ABSTRACT
The first half of the nineteenth century in China had seen a worsening of both social and economic climates, in which rash expenditure, corruption in the ruling elite and the military, continuous growth in the population, and over-extension of empire were eventually to lead to massive social upheaval and recession. According to Gernet:
the political and administrative system, the techniques of production and commercial practices…had become inadequate in an Empire which controlled vast territories and whose population seems to have more than doubled in a century.
