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Cixi, Dowager Empress of China
George Gibbs (MR)
Cixi, Empress Dowager of China, was born on November 29th 1835 in Beijing to a noble Manchu family. At the age of sixteen Cixi was sent to be a low-ranking concubine for Emperor Xianfeng; at the time, this would have been seen as a great privilege and it introduced Cixi to life in the royal court, yet it meant that she was entirely owned and controlled by the Emperor.
She quickly became one of the Emperor’s favourites and had a son by him. After the death of the Emperor, Cixi joined a triumviral regency that governed in the name of her son, who was in fact only 6 years old at the date of his accession. The name Cixi is honorific and means ‘Kind Joy,’ this was the name given to her after the death of Xianfeng.
Undoubtedly, she is one of the most powerful and significant women in Chinese history. There is still to this day ambiguity surrounding her life and reputation, however we can say for certain that her intelligence, strength and ruthlessness ultimately contributed to the modernization of China, i ncreasing foreign relations and bolstering trade.
Cixi came to wield significant political power in the last four years of the Qing dynasty and even after the termination of the regency in 1873 her personal involvement in state affairs continued. Cixi supervised and contributed to the Tongzhi restoration which enabled the survival of the dynasty until 1911, during which time she was responsible for various effective, although sometimes belated, reforms such as the abolition of slavery and ancient torturous forms of punishment, as well as banning the barbaric practice of foot-binding.
Despite this, the credibility of her legacy has been the subject of some discourse by historians, with some arguing she was a tyrannical despot whose reactionary policies led to not only the downfall but the humiliation of the Qing dynasty.
Other, more sympathetic, revisionist interpretations argue that she was used as a scapegoat by communist and nationalist reformers and that her maintenance of political stability should be praised.
There is both misinformation and a lack of information surrounding the life of Cixi. It can be argued that she did what was necessary to survive in a patriarchal and toxic court.
Her decisions were pragmatic and she needed to display an element of ruthlessness and cruelty to strengthen the dynasty whilst also advancing a program of modernisation.
This is contrary to the image of an archconservative that was created of her. One could even go so far as to say that if she had lived a little longer, China may have become a stable, constitutional monarchy.
Arguably, she played a role in the dramatic modernisation of China, but because of her gender, she was forced to rule in the background.
The demonic portrayal of Cixi is unjust: although she did carry out ruthless acts, after a century of defamation, her reputation and life should be re-examined to portray an intelligent survivor who learnt to navigate and lead Qing politics for the best part of half a century.
