Empress Dowager Cixi Quotes


You must find ways to make absolutely sure that such abuse of the Chinese is strictly prohibited and discontinued.


Context

She had read reports that Chinese faced in several lands of the West. The worst of these were Peru and Cuba where Chinese emigrant labor were kidnapped and worked in slave conditions. Prior to Cixi, Chinese Emperors had little or no concern for the laborers and peasants in their own country much less those Chinese who had gone abroad in search of a better life.


Citations

Cixi, 1835–1908, Empress Dowager of China, Instructions to her chief negotiator, Earl Li, 1875

Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations

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Empress Dowager Cixi
Empress Dowager Cixi
  • Born: November 29, 1835
  • Died: November 15, 1908
  • Nationality: Chinese
  • Profession: Noblewoman

Empress Dowager Cixi was a Chinese empress dowager and regent who was the de facto supreme ruler of China in the late Qing dynasty for 47 years, from 1861 until her death in 1908. Of the Manchu Yehe Nara clan, she was elected as a concubine of the Xianfeng Emperor in her adolescence and gave birth to a son, Zaichun, in 1856. After the Xianfeng Emperor's death in 1861, the young boy became the Tongzhi Emperor, and she became the Empress Dowager. Cixi ousted a group of regents appointed by the late emperor and assumed regency, which she shared with Empress Dowager Ci'an. Cixi then consolidated control over the dynasty when she installed her nephew as the Guangxu Emperor at the death of the Tongzhi Emperor in 1875, contrary to the traditional rules of succession of the Qing dynasty that had ruled China since 1644.