Ci Xi, Empress Dowager
(1835–1908), Dowager empress of China and regent. Nee Yehonala of the Manchu Blue Banner, also known as Ci Xi, held power over China's political life for almost half a century. She was a consort of Emperor Xian Feng (1831–1861, ruled 1850–1861) and bore his successor, Tong Zhi (1856–1875, ruled 1862–1874). After Emperor Xian Feng's death in 1861, Ci Xi seized power by removing eight conservative regents from the court and setting up her own regent over the boy emperor. In 1875, after Emperor Tong Zhi died with no heir, Ci Xi named her three-year-old nephew Guang Xu (1871–1908, ruled 1875–1908) to the throne.
In 1898, Ci Xi resumed the regency as a result of a coup in which she succeeded in crushing the emperor's effort to push through a number of radical proposals designed to renovate and modernize the Chinese government. In 1900, Ci Xi supported officials who encouraged the antiforeign secret society Boxer movement. A coalition of foreign troops soon captured the capital and Ci Xi was forced to flee from Peking to northwestern China, where she accepted the humiliating treaty, the Boxer Protocol, in 1901. Returning to Peking in 1902, she finally began to implement a number of innovations that the reformers had sought in 1898, including the inception of China's constitutional establishment. Ci Xi died on 15 November 1908, one day after the emperor's death.
Further Reading
Der Ling, Princes. (1928) Old Buddha (Empress Tzu Hsi). New York: Dodd, Mead & Company.
Haldane, Charlotte. (1965) The Last Great Empress of China. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill.
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