Empress Dowager Cixi

November 29, 1835 – November 15, 1908

Empress Dowager Cixi (1835–1908) was a Manchu noblewoman of the Yehe Nara clan who controlled the government of the late Qing dynasty as empress dowager and regent from 1861 until her death in 1908. A concubine of the Xianfeng Emperor, she became co-regent for her son, the Tongzhi Emperor, and later installed her nephew as the Guangxu Emperor.

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Biography

Cixi was born in 1835 into a Manchu family of the Yehe Nara clan and was chosen in 1851 as a low-ranking consort of the Xianfeng Emperor. In 1856 she bore his only surviving son, which raised her rank, and her ability to read Chinese let her help the ailing emperor with state papers.

When Xianfeng died in 1861 their five-year-old son became the Tongzhi Emperor. Allied with the emperor's widow Ci'an and with Prince Gong, Cixi ousted the eight regents Xianfeng had appointed in the Xinyou Coup and ruled with Ci'an from behind the curtain. During the Tongzhi Restoration she entrusted Han Chinese officials such as Zeng Guofan with the war against the Taiping rebels and supported limited military and industrial modernisation.

After her son's death in 1875 she installed her four-year-old nephew as the Guangxu Emperor and continued as regent, holding power alone after Ci'an died in 1881. She formally retired in 1889 but kept a decisive voice in government. In 1898 she halted the emperor's Hundred Days' Reform, resumed control of the court and kept him confined for the rest of his life.

In 1900 she backed the Boxers and declared war on the foreign powers; when the Eight-Nation Alliance took Beijing she fled to Xi'an. After returning in 1902 she sponsored the New Policies, reforms of law, education and administration that included the abolition of the civil service examinations in 1905. She died in November 1908, a day after the Guangxu Emperor, having chosen the infant Puyi as his successor.