What are the three modern navies established by the Qing government?

Beiyang Navy, Nanyang Navy, Fujian Navy

Preparing to build a new navy is an important part of the Westernization Movement, but focusing on it on a large scale is What happened after the Sino-French War.

As early as 1861, when the Westernization Movement just started, the Qing government, based on the suggestion of Hurd, then the deputy taxation department of Guangdong Customs, spent 800,000 taels of silver with the former chief tax officer of the customs who was returning to the UK for vacation at that time. H.N. Lay came forward and ordered three medium-sized ships and four small ships from Britain. In 1862, seven warships were purchased, with an actual cost of 1.07 million taels of silver. It was originally agreed that each ship would temporarily hire two or three foreigners to serve as helmsmen and gunners. After the Chinese Bingben learned how to sail and fire cannons, the Chinese would take charge. Unexpectedly, Li Taitai had ulterior motives. He recruited more than 600 officers and soldiers in the UK, declared to establish a "Sino-British Fleet", and appointed Captain S. Osborn of the Royal Navy as the fleet commander. He signed thirteen clauses of the contract with Aspen on behalf of the Qing government without authorization, which stipulated that Aspen had full command of the fleet; except for the Emperor of China, Aspen did not accept orders from any Chinese officials; even the orders from the Emperor of China must be After being conveyed by Li Taitai, if Li Taitai thinks it is inappropriate, he can refuse the intermediary conveyance; the contract is established and cannot be abandoned midway. These measures fully exposed Li Taitai's group's attempt to take advantage of the opportunity to control the Chinese navy.

In September 1863, this fleet sailed to China. It is obviously an armed force completely controlled by foreign invaders, but Yixuan is actually ready to accept it, on the condition that the "president" of the fleet is appointed by the Qing government, and A Siben can serve as deputy. Zeng Guofan was worried that Asiben's fierce spirit would make him unfavorable and difficult to deal with in the future. Also, due to the competition between the Hunan and Huai armies, they were in a stalemate and demanded that the fleet be disbanded. The Qing government was also afraid that unexpected changes would occur if the fleet was accepted, so it decided to disband it and ordered Aspen to sail it back to England and sell it off. The proceeds from the sale were not enough to cover "severance" expenses. The Qing government had to spend another 375,000 taels of silver to end this shameful naval construction.

Despite this, the Westernizationists’ desire to build a navy did not cease. On June 25, 1866, Zuo Zongtang, the governor of Fujian and Zhejiang, proposed: "Since the war on the sea, steamships and warships from various countries in Europe and the West have reached Tianjin directly, and the barriers have become empty. If you want to prevent the harm of the sea and reap its benefits, you must rectify the navy; if you want to rectify the navy, you must set up a bureau to supervise the construction of ships. "The Qing government approved Zuo Zongtang's suggestion. Therefore, Jiangnan Manufacturing Administration and Fuzhou Shipbuilding Bureau followed Western methods to manufacture warships.

By the early 1970s, although Fuzhou Shipping Bureau and Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau had successively manufactured several warships, they were all useless. In 1874, Japan invaded Taiwan. Japan, which was only six or seven years after the Meiji Restoration, actually sent two ironclad ships to bully China with great force. At that time, some Qing officials proposed purchasing new ships, mines, guns and ammunition from foreign countries. The Qing government adopted it, but it has not yet been implemented. The Qing government had signed the "Special Treaty on Taiwan Affairs" with Japan, ending the Sino-Japanese negotiations in humiliation. Afterwards, the Westernizationists used China's lack of ironclad ships as an excuse for "simplying compromise" against Japan. Yi Xuan, Wen Xiang and others reported: "My husband, a small country in the east of Japan, who has learned Western military methods, only purchased two armored ships, dared to take advantage of this to cause trouble; while Shen Baozhen and his ministers along the coastal areas did not think that the armored ships had been purchased yet, so it was inconvenient to fight with them. The reason for the break was that this was due to accommodating the situation and insufficient preparations." For this reason, they put forward the idea of ??"purchasing iron-clad ships as the basis for self-reliance", which some Westernization bureaucrats praised as "appropriate to the current situation." Good advice. As a result, the Qing government determined to allocate huge sums of money to order ironclad ships from Western Europe and create a new navy. In June 1875, at the initiative of Shen Baozhen, the Governor of Liangjiang, and Li Hongzhang, the Governor of Zhili, and with the approval of the Prime Minister's Yamen, the tax banks of Guangdong Customs, Jiang Customs, and other provinces such as Jiangsu and Zhejiang were allocated 4 million taels per year, respectively, to Nanyang and Beiyang. , as a means to prepare naval military expenditures, and prepare to build three navies in the Nanyang, Beiyang and Guangdong oceans within ten years. Later, in order to concentrate on the use of funds, it was stipulated that these four million taels would first meet the needs of Beiyang, and then be released to Nanyang later. After Shen Baozhen's death in 1879, Li Hongzhang took charge of the navy.

He set up a naval camp office in Tianjin to handle naval affairs, and assigned Ma Jianzhong to take charge of it.

In order to train naval officers, in 1877, the Qing government selected a group of students from Fuzhou Shipping School to study in England and France to learn naval driving and combat techniques; in 1880, Li Hongzhang established a naval school in Tianjin and appointed Yan Fu, who returned from studying in England, became the chief instructor and trained naval officers of the Beiyang Department.

By 1879, Li Hongzhang had purchased eight mosquito ships from Britain, including Longxiang, Huwei, and Feiting, as weapons for guarding the harbor. However, the quality of the mosquito ships was low, so Li Hongzhang sent his confidant Li Fengbao to Germany to spend 3 million taels of silver to order two ironclads, Dingyuan and Zhenyuan, each with 6,000 horsepower, from the Volk Shipyard in Germany at a high price.

In 1881, Li Hongzhang built another dock in Dagu and sent Army Admiral Ding Ruchang to lead the Beiyang Navy.

After years of painstaking efforts, by the time of the Sino-French War in 1884, the Qing government had established three navies: the Beiyang Navy, the Nanyang Navy, and the Fujian Navy. The Nanyang Navy has seventeen warships, the Beiyang Navy has fifteen warships, and the Fujian Navy has eleven warships. The Nanyang Navy was in the hands of the Hunan Clan, the Beiyang Navy was the private property of Li Hongzhang and the Huai Clan, and the Fujian Navy was in the hands of the Governor of Fujian and Zhejiang and the Fujian Shipping Minister. The three are each under control and do not govern each other, and their factions are extremely deep. These navies usually do not focus on training and spend a lot of time on the complicated matters of transporting supplies and welcoming officials. Their internal organization is lax, and their weapons come from different countries and have different models. These shortcomings were exposed during the Sino-French war. During the First World War between China and France, the Fujian Navy was destroyed, and the Nanyang Navy also suffered heavy losses. Only the Beiyang Navy was spared because it stayed out of the war and refused to rescue.

After the Sino-French War, in order to cover up its guilt of "defeating without defeat", the Qing government once again used the reason that "the navy is inferior to others" and actually declared: "Last year, the legal person provoked and overthrew the enemy. In the first battle, all the land armies won great victories, which can still strengthen our military power: if the naval forces are strong and support each other, there will be no need to contain them everywhere. To control the navy, he also proposed the establishment of a yamen to oversee the country's naval construction and coastal defense affairs, and send "ministers who are prudent and knowledgeable about defense and will make arrangements for everything."

In October 1885, the Naval Yamen was formally established, with Prince Chun Yixuan (the biological father of Emperor Guangxu) as the Prime Minister and Minister of the Navy, Prince Qing Yikuang and Li Hongzhang as the meeting organizers, and Zeng Jize "helped to handle it". The actual host was Li Hongzhang. Since then, under the leadership of Li Hongzhang, the Navy Yamen spent tens of millions of dollars to purchase foreign warships and cannons, build Lushun and Weihai guard ports, and hire foreign instructors to train officers and soldiers. After several years of operation, in 1888, the Beiyang Fleet was officially established and owned 22 warships, 17 of which were purchased from foreign countries and five were homemade. Li Hongzhang hired the British W.M. Lang and others as naval instructors and took control of the drills. Soon, Lushun, Weihaiwei and Dalian military ports and corresponding docks and forts were also completed, and the Beiyang Navy was fully completed. Since then, the Beiyang Navy has stopped purchasing warships, and most of the annual military expenditure of four million taels has been misappropriated by the Empress Dowager Cixi to fund the construction of the Summer Palace.

Li Hongzhang was deeply intoxicated by the superficial momentum of the Beiyang Navy. After reviewing the Beiyang Navy in 1891, he boasted to the Qing court, saying: "There are more than 20 Beiyang warships in total, and the navy is as large as one." "Slightly", "Currently it is limited to salary and cannot be expanded, but as far as the Bohai Portal is concerned, it has a solid momentum." In April 1894, after another review, he said even more shamelessly: "From now on. The capital faces the sea to the east, reaches Liaoshen in the north, and Qingqi in the south. For more than 2,000 miles, it is connected with each other and the situation is complete." Just when Li Hongzhang was feeling complacent, Japan, its neighbor to the east, was desperately trying to expand its existing navy and army with ulterior motives, and finally launched a large-scale war of aggression against China in 1894. In this war, the entire Beiyang Navy was wiped out, thus declaring The Westernization Movement, which lasted for more than thirty years, was completely bankrupt. Since then, although various "Westernization" activities are still going on, the Westernization Movement as a specific historical meaning has ended.