Empress Dowager Cixi Research Articles

Jan Pajor, Great Britain’s Stance Towards Political Changes in China in the Years 1908–1909

Between 1908 and 1909, significant political changes took place in China. Following the death of the nominal sovereign, Guangxu, and the Empress Dowager Cixi, who exercised real power, the minor Puyi was selected as the new emperor. The regency was assumed by the weak and inept Prince Chun, who dismissed the most influential imperial dignitary, Yuan Shikai, in early 1909. When the second major dignitary, Zhang Zidong, died shortly later, the Beijing authorities found themselves in crisis. The article shows how Great Britain, which had the strongest position among the powers in China, reacted to these developments.

Artful Subversion: Empress Dowager Cixi’s Image Making by Ying-chen Peng

Artful Subversion: Empress Dowager Cixi’s Image Making by Ying-chen Peng

Goiter in the Qing Dynasty.

Empress Dowager Cixi, the supreme ruler of China's Qing Dynasty, along with Imperial Concubine Jin, mayhave suffered from goiter. Our suspicions were aroused by two interesting historical photographs. Herein, weprovide a medical interpretation of these historical images in an attempt to present the cases of these twohistorical figures.

Gender dan Keselamatan: Sumbangan Maharani Cixi Dalam Dalam Reformasi China (1861-1908)

Research on gender and ancient female leadership, like that of Empress Dowager Cixi (1861–1908), is lacking in English and Malay. Most research only discussed Cixi’s general narrative. The majority of studies merely covered Cixi’s overarching story. Cixi was one of the women leaders who defied the patriarchal status quo to rule. Nevertheless, her contribution was overlooked due to the controversy surrounding her, which tarnished her reputation. Thus, through library research and content analysis methods, this article discusses Cixi’s contribution to the Qing dynasty while filling in the research gap of international relations scholarship by overlooking Cixi’s contributions, which fall under the scope of the missing women figures under the gender and international relation scholarship. The study shows that Cixi’s contribution could be traced through the reformation of political sectors, such as the development of modern military and defense sectors, economic sectors, and social sectors, such as women’s empowerment. Cixi successfully defied the gender barrier to become a leader; however, her contribution has been overlooked. It is time for her leadership to be recognised.

Editorial Note, Navigating Geopolitical Shifts and Turbulence: A Multifaceted of International Relations

The year 2023, which is about to draw its curtain, has recorded various geopolitical changes and challenging issues due to complex interactions among various parties, which require a thorough solution for the benefit of humanity. The events of the Russia-Ukraine War, the conflict in the Middle East that is heating up, in addition to climate change that results in various catastrophes are among some bitter facts as a hard lesson for all of us. Parallel to this development, this edition of SINERGI covers a wide range of topics, such as the US-China competition and democratic leadership in the context of ASEAN, as well as China’s Belt and Road Initiative and its effects on Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. The collection also examines the geopolitical significance of locations such as the Strait of Hormuz and reassesses historical personalities like the case of the Empress Dowager Cixi. Overall, this compilation provides valuable, insightful information about the intricacies of international politics, economic manoeuvres, and regional security, which presenting a wide range of viewpoints to guide scholarly discussion and policy.

Gender Issues and the Distorted Narrative in Women Leadership in China: The Case of Empress Dowager Cixi (1861-1908)

Throughout history, the controversial Empress Dowager Cixi has been portrayed as a cruel and ineffective leader, despite contradicting evidences. This study assesses the narratives that vilified her via library and historical research methods, and analysed using critical discourse analysis. The Qing’s social system became an instrument of prejudice and discrimination which fostered a gender-biased mindset and disparity that was used against Qing women like Cixi. This scenario paved the way for prejudiced and fabricated narratives about Cixi written by scholars and foes, and were accepted and cited in the vast majority of subsequent English historical and scholarly works, which are still regarded as accurate today. The study discovers that Cixi’s contribution can be traced through China’s political, development, and social sectors, such as in the empowerment of Qing women. This article examines Cixi under the theme of gender, and accentuated how gender has become a crucial key in creating a massive impact on her life and how Qing’s societal system itself becomes a tool of suppression, bias and discrimination towards Qing women, specifically Cixi. This article bridges a major research gap in gender and political studies by filling in the studies on historical women’s leadership. Cixi broke down gender barriers to reform China, and she should be honoured for her contributions to society.

A psychobiographical analysis of Empress Dowager Cixi: exploring the femininity castrated complex

In Chinese culture, there is a widely circulated phrase, ‘A hen crows in the morning’. This phrase is used to humiliate women who steal power and engage in the political field. It demonstrates the complicated relationship between women and power in the context of Chinese culture. Women are not completely excluded from the politics, but women in power are often stigmatised. This study explores the life of Empress Dowager Cixi (1835–1908), the last female dominator in Chinese history, takes psychobiography as the research method, and attempts to understand the complicated relationship between women and power in Chinese culture through analysing Cixi’s life from the perspective of complex and cultural complex theory which originated with C.G. Jung and analytical theory. The research findings show that humiliating and suppressing women with political talent can trigger their complexes, both personal and cultural. This study attempts to propose the femininity castrated complex to better describe the conscious and unconscious psychological dynamics impacting on women within patriarchal, political Chinese culture. This complex further relates to (1) denying her biological sex in order to avoid accusations of superego and, (2) the relationship with her son who is not only her son, but also her enemy regarding (political) power.

From Reading to Dressing: Portraiture of a Qing Empress in Gender and Cross-Cultural Perspective

This paper argues that the abundance in quantity and innovation of the painted and photographic portraits commissioned by Empress Dowager Cixi between the latter years of the 19th and early years of the 20th centuries, exceeded that of any other late Qing emperor or royal consort, and it is the diversity of gender references presented among them that is particularly distinctive. Through separating such a practice of ritualised “gender performance” into three stages, from 1) the ‘masculinised’ pose of “reading” appearing frequently in works of an earlier period, through 2) the gender-neutral divine imagery of dressing as a bodhisattva, to 3) the late-period feminised image of “dressing in front of the mirror”, the purpose of this paper is to explore how gender is shown in a late Qing empress’ portraiture, which is subject to multifarious changes dependent on different domestic and international political demands. The conclusion is that 1) on the international stage as set in the early years of the 20th century, the image of a late Qing empress dowager participated in the broader shaping of China’s national image as something weak, feminine and disempowered, and 2) the essential incompatibility of Chinese and Western visual cultures was a major factor in the failures of the projection of the image of late Qing China overseas.

Between Concealment and Revelation

Abstract After the Boxer Rebellion in 1900, the Empress Dowager Cixi, the de facto head of the Qing court, undertook projects to reconstitute her identity through the production of photographs and paintings. While they helped to reestablish and strengthen her ties with foreign nations, the paintings and photographs also enabled Cixi to contemplate the fluidity of identity and, subsequently, challenge the authority of colonial narratives. Variations of similar poses and the use of mirrors in highly staged photographs reveal the Empress Dowager's sly civility and mimicry of colonial photographic conventions to subvert the imperial gaze. Combining a reclamation of female authors' voices, including those of Katherine Carl, Sarah Pike Conger, Yu Derling, and Yu Rongling, with close visual analyses of select photographs placed within particular political, historical, and religious contexts, reveals the ways in which the Empress Dowager used photography not only as a space to negotiate political agency, but also as a subversive means to challenge the entire colonial apparatus of knowledge production that hinged so critically on the belief in photography's veracity and authenticity.

The Interpretation Of Chinese Empress Dowager Cixi's Image In The Portraits Of American Artists

The Chinese themes in Early American art have long been obscured under the veil of Japonisme, Aesthetic movement, boundary-pushing modernism and more significantly because of the political circumstances - decline of China as an empire and complicated Chinese-American interconnections. One of the favoured theme of American academism at the period of the late 19th- early 20th centuries were genre scenes, street scenes, portrait d’intérieur1 , portraits, still life works related to China and Chinatowns. Nonetheless, the American press through the imagery created by illustrators and caricaturists was largely involved in interpretations of Western encounters with Chinese culture from the highlighted negative light, either being deeply affected by anti-Chinese flows or fuelling those xenophobic moods. Consequently, a few American artists featured Chinese people and Chinese settings from the perspective of admiration of their “otherness”. Only two American artists- Katherine A. Carl and Hubert Vos, succeeded to pave their career path to the Chinese court, enriching American arts of the early 1900s with the unprecedented depictions of high rank Chinese and the scandalously renowned empress Dowager Cixi (1835-1908) in the positive light of fascination. A number of publications have viewed and examined those portraits from the angle of "political self-fashioning”, but our research is another academic attempt to place those oil paintings in the context of China-related subject matter and its extension in the rising American art of the previous century, stressing their artistic value, function and their relations to the intended audiences.

MAHARANI DOWAGER CIXI: WANITA YANG MEMERINTAH CHINA DI BELAKANG TABIR, 1862-1874

This article examines Empress Dowager Cixi’s life history up until her ascension to power in 1875. The focus of the study is on the reign of Emperor Tongzhi (1862-1874) because Cixi successfully launched a coup known as Xinyou 1861 until she was known as the Chinese empress who ruled ‘behind the curtains’ during the reign of Emperor Tongzhi. This research into the subject utilises the qualitative method by scrutinising the polemic on Cixi’s role in the history of modern China. This is due to divided perception among historians that she was theiron lady behind the throne during her reign. The findings of this research reveals that Cixi was merely a victim of political circumstances arising from the internal collapse of the Qing Dynasty which was out of her control. This research concludes that during the early days of her administration, Cixi had the resolve and determination to propel China towards modernisation based on the Western administrative model. Unfortunately, the empress had to postpone all efforts to modernise China in order to maintain and preserve her position from her political rivals.

Kang Youwei’s propaganda adjustments after the Hundred Days Reform, 1898–1900

ABSTRACT After the failed Hundred Days Reform, Kang Youwei launched a propaganda campaign in the newspapers under his control. In addition to casting himself in a favorable light, the campaign served two other purposes: to justify his own fleeing from China and to solicit foreign intervention to free Emperor Guangxu from house arrest. Immediately following the bloody coup d’etat in 1898, Kang identified Empress-Dowager Cixi as the chief instigator of the tragedy. By 1899, he turned to blaming some of her “evil ministers” as well. A year later he accused both parties. After the founding of Baohuang hui (Chinese Empire Reform Association) in 1899, Kang’s overseas propaganda began to call for an armed rescue mission and for funds from the overseas Chinese communities for this purpose. The adjustments Kang made to his propaganda campaign were echoed by progressive newspapers published inside China. Together, they created a public opinion that forced the Qing government to proceed with the political reform.

Merkel the German “Empress Dowager”? Reactions to the Syrian Refugee Crisis in China and other East Asian Countries

Author(s): Shen, Qinna | Abstract: Taking a cue from a painting by Jiny Lan, a Chinese artist living in Germany, which captures Merkel’s refugee policy in 2015, the article examines both official and popular responses to the recent Syrian refugee crisis in China and other East Asian countries. In the painting, Merkel wears a Manchu-style headdress typical of women at the Qing court. Lan’s portrait of the German Chancellor resembles the Empress Dowager Cixi—one of the most powerful women in Chinese history, and a ruler with a contentious legacy. The article distills some of the major reasons for a positive or negative attitude toward accepting refugees among Chinese living in both China and Germany. In the coda, it briefly touches on reactions in Japan and South Korea to provide context and contrast.Although popular opinion in China and within Germany’s Chinese communities is divided on the refugee question, there is little interest among Chinese in either country in building a Willkommenskultur. The massive influx of new immigrant groups led Chinese expatriates in Germany such as Jiny Lan to distance themselves from Merkel’s impactful refugee policy. Their political views tended to converge with those of Merkel’s critics both in the government and among the right-leaning populace. The apocalyptic equation of Merkel and the Empress Dowager Cixi taps into the fear that the end of Germany is near, evident in neologisms such as “Europastan,” “Deutschstan,” and “Francistan.” The refugee issue is an ongoing one. Merkel has by now modified her position, but the effects of her refugee policy in 2015 still remain to be seen.

A Desexualized Pirate in Yuan Yung-Lun's Ching Hai-Fen Chi: Analysis of Ching Yih Saou's Body and Gender from a Perspective of Butlerian Theory

When the ethical view for women in Confucianism is typified by the principle that “three follow the road,” there is no wonder that men’s predominance of women should be regarded as obligatory in China. The stereotype that women have to be barred from official society and kept imprisoned in their homes has thoroughly penetrated the country. However, Chinese women have presented the impression that they are powerful. The most striking examples are Lu Zhi, Wu Zetian, and Empress Dowager Cixi, who wielded their authority over the country as empresses after their husbands’ deaths. Considering that they are real figures in Chinese history, the fact of powerful women in China cannot be altogether impossible. Now there is a contradiction that some autocratic empresses, without parallel in the world, have existed in the history of a country that has always valued the ideology of women’s subjection to men. An opinion should be that “the differences called sexual difference cannot be applied to all men and women. Rather, this difference is meaningful only when comparing the nature of men and women as groups, that is, at the statistical level,” and the same can be applied to the way Chinese women live. It should be understood that not all women in China were oppressed and that some of them could hold the reins of power, depending on their ages and status. Focusing on maritime history especially reveals the limitations of the stereotype that Chinese women were supposed to be driven out of official roles and oppressed in homes. Take, for example, the pirates who were active on the South China coast, where some communities had members who lived their whole lives aboard ships without landing. Ching Yih Saou the most famous female pirate in Chinese maritime history, was active from the end of the 18th century to the first half of the 19th century. The aim of this paper is very innovative. Judith Butler, in forwarding a different position from sex–gender dualism, argues that human beings can exhibit the characteristics of men and women without reference to physical difference. This paper adopts Butler’s theory and reveals that Ching Yih Saou is a picture of it. First, this paper follows up on her activities in Yuan Yung-lun's Ching hai-fen chi as a primary source and then deconstructs sexual identities of masculinity or femininity by considering Ching Yih Saou’s life as an example of Butler’s theory.

Empress Dowager Cixi’s Imperial Pedagogy: The School for Female Nobles and New Visions of Authority in Early Twentieth Century China

AbstractAfter the 1861 coup that brought her to power, Empress Dowager Cixi mobilized a variety of traditions of imperial education to cultivate the persona of a classical ruler and cement her place at the center of Qing governance. At the turn of the twentieth century, however, her enemies launched a propaganda campaign that portrayed Cixi not as a legitimate ruler but as the enemy of progress. In response, Cixi herself began a project to refashion the Qing throne, placing new institutions of imperial education for women at the center of efforts to reestablish her domestic authority and reclaim the Qing’s international standing. After reviewing Cixi’s strategies of legitimation from 1861 to 1898, this paper focuses on the Empress’s twentieth-century attempt to construct an educational apparatus to invent and train a group of female nobles who were intended to play a leading role in reforms around the country. In advocating for the role of these women and institutions, Cixi placed herself and a cosmopolitan cohort of women at the center of plans for China’s future. This future was predicated on a refashioned Qing imperial ideology that grounded the legitimacy of the state in part in its participation in global norms and practices of governance. Although the future Cixi imagined for herself and the Qing never materialized, an examination of the project helps shed new light on the politics and culture of the late Qing and beyond.

ZHANG Zhongyuan (), President of Imperial Academy of Medicine in the Qing Dynasty

The Imperial Academy of Medicine (IAM) was the central medical administrative authority, responsible for the promulgation and implementation of national medical policies. It also was the medical educational institution that trained physicians. The imperial government isolated the physicians at the IAM from the outside world. Therefore, records about them are rare. By studying official archives such as Juezhi Quanlan 《》, Jinshen Quanshu 《》 and Qing Dynasty Imperial medical archives, etc, we provide a brief biography of Zhang Zhongyuan, the last chief administrator of the IAM, and present his rise from the lowest rank of physician to chief administrator. We also discuss his medical activities, diagnosis and treatments for the Imperial family, especially for Empress Dowager Cixi () and Emperor Guangxu (), as well as the management and reforms he advocated for the IAM. Through an analysis of the case of Zhang Zhongyuan, we can have a glimpse of the real life of imperial physicians.

Emancipating the Passive Muse: A Call for a Feminist Approach to Writing Biographies on Historical Women

This essay analyzes two popular biographies on historical women to interrogate how a focus on gender has shaped the genre: Nancy Ruben Stuart’s The Muse of the Revolution: The Secret Pen of Mercy Otis Warren and the Founding of a Nation (2008) and Jung Chang’s Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China (2013). I argue that biographers who perpetuate gender stereotypes miss a momentous opportunity during the current life writing boom in the United States to educate readers on women’s social, cultural, and political contributions worldwide. In proposing that feminist-informed biographies are more accurate, complete, and make social and cultural interventions, I discuss how these texts celebrate women’s abilities and successes and, thus, counter patriarchal interpretations of history

Inside the World of the Eunuch: A Social History of the Emperor's Servants in Qing China by Melissa Dale

Reviewed by: Inside the World of the Eunuch: A Social History of the Emperor's Servants in Qing China by Melissa Dale Ellen Soullière (bio) Melissa Dale. Inside the World of the Eunuch: A Social History of the Emperor's Servants in Qing China. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2018. xi, 223 pp. Hardcover $55.00, isbn 978-988-8455-75-1. This is the first book-length study of Chinese eunuchs in English since Henry Shih-shan Tsai's 1996 study of eunuchs in the Ming dynasty. Dale has accessed [End Page 193] a number of new sources for the study of Qing dynasty eunuchs, including archival records of legal cases in which eunuchs were involved. She has looked at the eunuch institution from multiple perspectives: legal, medical, social, and historical, effectively supplementing her text-based account with photographs of eunuchs in the early twentieth century. With the best will in the world, those of us who have grown up steeped in modern Western liberal traditions struggle to understand the social, political, and economic circumstances that enabled one group of human beings to routinely subject another group of people, in this case boys and men, to an operation that robbed them of their external genitalia and their opportunities to engage in ordinary sexual activity and to have biological children. As our guide into the world of Qing dynasty eunuchs, Dale's authorial voice is calm and she does not flinch from recording the details of the operations these boys and men endured and the mortality or lifelong morbidity that were often the result. Dale highlights dramatic contrasts between the histories of eunuchs in the Ming and Qing while at the same time illustrating some areas where continuity is apparent. She estimates that about 3,000 eunuchs were working in the Qing imperial palace at the end of the dynasty, very significantly fewer than estimates of their numbers under the Ming. She identifies the employment of bondservants as a key structural difference between the Ming and Qing courts. Qing bondservants were men who had a special relationship with the emperor and took on many of the more prestigious roles that eunuchs had fulfilled under the Ming. Qing dynasty eunuchs did not fill important military positions as eunuchs had during the Ming. In addition, at least initially, the Qing emperors sought to limit eunuchs' literacy more than the Ming had done. Nevertheless, there were opportunities for Qing eunuchs to learn to read and write in both Manchu and Chinese, and their literacy was one of the skills they had to offer in their service to the imperial women. Empress Dowager Cixi was known to prefer to employ literate eunuchs. By the end of the dynasty, the most senior eunuchs held positions in the imperial household that were as high as the second and third rank in the bureaucracy. As the ultimate symbol of imperial power and authority, these senior eunuchs were respected and feared. Their generic designation (tàijiàn 太監) signalled both their administrative responsibilities and their closeness to the throne. While the justification for turning boys into eunuchs was often articulated in terms of the need to have servants in the imperial palaces who could never threaten the purity of the imperial patriline, Dale provides abundant evidence that looking after the women of the palace was far from the only activity that Qing dynasty eunuchs characteristically undertook. They led religious services, serving as lamas, chanting the scriptures, and praying for the souls of the dead. Their religious activities encompassed Buddhism, Daoism, and Confucian [End Page 194] sacrifices to the ancestors and some were converts to Christianity. Eunuchs also served the court and the imperial elite as actors and theatrical performers, musicians, physicians, and men of all work. They looked after imperial collections, transmitted edicts, managed documents, gardened, kept the imperial seals, and were in charge of the protocols for imperial audiences for officials and visitors. Expected to perform as the perfect servants of the imperium, they often obliged. Dale found that under the Qing dynasty most eunuchs were Han Chinese who came from the northern provinces of Hebei, Shandong, and Zhili, the directly administered region surrounding the capital...

A Precious Mirror for Governing the Peace: A Primer for Empress Dowager Cixi

The vilified Empress Dowager Cixi (1835–1908) of late Qing China remains a symbol of national humiliation and weakness in modern Chinese historiography. Scholars attribute Cixi’s “rule behind the curtains” responsible for the ultimate decline of the Qing dynasty and its capitulatory peace with foreign powers. This article revisits the conditions that enabled Cixi’s rise to power during the Tongzhi reign (1861–75) and argues that Hanlin academicians regarded her as a potentially capable regent upon whom they could count to manage state affairs in the best interests of the Tongzhi emperor. This article also argues that Cixi acquired her political vocabulary from her Hanlin lecturers who compiled a unique primer for their patroness – the Zhiping baojian (A precious mirror for governing the peace) – on female regency in China’s imperial past.

Ordering the social: History of the human sciences in modern China

In The Order of Things (1966 [1970]), Michel Foucault unearths the discursive redistribution of the episteme underlying the process 'when man constituted him-self in Western culture as both that which must be conceived of and that which is to be known'.1 His investigation into the historical epistemology of what he called sciences humaines (a term that dates back at least to the 17th-century) has prompted historians of western science to dig deep in a growing body of literature on the history of the related disciplinary subjects.2 Two landmark volumes that have encapsulated the evolving historiography of the human sciences are Modernist Impulses in the Human Sciences, 1870-1930 edited by Dorothy Ross (1994) and The Cambridge History of Science Volume 7: The Modern Social Sciences coedited by Theodore Porter and Dorothy Ross (2003).3 With the notable exception of one chapter in the latter volume, historical research on the sciences of social organization and human experience in China, unlike its western counterpart, has only begun to mature in recent years.4 This special issue pushes the field in new directions by highlighting the latest research of an international company of early career researchers. Whereas Foucault's later work on sexuality and power has invited many scholars to wrestle with its Eurocentric burdens, the omission of a parallel mode of historical inquiry for his work on the human sciences denotes precisely what this special issue aims to recalibrate.5 To achieve that goal, the following essays share an attention to the mutually generative relationship of politics and scientific inquiry in 20th-century China.John Feng's opening essay probes the science-politics nexus by focusing on the rise of a discipline in the scientific study of the state in early republican China. Building on the life of Lu Zhengxiang (1871-1949), China's Ambassador Extraordinary to The Hague Peace Conference, it reconstructs the early years of the Chinese Social and Political Science Association (CSPSA), a replica of the American Political Science Association, and analyzes the heated discussions of state-building in its official publication (in English), the Chinese Social and Political Science Review. Already in the final years of the Qing, Lu had submitted a memorial to Empress Dowager Cixi urging China to become more attuned to the new international order of law and constitutionalism. Lu's effort to modernize China through legal and constitutional reform culminated in his collaboration with Paul Reinsch to found the CSPSA in December 1915. The meanings of democracy, state sovereignty, international relations, law, politics, and other key terms in legal science carried significant weight in the visions of CSPSA members, most of whom were cultural elites educated in the west and thus fluent in English. Feng's essay captures an important episode in early 20th-century China during which science, culture, and politics intersected in the envisioning of a new social order that paved the way for the May Fourth Movement.Hsiao-pei Yen's meticulously researched essay extends the investigation of the role of international politics, especially in terms of the antonymous friction between imperialism and nationalism, in the development of republican-era Chinese science. Specifically, it traces the historical transformation of what Yen calls 'from paleoanthropology in China to Chinese paleoanthropology', or simply the Chinese indigenization of the internationally oriented scientific study of ancient human fossils. Yen provides a detailed account of the different archaeological expeditions conducted by scientists of various national origins in central Asia. Between the May Fourth Movement and the Japanese occupation periods, these international scientists acquainted themselves with one another and other like-minded Chinese scientists (who were, again, often fluent in European languages) in cosmopolitan Beijing. However, after their research agenda came to public attention, the foreign scientists were drawn into joint expeditions with Chinese scientists, such as the Sino-Swedish scientific expedition to northwestern China, in order to assure the Chinese that locally excavated materials were not exported out of China to serve the hegemonic ambition of European imperialism. …