Evolution Of Coastal Defense Thought In The View Of The Late Qing Dynasty

During the Late Qing Dynasty,under the bondage of the Chinese traditional concept of the coastal defense,on the one hand,the Qing Dynasty rulers,faced the challenge from the Western formidable enemy by sea,were still used to maintaining conceitedly the "Celestial Empire" dignity and using the lagged conventional thinking to deal with the overseas barbarians,finally lost in the fight;on the other hand,some open-minded people,due to the threat from the ocean,carried out much active and hardy exploration and strived to shake off the bondage of the Chinese traditional concept of the coastal defense,then put forward some thought represented the directions of the modern coastal defense,such as Lin Zexu's fighting thought of "the establishment of the modern navy on the sea," and Wei Yuan's "learning from foreign fortes on technology to restrict foreign".However,under the heavily traditional atmosphere,Lin's and Wei's thinking actually did not reach consensus in the community.Therefore,the transformation for the traditional coastal defense thought seemedtebie especially difficult and tortuous.The thesis,based on the Xianfeng Era,did a preliminary research for the evolution of the coastal defense thought.The text has been divided into five parts:The first part is the introduction,which is to illustrate the origin of the subjects, to explain the comprehensive study of this article,the selection of the data and the usage of the research methods,based on reviewing the relevant academic history.The second part is mainly to review the stasis in the traditional coastal defense thought,and to analyze the performance of the image of "Celestial Empire" and the lagged conventional thoughts,by researching the reasons for the formation of the traditional ocean view of the "heave land light sea".The third part is mainly to illustrate the confusion from "as before the Board" and to study the evolution of the coatal defense thought during the Xianfeng Era, through the analysis of the Emperor Xianfeng's external awareness,the confusion of courtiers and the studious exploration from those open-minded people.The fourth part is mainly to focus on initial transformation in the traditional coastal defense concept during the Xianfeng Era,through analysing of the plight of the domestic strife and foreign aggression to Qing Dynasty,and of the strategies taken by them.The fifth part is the conclusion with regard to some thinking about this article.