Shanghai was listed as one of five treaty ports in the Treaty of Nanking in 1842. In 1845, the foreign concession was formally established. Since then, Shanghai has become an important port for trade with foreign countries with its geographical advantages at the mouth of the Yangtze River, and has also become the base camp of foreign colonists in China.
After a long period of operation by foreign colonists, Shanghai became the largest metropolitan city in old China. However, the so-called wealth in Shanghai is a deformed wealth, and this wealth is based on the blood and sweat of the Chinese people. How rich Shanghai is, how deep the damage to the Chinese people is.
After the rise of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, foreigners were very concerned about this movement. They were divided into two factions, one supporting the movement and fantasizing about the establishment of a Christian state in the East that obeyed the Church.
The other faction opposes the movement, arguing that it will harm the interests of Western colonialists in China. They believed that rather than dealing with a nationalist state, they would benefit more from the condescending Manchu qing government.
Therefore, after the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom established the capital of Tianjing, foreign countries continued to visit Tianjing to test the country's foreign policy. There were monks to preach, and there were Also British fleets to shell. In the end, diplomacy between the two sides failed, and the Western imperialists decided to support the Manchu Qing government and make enemies of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. And the missionaries, in the words of Hong Renjie, "None of the foreigners I have met are good people." ”
In the late Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, the Taiping Army broke through the Jiangnan camp and began to conquer the jiangsu and Zhejiang regions. What many people did not expect was that this war of conquest brought a strange prosperity to Shanghai.
The first is that a large number of wealthy families in Jiangsu and Zhejiang have fled from their hometowns and taken refuge in Shanghai. They carried a large number of family properties with them and invested in Shanghai, which stimulated the prosperity of Shanghai.
Second, Shanghai became a buffer zone between the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and the Qing army. Due to its special status as a treaty port, it became a major provider of war materiel between the two sides. On the side of the Qing army, Li Hongzhang and Hua'er's foreign gun brigade needless to say, and the Taiping Army also purchased a large number of arms and equipment.
In 1862, for example, the Davidsonand Company, a British company, was seized that one of its ships was trying to transport three hundred guns, one hundred boxes of small arms, and fifty tons of ammunition to the rebels through Singapore. ＂
For example, the account books on the captured American ship revealed that the ship's company had just supplied the Wusong rebels with nearly three thousand smoothbore guns, eight hundred artillery pieces, eighteen thousand projectiles, and more than three million detonators.
These are just the tip of the iceberg of the arms trade. We can imagine the profits that this huge arms trade brings to Shanghai.
Third, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom's active foreign trade policy. After occupying the Jiangsu and Zhejiang regions, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom adopted a policy of protecting and encouraging foreign commercial trade. This greatly increased the volume of trade in the areas controlled by the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.
For example, according to statistics, the export volume of silk in the country was only more than 60,000 bales in 1854, and after the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom "actually held the entire silk-producing area", in 1863, it increased sharply to more than 88,000 bales.
Tea exports were over 70 million pounds from 1852 to 1853 and increased to more than 110 million pounds in 1862. Even the foreign invaders had to admit that "these figures do not prove that the Taiping Army destroyed commerce." The miracle is that when the Taiping Army was engaged in a life-and-death struggle, they were able to expand their business in that way."
Most of these large amounts of foreign commercial trade were exported from treaty ports controlled by the Western powers, and also from Shanghai at that time, which also stimulated Shanghai's prosperity.
Fourth, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom cracked down the salt, pawn and opium industries in the feudal economy. This frees up a large amount of money operating here and puts it into new operations. A large part of this has been invested in the construction of Shanghai nearby.
All of the above made Shanghai the only safe haven in the southeast after the Taiping Army swept through Jiangsu and Zhejiang, and also became a gathering place for funds. All this has effectively promoted the development of Shanghai's economy and promoted Shanghai's prosperity.