Cixi

Empress Dowager Cixi (1835–1908) was a Chinese imperial consort who rose to become the de facto ruler of the Qing dynasty for much of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. A member of the Manchu Yehenara clan, she entered the Forbidden City as a concubine of the Xianfeng Emperor and bore him a son, who would become the Tongzhi Emperor. After Xianfeng’s death in 1861, she and Tongzhi’s wife, Empress Dowager Ci’an, acted as regents, guiding the government during a period of consolidation after the Taiping Rebellion.

When Tongzhi died in 1875 and Ci’an died in 1881, Cixi ruled the empire alone for the remainder of her life. She pursued a policy of cautious modernization while maintaining autocratic control. Her early years saw attempts to strengthen the state through the Self-Strengthening Movement, focusing on military and industrial modernization alongside limited educational reforms.

In 1898, Cixi opposed the Hundred Days Reform led by Guangxu and reformers, placing the emperor under house arrest and reversing many reform measures. The Boxer Uprising of 1899–1901 underscored popular anti-foreign sentiment. Although she initially supported the Boxers, the ensuing foreign intervention led to the Boxer Protocol and compelled the Qing to undertake broader reforms known as the late Qing reforms or New Policies (1901–1908) to reorganize government, the military, education, and the legal system in an effort to strengthen the dynasty.

Cixi died in 1908, shortly before the dynasty’s collapse. Her legacy is debated: she is viewed by some as a stabilizing, proactive modernizer constrained by circumstance, and by others as an impediment to deeper reform.