Revisionists suggested that Nationalist and Communist revolutionaries scapegoated her for deep-rooted problems beyond salvage, and lauded her maintenance of political order. Conventionally denounced as a ruthless despot whose reactionary policies – although successfully self-serving in prolonging the ailing Qing dynasty – led to its humiliation and utter downfall in the Wuchang Uprising. Historians both in China and abroad have debated her legacy. The deaths of both Cixi and the Guangxu Emperor in November 1908 left the court in the hands of Manchu conservatives, a child, Puyi, on the throne, and a restless, deeply divided society.

When Cixi returned to Beijing from Xi'an, where she had taken the emperor, she became friendly to foreigners in the capital and began to implement fiscal and institutional reforms aimed to turn China into a constitutional monarchy. The ensuing defeat was a stunning humiliation. After the Boxer Rebellion led to invasion by Allied armies, Cixi initially backed the Boxer groups and declared war on the invaders.

She placed the Guangxu Emperor, who, she thought, had tried to assassinate her, under virtual house arrest for supporting radical reformers, publicly executing the main reformers. She supported the principles of the Hundred Days' Reforms of 1898, but feared that sudden implementation, without bureaucratic support, would be disruptive and that the Japanese and other foreign powers would take advantage of any weakness. Although Cixi refused to adopt Western models of government, she supported technological and military reforms and the Self-Strengthening Movement. This was contrary to the traditional rules of succession of the Qing dynasty that had ruled China since 1644.Ĭixi supervised the Tongzhi Restoration, a series of moderate reforms that helped the regime survive until 1911. Cixi then consolidated control over the dynasty when she installed her nephew as the Guangxu Emperor at the death of her son, the Tongzhi Emperor, in 1875. Cixi ousted a group of regents appointed by the late emperor and assumed the regency along with Ci'an, who later died. After the Xianfeng Emperor's death in 1861, the young boy became the Tongzhi Emperor, and she assumed the role of co-empress dowager, alongside the Emperor's widow, Empress Dowager Ci'an. Selected as a concubine of the Xianfeng Emperor in her adolescence, she gave birth to a son, Zaichun, in 1856. 'Empress Dowager Cixi' in Chinese charactersĮmpress Dowager Cixi born Yehe Nara Xingzhen (29 November 1835 – 15 November 1908), was a Chinese noblewoman of the Manchu Yehe Nara clan, concubine and later regent who effectively controlled the Chinese government in the late Qing dynasty for 47 years, from 1861 until her death in 1908.

Empress cixi book