Self-Strengthening Movement
The defeat of the Qing army by a relatively small Anglo-French military force (outnumbered at least 10 to 1 by the Qing army) coupled with the flight (and subsequent death) of the Xianfeng Emperor and the burning of the Summer Palaces was a shocking blow to the once powerful Qing Empire. "Beyond a doubt, by 1860 the ancient civilization that was China had been thoroughly defeated and humiliated by the West." After the war, a major modernization movement, known as the Self-Strengthening Movement, began in China in the 1860s and several institutional reforms were initiated.