The museum fails to explain exactly how broken China was in the middle of the eighteenth century. For twenty years, from 1851 to 1871, the Taiping Rebellion, led by a man who claimed to be the younger brother of Jesus Christ, left millions dead in the southern part of the country. The casualties from Britain’s military action were by comparison minuscule, but drove home the point that without a better internal system of government China would never be able to withstand foreign invasion. It is this narrative of strong, forward-looking internal government coupled with effective military defense
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