Self-Strengthening Movement - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Self-Strengthening_MovementThe Self-Strengthening Movement, also known as the Westernisation [1] or Western Affairs Movement [2] ( c. 1861 –1895), was a period of radical institutional reforms initiated in China during the late Qing dynasty following the military disasters of the Opium Wars . The British and French burning of the Old Summer Palace in 1860 as Taiping rebel armies marched north, forced the imperial court to acknowledge the crisis.