Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- PART I Conceptual framework
- PART II The historical transformation of international orders
- 3 The origins, constitution and decay of Latin Christendom
- 4 The collapse of Latin Christendom
- 5 Anarchy without society: Europe after Christendom and before sovereignty
- 6 The origins, constitution and decay of the Sinosphere
- 7 Heavenly Kingdom, imperial nemesis: Barbarians, martyrs and the crisis of the Sinosphere
- 8 Into the abyss: Barbarians, martyrs and the crisis of the Sinosphere
- 9 The great disorder and the birth of the East Asian sovereign state system
- PART III Contemporary challenges and future trajectories of world order
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
- Cambridge Studies in International Relations
- References
7 - Heavenly Kingdom, imperial nemesis: Barbarians, martyrs and the crisis of the Sinosphere
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 January 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- PART I Conceptual framework
- PART II The historical transformation of international orders
- 3 The origins, constitution and decay of Latin Christendom
- 4 The collapse of Latin Christendom
- 5 Anarchy without society: Europe after Christendom and before sovereignty
- 6 The origins, constitution and decay of the Sinosphere
- 7 Heavenly Kingdom, imperial nemesis: Barbarians, martyrs and the crisis of the Sinosphere
- 8 Into the abyss: Barbarians, martyrs and the crisis of the Sinosphere
- 9 The great disorder and the birth of the East Asian sovereign state system
- PART III Contemporary challenges and future trajectories of world order
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
- Cambridge Studies in International Relations
- References
Summary
Both in Heaven and on earth is the Heavenly Kingdom of the Divine Father. Do not imagine that it refers solely to the Heavenly Kingdom in Heaven. Thus the Great Elder Brother formerly issued an edict foretelling the coming of the Heavenly Kingdom soon, meaning that the Heavenly Kingdom would come into being on earth. Today the Heavenly Father and the Heavenly Elder Brother descend into the world to establish the Heavenly Kingdom …
In the mid-nineteenth century, China experienced a conjunction of internal crisis and external calamity that permanently weakened the Qing dynasty, thus guaranteeing the Sinosphere's eventual destruction. From the First Opium War onwards, the Manchu Raj confronted a barbarian menace on its maritime frontier that directly threatened its economic heartland, and could be subdued neither through the force of arms nor through the munificence of imperial largesse. Confounding historical precedents, whereby pastoral conquerors from the steppe had been progressively Sinicised and thus ‘civilised’ into conformity with the Sinosphere's norms, the seaborne barbarians of the British East India Company proved incapable of instruction or assimilation. Worse still, the British carried with them heretical beliefs that soon found purchase among south-eastern China's alienated peasantry, fuelling a wave of rebellions that came within an ace of toppling the imperial household. From a population of approximately 410 million in 1850, China's population is estimated to have fallen to approximately 350 million by the time the last of the mid-century rebellions was suppressed in 1873.
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- War, Religion and EmpireThe Transformation of International Orders, pp. 174 - 195Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010