The Education Research Of The Navy In The Late Qing Dynasty In Guangdong

After the Opium War in 1840, China was invaded by Western colonizers and was faced with a serious maritime crisis. Chinese insightful people started the Westernization Movement in order to pursue the self-improvement and prosperity in the shout of “Learning Merits from the Foreign to Conquer the Foreign” which was mentioned by insightful people. They proposed to set up plants,make warships and cultivated talents making coast defense become the focus of the whole society.The developments of navy needed many talents to operate warships,so the education of navy came into being.From the evolution of education of navies in the late period of Qing dynasty,it could be divided into three stages:start-up,development,recovery and decline periods.Naval education included education in official marine force schools and education for studying abroad.This paper mainly discusses the education in official marine force schools.The country gradually established a dozen of naval colleges after the born of the first naval college-Fuzhou shipping policy school in1866.Guangdong was trampled by by western invaders during the two Opium wars.Thus officials and gentlemen of Guangdong founded westernization school and launched activities of military modernization during westernization movement.From Guangdong Shi-Xue-Guan in the early 1880 s,to Guangdong Navy And Army college in 1887 and to Huangpu Marine Force School in 1893,the naval college of Guangdong finally developed into the Guangdong naval academy until after the Republic of China.We should learn successful and failure experiences from it.Guangdong naval college cultivated many navy elites and provided qualified talents for our navy fleet.It maked a great contribution to the navy construction.Guangdong still occupied an important strategic position on coastal provinces,though its position might be weakened in the late Qing Dynasty.Guangdong naval college breaked through the traditional system of feudal education.It created a new model of education and promoted the development of Chinese education. But it also existeddrawbacks.For example, it ignored the military tactics know ledges and never form a unified and comprehensive navy education system. To some extent,naval college spread the knowledge of coastal defense.But there is a limited function to raise Chinese sea defence awareness, because it was intend to cultivate naval talents.