Little notice has been taken in our account of Germany’s spacious days of her relations to China and the Far East generally.  They were, nevertheless, all through that period intimately connected with her expansion or dreams of expansion.  About 1890 the Flowery Land awoke to the benefits of European civilization and in particular of European ingenuity; and in 1891, for the first time in Chinese history, foreign diplomatists were granted the privilege of an annual reception at the Chinese Court.  So exclusive was the Manchu dynasty—­the Hohenzollerns of China in point of antiquity; yet not a score of years later the Manchu monarchy had been quietly removed from its five-thousand-year-old throne, and China, apparently the most conservative and monarchical people on earth, proclaimed itself a republic—­a regular modern republic!—­an operation that among peoples claiming infinite superiority to the Chinese would have cost thousands of lives and a vast expenditure of money.

Naturally, once China showed a willingness to abandon its axenic attitude towards foreign devils and all things foreign-devilish, the European Powers turned their eyes and energies towards her, and a strenuous commercial and diplomatic race after prospective concessions for railways, mines, and undertakings of all kinds began.  Each Power feared that China would be gobbled up by a rival, or that at least a partition of the vast Chinese Empire was at hand.  Consequently, when China was beaten in her war with Japan, and made the unfavourable treaty of Shimonoseki, the European Powers were ready to appear as helpers in time of need.  Russia, Germany, and France got the Shimonoseki Treaty altered, and the Laotung Peninsula with Port Arthur given back, and in return Russia acquired the right to build a railway through Manchuria (the first step towards “penetration” and occupation), French engineers obtained several valuable mining and railway concessions, and Germany got certain privileges in Hankow and Tientsin.

Meantime the old, deeply-rooted hatred of the foreign devil, the European, was spreading among the population, which was still, in the mass, conservative.  Missionaries were murdered, and among them, in 1897, two German priests.  Germany demanded compensation, and in default sent a cruiser squadron to Kiautschau Bay.  Russia immediately hurried a fleet to Port Arthur and obtained from China a lease of that port for twenty-five years.  England and France now put in a claim for their share of the good things going.  England obtained Wei-hai-Wei, France a lease of Kwang-tschau and Hainan.  China was evidently throwing herself into the arms of Europe, when, in 1898, the Dowager Empress took the government out of the hands of the young Emperor and a period of reaction set in.  The appearance of Italy with a demand for a lease of the San-mun Bay in 1899 brought the Chinese anti-foreign movement to a head, and the Boxer conspiracy grew to great dimensions.