Formation The Qing dynasty was founded not by
Han Chinese, who constituted a majority of the population, but by
Manchus, a sedentary farming people descended from the
Jurchens, a
Tungusic people who lived in the region now comprising the Chinese provinces of
Jilin and
Heilongjiang.
Nurhaci The early form of the Manchu state was founded by
Nurhaci, the chieftain of a minor Jurchen tribethe Aisin-Gioroin
Jianzhou in the early 17th century. Nurhaci may have spent time in a Han household in his youth, and became fluent in
Chinese and
Mongolian languages and read the Chinese novels
Romance of the Three Kingdoms and
Water Margin. As a vassal of the Ming emperors, he officially considered himself a guardian of the Ming border and a local representative of the Ming dynasty.
Hong Taiji Nurhaci died in 1626, and was succeeded by his eighth son,
Hong Taiji. Although Hong Taiji was an experienced leader and the commander of two Banners, the Jurchens suffered defeat in 1627, in part due to the Ming's newly acquired
Portuguese cannons. To redress the technological and numerical disparity, Hong Taiji in 1634 created his own artillery corps, who cast their own cannons in the European design with the help of defector Chinese metallurgists. One of the defining events of Hong Taiji's reign was the official adoption of the name "Manchu" for the united Jurchen people in November 1635. In 1635, the Manchus' Mongol allies were fully incorporated into a separate Banner hierarchy under direct Manchu command. In April 1636,
Mongol nobility of Inner Mongolia, Manchu nobility and the Han
mandarin recommended that Hong as the khan of Later Jin should be the emperor of the Great Qing. When he was presented with the
imperial seal of the
Yuan dynasty after the defeat of the last
Khagan of the Mongols, Hong Taiji renamed his state from "Great Jin" to "Great Qing" and elevated his position from Khan to
Emperor, suggesting imperial ambitions beyond unifying the Manchu territories. Hong Taiji then proceeded to
invade Korea again in 1636. Meanwhile, Hong Taiji set up a rudimentary bureaucratic system based on the Ming model. He established six boards or executive level ministries in 1631 to oversee finance, personnel, rites, military, punishments, and public works. However, these administrative organs had very little role initially, and it was not until the eve of completing the conquest ten years later that they fulfilled their government roles. Hong Taiji staffed his bureaucracy with many Han Chinese, including newly surrendered Ming officials, but ensured Manchu dominance by an ethnic quota for top appointments. Hong Taiji's reign also saw a fundamental change of policy towards his Han Chinese subjects. Nurhaci had treated Han in Liaodong according to how much grain they had. Due to a Han revolt in 1623, Nurhaci turned against them and enacted discriminatory policies and killings against them. He ordered that Han who assimilated to the Jurchen (in Jilin) before 1619 be treated equally with Jurchens, not like the conquered Han in Liaodong. Hong Taiji recognised the need to attract Han Chinese, explaining to reluctant Manchus why he needed to treat the defecting Ming general
Hong Chengchou leniently. Hong Taiji incorporated Han into the Jurchen polity as citizens obligated to provide military service. By 1648, less than one-sixth of the bannermen were of Manchu ancestry.
Claiming the Mandate of Heaven Hong Taiji died suddenly in September 1643. As Jurchen leaders were chosen by a council of nobles, there was no clear successor. The leading contenders for power were Hong Taiji's oldest son
Hooge and Hong Taiji's half brother
Dorgon. A compromise installed Hong Taiji's five-year-old son, Fulin, as the
Shunzhi Emperor, with Dorgon as regent and de facto leader of the Manchu nation. Meanwhile, Ming government officials fought against fiscal collapse, against each other, and against a series of
peasant rebellions. They were unable to capitalise on the Manchu succession dispute and the resulting boy emperor. In April 1644, Beijing was sacked by a contentious rebel coalition led by
Li Zicheng, a former minor Ming official, who established a short-lived
Shun dynasty. The last Ming ruler, the
Chongzhen Emperor, committed suicide when the city fell to the rebels, marking the effective end of the dynasty. Li Zicheng then led rebel forces numbering some 200,000 to confront Ming general
Wu Sangui, stationed at
Shanhai Pass of the
Great Wall to defend the capital against the approaching Manchu-led armies. Wu, to survive, had to ally with one of his adversaries against the other; one was a Han Chinese peasant army twice his size, but he chose the other. Wu may have resented Li Zicheng's attack on officials and the social order; Li had taken Wu's father hostage and it was said that Li took
Wu's concubine for himself. On the other hand, the Manchus had adopted a Chinese-style form of government and promised stability. Wu and Dorgon allied to defeat Li Zicheng in the
Battle of Shanhai Pass on 27 May 1644. The newly allied armies captured Beijing on 6 June. The
Shunzhi Emperor was invested as the "
Son of Heaven" on 30 October 1644. The Manchus, who had positioned themselves as political heirs to the Ming, held a formal funeral for the Chongzhen Emperor. However, completing the conquest of
China proper took another seventeen years of battling Ming loyalists, pretenders and rebels. The last Ming pretender,
Prince Gui, sought refuge with
Pindale Min, the king of
Burma, but was turned over to a Qing expeditionary army commanded by Wu Sangui, who had him brought back to
Yunnan and executed in early 1662. The Qing had taken shrewd advantage of Ming civilian government discrimination against the military and encouraged the Ming military to defect by spreading the message that the Manchus valued their skills. Banners made up of Han Chinese who defected before 1644 were classed among the Eight Banners, giving them social and legal privileges. Han defectors swelled the ranks of the Eight Banners so greatly that ethnic Manchus became a minorityonly 16% in 1648, with Han bannermen dominating at 75% and Mongol bannermen making up the rest. Gunpowder weapons like muskets and artillery were wielded by the Chinese Banners. Normally, Han Chinese defector troops were deployed as the vanguard, while Manchu bannermen were used predominantly for quick strikes with maximum impact, so as to minimise ethnic Manchu losses. This multi-ethnic force conquered Ming China for the Qing. The three Liaodong officers who played key roles in the conquest of southern China were Shang Kexi, Geng Zhongming, and Kong Youde, who governed southern China autonomously as viceroys for the Qing after the conquest. Han bannermen made up the majority of governors during the early Qing, stabilising their rule. To promote ethnic harmony, a 1648 decree allowed Han Chinese civilian men to marry Manchu women from the Banners with the permission of the Board of Revenue if they were registered daughters of officials or commoners, or with the permission of their banner company captain if they were unregistered commoners. Later in the dynasty the policies allowing intermarriage were done away with. The Qing's depiction of itself as a
Chinese empire was not hindered by the imperial house's Manchu ethnicity, especially after 1644, when the name "Chinese" was given a multiethnic meaning. The first seven years of the young Shunzhi Emperor's reign were dominated by Dorgon's regency. Because of his own political insecurity, Dorgon followed Hong Taiji's example by ruling in the name of the emperor at the expense of rival Manchu princes, many of whom he demoted or imprisoned. Dorgon's precedents and example cast a long shadow. First, the Manchus had entered "South of the Wall" because Dorgon had responded decisively to Wu Sangui's appeal, then, instead of sacking Beijing as the rebels had done, Dorgon insisted, over the protests of other Manchu princes, on making it the dynastic capital and reappointing most Ming officials. No major Chinese dynasty had directly taken over its immediate predecessor's capital, but keeping the Ming capital and bureaucracy intact helped quickly stabilize the regime and sped up the conquest of the rest of the country. Dorgon then drastically reduced the influence of the eunuchs and directed Manchu women not to
bind their feet in the Han Chinese style. However, not all of Dorgon's policies were equally popular or as easy to implement. The controversial July 1645
Queue Order forced adult Han Chinese men to shave the front of their heads and comb the remaining hair into the
queue hairstyle which was worn by Manchu men, on pain of death. The popular description of the order was: "To keep the hair, you lose the head; To keep your head, you cut the hair." To the Manchus, this policy was a test of loyalty and an aid in distinguishing friend from foe. For the Han Chinese, however, it was a humiliating reminder of Qing authority that challenged traditional Confucian values. The order triggered strong resistance in
Jiangnan. In the ensuing unrest, some 100,000 Han were slaughtered. On 31 December 1650, Dorgon died suddenly, marking the start of the Shunzhi Emperor's personal rule. Because the emperor was only 12 years old at that time, most decisions were made on his behalf by his mother,
Empress Dowager Xiaozhuang, who turned out to be a skilled political operator. Although his support had been essential to Shunzhi's ascent, Dorgon had centralised so much power in his hands as to become a direct threat to the throne. So much so that upon his death he was bestowed the extraordinary posthumous title of Emperor Yi (), the only instance in Qing history in which a Manchu "prince of the blood" () was so honoured. Two months into Shunzhi's personal rule, however, Dorgon was not only stripped of his titles, but his corpse was disinterred and mutilated. Dorgon's fall from grace also led to the purge of his family and associates at court. Shunzhi's promising start was cut short by his early death in 1661 at the age of 24 from
smallpox. He was succeeded by his third son Xuanye, who reigned as the
Kangxi Emperor. The Manchus sent Han bannermen to fight against Koxinga's Ming loyalists in Fujian. They removed the population from coastal areas in order to deprive Koxinga's Ming loyalists of resources. This led to a misunderstanding that Manchus were afraid of water. Han bannermen carried out the fighting and killing, casting conquest of the Mingdoubt on the claim that fear of the water led to the coastal evacuation and ban on maritime activities. Even though a poem refers to the soldiers carrying out massacres in Fujian as "barbarians", both Han
Green Standard Army and Han bannermen were involved and carried out the worst slaughter. 400,000 Green Standard Army soldiers were used against the Three Feudatories in addition to the 200,000 bannermen.
Kangxi Emperor's reign and consolidation () The 61-year reign of the
Kangxi Emperor was the longest of any emperor in Chinese history, and marked the beginning of the
High Qing era, the zenith of the dynasty's social, economic and military power. The early Manchu rulers established two foundations of legitimacy that help to explain the stability of their dynasty. The first was the bureaucratic institutions and the
neo-Confucian culture that they adopted from earlier dynasties. Manchu rulers and Han Chinese
scholar-official elites gradually came to terms with each other. The
examination system offered a path for ethnic Han to become officials. Imperial patronage of the
Kangxi Dictionary demonstrated respect for Confucian learning, while the
Sacred Edict of 1670 effectively extolled Confucian family values. His attempts to discourage Chinese women from
foot binding, however, were unsuccessful. The second major source of stability was the
Inner Asian aspect of their Manchu identity, which allowed them to appeal to the Mongol, Tibetan and Muslim subjects. Qing emperors adopted different images for these subjects in their multi-ethnic empire. The Qing used the title of Emperor (
Huangdi or
hūwangdi), along with
Son of Heaven and
Ejen in
Chinese and
Manchu. Like
Kublai Khan of the Mongol-led
Yuan dynasty and
Yongle Emperor of the
Ming dynasty, Qing rulers like the
Qianlong Emperor portrayed the image of themselves as
Buddhist sage rulers (wheel-turning kings), patrons of
Tibetan Buddhism to maintain legitimacy for Tibetan Buddhists. Mongol subjects also commonly referred to the Qing ruler as
Bogda Khan, while Turkic Muslim subjects (now known as the
Uyghurs) commonly referred to the Qing ruler as
Chinese khagan. Kangxi's reign began when the young emperor was seven. To prevent a repeat of Dorgon's monopolising of power, on his deathbed his father hastily appointed four regents who were not closely related to the imperial family and had no claim to the throne. However, through chance and machination,
Oboi, the most junior of the four, gradually achieved such dominance as to be a potential threat. In 1669, Kangxi disarmed and imprisoned Oboi through trickerya significant victory for a fifteen-year-old emperor. The young emperor faced challenges in maintaining control of his kingdom, as well. Three Ming generals singled out for their contributions to the establishment of the dynasty had been granted governorships in southern China. They became increasingly autonomous, leading to the
Revolt of the Three Feudatories, which lasted for eight years. Kangxi was able to unify his forces for a counterattack led by a new generation of Manchu generals. By 1681, the Qing government had established control over a ravaged southern China, which took several decades to recover. (1688) To extend and consolidate the dynasty's control in Central Asia, the Kangxi Emperor personally led a series of military campaigns against the
Dzungars in
Outer Mongolia. The Kangxi Emperor expelled
Galdan's invading forces from these regions, which were then incorporated into the empire. In 1683, Qing forces received the surrender of
Formosa (Taiwan) from
Zheng Keshuang, grandson of
Koxinga, who had conquered Taiwan from the
Dutch colonists as a base against the Qing. Winning Taiwan freed Kangxi's forces for a series of battles over
Albazin, the far eastern outpost of the
Tsardom of Russia. The 1689
Treaty of Nerchinsk was China's first formal treaty with a European power and kept the border peaceful for the better part of two centuries. Galdan was ultimately killed in the
Dzungar–Qing War; after his death, his Tibetan Buddhist followers attempted to control the choice of the next
Dalai Lama. Kangxi dispatched two armies to
Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, and installed a Dalai Lama sympathetic to the Qing.
Reigns of the Yongzheng and Qianlong emperors in
Chengde, built during the reign of the Qianlong Emperor on the model of the
Potala Palace in
Lhasa The reigns of the
Yongzheng Emperor () and his son, the
Qianlong Emperor (), marked the height of Qing power. However, the historian Jonathan Spence notes that the empire at the end of Qianlong's reign was "like the sun at midday". Despite "many glories", "signs of decay and even collapse were becoming apparent". After the death of the Kangxi Emperor in the winter of 1722, his fourth son, Prince Yong (), became the Yongzheng Emperor. He felt a sense of urgency about the problems that had accumulated in his father's later years. In the words of one recent historian, he was "severe, suspicious, and jealous, but extremely capable and resourceful", and in the words of another, he turned out to be an "early modern state-maker of the first order". First, he promoted Confucian orthodoxy and cracked down on unorthodox sects. In 1723, he outlawed Christianity and expelled most Christian missionaries. He expanded his father's system of
Palace Memorials, which brought frank and detailed reports on local conditions directly to the throne without being intercepted by the bureaucracy, and he created a small
Grand Council of personal advisors, which eventually grew into the emperor's de facto cabinet for the rest of the dynasty. He shrewdly filled key positions with Manchu and Han Chinese officials who depended on his patronage. When he began to realise the extent of the financial crisis, Yongzheng rejected his father's lenient approach to local elites and enforced collection of the land tax. The increased revenues were to be used for "money to nourish honesty" among local officials and for local irrigation, schools, roads, and charity. Although these reforms were effective in the north, in the south and lower Yangtze valley there were long-established networks of officials and landowners. Yongzheng dispatched experienced Manchu commissioners to penetrate the thickets of falsified land registers and coded account books, but they were met with tricks, passivity, and even violence. The fiscal crisis persisted. in the
Qing conquest of Xinjiang (1755–1758) Yongzheng also inherited diplomatic and strategic problems. A team made up entirely of Manchus drew up the 1727
Treaty of Kyakhta to solidify the diplomatic understanding with Russia. In exchange for territory and trading rights, the Qing would have a free hand in dealing with the situation in Mongolia. Yongzheng then turned to that situation, where the Zunghars threatened to re-emerge, and to the southwest, where local
Miao chieftains resisted Qing expansion. These campaigns drained the treasury but established the emperor's control of the military and military finance. saluting the Qianlong Emperor When the Yongzheng Emperor died in 1735, his son Prince Bao () became the Qianlong Emperor. Qianlong personally led the
Ten Great Campaigns to expand military control into present-day
Xinjiang and
Mongolia, putting down revolts and uprisings in
Sichuan and southern China while expanding control over Tibet. The Qianlong Emperor launched several ambitious cultural projects, including the compilation of the
Siku Quanshu, the largest collection of books in Chinese history. Nevertheless, Qianlong used the
literary inquisition to silence opposition. Beneath outward prosperity and imperial confidence, the later years of Qianlong's reign were marked by rampant corruption and neglect.
Heshen, the emperor's handsome young favorite, took advantage of the emperor's indulgence to become one of the most corrupt officials in the history of the dynasty. Qianlong's son, the
Jiaqing Emperor (), eventually forced Heshen to commit suicide. '' (1759) by
Xu Yang Populations in the first half of the 17th century did not recover from civil wars and epidemics, but the following years of prosperity and stability led to steady growth. The Qianlong Emperor bemoaned the situation by remarking, "The population continues to grow, but the land does not." The introduction of new crops from the Americas such as the potato and peanut improved nutrition as well, so that the population during the 18th century ballooned from 100 million to 300 million people. Soon farmers were forced to work ever-smaller holdings more intensely. In 1796, the
White Lotus Society raised open rebellion, saying "the officials have forced the people to rebel". Others blamed officials in various parts of the country for corruption, failing to keep the famine relief granaries full, poor maintenance of roads and waterworks, and bureaucratic factionalism. There soon followed uprisings of "new sect" Muslims against local Muslim officials, and Miao tribesmen in southwest China. The
White Lotus Rebellion continued until 1804, when badly run, corrupt, and brutal campaigns finally ended it.
Rebellion, unrest, and external pressure (E. Duncan; 1843) During the early Qing, China continued to be the hegemonic imperial power in East Asia. Although there was no formal ministry of foreign relations, the
Lifan Yuan was responsible for relations with the Mongols and Tibetans in Inner Asia, while the
tributary system, a loose set of institutions and customs taken over from the Ming, in theory governed relations with East and Southeast Asian countries. The 1689
Treaty of Nerchinsk stabilised relations with the
Tsardom of Russia. However, during the 18th century, European empires gradually expanded across the world and developed economies predicated on maritime trade, colonial extraction, and technological advances. The dynasty was confronted with
newly developing concepts of the international system and state-to-state relations. European trading posts expanded into territorial control in what is now India and Indonesia. The Qing response was to establish the
Canton System in 1756, which restricted maritime trade to
Guangzhou and gave monopoly trading rights to
private Chinese merchants. This was successful for a time, and the
British East India Company and the
Dutch East India Company had long before been granted similar monopoly rights by their governments. In 1793, the British East India Company, with the support of the British government, sent a
diplomatic mission to China led by
Lord Macartney in order to open trade and put relations on a basis of equality. The imperial court viewed trade as of secondary interest, whereas the British saw maritime trade as the key to their economy. The Qianlong Emperor told Macartney "the kings of the myriad nations come by land and sea with all sorts of precious things", and "consequently there is nothing we lack..." in the background (1850–1855) Since China had little demand for European goods, Europe paid in silver for Chinese goods, an imbalance that worried the
mercantilist governments of Britain and France. The
growing Chinese demand for opium provided the remedy. The British East India Company greatly expanded its production in Bengal. The
Daoguang Emperor, concerned both over the outflow of silver and the damage that opium smoking was causing to his subjects, ordered
Lin Zexu to end the opium trade. Lin confiscated the stocks of opium without compensation in 1839, leading Britain to send a military expedition the following year. The
First Opium War revealed the outdated state of the Chinese military. The Qing navy, composed entirely of wooden sailing
junks, was severely outclassed by the modern tactics and firepower of the
British Royal Navy. British soldiers, using advanced muskets and artillery, easily outmaneuvered and outgunned Qing forces in ground battles. The Qing surrender in 1842 marked a decisive, humiliating blow. The
Treaty of Nanjing, the first of the "
unequal treaties", demanded war reparations, forced China to open up the
Treaty Ports of
Canton,
Amoy,
Fuzhou,
Ningbo and
Shanghai to Western trade and missionaries, and to cede
Hong Kong Island to Britain. It revealed weaknesses in the Qing government and provoked rebellions against the regime. The
Taiping Rebellion (1849–1864) was the first major
anti-Manchu movement. Amid widespread social unrest and worsening famine, the rebellion not only posed the most serious threat to Qing rule, but during its 14-year course, between 20 and 30 million people died. The rebellion began under the leadership of
Hong Xiuquan (1814–1864), a disappointed civil service examination candidate who, influenced by reading the
Old Testament in translation, had a series of visions and announced himself to be the son of God, the younger brother of Jesus Christ, sent to reform China. In 1851, Hong launched an uprising in
Guizhou and established the
Taiping Heavenly Kingdom with himself as its king. Within this kingdom, slavery, concubinage, arranged marriage, opium smoking, footbinding, judicial torture, and the worship of idols were all banned. However, success led to internal feuds, defections and corruption. In addition, British and French troops, equipped with modern weapons, had come to the assistance of the Qing army. Nonetheless, it was not until 1864 that Qing forces under
Zeng Guofan succeeded in crushing the revolt. After the outbreak of this rebellion, there were also revolts by the
Muslims and
Miao people of China against the Qing, most notably in the
Miao Rebellion (1854–1873) in
Guizhou, the
Panthay Rebellion (1856–1873) in
Yunnan, and the
Dungan Revolt (1862–1877) in the northwest. The Western powers, largely unsatisfied with the Treaty of Nanjing, gave grudging support to the Qing government during the Taiping and Nian rebellions. China's income fell sharply during the wars as vast areas of farmland were destroyed, millions of lives were lost, and countless armies were raised and equipped to fight the rebels. In 1854, Britain tried to re-negotiate the Treaty of Nanjing, inserting clauses allowing British commercial access to Chinese rivers and the creation of a permanent British embassy at Beijing. In 1856, Qing authorities, in searching for a pirate, boarded a ship, the
Arrow, which the British claimed had been flying the British flag, an incident which led to the
Second Opium War. In 1858, facing no other options, the
Xianfeng Emperor agreed to the
Treaty of Tientsin, which contained clauses deeply insulting to the Chinese, such as a demand that all official Chinese documents be written in English and a proviso granting British warships unlimited access to all navigable Chinese rivers. Ratification of the treaty in the following year led to a resumption of hostilities. In 1860, with Anglo-French forces marching on Beijing, the emperor and his court fled the capital for the
imperial hunting lodge at Rehe. Once in Beijing, the Anglo-French forces looted and burned the
Old Summer Palace and, in an act of revenge for the arrest, torture, and execution of the English diplomatic mission.
Prince Gong, a younger half-brother of the emperor, who had been left as his brother's proxy in the capital, was forced to sign the
Convention of Beijing. The humiliated emperor died the following year at Rehe.
Self-strengthening and frustration of reforms Following the death of the Xianfeng Emperor in 1861, and the accession of the 5-year-old
Tongzhi Emperor, the Qing rallied. In the
Tongzhi Restoration, Han Chinese officials such as
Zuo Zongtang stood behind the Manchus and organised provincial troops.
Zeng Guofan, in alliance with Prince Gong, sponsored the rise of younger officials such as
Li Hongzhang, who put the dynasty back on its feet financially and instituted the
Self-Strengthening Movement, which adopted Western military technology in order to preserve Confucian values.Their institutional reforms included China's first unified ministry of foreign affairs in the
Zongli Yamen, allowing foreign diplomats to reside in the capital, the establishment of the
Imperial Maritime Customs Service, the institution of modern navy and army forces including the
Beiyang Army, and the purchase of armament factories from the Europeans. The dynasty gradually lost control of its peripheral territories. In return for promises of support against the British and the French, the
Russian Empire took large chunks of territory in the Northeast in 1860. The period of cooperation between the reformers and the European powers ended with the 1870
Tianjin Massacre, which was incited by the murder of French nuns set off by the belligerence of local French diplomats. Starting with the
Cochinchina Campaign in 1858, France expanded control of Indochina. By 1883, France was in full control of the region and had reached the Chinese border. The
Sino-French War began with a surprise attack by the French on the Chinese southern fleet at Fuzhou. After that the Chinese declared war on the French. A
French invasion of Taiwan was halted and the French were defeated on land in Tonkin at the
Battle of Bang Bo. However Japan threatened to enter the war against China due to the Gapsin Coup and China chose to end the war with negotiations. The war ended in 1885 with the
Treaty of Tientsin and the Chinese recognition of the French protectorate in Vietnam. Some Russian and Chinese
gold miners also established a short-lived
proto-state known as the
Zheltuga Republic (1883–1886) in the
Amur River basin, which was however soon crushed by the Qing forces. In 1884, Qing China obtained concessions in
Korea, such as the
Chinese concession of Incheon, but the pro-Japanese Koreans in
Seoul led the
Gapsin Coup. Tensions between China and Japan rose after China intervened to suppress the uprising. The Japanese prime minister
Itō Hirobumi and Li Hongzhang signed the
Convention of Tientsin, an agreement to withdraw troops simultaneously, but the
First Sino-Japanese War of 1895 was a military humiliation. The
Treaty of Shimonoseki recognised Korean independence and ceded Taiwan and the
Pescadores to Japan. The terms might have been harsher, but when a Japanese citizen attacked and wounded Li Hongzhang, an international outcry shamed the Japanese into revising them. The original agreement stipulated the cession of
Liaodong Peninsula to Japan, but Russia, with its own designs on the territory, along with Germany and France, in the
Triple Intervention, successfully put pressure on the Japanese to abandon the peninsula. () These years saw the participation of
Empress Dowager Cixi in state affairs. Cixi initially entered the imperial palace in the 1850s as a concubine of the Xianfeng Emperor, and became the mother of the future Tongzhi Emperor. Following his accession at the age of five, Cixi, Xianfeng's widow
Empress Dowager Ci'an, and Prince Gong (a son of the Daoguang Emperor), staged
a coup that ousted several of the Tongzhi Emperor's regents. Between 1861 and 1873, Cixi and Ci'an served as regents together; following the emperor's death in 1875, Cixi's nephew, the
Guangxu Emperor, took the throne in violation of the custom that the new emperor be of the next generation, and another regency began. Ci'an suddenly died in the spring of 1881, leaving Cixi as sole regent. From 1889, when Guangxu began to rule in his own right, until 1898, the Empress Dowager lived in semi-retirement, spending the majority of the year at the
Summer Palace. In 1897, two German Roman Catholic missionaries were murdered in southern
Shandong province (the
Juye Incident). Germany used the murders as a pretext for a naval occupation of
Jiaozhou Bay. The occupation prompted a
Scramble for China in 1898, which included the
German lease of Jiaozhou Bay, the
Russian lease of Liaodong, the
British lease of the New Territories of Hong Kong, and the
French lease of Guangzhouwan. ,
Germany,
Russia,
France, and Japan dividing China In the wake of these external defeats, the Guangxu Emperor initiated the
Hundred Days' Reform in 1898. Newer, more radical advisers such as
Kang Youwei were given positions of influence. The emperor issued a series of edicts and plans were made to reorganise the bureaucracy, restructure the school system, and appoint new officials. Opposition from the bureaucracy was immediate and intense. Although she had been involved in the initial reforms, the Empress Dowager
stepped in to call them off, arrested and executed several reformers, and took over day-to-day control of policy. Yet many of the plans stayed in place, and the goals of reform were implanted. celebrating their victory in the
Battle of Peking, within the walls of the
Forbidden City on 28 November 1900 Drought in North China, combined with the imperialist designs of European powers and the instability of the Qing government, created background conditions for the
Boxers. In 1900, local groups of Boxers proclaiming support for the Qing dynasty murdered foreign missionaries and large numbers of Chinese Christians, then converged on Beijing to besiege the Foreign Legation Quarter. A coalition of European, Japanese, and Russian armies (the
Eight-Nation Alliance) then entered China without diplomatic notice, much less permission. Cixi declared war on all of these nations, only to lose control of Beijing after a short, but hard-fought campaign. She fled to
Xi'an. The victorious allies then enforced their demands on the Qing government, including compensation for their expenses in invading China and execution of complicit officials, via the
Boxer Protocol.
Reform, revolution, collapse The defeat by Japan in 1895 created a sense of crisis which the failure of the 1898 reforms and the disasters of 1900 only exacerbated. Cixi in 1901 moved to mollify the foreign community, called for reform proposals, and initiated the
Late Qing reforms. Over the next few years the reforms included the restructuring of the national education, judicial, and fiscal systems, the most dramatic of which was the abolition of the imperial examination system in 1905. The court directed
a constitution to be drafted, and
provincial elections were held, the first in China's history. Sun Yat-sen and revolutionaries debated reform officials and constitutional monarchists such as Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao over how to transform the Manchu-ruled empire into a modernised Han Chinese state. The Guangxu Emperor died on 14 November 1908, and Cixi died the following day.
Puyi, the oldest son of
Zaifeng, Prince Chun, and nephew to the childless Guangxu Emperor, was appointed successor at the age of two, leaving Zaifeng with the regency. Zaifeng forced Yuan Shikai to resign. The Qing dynasty became a
constitutional monarchy on 8 May 1911, when Zaifeng created a "responsible cabinet" led by
Yikuang, Prince Qing. However, it became known as the "
royal cabinet", as five of its thirteen members, were part of or related to the royal family. The
Wuchang Uprising on 10 October 1911 set off a series of uprisings. By November, 14 of the 22 provinces had rejected Qing rule. This led to the creation of the
Republic of China, in
Nanjing on 1 January 1912, with
Sun Yat-sen as its provisional head. Seeing a desperate situation, the Qing court brought Yuan Shikai back to power. His
Beiyang Army crushed the revolutionaries in Wuhan at the
Battle of Yangxia. After taking the position of
Prime Minister he created
his own cabinet, with the support of
Empress Dowager Longyu. However, Yuan Shikai decided to cooperate with Sun Yat-sen's revolutionaries to overthrow the Qing dynasty. On 12 February 1912, Longyu issued the
abdication of the child emperor Puyi, leading to the fall of the Qing dynasty under the pressure of Yuan Shikai's Beiyang army despite objections from
conservatives and royalist reformers. This brought an end to over 2,000 years imperial governance in China, and began a period of instability. In July 1917, there was an
abortive attempt to restore the Qing led by
Zhang Xun. Puyi was
allowed to live in the Forbidden City after his abdication until 1924, when he moved to the
Japanese concession in Tianjin. The Empire of Japan
invaded Northeast China and founded
Manchukuo there in 1932, with Puyi as its
emperor. After the
invasion of Northeast China to fight Japan by the
Soviet Union, Manchukuo fell in 1945. ==Government==