Daoguang Emperor

The Daoguang Emperor (1782–1850), personal name Minning, was the seventh emperor of the Qing dynasty and the sixth Qing emperor to rule over China proper. His reign was marked by the First Opium War and the beginning of the Taiping Rebellion, which nearly brought down the dynasty.

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Biography

Born Mianning in the Forbidden City in 1782, the future Daoguang Emperor was the second son of Prince Yongyan, who became the Jiaqing Emperor in 1796. Because his mother was his father's principal consort, he ranked first in the succession ahead of an older half-brother, and he was a favourite of his grandfather, the Qianlong Emperor. In 1813, while still a prince, he helped beat back the Eight Trigrams rebels who forced their way into the Forbidden City.

He took the throne in 1820 after his father's sudden death, the first Qing ruler who was the eldest legitimate son of his predecessor, and altered his personal name to Minning. Early in the reign Jahangir Khoja invaded Xinjiang from Kokand and took Kashgar, Yarkand and Khotan; Qing forces recovered the region and Jahangir was executed in 1828.

Opium imports rose to tens of thousands of chests a year under Daoguang. He issued repeated bans and sent Lin Zexu to Canton as Imperial Commissioner, and the crackdown led to the First Opium War with Britain. Defeat brought the Treaty of Nanjing in 1842, which ceded Hong Kong and imposed a heavy indemnity, and exposed the dynasty's military weakness.

Daoguang died at the Old Summer Palace in February 1850 and was succeeded by his son, the Xianfeng Emperor. The historian Jonathan Spence described him as well-meaning but ineffective, and the Taiping Rebellion broke out at the close of his reign.