Welcome back everyone, Lauslo Montgomery here. Again, you're listening to the China History Podcast.

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Okay, more Guangzhou history again. We're in the Qing Dynasty. In the last three episodes,

we looked at this city's history from about the Qin with the establishment of the Nanhai

Commandery, one of the 36, the first emperor called for to help manage his new empire.

In these 1718 centuries of Guangzhou history, we looked at so far, in my utterly worthless

opinion. As far as popular Chinese history goes, where Guangzhou is concerned at least,

now it sort of takes a back seat to what we're going to look at from here on out.

As far as China's imperial history going back to 221 BC, it's the Qing Dynasty,

1644 to 1912, that is closest to us in our time and is therefore most familiar and more

accessible thanks to all the surviving historical documents, books, and archival images from Chinese

and foreign sources. Between the arrival of the Portuguese and the early 1500s and the founding

of the PRC, there was plenty else happening in Guangzhou besides the history of foreign trade and

all the wars, unequal treaties, uprisings, and revolution. To all seafaring traders from China's

south and west, Guangzhou had always served as the front door. That's where the Pearl River emptied

out into the south China Sea. It was on China's coast. That's just how it all panned out. This part

of China had no choice. All because of the way the rivers flowed, this city was destined to be

...