The Qing dynasty at its greatest extent in 1760, with modern borders shown for the rest of the world. Territory claimed but not controlled is shown in light green.
To maintain prominence over its neighbors, the Qing leveraged and adapted the traditionaltributary system employed by previous dynasties, enabling their continued predominance in affairs with countries on its periphery likeJoseon Korea and theLê dynasty in Vietnam, whileextending its control overInner Asia includingTibet,Mongolia, andXinjiang. The Qing dynasty reached its apex during the reign of theQianlong Emperor (1735–1796), who led theTen Great Campaigns of conquest, and personally supervisedConfucian cultural projects. After his death, the dynasty faced internal revolts, economic disruption, official corruption, foreign intrusion, and the reluctance of Confucian elites to change their mindset. With peace and prosperity, the population rose to 400 million, but taxes and government revenues were fixed at a low rate, soon leading to a fiscal crisis. Following China's defeat in theOpium Wars, Western colonial powers forced the Qing government to signunequal treaties, granting them trading privileges,extraterritoriality andtreaty ports under their control. TheTaiping Rebellion (1850–1864) and theDungan Revolt (1862–1877) in western China led to the deaths of over 20 million people, from famine, disease, and war.
Hong Taiji proclaimed theGreat Qing dynasty in 1636.[18] There are competing explanations as to the meaning of theChinese characterQīng (清; 'clear', 'pure') in this context. One theory posits a purposeful contrast with the Ming: the characterMíng (明; 'bright') is associated with fire within theChinese zodiacal system, whileQīng (清) is associated with water, illustrating the triumph of the Qing as the conquest of fire by water. The name possibly also possessed Buddhist implications of perspicacity and enlightenment, as well as connection with the bodhisattvaManjusri.[19]Early European writers used the term "Tartar" indiscriminately for all the peoples of Northern Eurasia but in the 17th century Catholic missionary writings established "Tartar" to refer only to the Manchus and "Tartary" for the lands they ruled—i.e.Manchuria and the adjacent parts ofInner Asia,[20][21] as ruled by the Qing before theMing–Qing transition.
After conqueringChina proper, the Manchus identified their state as "China", equivalently asZhōngguó (中國; 'middle kingdom') in Chinese andDulimbai Gurun in Manchu.[c] The emperors equated the lands of the Qing state (including, among other areas, present-day Northeast China, Xinjiang, Mongolia, and Tibet) as "China" in both the Chinese and Manchu languages, defining China as a multi-ethnic state, and rejecting the idea that only Han areas were properly part of "China". The government used "China" and "Qing" interchangeably to refer to their state in official documents,[22] including the Chinese-language versions of treaties and maps of the world.[23] The term 'Chinese people' (中國人;Zhōngguórén; Manchu:ᡩᡠᠯᡳᠮᠪᠠᡳ ᡤᡠᡵᡠᠨ ᡳ ᠨᡳᠶᠠᠯᠮᠠDulimbai gurun-i niyalma) referred to all the Han, Manchu, and Mongol subjects of the Qing Empire.[24] When the Qingconquered Dzungaria in 1759, it proclaimed within a Manchu-language memorial that the new land had been absorbed into "China".[25]: 77 The Qing government expounded an ideology that it was bringing the "outer" non-Han peoples—such as various populations of Mongolians, as well as the Tibetans—together with the "inner" Han Chinese into "one family", united within the Qing state. Phraseology likeZhōngwài yījiā (中外一家) andnèiwài yījiā (內外一家)—both translatable as 'home and abroad as one family'—was employed to convey this idea of Qing-mediated trans-cultural unity.[25]: 76–77
The Qing dynasty was founded not byHan Chinese, who constituted a majority of the population, but byManchus, a sedentary farming people descended from theJurchens, aTungusic people who lived in the region now comprising the Chinese provinces ofJilin andHeilongjiang.[26]
Nurhaci
Manchu cavalry charging Ming infantry at the 1619Battle of Sarhū
The early form of the Manchu state was founded byNurhaci, the chieftain of a minor Jurchen tribe – the Aisin-Gioro – inJianzhou in the early 17th century. Nurhaci may have spent time in a Han household in his youth, and became fluent inChinese andMongolian languages and read the Chinese novelsRomance of the Three Kingdoms andWater Margin.[27][28] 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.[16] Nurhaci embarked on an intertribal feud in 1582 that escalated into a campaign tounify the nearby tribes. He also began organizing theEight Banners military system which included Manchu, Han, andMongol elements. By 1616, however, he had sufficiently consolidated Jianzhou so as to be able to proclaim himselfKhan of theLater Jin dynasty in reference to theprevious Jurchen-ruled Jin dynasty.[29]
Two years later, Nurhaci announced the "Seven Grievances" and openly renounced the sovereignty of Ming overlordship in order to complete the unification of those Jurchen tribes still allied with the Ming emperor. After a series of successful battles, he relocated his capital fromHetu Ala to successively bigger captured Ming cities in Liaodong: firstLiaoyang in 1621, thenMukden (Shenyang) in 1625.[29] Furthermore, the Khorchin proved a useful ally in the war, lending the Jurchens their expertise as cavalry archers. To guarantee this new alliance, Nurhaci initiated a policy of inter-marriages between the Jurchen and Khorchin nobilities, while those who resisted were met with military action. This is a typical example of Nurhaci's initiatives that eventually became official Qing government policy. During most of the Qing period, the Mongols gave military assistance to the Manchus.[30]
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 acquiredPortuguese 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 Hanmandarin recommended that Hong as the khan of Later Jin should be the emperor of the Great Qing.[31][32] When he was presented with theimperial seal of theYuan dynasty after the defeat of the lastKhagan of the Mongols, Hong Taiji renamed his state from "Great Jin" to "Great Qing" and elevated his position from Khan toEmperor, suggesting imperial ambitions beyond unifying the Manchu territories. Hong Taiji then proceeded toinvade Korea again in 1636.
Coins of Hong Taiji in Manchu script
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.[33]
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 generalHong Chengchou leniently.[34] 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.[35]
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 sonHooge and Hong Taiji's half brotherDorgon. A compromise installed Hong Taiji's five-year-old son, Fulin, as theShunzhi 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 ofpeasant 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 byLi Zicheng, a former minor Ming official, who established a short-livedShun dynasty. The last Ming ruler, theChongzhen 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 generalWu Sangui, stationed atShanhai Pass of theGreat 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 tookWu'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 theBattle of Shanhai Pass on 27 May 1644.[36]
The newly allied armies captured Beijing on 6 June. TheShunzhi 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 ofChina proper took another seventeen years of battling Ming loyalists, pretenders and rebels. The last Ming pretender,Prince Gui, sought refuge withPindale Min, the king ofBurma, but was turned over to a Qing expeditionary army commanded by Wu Sangui, who had him brought back toYunnan 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.[37] 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 minority – only 16% in 1648, with Han bannermen dominating at 75% and Mongol bannermen making up the rest.[38] Gunpowder weapons like muskets and artillery were wielded by the Chinese Banners.[39] 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.[40]
This multi-ethnic force conquered Ming China for the Qing.[41] 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.[42] Han bannermen made up the majority of governors during the early Qing, stabilising their rule.[43] 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.[44] The Qing's depiction of itself as aChinese empire was not hindered by the imperial house's Manchu ethnicity, especially after 1644, when the name "Chinese" was given a multiethnic meaning.[45]
Qing and Central Asia in 1636
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 tobind their feet in the Han Chinese style.[46]
However, not all of Dorgon's policies were equally popular or as easy to implement. The controversial July 1645Queue Order forced adult Han Chinese men to shave the front of their heads and comb the remaining hair into thequeue hairstyle which was worn by Manchu men, on pain of death.[47] The popular description of the order was: "To keep the hair, you lose the head; To keep your head, you cut the hair."[46] 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.[48] The order triggered strong resistance inJiangnan.[49] In the ensuing unrest, some 100,000 Han were slaughtered.[50][51][52]
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 (義皇帝), the only instance in Qing history in which a Manchu "prince of the blood" (親王) 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.[53] 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 fromsmallpox. He was succeeded by his third son Xuanye, who reigned as theKangxi Emperor.
The Manchus sent Han bannermen to fight against Koxinga's Ming loyalists in Fujian.[54] 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.[55] Even though a poem refers to the soldiers carrying out massacres in Fujian as "barbarians", both HanGreen Standard Army and Han bannermen were involved and carried out the worst slaughter.[56] 400,000 Green Standard Army soldiers were used against the Three Feudatories in addition to the 200,000 bannermen.[57]
The 61-year reign of theKangxi Emperor was the longest of any emperor in Chinese history, and marked the beginning of theHigh 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 theneo-Confucian culture that they adopted from earlier dynasties.[58] Manchu rulers and Han Chinesescholar-official elites gradually came to terms with each other. Theexamination system offered a path for ethnic Han to become officials. Imperial patronage of theKangxi Dictionary demonstrated respect for Confucian learning, while theSacred Edict of 1670 effectively extolled Confucian family values. His attempts to discourage Chinese women fromfoot binding, however, were unsuccessful.
The second major source of stability was theInner Asian aspect of their Manchu identity, which allowed them to appeal to the Mongol, Tibetan and Muslim subjects.[59] Qing emperors adopted different images for these subjects in their multi-ethnic empire. The Qing used the title of Emperor (Huangdi orhūwangdi),[60] along withSon of Heaven andEjen inChinese andManchu. LikeKublai Khan of the Mongol-ledYuan dynasty andYongle Emperor of theMing dynasty, Qing rulers like theQianlong Emperor portrayed the image of themselves asBuddhist sage rulers (wheel-turning kings), patrons ofTibetan Buddhism[61] to maintain legitimacy for Tibetan Buddhists.[62] Mongol subjects also commonly referred to the Qing ruler asBogda Khan,[63] while Turkic Muslim subjects (now known as theUyghurs) commonly referred to the Qing ruler asChinese khagan.[64]
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 trickery – a 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 theRevolt 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.[65]
To extend and consolidate the dynasty's control in Central Asia, the Kangxi Emperor personally led a series of military campaigns against theDzungars inOuter Mongolia. The Kangxi Emperor expelledGaldan's invading forces from these regions, which were then incorporated into the empire. In 1683, Qing forces received the surrender ofFormosa (Taiwan) fromZheng Keshuang, grandson ofKoxinga, who had conquered Taiwan from theDutch colonists as a base against the Qing. Winning Taiwan freed Kangxi's forces for a series of battles overAlbazin, the far eastern outpost of theTsardom of Russia. The 1689Treaty 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 theDzungar–Qing War;[66] after his death, his Tibetan Buddhist followers attempted to control the choice of the nextDalai Lama. Kangxi dispatched two armies toLhasa, the capital of Tibet, and installed a Dalai Lama sympathetic to the Qing.[67]
The reigns of theYongzheng Emperor (r. 1723–1735) and his son, theQianlong Emperor (r. 1735–1796), 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".[68]
After the death of the Kangxi Emperor in the winter of 1722, his fourth son, Prince Yong (雍親王), became the Yongzheng Emperor. He felt a sense of urgency about the problems that had accumulated in his father's later years.[69] In the words of one recent historian, he was "severe, suspicious, and jealous, but extremely capable and resourceful",[70] and in the words of another, he turned out to be an "early modern state-maker of the first order".[71] First, he promoted Confucian orthodoxy and cracked down on unorthodox sects. In 1723, he outlawed Christianity and expelled most Christian missionaries.[72] He expanded his father's system ofPalace Memorials, which brought frank and detailed reports on local conditions directly to the throne without being intercepted by the bureaucracy, and he created a smallGrand 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.[73]
Yongzheng also inherited diplomatic and strategic problems. A team made up entirely of Manchus drew up the 1727Treaty 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 localMiao chieftains resisted Qing expansion. These campaigns drained the treasury but established the emperor's control of the military and military finance.[74]
When the Yongzheng Emperor died in 1735, his son Prince Bao (寶親王) became the Qianlong Emperor. Qianlong personally led theTen Great Campaigns to expand military control into present-dayXinjiang andMongolia, putting down revolts and uprisings inSichuan and southern China while expanding control over Tibet. The Qianlong Emperor launched several ambitious cultural projects, including the compilation of theSiku Quanshu, the largest collection of books in Chinese history. Nevertheless, Qianlong used theliterary inquisition to silence opposition.[75] 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.[76] Qianlong's son, theJiaqing Emperor (r. 1796–1820), eventually forced Heshen to commit suicide.
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, theWhite 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. TheWhite Lotus Rebellion continued until 1804, when badly run, corrupt, and brutal campaigns finally ended it.[77]
Rebellion, unrest, and external pressure
British Steamship destroying Chinese warjunks (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, theLifan Yuan was responsible for relations with the Mongols and Tibetans in Inner Asia, while thetributary system, a loose set of institutions and customs taken over from the Ming, in theory governed relations with East and Southeast Asian countries. The 1689Treaty of Nerchinsk stabilised relations with theTsardom 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 withnewly 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 theCanton System in 1756, which restricted maritime trade toGuangzhou and gave monopoly trading rights toprivate Chinese merchants. This was successful for a time, and theBritish East India Company and theDutch 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 adiplomatic mission to China led byLord 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..."[78]
View of the Canton River, showing theThirteen Factories in the background (1850–1855)
Since China had little demand for European goods, Europe paid in silver for Chinese goods, an imbalance that worried themercantilist governments of Britain and France. Thegrowing Chinese demand for opium provided the remedy. The British East India Company greatly expanded its production in Bengal. TheDaoguang Emperor, concerned both over the outflow of silver and the damage that opium smoking was causing to his subjects, orderedLin 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. TheFirst Opium War revealed the outdated state of the Chinese military. The Qing navy, composed entirely of wooden sailingjunks, was severely outclassed by the modern tactics and firepower of theBritish 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. TheTreaty of Nanjing, the first of the "unequal treaties", demanded war reparations, forced China to open up theTreaty Ports ofCanton,Amoy,Fuzhou,Ningbo andShanghai to Western trade and missionaries, and to cedeHong Kong Island to Britain. It revealed weaknesses in the Qing government and provoked rebellions against the regime.
TheTaiping Rebellion (1849–1864) was the first majoranti-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.[79] The rebellion began under the leadership ofHong Xiuquan (1814–1864), a disappointed civil service examination candidate who, influenced by reading theOld 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.[80] In 1851, Hong launched an uprising inGuizhou and established theTaiping 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 underZeng Guofan succeeded in crushing the revolt. After the outbreak of this rebellion, there were also revolts by theMuslims andMiao people of China against the Qing, most notably in theMiao Rebellion (1854–1873) inGuizhou, thePanthay Rebellion (1856–1873) inYunnan, and theDungan Revolt (1862–1877) in the northwest.
Qing forces defeating Taiping armies
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, theArrow, which the British claimed had been flying the British flag, an incident which led to theSecond Opium War. In 1858, facing no other options, theXianfeng Emperor agreed to theTreaty 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 theimperial hunting lodge at Rehe. Once in Beijing, the Anglo-French forces looted and burned theOld Summer Palace and, in an act of revenge for the arrest, torture, and execution of the English diplomatic mission.[81]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 theConvention 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-oldTongzhi Emperor, the Qing rallied. In theTongzhi Restoration, Han Chinese officials such asZuo Zongtang stood behind the Manchus and organised provincial troops.Zeng Guofan, in alliance with Prince Gong, sponsored the rise of younger officials such asLi Hongzhang, who put the dynasty back on its feet financially and instituted theSelf-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 theZongli Yamen, allowing foreign diplomats to reside in the capital, the establishment of theImperial Maritime Customs Service, the institution of modern navy and army forces including theBeiyang Army, and the purchase of armament factories from the Europeans.[82]
The dynasty gradually lost control of its peripheral territories. In return for promises of support against the British and the French, theRussian 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 1870Tianjin Massacre, which was incited by the murder of French nuns set off by the belligerence of local French diplomats. Starting with theCochinchina Campaign in 1858, France expanded control of Indochina. By 1883, France was in full control of the region and had reached the Chinese border. TheSino-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. AFrench invasion of Taiwan was halted and the French were defeated on land in Tonkin at theBattle 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 theTreaty of Tientsin and the Chinese recognition of the French protectorate in Vietnam.[83] Some Russian and Chinesegold miners also established a short-livedproto-state known as theZheltuga Republic (1883–1886) in theAmur River basin, which was however soon crushed by the Qing forces.[84]
In 1884, Qing China obtained concessions inKorea, such as theChinese concession of Incheon,[85] but the pro-Japanese Koreans inSeoul led theGapsin Coup. Tensions between China and Japan rose after China intervened to suppress the uprising. The Japanese prime ministerItō Hirobumi and Li Hongzhang signed theConvention of Tientsin, an agreement to withdraw troops simultaneously, but theFirst Sino-Japanese War of 1895 was a military humiliation. TheTreaty of Shimonoseki recognised Korean independence and ceded Taiwan and thePescadores 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 ofLiaodong Peninsula to Japan, but Russia, with its own designs on the territory, along with Germany and France, in theTriple Intervention, successfully put pressure on the Japanese to abandon the peninsula.
Oil painting of Empress Dowager Cixi byHubert Vos (c. 1905)
These years saw the participation ofEmpress 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 the his accession at the age of five, Cixi, Xianfeng's widowEmpress Dowager Ci'an, and Prince Gong (a son of the Daoguang Emperor), stageda 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, theGuangxu 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.[86]
In the wake of these external defeats, the Guangxu Emperor initiated theHundred Days' Reform in 1898. Newer, more radical advisers such asKang 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 Dowagerstepped 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.[87]
Drought in North China, combined with the imperialist designs of European powers and the instability of the Qing government, created background conditions for theBoxers. 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 (theEight-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 toXi'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 theBoxer Protocol.[88]
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 theLate 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.[89] The court directeda constitution to be drafted, andprovincial elections were held, the first in China's history.[90] 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.[91]
The Guangxu Emperor died on 14 November 1908, and Cixi died the following day.Puyi, the oldest son ofZaifeng, 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 aconstitutional monarchy on 8 May 1911, when Zaifeng created a "responsible cabinet" led byYikuang, 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.[92]
TheWuchang 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 theRepublic of China, inNanjing on 1 January 1912, withSun Yat-sen as its provisional head. Seeing a desperate situation, the Qing court brought Yuan Shikai back to power. HisBeiyang Army crushed the revolutionaries in Wuhan at theBattle of Yangxia. After taking the position ofPrime Minister he createdhis own cabinet, with the support ofEmpress Dowager Longyu. However, Yuan Shikai decided to cooperate with Sun Yat-sen's revolutionaries to overthrow the Qing dynasty.
A pitched battle between the imperial and revolutionary armies in 1911
On 12 February 1912, Longyu issued theabdication of the child emperor Puyi leading to the fall of the Qing dynasty under the pressure of Yuan Shikai's Beiyang army despite objections fromconservatives and royalist reformers.[93] This brought an end to over 2,000 years imperial governance in China, and began a period of instability. In July 1917, there was anabortive attempt to restore the Qing led byZhang Xun. Puyi was allowed to live in the Forbidden City after his abdication until 1924, when he moved to theJapanese concession in Tianjin. The Empire of Japaninvaded Northeast China and foundedManchukuo there in 1932, with Puyi as itsemperor. After theinvasion of Northeast China to fight Japan by theSoviet Union, Manchukuo fell in 1945.
The early Qing emperors adopted the bureaucratic structures and institutions from the Ming, but split rule between Han and Manchus, with some positions also given toMongols.[94] Like previous dynasties, the Qing recruited officials via theimperial examination system, until the system was abolished in 1905. The Qing divided the positions into civil and military positions, each having nine grades or ranks, each subdivided into a and b categories. Civil appointments ranged from an attendant to the emperor or a Grand Secretary in the Forbidden City (highest) to being a prefectural tax collector, deputy jail warden, deputy police commissioner, or tax examiner. Military appointments ranged from being a field marshal or chamberlain of the imperial bodyguard to a third class sergeant, corporal or a first or second class private.[95]
The formal structure of the Qing government centred on the Emperor as the absolute ruler, who presided over six Boards (Ministries[d]), each headed by two presidents[e] and assisted by four vice presidents.[f] In contrast to the Ming system, however, Qing ethnic policy dictated that appointments were split between Manchu noblemen and Han officials who had passed the highest levels of thestate examinations. TheGrand Secretariat,[g] which had been an important policy-making body under the Ming, lost its importance during the Qing and evolved into an imperialchancery. The institutions which had been inherited from the Ming formed the core of the Qing "Outer Court", which handled routine matters and was located in the southern part of theForbidden City.[97]
The emperor of China from The Universal Traveller
In order not to let the routine administration take over the running of the empire, the Qing emperors made sure that all important matters were decided in the "Inner Court", which was dominated by the imperial family and Manchu nobility and which was located in the northern part of the Forbidden City. The core institution of the inner court was theGrand Council.[h] It emerged in the 1720s under the reign of theYongzheng Emperor as a body charged with handling Qing military campaigns against the Mongols, but soon took over other military and administrative duties, centralising authority under the crown.[98] The Grand Councillors[i] served as a sort ofprivy council to the emperor.
From the early Qing, the central government was characterised by a system of dual appointments by which each position in the central government had a Manchu and a Han Chinese assigned to it. The Han Chinese appointee was required to do the substantive work and the Manchu to ensure Han loyalty to Qing rule.[99] While the Qing government was established as anabsolute monarchy like previous dynasties in China, by the early 20th century however the Qing court began to move towards aconstitutional monarchy,[100] with government bodies like theAdvisory Council established and aparliamentary election toprepare for a constitutional government.[101][102]
There was also another government institution calledImperial Household Department which was unique to the Qing dynasty. It was established before the fall of the Ming, but it became mature only after 1661, following the death of theShunzhi Emperor and the accession of his son, theKangxi Emperor.[103] The department's original purpose was to manage the internal affairs of the imperial family and the activities of theinner palace (in which tasks it largely replacedeunuchs), but it also played an important role in Qing relations withTibet andMongolia, engaged in trading activities (jade,ginseng, salt, furs, etc.), managed textile factories in theJiangnan region, and even published books.[104]Relations with the Salt Superintendents and salt merchants, such as those at Yangzhou, were particularly lucrative, especially since they were direct, and did not go through absorptive layers of bureaucracy. The department was manned bybooi,[j] or "bondservants", from the Upper ThreeBanners.[105] By the 19th century, it managed the activities of at least 56 subagencies.[103][106]
The Qing dynasty was established by conquest and maintained by armed force. The founding emperors personally organised and led the armies, and the continued cultural and political legitimacy of the dynasty depended on the ability to defend the country from invasion and expand its territory. Therefore, military institutions, leadership, and finance were fundamental to the dynasty's initial success and ultimate decay. The early military system centred on theEight Banners, a hybrid institution that also played social, economic, and political roles.[107] The Banner system was developed on an informal basis as early as 1601, and formally established in 1615 byJurchen leaderNurhaci (1559–1626), the retrospectively recognised founder of the Qing. His sonHong Taiji (1592–1643), who renamed the Jurchens "Manchus," created eight Mongol banners to mirror the Manchu ones and eight "Han-martial" (??;Hànjun) banners manned by Chinese who surrendered to the Qing before the full-fledgedconquest of China proper began in 1644. After 1644, the Ming Chinese troops that surrendered to the Qing were integrated into theGreen Standard Army, a corps that eventually outnumbered the Banners by three to one.
The use of gunpowder during theHigh Qing can compete with the threegunpowder empires in western Asia.[108] Manchu imperial princes led the Banners in defeating the Ming armies, but after lasting peace was established starting in 1683, both the Banners and the Green Standard Armies started to lose their efficiency. Garrisoned in cities, soldiers had few occasions to drill. The Qing nonetheless used superior armament and logistics to expand deeply into Central Asia, defeat theDzungar Mongols in 1759, and complete their conquest ofXinjiang. Despite the dynasty's pride in theTen Great Campaigns of the Qianlong Emperor (r. 1735–1796), the Qing armies became largely ineffective by the end of the 18th century. It took almost ten years and huge financial waste to defeat the badly equippedWhite Lotus Rebellion (1795–1804), partly by legitimizing militias led by local Han Chinese elites. TheTaiping Rebellion (1850–1864), a large-scale uprising that started in southern China, marched within miles of Beijing in 1853. The Qing court was forced to let its Han Chinesegovernors-general, first led byZeng Guofan, raise regional armies. This new type of army and leadership defeated the rebels but signaled the end of Manchu dominance of the military establishment.
The military technology of the EuropeanIndustrial Revolution made China's armament and military rapidly obsolete. In 1860 British and French forces in theSecond Opium War captured Beijing and sacked theSummer Palace. The shaken court attempted to modernise its military and industrial institutions by buying European technology. ThisSelf-Strengthening Movement establishedshipyards (notably theJiangnan Arsenal and theFoochow Arsenal) and bought modern guns and battleships in Europe. The Qing navy became the largest in East Asia. But organisation and logistics were inadequate, officer training was deficient, and corruption widespread. TheBeiyang Fleet was virtually destroyed and the modernised ground forces defeated in the 1895First Sino-Japanese War. The Qing created aNew Army, but could not prevent theEight Nation Alliance from invading China to put down theBoxer Uprising in 1900. Therevolt of a New Army corps in 1911 led to thefall of the dynasty.
Administrative divisions
The Eighteen Provinces ofChina proper in 1875Qing China in 1832
The Qing reached its largest extent during the 18th century, when it ruled China proper (eighteen provinces) as well as the areas of present-dayNortheast China,Inner Mongolia,Outer Mongolia,Xinjiang andTibet, at approximately 13,000,000 km2 (5,000,000 sq mi) in size. There were originally 18 provinces, all in China proper, but this number was later increased to 22, with Manchuria and Xinjiang being divided or turned into provinces.Taiwan, originally part ofFujian, became a province of its own in the 19th century,[109] but was ceded to Japan following theFirst Sino-Japanese War in 1895.[110]
The Qing organisation ofprovinces was based on the fifteen administrative units set up by the Ming dynasty, later made into eighteen provinces by splitting for example,Huguang into Hubei and Hunan provinces. The provincial bureaucracy continued the Yuan and Ming practice of three parallel lines, civil, military, andcensorate, or surveillance. Each province was administered by agovernor and aprovincial military commander. Below the province wereprefectures operating under a prefect, followed bysubprefectures under a subprefect. The lowest unit was thecounty, overseen by acounty magistrate. The eighteen provinces are also known as "China proper". The position ofviceroy was the highest rank in the provincial administration. There were eight regional viceroys in China proper, each usually took charge of two or three provinces. TheViceroy of Zhili, who was responsible for the area surrounding Beijing, is usually considered as the most honourable and powerful viceroy among the eight.
By the mid-18th century, the Qing had successfully put outer regions under its control.Imperial commissioners and garrisons were sent to Mongolia and Tibet to oversee their affairs. These territories were also under supervision of a central government institution calledLifan Yuan.Qinghai was also put under direct control of the Qing court. Xinjiang, also known as Chinese Turkestan, was subdivided into the regions north and south of theTian Shan mountains, also known today asDzungaria andTarim Basin respectively, but the post of Ili General was established in 1762 to exercise unified military and administrative jurisdiction over both regions. Dzungaria was fully opened to Han migration by the Qianlong Emperor from the beginning. Han migrants were at first forbidden from permanently settling in the Tarim Basin but were the ban was lifted after the invasion byJahangir Khoja in the 1820s. Likewise,Manchuria was also governed by military generals until its division into provinces, though some areas of Xinjiang and Northeast China were lost to theRussian Empire in the mid-19th century. Manchuria was originally separated from China proper by the InnerWillow Palisade, a ditch and embankment planted with willows intended to restrict the movement of the Han Chinese, as the area was off-limits to civilian Han Chinese until the government started colonising the area, especially since the 1860s.
With respect to these outer regions, the Qing maintained imperial control, with the emperor acting as Mongol khan, patron ofTibetan Buddhism and protector of Muslims. However, Qing policy changed with the establishment of Xinjiang province in 1884. During theGreat Game, taking advantage of theDungan revolt in northwest China,Yakub Beg invaded Xinjiang from Central Asia with support from the British Empire, and made himself the ruler of the kingdom ofKashgaria. The Qing court sent forces to defeat Yaqub Beg and Xinjiang was reconquered, and then the political system of China proper was formally applied onto Xinjiang. TheKumul Khanate, which was incorporated into the Qing dynasty as a vassal after helping Qing defeat the Zunghars in 1757, maintained its status after Xinjiang turned into a province through the end of the dynasty in theXinhai Revolution up until 1930.[111] In the early 20th century, Britain sentan expedition force toTibet and forced Tibetans to sign a treaty. The Qing court responded by asserting Chinese sovereignty over Tibet,[112] resulting in the 1906 Anglo-Chinese Convention signed between Britain and China. The British agreed not to annex Tibetan territory or to interfere in the administration of Tibet, while China engaged not to permit any other foreign state to interfere with the territory or internal administration of Tibet.[113] The Qing government also turned Manchuria into three provinces in the early 20th century, officially known as the "Three Northeast Provinces", and established the post ofViceroy of the Three Northeast Provinces to oversee these provinces.
Society
Population growth and mobility
The population grew in numbers, density, and mobility. The population in 1700 was roughly 150 million, about what it had been a century before, then doubled over the next century, and reached a height of 450 million on the eve of the Taiping Rebellion in 1850.[114] The spread of New World crops, such as maize, peanuts, sweet potatoes, and potatoes decreased the number of deaths from malnutrition. Diseases such assmallpox were brought under control by an increase in inoculations. In addition, infant deaths were decreased due to campaigns againstinfanticide and improvements in birthing techniques performed by doctors and midwives and an increase in medical books available to the public.[115] European population growth in this period was greatest in the cities, but in China there was only slow growth in cities and the lower Yangzi. The greatest growth was in the borderlands and the highlands, where farmers moved to take advantage of large tracts of marshlands and forests.[116]
The population was remarkably mobile, perhaps more so than at any time in Chinese history. Millions of Han Chinese migrated toYunnan and Guizhou in the 18th century, and also to Taiwan. After the conquests of the 1750s and 1760s, the court organised agricultural colonies in Xinjiang. This mobility also included the privately organised movement of Qing subjects overseas, largely to Southeast Asia, to pursue trade and other economic opportunities.[116]
Manchuria, however, was formally closed to Han settlement by theWillow Palisade, with the exception of some bannermen.[117] Nonetheless, by 1780, Han Chinese had become 80% of the population.[118] The relatively sparse populatikon made the territory vulnerable to Russian annexation. In response, the Qing officials proposed in 1860 to open parts of Guandong to Chinese civilian farmer settlers.[119] Late 19th century Manchuria was opened up to Han settlers, resulting in more extensive migration.[120] By the dawn of the 20th century, largely in an attempt to counteract increasing Russian influence, the Qing had abolished the existing administrative system in Manchuria, reclassified all immigrants to the region as "Han" instead of "civilians", and replaced provincial generals with provincial governors. From 1902 to 1911, 70 civil administrations were created in Manchuria, owing to the region's growing population.[121]
Social status
According to statute, Qing society was divided into relatively closed estates, of which in most general terms there were five. Apart from the estates of the officials, the comparatively minuscule aristocracy, and the degree-holding scholar-officials, there also existed a major division among ordinary Chinese between commoners and people with inferior status.[122] They were divided into two categories: one of them, the good "commoner" people, the other "mean" people who were seen as debased and servile. The majority of the population belonged to the first category and were described asliangmin, a legal term meaning good people, as opposed tojianmin meaning the mean (or ignoble) people. Qing law explicitly stated that the traditionalfour occupations (scholars, farmers, artisans and merchants) were "good", or having a status of commoners. On the other hand, slaves or bondservants, entertainers (including prostitutes and actors), tattooed criminals, and those low-level employees of government officials were the "mean people". Mean people were legally inferior to commoners and suffered unequal treatments, such as being forbidden to take the imperial examination.[123] Furthermore, such people were usually not allowed to marry with free commoners and were even often required to acknowledge their abasement in society through actions such as bowing. However, throughout the Qing dynasty, the emperor and his court, as well as the bureaucracy, worked towards reducing the distinctions between the debased and free but did not completely succeed even at the end of its era in merging the two classifications together.[124]
Although there had been no powerful hereditary aristocracy since theSong dynasty, the gentry, like their British counterparts, enjoyed imperial privileges and managed local affairs. The status of scholar-officials was defined by passing at least the first level of civil service examinations and holding a degree, which qualified him to hold imperial office, although he might not actually do so. The gentry member could legally wear gentry robes and could talk to officials as equals. Informally, the gentry then presided over local society and could use their connections to influence the magistrate, acquire land, and maintain large households. The gentry thus included not only males holding degrees but also their wives and some of their relatives.[125]
A brush container, a symbol of gentry culture during the Qing
The gentry class was divided into groups. Not all who held office were literati, as merchant families could purchase degrees, and not all who passed the exams found employment as officials, since the number of degree-holders was greater than the number of openings. The gentry class also differed in the source and amount of their income. Literati families drew income from landholding, as well as from lending money. Officials drew a salary, which, as the years went by, were less and less adequate, leading to widespread reliance on "squeeze", irregular payments. Those who prepared for but failed the exams, like those who passed but were not appointed to office, could become tutors or teachers, private secretaries to sitting officials, administrators of guilds or temples, or other positions that required literacy. Others turned to fields such as engineering, medicine, or law, which by the nineteenth century demanded specialised learning. By the nineteenth century, it was no longer shameful to become an author or publisher of fiction.[126]
The Qing gentry were marked as much by their aspiration to a cultured lifestyle as by their legal status. They lived more refined and comfortable lives than the commoners and used sedan-chairs to travel any significant distance. They often showed off their learning by collecting objects such asscholars' stones,porcelain or pieces of art for their beauty, which set them off from less cultivated commoners.[127]
During the Qing, the building block of society waspatrilineal kinship. A shift in marital practices, identity and loyalty had begun during the Song, when the civil service examination began to replace nobility and inheritance as a means for gaining status. Instead of intermarrying within aristocratic elites of the same social status, they tended to form marital alliances with nearby families of the same or higher wealth, and established the local people's interests as first and foremost which helped to form intermarried townships.[128] The neo-Confucian ideology, especially the Cheng-Zhu thinking favored by Qing social thought, emphasised patrilineal families and genealogy in society.[129]
The emperors and local officials exhorted families to compile genealogies in order to stabilise local society.[130] The genealogy was placed in the ancestral hall, which served as the lineage's headquarters and a place for annual ancestral sacrifice. A specificChinese character appeared in the given name of each male of each generation, often well into the future. These lineages claimed to be based on biological descent but when a member of a lineage gained office or became wealthy, he might use considerable creativity in selecting a prestigious figure to be "founding ancestor".[131] Such worship was intended to ensure that the ancestors remain content and benevolent spirits (shen) who would keep watch over and protect the family. Later observers felt that the ancestral cult focused on the family and lineage, rather than on more public matters such as community and nation.[132]
Inner Mongols and Khalkha Mongols in the Qing rarely knew their ancestors beyond four generations and Mongol tribal society was not organised among patrilineal clans, contrary to what was commonly thought, but included unrelated people at the base unit of organisation.[133] The Qing tried but failed to promote the Chinese Neo-Confucian ideology of organising society along patrimonial clans among the Mongols.[134]
Manchu rulers presided over a multi-ethnic empire and the emperor, who was held responsible for "all under heaven", patronised and took responsibility for all religions and belief systems. The empire's "spiritual centre of gravity" was the "religio-political state".[135] Since the empire was part of the order of the cosmos, which conferred theMandate of Heaven, the emperor as "Son of Heaven" was both the head of the political system and the head priest of theState Cult. The emperor and his officials, who were his personal representatives, took responsibility over all aspects of the empire, especially spiritual life and religious institutions and practices.[136] Thecounty magistrate, as the emperor's political and spiritual representative, made offerings at officially recognised temples. The magistrate lectured on the Emperor'sSacred Edict to promote civic morality; he kept close watch over religious organisations whose actions might threaten the sovereignty and religious prerogative of the state.[137]
Placard (right to left) in Manchu, Chinese, Tibetan, MongolianYonghe Lamasery, Beijing
The Manchu imperial family were especially attracted by Yellow Sect orGelug Buddhism that had spread from Tibet into Mongolia. TheFifth Dalai Lama, who had gained power in 1642, just before the Manchus took Beijing, looked to the Qing court for support. The Kangxi and Qianlong emperors practiced this form of Tibetan Buddhism as one of their household religions and built temples that made Beijing one of its centres, and constructed a replica Lhasa'sPotala Palace at their summer retreat inRehe.[138]
Shamanism, the most common religion among Manchus, was a spiritual inheritance from theirTungusic ancestors that set them off from Han Chinese.[139]State shamanism was important to the imperial family both to maintain their Manchu cultural identity and to promote their imperial legitimacy among tribes in the northeast.[140] Imperial obligations included rituals on the first day ofChinese New Year at a shamanic shrine (tangse).[141]Practices in Manchu families included sacrifices to the ancestors, and the use of shamans, often women, who went into a trance to seek healing or exorcism.[142]
Popular religion
Chinese folk religion was centred around the patriarchal family andshen, or spirits. Common practices includedancestor veneration,filial piety,local gods and spirits. Rites includedmourning, funeral, burial, practices.[143] Since they did not require exclusive allegiance, forms and branches ofConfucianism,Buddhism, andDaoism were intertwined, for instance in the syncreticThree teachings.[144] Chinese folk religion combined elements of the three, with local variations.[145] County magistrates, who were graded and promoted on their ability to maintain local order, tolerated local sects and even patronised local temples as long as they were orderly, but were suspicious ofheterodox sects that defied state authority and rejected imperial doctrines. Some of these sects indeed had long histories of rebellion, such as theWay of Former Heaven, which drew on Daoism, and the White Lotus Society, which drew on millennial Buddhism. The White Lotus Rebellion (1796–1804) confirmed official suspicions as did the Taiping Rebellion, which drew on millennial Christianity.
TheAbrahamic religions had arrived from Western Asia as early as the Tang dynasty but their insistence that they should be practised to the exclusion of other religions made them less adaptable than Buddhism, which had quickly been accepted as native.Islam predominated in Central Asian areas of the empire, whileJudaism andChristianity were practiced in well-established but self-contained communities.[146]
Several hundred Catholic missionaries arrived between the late Ming period and the proscription of Christianity in 1724. TheJesuits adapted to Chinese expectations, evangelised among the educated, adopted the robes and lifestyles of literati, became proficient in the Confucian classics, and did not challenge Chinese moral values. They proved their value to the early Manchu emperors with their work in gunnery, cartography, and astronomy, but fell out of favor for a time until the Kangxi Emperor's 1692 edict of toleration.[147] In the countryside, the newly arrivedDominican andFranciscan clerics established rural communities that adapted to local folk religious practices by emphasising healing, festivals, and holy days rather than sacraments and doctrine.[148] In 1724, the Yongzheng Emperor proscribed Christianity as a "heterodox teaching".[149] Since the European Catholic missionaries had kept control in their own hands and had not allowed the creation of a native clergy, however, the number of Catholics would grow more rapidly after 1724 because local communities could now set their own rules and standards. In 1811, Christian religious activities were further criminalised by the Jiaqing Emperor.[150] The imperial ban was lifted by Treaty in 1846.[151]
The first Protestant missionary to China,Robert Morrison (1782–1834) of theLondon Missionary Society (LMS), arrived at Canton on 6 September 1807.[152] He completed a translation of the entire Bible in 1819.[153]Liang Afa (1789–1855), a Morrison-trained Chinese convert, extended evangelisation into inner China.[154][155] The two Opium Wars (1839–1860) marked the watershed of Protestant Christian missions. The series of treaties signed between the 1842Treaty of Nanjing and the 1858 Treaty of Tianjin distinguished Christianity from local religions and granted it protected status.[156]
In the late 1840sHong Xiuquan read Morrison's Chinese Bible, as well as Liang Afa's evangelistic pamphlet, and announced to his followers that Christianity in fact had been the religion of ancient China before Confucius and his followers drove it out.[157] He formed theTaiping Movement, which emerged in South China as a "collusion of the Chinese tradition of millenarian rebellion and Christian messianism", "apocalyptic revolution, Christianity, and 'communist utopianism'".[158]
After 1860, enforcement of the treaties allowed missionaries to spread their evangelisation efforts outside Treaty Ports. Their presence created cultural and political opposition. HistorianJohn K. Fairbank observed that "[t]o the scholar-gentry, Christian missionaries were foreign subversives, whose immoral conduct and teaching were backed by gunboats".[159] In the next decades, there were some 800 conflicts between village Christians and non-Christians mostly about non-religious issues, such as land rights or local taxes, but religious conflict often lay behind such cases.[160] In the summer of 1900, as foreign powers contemplated the division of China, village youths, known as Boxers, who practiced Chinese martial arts and spiritual practices, attacked and murdered Chinese Christians and foreign missionaries in theBoxer Uprising. The imperialist powers once again invaded and imposed a substantialindemnity. This defeat convinced many among the educated elites that popular religion was an obstacle to China's development as a modern nation, and some turned to Christianity as a spiritual tool to build one.[161]
By 1900, there were about 1,400 Catholic priests and nuns in China serving nearly 1 million Catholics. Over 3,000 Protestant missionaries were active among the 250,000 Protestant Christians in China.[162] Western medical missionaries established clinics and hospitals, and led medical training in China.[163] Missionaries began establishing nurse training schools in the late 1880s, but nursing of sick men by women was rejected by local tradition, so the number of students was small until the 1930s.[164]
A Qing-era copper cash coinA Qing postage stamp fromYantai
By the end of the 17th century, the Chinese economy had recovered from the devastation caused by the wars in which theMing dynasty were overthrown.[165] In the following century, markets continued to expand, but with more trade between regions, a greater dependence on overseas markets and a greatly increased population.[166] By the end of the 18th century the population had risen to 300 million from approximately 150 million during the late Ming dynasty. The dramatic rise in population was due to several reasons, including the long period of peace and stability in the 18th century and the import of new crops China received from the Americas, including peanuts, sweet potatoes and maize. New species of rice from Southeast Asia led to a huge increase in production. Merchant guilds proliferated in all of the growing Chinese cities and often acquired great social and even political influence. Rich merchants with official connections built up huge fortunes and patronised literature, theater and the arts. Textile and handicraft production boomed.[167]
The government broadened land ownership by returning land that had been sold to large landowners in the late Ming period by families unable to pay the land tax.[168] To give people more incentives to participate in the market, they reduced the tax burden in comparison with the late Ming, and replaced thecorvée system with a head tax used to hire laborers.[169] The administration of theGrand Canal was made more efficient, and transport opened to private merchants.[170] A system of monitoring grain prices eliminated severe shortages, and enabled the price of rice to rise slowly and smoothly through the 18th century.[171] Wary of the power of wealthy merchants, Qing rulers limited their trading licenses and usually refused them permission to open new mines, except in poor areas.[172] These restrictions on domestic resource exploration, as well as on foreign trade, arecritiqued by some scholars as a cause of theGreat Divergence, by which the West overtook China economically.[173][174]
During the Ming–Qing period (1368–1911) the biggest development in the Chinese economy was its transition from a command to a market economy, the latter becoming increasingly more pervasive throughout the Qing's rule.[132] Between roughly 1550 and 1800, China proper experienced a second commercial revolution, developing naturally from the first commercial revolution during the Song, which saw the emergence of long-distance inter-regional trade of luxury goods. During the second commercial revolution, for the first time, a large percentage of farming households began producing crops for sale in the local and national markets rather than for their own consumption or barter in the traditional economy. Surplus crops were placed onto the national market for sale, integrating farmers into the commercial economy from the ground up. This naturally led to regions specialising in certain cash-crops for export as China's economy became increasingly reliant on inter-regional trade of bulk staple goods such as cotton, grain, beans, vegetable oils, forest products, animal products, and fertiliser.[124]
Silver entered in large quantities from mines in theNew World after the Spanish conquered the Philippines in the 1570s. The re-opening of the southeast coast, which had been closed in the late 17th century, quickly revived trade, which expanded at 4% per annum throughout the latter part of the 18th century.[175] China continued to export tea, silk and manufactures, creating a large, favorabletrade balance with the West.[167] The resulting expansion of the money supply supported competitive and stable markets.[176] During the mid-Ming China had gradually shifted to silver as the standard currency for large scale transactions and by the late Kangxi period, the assessment and collection of the land tax was done in silver. Landlords began only accepting rent payments in silver rather than in crops themselves, which in turn incentivized farmers to produce crops for sale in local and national markets rather than for their own personal consumption or barter.[124] Unlike the copper coins,qian or cash, used mainly for smaller transactions, silver was not reliably minted into a coin but rather was traded in units of weight: theliang ortael, which equaled roughly 1.3 ounces of silver. A third-party had to be brought in to assess the weight and purity of the silver, resulting in an extra "meltage fee" added on to the price of transaction. Furthermore, since the "meltage fee" was unregulated it was the source of corruption. The Yongzheng emperor cracked down on the corrupt "meltage fees", legalizing and regulating them so that they could be collected as a tax. From this newly increased public coffer, the Yongzheng emperor increased the salaries of the officials who collected them, further legitimising silver as the standard currency of the Qing economy.[132]
Urbanisation and the proliferation of market-towns
The second commercial revolution also had a profound effect on the dispersion of the Qing populace. Up until the late Ming there existed a stark contrast between the rural countryside and cities because extraction of surplus crops from the countryside was traditionally done by the state. However, as commercialisation expanded in the late-Ming and early-Qing, mid-sized cities began popping up to direct the flow of domestic, commercial trade. Some towns of this nature had such a large volume of trade and merchants flowing through them that they developed into full-fledged market-towns. Some of these more active market-towns even developed into small cities and became home to the new rising merchant class.[124] The proliferation of these mid-sized cities was only made possible by advancements in long-distance transportation and communication. As more and more Chinese citizens were travelling the country conducting trade they increasingly found themselves in a far-away place needing a place to stay; in response the market saw the expansion of guild halls to house these merchants.[132]
Full-fledged trade guilds emerged, which, among other things, issued regulatory codes and price schedules, and provided a place for travelling merchants to stay and conduct their business. Along with thehuiguan trade guilds, guild halls dedicated to more specific professions,gongsuo, began to appear and to control commercial craft or artisanal industries such as carpentry, weaving, banking, and medicine.[132] By the nineteenth century guild halls worked to transform urban areas into cosmopolitan, multi-cultural hubs, staged theatre performances open to general public, developed real estate by pooling funds together in the style of a trust, and some even facilitated the development of social services such as maintaining streets, water supply, and sewage facilities.[124]
In 1685, the Kangxi emperor legalised private maritime trade along the coast, establishing a series of customs stations in major port cities. The customs station at Guangzhou became by far the most active in foreign trade; by the late Kangxi reign, more than forty mercantile houses specialising in trade with the West had appeared. The Yongzheng emperor made a parent corporation comprising those forty individual houses in 1725 known as theCohong system. Firmly established by 1757, theCanton Cohong was an association of thirteen business firms that had been awarded exclusive rights to conduct trade with Western merchants in Canton. Until its abolition after the Opium War in 1842, the Canton Cohong system was the only permitted avenue of Western trade into China, and thus became a booming hub of international trade.[132] By the eighteenth century, the most significant export China had was tea. British demand for tea increased exponentially up until they figured out how to grow it for themselves in the hills of northern India in the 1880s. By the end of the eighteenth century, tea exports going through the Canton Cohong system amounted to one-tenth of the revenue from taxes collected from the British and nearly the entire revenue of the British East India Company; in fact, until the early nineteenth century tea comprised ninety percent of exports leaving Canton.[132]
Revenue
The recorded revenues of the central Qing government increased little over the course of the 18th and early 19th century from 36,106,483 taels in 1725 to 43,343,978 taels in 1812 before declining to 38,600,570 taels in 1841, the land tax was the principal source of revenue for the central government with the salt, customs and poll taxes being important secondary sources.[178] Following the Opium Wars and the opening of China to foreign trade and the mid-century rebellions, two further important sources of revenue were added: the foreign maritime customs revenue and thelikin revenue though only 20% of the likin revenue was actually given by the provinces to Hu Pu (board of revenue) in Beijing the rest remaining in provincial hands, the Hu Pu also managed to raise some miscellaneous taxes and increased the rate of the salt tax these measures doubled revenue by the late 19th century, this however was insufficient for the central government which was facing numerous crises and wars during the period and 9 foreign loans amounting to 40mil taels were contracted by the Qing government prior to 1890.[179]
It was estimated in the 1850s that wages around the capital of Beijing and the Yangtze delta region for a farmer was between 0.99 and 1.02 taels a month; assuming every day was worked, this would amount to roughly 12 taels a year with over 400,000,000 citizens in 1890 the level of taxation was extremely low.[180]
The Financial Reorganisation bureau of the Dynasty (established in 1909) estimated total revenue to be 292,000,000 taels. H.B. Morse estimated in the early 1900s a total of 284,150,000 taels of which 99,062,000 taels was spent by the Central government, 142,374,000 taels by the provincial governments and the remainder by the local government. In 1911 the Consultative assembly estimated total revenue to be 301,910,297 taels. Included in this figure was over 44,000,000 taels from the Likin of which only 13,000,000 was reported to Beijing.[181]
The Qing government during and following the First Sino-Japanese war increasingly took on loans to meet its expenditure requirements a total of 746,220,453 taels of which slightly over 330,000,000 taels was for Railway construction and the repayment to come from the revenues of the railways themselves thus these loans did not burden the central government finances. A relatively small sum of just over 25,500,000 taels was borrowed for industrial projects, over 5,000,000 taels for Telegraph lines with less than 1,000,000 taels for miscellaneous purposes. The remainder was primarily for the costs of the Sino-Japanese war and the indemnity in the Treaty of Shimonoseki amounting to over 382,000,000 taels.[181]
Taizu noted that these figures for formal taxation only amounted to half of the total taxation and therefore revenue of the government with these surcharges being levied at a local level by local officials who found the level of taxation far too low to support even basic governance, despite the ability to levy surcharges belonging solely to the central government.[182]
Chinese scholars, court academies, and local officials carried on late Ming dynasty strengths inastronomy,mathematics, andgeography, as well as technologies inceramics,metallurgy,water transport,printing. Contrary to stereotypes in some Western writing, 16th and 17th century Qing dynasty officials and literati eagerly explored the technology and science introduced byJesuit missionaries. Manchu leaders employed Jesuits to use cannon and gunpowder to great effect in the conquest of China, and the court sponsored their research in astronomy. The aim of these efforts, however, was to reform and improve inherited science and technology, not to replace it. Scientific knowledge advanced during the Qing, but there was not a change in the way this knowledge was organised or the way scientific evidence was defined or its truth tested. Those who studied the physical universe shared their findings with each other and identified themselves as men of science, but they did not have a separate and independent professional role with its own training and advancement. They were still literati.[183]
TheOpium Wars, however, demonstrated the power of steam engine and military technology that had only recently been put into practice in the West. During theSelf-Strengthening Movement of the 1860s and 1870s Confucian officials in several coastal provinces established an industrial base in military technology. The introduction ofrailroads into China raised questions that were more political than technological. A British company built the 19 km (12 mi) Shanghai–Woosung line in 1876, obtaining the land under false pretenses, and it was soon torn up. Court officials feared local public opinion and that railways would help invaders, harm farmlands, and obstructfeng shui.[184] To keep development in Chinese hands, the Qing government borrowed 34 billion taels of silver from foreign lenders for railway construction between 1894 and 1911. As late as 1900, only 470 km (292 mi) were in operation. Finally, 8,400 km (5,200 mi) of railway was completed. The British and French after 1905 opened lines to Burma and Vietnam.[185]
Protestant missionaries by the 1830s translated and printed Western science and medical textbooks. The textbooks found homes in the rapidly enlarging network of missionary schools and universities. The textbooks opened learning open possibilities for the small number of Chinese students interested in science, and a very small number interested in technology. After 1900, Japan had a greater role in bringing modern science and technology to Chinese audiences but even then they reached chiefly the children of the rich landowning gentry.[186]
Under the Qing, inherited forms of art flourished and innovations occurred at many levels and in many types. High levels of literacy, a successful publishing industry, prosperous cities, and the Confucian emphasis on cultivation all fed a lively and creative set of cultural fields.
By the end of the 19th century, national artistic and cultural worlds had begun to come to terms with the cosmopolitan culture of the West and Japan. The decision to stay within old forms or welcome Western models was now a conscious choice. Classically trained Confucian scholars such asLiang Qichao andWang Guowei read widely and broke aesthetic and critical ground later cultivated in theNew Culture Movement.
Fine arts
ADaoguang periodPeking glass vase. Colored in "Imperial Yellow", due to its association with the Qing.
The Qing emperors were generally adept at poetry and often skilled in painting, and offered their patronage to Confucian culture. The Kangxi and Qianlong Emperors, for instance, embraced Chinese traditions both to control them and to proclaim their own legitimacy. The Kangxi Emperor sponsored thePeiwen Yunfu, a rhyme dictionary published in 1711, and theKangxi Dictionary published in 1716, which remains to this day an authoritative reference. The Qianlong Emperor sponsored the largest collection of writings in Chinese history, theComplete Library of the Four Treasuries, completed in 1782. Court painters made new versions of the Song masterpiece,Zhang Zeduan'sAlong the River During the Qingming Festival, whose depiction of a prosperous and happy realm demonstrated the beneficence of the emperor. The emperors undertook tours of the south and commissioned monumental scrolls to depict the grandeur of the occasion.[187] Imperial patronage also encouraged the industrial production ofceramics andChinese export porcelain.Peking glassware became popular after European glass making processes were introduced by Jesuits to Beijing.[188][189] During this period the European trend to imitate Chinese artistic traditions, known aschinoiserie also gained great popularity in Europe due to the rise in trade with China and the broader current ofOrientalism.[190]
Landscape by Wang Gai, 1694
Yet the most impressive aesthetic works were done among the scholars and urban elite.Calligraphy and painting[191] remained a central interest to both court painters and scholar-officials who considered thefour arts part of their cultural identity and social standing.[192] The painting of theearly years of the dynasty included such painters as the orthodoxFour Wangs and the individualistsBada Shanren andShitao. Court painting of the dynasty was also greatly influenced by some Western artists.[193] The 19th century saw such innovations as theShanghai School and the Lingnan School,[194] which used the technical skills of tradition to set the stage for modern painting.
Traditional learning and literature
Traditional learning flourished, especially among Ming loyalists such asDai Zhen andGu Yanwu, but scholars in the school ofevidential learning made innovations in skeptical textual scholarship. Scholar-bureaucrats, includingLin Zexu andWei Yuan, developed a school ofpractical statecraft which rooted bureaucratic reform and restructuring in classical philosophy.
Philosophy[195] andliterature grew to new heights in the Qing period.Poetry continued as a mark of the cultivated gentleman, but women wrote in larger numbers andpoets came from all walks of life. The poetry of the Qing dynasty is a lively field of research, being studied (along with thepoetry of the Ming dynasty) for its association withChinese opera, developmental trends ofClassical Chinese poetry, the transition to a greater role forvernacular language, and for poetry bywomen. The Qing dynasty was a period of literary editing and criticism, and many of the modern popular versions of Classical Chinese poems were transmitted through Qing dynasty anthologies, such as theComplete Tang Poems and theThree Hundred Tang Poems. Although fiction did not have the prestige of poetry, novels flourished.Pu Songling brought the short story to a new level in hisStrange Tales from a Chinese Studio, published in the mid-18th century, andShen Fu demonstrated the charm of the informal memoir inSix Chapters of a Floating Life, written in the early 19th century but published only in 1877. The art of the novel reached a pinnacle inCao Xueqin'sDream of the Red Chamber, but its combination of social commentary and psychological insight were echoed in highly skilled novels such asWu Jingzi'sThe Scholars (1750) andLi Ruzhen'sFlowers in the Mirror (1827).[196]
Cuisine
Cuisine embodied cultural pride. The gentleman gourmet, such asYuan Mei, applied aesthetic standards to the art of cooking, eating, and appreciation oftea at a time whenNew World crops and products entered everyday life. Yuan'sSuiyuan Shidan expounded culinary aesthetics and theory, along with a range of recipes. TheManchu–Han Imperial Feast originated at the court. Although this banquet was probably never common, it reflected an appreciation of Manchu culinary customs.[197]
TheConfucian concept of thedynastic cycle was used by traditionalChinese historiography to organise China's past in terms of consecutive ruling houses that arose and collapsed. The Qing dynasty was the closing chapter of the 2000-year history of Imperial China.John King Fairbank ofHarvard University, a historian who is essentially credited with founding modern Chinese history in theUnited States, steadfastly maintained a perspective that split the history of China's past half millennium around 1842. All that fell before remained part of "traditional China", and with theWestern "shock" of theFirst Opium War and the resultingTreaty of Nanking, "modern China" was born. The Qing dynasty was thus bifurcated in this manner. In contemporary China, there is also a similar view for such a division.[198]
TheNew Qing History is arevisionist historiographical school that emerged in the mid-1990s and emphasises the particular Manchu character of the dynasty. Earlier historians had emphasised a pattern of Hansinicisation of various conquerors. In the 1980s and early 1990s, American scholars began learning theManchu language, taking advantage of archival holdings in this and other non-Chinese languages that had long been held inTaipei andBeijing but had previously attracted little scholarly attention.[199] This research concluded that the Manchu rulers 'manipulated' their subjects by fostering a sense of Manchu identity, often adoptingCentral Asian models of rule as much asConfucian ones.[200] The most prominent feature of the studies has been characterised by a renewed interest in the Manchus and their relationship to China andChinese culture, as well as that of other non-Han groups ruled by Beijing.[201]
William T. Rowe ofJohns Hopkins University wrote that the name "China" (中國; 中華) was generally understood to refer to the political realm of theHan Chinese during theMing dynasty, and this understanding persisted among the Han Chinese into the early Qing dynasty, and the understanding was also shared byAisin Gioro rulers before theMing-Qing transition. The Qing dynasty, however, "came to refer to their more expansive empire not only as the Great Qing but also, nearly interchangeably, as China" within a few decades of this development. Instead of the earlier (Ming) idea of an ethnic Han Chinese state, this new Qing China was a "self-consciously multi-ethnic state". Han Chinese scholars had some time to adapt this, but by the 19th century, the notion of China as amultinational state with new, significantly extended borders had become the standard terminology for Han Chinese writers. Rowe noted that "these were the origins of the China we know today".[202]
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