A Study On Geographical Distribution Of Students Abroad In Late Qing

After the defeat of the First Opium War in 1840, China was forced to open to the world. It was in the most dangerous period that internal and external suffers intertwinded that it had never been before over thousands of years, especially after the Farmers'Movement in 1851 and the Second Opium War in 1856. The governers of Late Qing felt it and some realized that China must learn from the western countries. So the movement of studying abroad came into being.The movement of studying abroad in Late Qing began in 1872 when the young men were sended to America and ended in 1912 when the Democratic China was founded. During the period, it had undergone a series of changes. According to the countries where the students studied, I divided Late Qing into four periods: the young men studying in America, the navy army students studying in Europe, the students studying in Japan after the defeat of war in 1894, and the students studying in America again because of the returned money of American government. The thesis includes a rough description on the development of the students studying abroad movement in Late Qing, and then gets the separated statistics and analysis of the students studying abroad basing on the regional distribution, such as the students studying in Japan, in America and in Europe.According to the analysis, it is clear that there were a lot of students studying abroad in Late Qing. The students almost came from the whole country, but the quantity of every province was distributed differently. In some provinces there were hundreds of students studying abroad, but in some other provinces there were only a few even in some province there wasn't one. The distribution of students studying in Japan, in America or in Europe was obviously similar. In Late Qing the students gathered in the two developed and open areas—the Southeast China and the Yangtze River Valley. As a whole, it could be divided into four parts: the Southeast China, the Yangtze River Valley, the Inland Region and the Border Area. The distribution of the students tallied with the process of the western knowledge in China, so did the process of the modernization of China. The Southeast China was in a favorable condition. It was the first developed place in China that the movement of students studying abroad emerged here and then expanded. Before the defeat of war in 1894, the students studying abroad of Late Qing mostly came from this region. After the war, the western countries controlled China from the Southeast China to the Yangtze River Valley with a series of unequal treaties. Japan replaced America and the Europe. Most students came to Japan to study. Hubei province rose quickly with the influence of the New Policy. The quantity of students studying in Japan in Hubei were the most. It influenced Sichuan. The quantity of students in Sichuan were the fourth. So the Yangtze River Valley became the second region where students came from.At present, there are many outstanding researches on the students studying abroad in Late Qing, but the regional distribution of the students in Late Qing is lack of research. Therefore, starting from the point of the regional distribution and according to the statistic and analysis on the regional distribution of the students, I have made the systematic analysis on the regional distribution and get a further understanding that the modernization in one region will affect the regional distribution of the students studying abroad. On the basis of knowing this point, we can also understand the rule of the geographical distribution of talents in Late Qing.