Yiyang's Modernization Process During 1840-1949

Marked with the Opium War, China began to change greatly, namely from a traditional nation to a modern industrial and commercial nation. As the best places which can reflect the factors of China 's modernization clearly, cities also undergone tremendous changes and began to step into the modern development period. But due to some special reasons, the urban modernization of Yiyang was clearly delayed before the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895. It was not until the turn of 19th—20th century, the contacts between Yiyang and the markets at home and abroad were strengthened gradually , modern commerce and shipping trade rose slowly, and then the modern factors of Yiyang sporadically appeared, and the urban modernization started insensibly. At the moment, however, all the constructions of urban modernization were not large, the quality was not high, and the influence was extremely limited. Nevertheless, the urban modernization of Yiyang had already had the clue, and it had pointed out the direction of Yiyang's development . During the period of the Republic, Yiyang's modernization propelled difficultly and intermittenly towards a fast development stage. During the Beiyang Government Period, especially during the World WarⅠ, with the alternation of the new and old regime and the Demand for industrial raw material from the Capitalism, Yiyang'sEconomic Modernization (mainly mining and metallurgical industry) made remarkable progress, and it also gradually penetrated into political field, cultural and educational field, medical and hedlth field ,public social life and other fields, then it drove the all-round development of Yiyang's modernization. However ,this development then rose and fell with the queasy Political Situation. In the period of National Government, Yiyang 's urban modernization experienced a tortuous course. Before the Anti-Japanese War, large-scale wars at home were over, this led to a relatively stable public situation, and the government also went about constructing partly, so the development of Yiyang's economic modernition achieved obvious progress, particulally, many industries earned initial development ,such as smelting, electric power, textile, food processing, printing, paper, machinery and chemical industry. Economic industrialization was further improved and it grandly entered into the urban modernization with the traditional economic structure's optimizition. But unfortunately, Yiyang was then captured by Japanese, the urban modernization was greatly damaged. Then the Aggressive War Against China and civil war make the modernization of Yiyang was on the verge of despair. after the city was liberated, the urban modernization entered the new development period.Through the exploration and study of Yiyang's city modernization during 1840 to 1949, this paper aims to get clear the development process and to show the economy, politics, education, medical service and people's life of Yiyang city in late Qing dynasty. The paper tries to explore the characteristics and causes of Yiyang modernization development in order to provide historical experience as a reference for Yiyang city's sustainable development and modernization nowadays.