| China's naval battles were mainly concentrated in the late Qing Dynasty.From the Gengzi Year of 1840 to the Gengzi Year of 1900,the 60-year naval battles could be equated with shore defense operations or anti-landing operations because the Qing government ignored the importance of sea power and territorial defense.As a result,it was generally not until the enemy invaded the coast that it began to organize resistance.At the first stage,the foreign fleet invaded China,later it developed into a situation which foreign powers fighting each other for the territory of China in the Chinese sea.In the sense of naval battle paintings of the Qing Dynasty,most of the Chinese artists painted sea defense paintings,while most foreigners painted offensive naval paintings.In the era when photography was not invented or photography was not widely used,Western merchant ships and warships were accompanied by painters.In the Sino-British and Sino-French naval battles,the Western fleet was equipped with specialized surveying ships,drafters and military painters,so the current situation of the war was recorded in the form of images and paintings.These images and paintings are the basis of the war reports that were extremely important in the Western media.They also provided first-hand geographic,military and cultural information for the Western invasion of China.This article uses the historical literature to sort out the history of the sea battles in the late Qing Dynasty.By collecting and copying a large number of relevant paintings and materials of domestic and foreign collections,it visually reproduces the history of sea battles in the late Qing Dynasty.Before modern China,the navy and the land force were listed as the main components of the army.They were also powerful weapons for expanding the territory and hegemony.In this process,China and foreign countries have had a series of maritime wars and landing/anti-landing wars.They repeatedly sought foreign enemies: expanding territory,resisting invasion and recovering lost homeland.During the Tang and Yuan Dynasties,the Chinese Navy fought Japan to establish China's hegemonic position in the East Asian.In the late Ming Dynasty,Chinese navy helped Korea to fight against Japanese aggression.Zheng Chenggong's attack on Taiwan was to recover Taiwan from the hands of the Dutch aggressors.During the Ming and Qing Dynasties,China's feudal society began to collapse.Due to Japanese pirates harassing in the costal areas of China,Chinese government had to attach great importance to strengthening coastal defense construction.In this process,China's pre-modern coastal defense system was initially established.In the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries,with the advent of the "Great Navigation Age",Western colonists such as Spain,Portugal,the Netherlands,the United Kingdom,and France came to the costal areas of China one after another to carry out early colonial aggression activities.The ancient and closed China became the target of European colonial expansion.China's coastal defense system,maritime power and even the entire country's security were facing severe challenges.From modern times,the Western aggressors used their battle ships and cannons to open the Chinese sea gate and forced China to incorporate into the world trading system.The navies of the powers began to frequently violate China's territorial waters.During the two Opium Wars,the Qing Army Navy was unable to handle the attacks of the navies from various countries.In respond of this,the Qing government established several modern fleets by purchasing foreign ships,self-built warships: from the Beiyang Navy fleet to the Ironclad Fleet.During the two Opium Wars,the Chinese and foreign ships confronted each other,the Sino-French sea battle,the Fengdao naval battle and the Dadonggou naval battle in the Sino-Japanese naval war.The Chinese coastal defense construction and the external shore defense operations in the late Qing Dynasty.In the Southern China and Southern-east China coastal defense and shore defense operations during the first Opium War,the Qing army suffered great casualties,and the British army fully grasped the initiative of the war;in the Guangzhou,Dagukou defense operations during the second Opium War,Guangzhou was almost defenseless;the three battles in Dagukou all ended up failing,which led to the situation that the British and French aggressors drove straight into the capital,and forced the Qing government to sign unequal treaties,except for the second one,which could be called a complete victory.In the Taiwan,Zhenhai and Keelung shore defense operations,the French army's attempt to occupy Keelung as collateral,occupy Zhenhai naval port and eliminate the three ships of Nanyang fleet all failed,but the French army was able to occupy Penghu.Several victories in the Sino-French war succeeded in defence,but failed to destroy the enemy's vitality.In the Lushun,Weihaiwei shore defense operations during the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895,the Japanese troops landed in Huayuankou and Rongcheng Bay respectively,and finally successfully taken the two military ports of Lushun and Weihaiwei,which forced the Beiyang Fleet into desperation.The coastal defense operations organized by the government in the late Qing Dynasty basically failed.In addition to social,political,economic and cultural reasons of modern China,the reasons can also be traced back to the military perspective,that is,weapons and equipment,military systems,and operational thinking are three important reasons for the failure of sea defense in the late Qing Dynasty:The first military reason: the gap at the artifact level.From the perspective of artifacts,the performance of weapons and equipment is one of the important factors determining the outcome of war.In the late Qing Dynasty,the weapon quality,development and manufacturing of China were far behind the Western powers.After the end of the first Opium War,Lin Zexu and Wei Yuan,put forward the advanced concept of "learn from the western technology and skills to control them”.Some advanced Chinese people began to engage in the development of firearms and warships sporadically and spontaneously.There was also a partial lead in the overall backwardness.For example,in the Keelung and Zhenhai battles during the Sino-French War,the weapons of the Qing army were once in advantage,but in the face of the British,French and Japanese naval powers,Chinese navy was unable to confront the enemy,whether in shore defense or maritime warfare.The Chinese navy did not dare to confront the enemy,they were unable to resist the superior enemy,so they had to hand over the sea power to the enemy.When and where to begin the war was completely controlled by the western powers.The second reason of military defeat: lack at institutional level.First,war preparation and mobilization mechanism were lacking.In the modern Chinese wars against foreign powers,the rulers neither paid attention to the preparations for war,they were arrogant and arrogant,and they did not dare to mobilize people to resist the aggression together.Before the war,they Qing government was negligent and lack of understanding of the enemy's situation.Secondly,the command and dispatch system of the campaign was not working.As a new service of the Chinese army,the modern navy should set up a unified command and dispatching agency.However,all of the several fleets established in the Westernization Movement had private attributes and regional characteristics,and each fleet was not affiliated with each other.The government of the late Qing Dynasty failed to establish a strong naval commanding organization.Thirdly,the officers and soldiers lacked training and the corruption was serious.During the late Qing Dynasty,the Chinese army was corrupted and degraded,training was impermanent,so the officers and soldiers lacked combat skills,and their fighting consciousness was low.The military system is unreasonable,the stationed areas were vast,the distribution was loose,and the command structure was chaotic.The backwardness of the military training and marshalling system made it difficult to compete with the foreign aggressor army which had initially realized the modernization.The third reason of military defeat: the backwardness at the ideological level.The ocean was a target of repeated aggression in modern China and an important channel for the western powers to seize the interests of aggression.The reason of modern China "lost at sea" was rooted in the fact that Western countries had advanced sea power ideology,and they considered controlling the ocean equaled the country's rise and fall as well as controlling the whole world.In the late Qing Dynasty,the rulers still held the negative concept of sticking to the "port defense",blindly defending and passively operating.As a result,ocean became the weakest link in China's national defense system.Due to the weak awareness of sea power and the lag of the coastal defense strategy in the late Qing Dynasty,there was no scientific defense strategy planning on the macro level,and there was no guidance on the concept of modern sea power.There were no specific and complete plan for the sea defense,the goal setting,and the preparation of the war,as well as the measures to guide the implementation of the war.On the micro level,the Qing army lacked the tactical layout of the battle,and the training of combat consciousness.Their tactics were conservative,backward,and rigid.In addition,and the sea-land coordinated operations were insufficient.In the naval battle,the fleet formation was seriously misplaced,and the shore defense combat tactics were rigid and single.From the perspective of the will of the war,it was not uncommon for the soldiers to escape and avoid the war regardless of the army or the navy.Soldiers lacked the awareness of their home country and did not know who to fight for.The commanders were selfish and did not try hard enough during the war.In the case of maritime warfare,they adhered to the concept of "value land and disregard the sea" and neglected the maintenance of maritime rights,which led to the passive state of sea warfare and coastal defense.Instead of taking the initiative to attack the enemy at sea,they would hand over the sea power to their enemy.The consequences were very serious. |
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