The Norman
conquest, growing out of a family quarrel, was decided by a single
battle. The Manchus' conquest of a country more than ten times the
extent of Britain was not so easy to effect. Yet they achieved
it with unexampled rapidity, because they came by invitation and
they brought peace to a people exhausted by long wars. Their task
was comparatively easy in the north, where the traditions of the
Kin Tartars still survived; but it was prolonged and bloody in
the south.
Both houses treated their new subjects as a conquered people. Each
imposed the burden of foreign garrisons and a new nobility. Each
introduced a foreign language, which they tried to perpetuate as
the speech of the court, if not of the people. In each case the
language of the people asserted itself. In Britain it absorbed
and assimilated the alien tongue; in China, where the absence of
common elements made amalgamation
[Page 269]
impossible, it superseded that of the conquerors, not merely for
writing purposes, but as the spoken dialect of the court.
Both conquerors found it necessary to conciliate the subject race
by liberal and timely concessions; but here begins a contrast.
In Britain no external badge of subjection was ever imposed; in
process of time all special privileges of the ruling caste were
abolished; and no trace of race antipathy ever displays itself
anywhere--if we except Ireland. In China the cue remains as a badge
of subjection.
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