considerable though indirect influence on the future of the Indian opium and cotton trade with China. and Mongolia do literally lie on the "outside" of the gates in the great wall, while Tibet lies beyond the "passes" in the western mountains. A Chinese rebel, if successful, will endeavour to get possession of all ultimately; because these, and even more of the contiguous regions, have been in the course of history under the sway of the "black-haired race" of China. But he will consider his work substantially achieved when the 360 millions of the latter accord him their allegiance, and when he is thus undisputed master of the "Shih pa săng, the Eighteen provinces ;" the term by which China Proper is commonly designated in conversation. This China Proper being one country, occupied by one race, speaking one language, Europeans are very apt to picture to themselves as about the size of one country in Europe, as for instance France; only populated throughout with an astounding, an almost incredible-density, like that of the basin of Paris, or of our manufacturing and shipping district, around Manchester and Liverpool. This is a most confusing conception. China is not more densely populated than England; and contains its 360 millions only because of its enormous territorial extent. If the reader imagine to himself Scotland doubled down upon the north-west of England and upon Wales, and then picture to himself eighteen of such compact Great Britains placed together so as to form one well rounded state, he will attain a more correct notion of the extent and population of China Proper, as composed of its Eighteen provinces. Some of these provinces consist almost entirely of alluvial plains, but the greater number exhibit an alternation of fertile river valleys, covered, like that of the Thames, with large, populous towns; and of thinly inhabited hilly or mountainous regions, more or less difficult of access. The two large islands on the coast of China form portions of two of these provinces, Formosa belonging to the province of Fuh-keen, Haenan to that of Kwangtung. The seaboard, and the plains of these islands have long been occupied by Chinese settlers, who have forced the aborigines back into the mountain recesses; but as the doings neither of the Aborigines nor of the colonists, exercise modifying influence on the political state of the mainland, we may dismiss them from consideration here. To some aboriginal tribes on the mainland I must however devote a little space, as it has been erroneously supposed that with them the present religious rebellion originated. I have compared the Eighteen provinces of China Proper to Eighteen Great Britains. To make the comparison more exact, all Celts (Scottish or Welsh) must be subtracted from fourteen of these Great Britains; fourteen of the eighteen Chinese provinces being inhabited by the homogeneous Chinese only. In the remaining four, the more rugged provinces in the south west of China, there are to be found among the mountains certain non-Chinese tribes, bearing a relation to the Chinese who have for many hundreds of years occupied the more accessible and largest portions of these four provinces, similar to that which the Celts of the mountains did, about 100 years ago, to the Anglo Saxons in the rest of Great Britain. They wear peculiar dresses and speak peculiar languages, or more probably dialects of one language, which have never been reduced to writing. They have occasionally disturbed the peace of those provinces within which their hills are included by devastating irruptions into the level lands occupied by the Chinese. But these irruptions have never assumed a more permanent character than that of passing incursions; and, when the population of the thirteen or fourteen provinces into which they have never even entered is taken into consideration, the aggregate number of all these highland tribes becomes, comparatively, a mere drop in the bucket. They are of no political weight; the utmost that they can do being to furnish a few thousands of fighting men to Armies of Chinese when the latter are disputing the Sovereignty of the Empire among themselves. The province of Kwangse, in which the present religious movement took its rise, contains the most of these |