But China's obsession with sovereignty has deeper roots that reach back to the nation's colonial experience. The United States, with its unparalleled geopolitical position , has been able to largely take security from foreign intervention for granted since the end of the War of 1812. Nineteenth-century China, by contrast, was defined by subjugation from the First Opium War (1839-1842) onward. The government at the time, the Qing dynasty, fought constantly to regain China's right to govern itself. This period, from 1839 to 1949, is known in China as the "century of humiliation" and was characterized by repeated military defeats, imperial decay and untold human suffering. For the Chinese, those years have long represented a momentous tragedy: the loss of China's right to sovereignty. Over the course of a few generations, China fell from the top to the bottom of the international order.