Zeng Guofan
(1811–1872), Confucian scholar and official. A leading Confucian scholar and high official in the late Qing dynasty (1644–1912), Zeng Guofan was born into a peasant family in Hunan Province. Zeng received his degree and served in various positions in the central government. Typical of the scholar-official ideal, he preferred to support a foreign dynasty—the Qing—who respected Chinese norms than support an indigenous rebellion that threatened the social and political order in which he believed. When the Taiping Rebellion (1851–1864) threatened the Qing dynasty, he accepted an appointment to raise an army first to regain control over Hunan and later to suppress the rebellion. He sponsored various projects of China's Self-Strengthening Movement (an effort by the Qing dynasty to restore power to resist Western encroachments, especially after the Second Opium War) and tried to increase China's military and economic power by learning from Western nations.
Zeng was very successful. He demanded that his troops conduct themselves according to proper Confucian principles. Zeng recruited members of the local scholar-gentry class as officers who were loyal to him and then recruited troops from Hunan. They embodied such Confucian ideals as respect for superiors, concern for their fellow Chinese, and moral behavior. Zeng's very success helped pave the way for a devolution of power from the Qing government in Beijing and began the rise of regional authorities, leading, ultimately, to the period of warlordism in the 1920s and 1930s. He died in 1872.
Further Reading
Chen, Gideon. (1968) The Pioneer Promoters of Modern Industrial Technique in China: Three Studies. New York: Paragon.
Hail, William J. (1964) Tseng Kuo-fan and the Taiping Rebellion. New York: Paragon.
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