Empress Dowager Cixi

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Empress Dowager Cixi bigraphy, stories - Dynasty

Empress Dowager Cixi : biography

29 November 1835 – 15 November 1908

Empress Dowager Cixi1, or Empress Dowager Tzu-hsi ( Manchu: Tsysi taiheo; 29 November 1835 – 15 November 1908), of the Manchu Yehenara clan, was a powerful and charismatic woman who unofficially but effectively controlled the Manchu Qing Dynasty in China for 47 years, from 1861 to her death in 1908.

Selected by the Xianfeng Emperor as an imperial concubine in her adolescence, she gave birth to his son, who became the Tongzhi Emperor upon Xianfeng’s death. Cixi ousted a group of regents appointed by the late emperor and assumed regency over her young son with the Empress Dowager Ci’an. Cixi then consolidated control over the dynasty when, at the death of the Tongzhi Emperor, contrary to the rules of succession, she installed her nephew as the Guangxu Emperor in 1875. Although she refused to adopt Western models of government, she nonetheless supported the technological and military Self-Strengthening Movement. Cixi rejected the Hundred Days’ Reforms of 1898 as impractical and detrimental to dynastic power and placed the Guangxu Emperor under house arrest for supporting reformers. After the Boxer Rebellion and the invasion of Allied armies, external and internal pressures led Cixi to effect institutional changes of just the sort she had resisted and appoint reform-minded officials. The dynasty collapsed in 1911, three years after her death (with the new Republican Era commencing 1 January 1912).

Historians both in China and abroad have generally portrayed her as a despot and villain responsible for the fall of the Dynasty, while others have suggested that her opponents among the reformers succeeded in making her a scapegoat for problems beyond her control, that she stepped in to prevent disorder, that she was no more ruthless than other rulers, and that she was even an effective if reluctant reformer in the last years of her life.Sue Fawn Chung, "The Much Maligned Empress Dowager: A Revisionist Study of the Empress Dowager Tz’u-Hsi (1835–1908)," Modern Asian Studies 13.2 (1979): 177–196.

Historical opinions

One of the historical oil paintings by Western artists depicting Empress Dowager Cixi

The traditional view of the Empress Dowager Cixi was that of a devious despot who contributed in no small part to China’s slide into corruption, anarchy, and revolution. During Cixi’s time, she used her power to accumulate vast quantities of money, bullion, antiques and jewelry, using the revenues of the state as her own. By the end of her reign she had amassed a huge personal fortune, stashing away some eight and a half million pounds sterling in London banks. The lavish palaces, gardens and lakes built by Cixi were hugely extravagant at a time when China was verging on bankruptcy.Edward Behr, The Last Emperor, 1987, p. 51 The recent discovery that her nephew died of acute arsenic poisoning casts a sinister shadow on the events of her reign, as do the many examples of her ruthless elimination of enemies throughout her life, from Sushun and his entourage to the martyrs of the 100 Days’ Reform to Empress Alute and the Consort Zhen, whether or not the details were embellished by critics.

Katharine Carl

Katharine Carl spent some ten months with the Empress Dowager Cixi in 1903 to paint her portrait for the St. Louis Exposition. Two years later she published a book about her experience, titled With the Empress Dowager. In the book’s introduction, Carl says she wrote the book because "After I returned to America, I was constantly seeing in the newspapers (and hearing of) statements ascribed to me which I never made."With the Empress Dowager of China by Katharine Carl 1907, current print Kessinger Publishing 2004, ISBN 978-1-4179-1701-3.

In her book, Katharine Carl describes the Empress Dowager Cixi as a kind and considerate woman for her station. Empress Dowager Cixi, though shrewd, had great presence, charm, and graceful movements resulting in "an unusually attractive personality". Carl wrote of the Dowager’s love of dogs and of flowers, as well as boating, Chinese opera and her Chinese water pipes and European cigarettes. Carl also made note of Empress Dowager Cixi’s loyalty, describing the case of "a Chinese woman who nursed Her Majesty through a long illness, about twenty-five years since, and saved her life by giving her mother’s milk to drink. Her Majesty, who never forgets a favor, has always kept this woman in the Palace. Being a Chinese, she had bound feet. Her Majesty, who cannot bear to see them even, had her feet unbound and carefully treated, until now she can walk comfortably. Her Majesty has educated the son, who was an infant at the time of her illness, and whose natural nourishment she partook of. This young man is already a Secretary in a good yamen (government office)."