THE QING DYNASTY [click here]
"...the last of the imperial dynasties of China, spanning the years 1644 to 1911/12. Under the Qing the territory of the empire grew to treble its size under the preceding Ming dynasty (1368–1644), the population grew from some 150 million to 450 million, many of the non-Chinese minorities within the empire were Sinicized, and an integrated national economy was established."
That from Britannica, as is this map of the late Qing period
Note: The green, or for some
titles red, text is the original Wikipedia timeline, frequently
corrected by me for grammar and spelling errors. The
blue text is my gradual development of the timeline into a fuller history and
commentary (with follow-up notes in amber). Because
I am interested in the positives of human history, and can only find negatives
in most of the politics, I have reduced most of the political history from
green to grey, so it is still there, and you are obviously free to follow
the links and find out more, but I honestly cannot imagine why you would want
to.
1644 CE: 25 April: The Chongzhen Emperor hanged himself from the Zuihuai as the army of Li Zicheng's Shun dynasty breached the walls of the Ming capital Beijing [presumably Shunzhi and Shun are connected words: see the last entry on the previous page]
27 May: Battle of Shanhai Pass: A Shun army was dealt a heavy defeat by the Qing and the former Ming general Wu Sangui at Shanhai Pass
4 June: Li Zicheng fled Beijing [it sounds like there is a civil war involving multiple factions, and not just the Manchu versus the Ming]
8 November: Shunzhi Emperor enthroned in Beijing
1645 CE: 20 May: Yangzhou Massacre: The Qing Dynasty slaughter the
inhabitants of Yangzhou city in 6 days according to the contemporary account
given by Wang Xiuchu [Xiuchu’s
account actually spans 10 days and puts the death toll at 800,000 but this is wikipedia
so what do you expect? click here]
1653 CE: January: The 5th Dalai Lama, the Dalai Lama of Tibet, visited
the Qing capital Beijing [as noted several times before, whenever there is a change of dynasty in China, the Dalai Lama of Tibet turns up to negotiate special arrangements for his country, sometimes successfully, sometimes less so]
1659 CE: Jesuits Martino Martini and Ferdinand Verbiest arrived in
China [again,
this is only on the Wikipedia page because it is part of European history, not in
any way significantly that of China]
1661 CE: 5 February: The Shunzhi Emperor died. He was succeeded by his
young son the Kangxi Emperor, with the Four Regents of the Kangxi Emperor
acting as regents [Peaceful Harmony”; his
birth-name was Xuanye.]
14 June: The Southern Ming admiral Koxinga declared the establishment of the Kingdom of Tungning on Taiwan [if you didn't know that Taiwan and Formosa were the same place, and hadn't read the entry for 1624 CE...
1662 CE: 1 February: Siege of Fort Zeelandia: The VOC surrendered Fort Zeelandia on Taiwan to Koxinga [and again, from a Dutch perspective, this should read "...on Dutch Formosa..."]
1664 CE: Schall von Bell was
imprisoned [why? I think the answer is in the link at 1626]
1673 CE: Revolt of the Three Feudatories: Wu rebelled against the
Qing dynasty on the pretext of seeking to restore the Ming
1682 CE: The Belgian Jesuit
Antoine Thomas arrived in China [and not just
Euro-centric, but Christo-centric; have you noticed that not a single Jewish visitor to China has yet appeared in this list, and yet Jews were now
living in subsantial communities around Kaifeng especially (click here); and maybe three Moslem names, in passing, and yet the Moslem involvement goes back centuries (see 1862 CE); actually the middle eastern links
go back as far as Hiram of Tyre circa 1000 BCE, and not so much as a hint in
this timeline]
1683 CE: Battle of Penghu: A Qing fleet destroyed the Tungning navy
at Penghu. The king of Tungning Zheng Keshuang surrendered to the Qing
1684 CE: The first of the Qing Thirteen Factories, neighbourhoods
where foreigners were allowed to live and trade, were established outside
Guangzhou
1689 CE: 27 August: The Qing
dynasty signed the Treaty of Nerchinsk with Russia, under which the two
countries mutually agreed to a border at the Stanovoy Range [yes,
and Russia’s first mention too, and is the writer aware of the proximity of
Hindustan (that’s India and Pakistan and Myanmar to you and me)?]
1690 CE: Yun Shouping died
[who was he? another magnificent painter: click here; the one here is just a lovely painting of some peonies, included because it's small enough to fit: the real magnificents are the landscapes]
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1698 CE: The Lugou Bridge was reconstructed [at Wanping, about a dozen miles south of Bei-Jing: click here; aka the Marco Polo Bridge, because he mentioned it, and famous today as the first point of the Japanese invasion in 1937, for which click here]
1705 CE: 4 December: The papal legate Charles-Thomas Maillard De Tournon
arrived in the Qing capital Beijing
1711 CE: The East India Company
(EIC) established a trading post in Guangzhou [the
East India Company is British, not Hindustani, despite the name. EIC as opposed
to VOC, which is the Dutch East India Company listed several times above]
The Peiwen Yunfu was completed [and still another dictionary! “a special book that helps people understand how to write Chinese characters correctly” is how this website puts it, and here "literally 'rime storehouse of esteemed phrases', is a 1711 Chinese rime dictionary of literary allusions and poetic dictions. Collated by tone and rime, the dictionary serves the composition of poetry"; more detail here]
1715 CE: 19 March: Chinese Rites controversy: Pope Clement XI issued a
papal bull forbidding veneration of the dead and worship of Confucius among
Chinese converts to Catholicism
1716 CE: The Kangxi Dictionary was
published (which type of Chinese was this: Mandarin perhaps, or did the
Manchus have their own version and were imposing it on the rest? click here)
1720 CE: Chinese expedition to Tibet: A Qing expedition expelled the
invading forces of the Dzungar Khanate from Tibet
1721 CE: Chinese Rites controversy: The Kangxi Emperor banned
Christian missions in China
1722 CE: 20 December: The Kangxi Emperor died
27 December: The Kangxi Emperor's son Yongzheng became emperor of the
Qing dynasty [“harmonious
justice”; his birth-name was Yinzhen]
1725 CE: The Complete Classics
Collection of Ancient China was completed [Biaodian
Gujin Tushu Jicheng in Manchu: click here]
1729 CE: Opium criminalised in
China [when were the British Opium Wars? the first in 1839 apparently
so we’ll wait till we get there]
1732 CE: Jiang Tingxi died [flowers and birds his speciality, though the brown rice paper that so many of these artists used does cause many of the works to become very dark over time: not this one though, a portrait of "the Grand Secretary of Wenyuan Library": click here and here for more of them, and more on him]
1735 CE: 8 October: The Yongzheng Emperor died. He was succeeded by his
son the Qianlong emperor [Hongli
his birthname, “Lasting Eminence” the title]
1750 CE: The French Jesuit Jean Joseph Marie Amiot was sent to China [the history of Christianity in
China, as I have now discovered by researching it, starts with the Assyrian Church of the East as early as the
7th century, but why would a Euro-centric history of the world feel the need to
mention that, let alone explore its several-hundred year history before the
arrival of the Russian Orthodox church, or that history either, irrelevant until the only true
Christians, the Jesuits?]
1755 CE: Ten Great Campaigns: The khan of the Dzungar Khanate
surrendered to invading Qing forces
The Puning Temple was built to commemorate the defeat of the Dzungar Khanate [it stands the hillock, north of the Chengde Mountain Resort in Hebei Province; and I presume it wasn’t a Hindu or a Jewish temple, so it must have been....sorry, that was me mis-spelling “punning”: the name means "Temple of Universal Peace": click here – and do we have the other seven listed on this page? The 8 are Boren Temple, Puning Temple, An'yuan Temple, Putuo Zongcheng Temple, Guang'an Temple, Suxiang Temple, Guangyuan Temple, Ximi Fushou Temple)
Puning is also known as "Big Buddha Temple" because its main hall hosts the largest wooden statue ever made of the Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara, for whom click here
1760 CE: The Canton System was
established, under which the Chinese merchants operating in the Thirteen
Factories were organized into a guild, the Cohong, and given an official
monopoly [is that an early form of Communism? how does it compare with the Guild System in the UK?]
1771 CE: The Putuo Zongcheng Temple was completed [where? click here – this is definitely another of the Chengde 8: click here
1774 CE: The Wenjin Chamber was
built [where? still in Chengde; click here]
1780 CE: A pagoda was built at
Fragrant Hills [which is where? Beijing: click here]
1782 CE: Siku Quanshu, The Complete Library of the Four Treasuries was completed [where? click here] “The Four Treasuries refer to the four conventional branches or classes of literature – 經 Jing, the Classics, 史 Shi, the Histories, 子 Zi, the Philosophers, and 集 Ji, the Literary Collections”. Lucky the Jesuits weren’t enforcing the Papal Bulls or the entire library would have been burned at the stake!
1791 CE: Dream of the Red Chamber
was published [what is it? The blurb on the Amazon.com
book says “For more than a century and a half, Dream of the Red Chamber has
been recognized in China as the greatest of its novels, a Chinese
Romeo-and-Juliet love story and a portrait of one of the world's great
civilizations” The first half of which puts me off entirely, the second half of
which encourages me to learn more. So I have followed the second line, and
click here for
more encouragement]
1793 CE: 14 September: Macartney Embassy: The British ambassador George Macartney, 1st Earl Macartney was introduced to the Qianlong Emperor [how nice! and did they have sandwiches or chop suey? and why would it be on a Chinese history timeline unless something very significant came out of it which should have been included? Presumably the start of “negotiations” for the British Empire to obtain its share of the stealing of China: see under Hong Kong almost immediately below]
1796 CE: 9 February: The Qianlong Emperor abdicated in favour of his son
the Jiaqing Emperor [Jiaqing,
pronounced "Saicungga Fengšen" in Manchu, means "possessive of
good fortune and blessing" or "worthy of good fortune and
blessing"; his Temple name was Emperor Renzong of Qing, his borthname
Yongyan]
White Lotus Rebellion:
White Lotus began an armed rebellion against the Qing dynasty
1807 CE: Protestant missions in
China 1807–1953: The Protestant missionary Robert Morrison arrived in China [no sooner
have the Papists been banned...]
1820 CE: 2 September: The Jiaqing Emperor died
3 October: The Jiaqing Emperor's son the Daoguang Emperor became
emperor of the Qing dynasty [“Radiant
Path”, Temple name Emperor Xuanzong of Qing, personal name Mianning]
1823 CE: The Bible was first
published in Chinese
But this is not Chinese history, it is Euro-Christian history;
and actually, so is the 1807 CE listing
1839 CE: 3 June: Destruction of opium at Humen: The Qing Imperial
Commissioner Lin Zexu ordered the destruction of roughly a thousand tons of
opium seized from EIC merchants in Humen
1842 CE: 29 August: First Opium War: The Qing dynasty and
the United Kingdom signed the Treaty of Nanking, under which the former agreed
to end the monopoly of the Cohong, pay reparations for the war and the
destruction of opium, and cede Hong Kong Island in perpetuity [this
needs a link to Margaret Thatcher giving the island back: Dec 19; but also a
note: so it turns out that the reason we took Hong Kong was simply to give us
unimpeded access to opium! click here]
1844 CE: Wei Yuan published the
Illustrated Treatise on the Maritime Kingdoms [what
exactly was it, and which lands did it cover? click here for “the
first influential Chinese work to sound the alarm about the growth of Western
power in maritime Asia, and it was the first to advocate dramatic changes in
Ch’ing maritime policy to counter the disruptive effects of Western commercial
expansion in the Southern Ocean” – pretty much my comment at 1842 CE, just
better stated]
3 July: The Qing dynasty and the
United States signed the Treaty of Wanghia, according to which the United
States was granted most favoured nation (MFN) status and extraterritoriality
was granted to its citizens resident in China [I
wonder who played Madame Butterfly on this occasion? as to
“extraterritoriality”; I mentioned the Northern Mariana islands earlier; now I
am adding the link again here as
this page provides a full explanation of the US concept of
“extraterritoriality”]
1850 CE: 25 February: The Daoguang Emperor died
9 March: The Daoguang Emperor's son the Xianfeng Emperor became emperor of the Qing dynasty [“universal prosperity”; Yizhu was his birthname]
1851 CE: 11 January: Jintian Uprising: The followers of Hong Xiuquan, who
believed him to be the younger brother of Jesus, announced their rebellion
against the Qing dynasty and the establishment of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom
in modern Guiping [apparently Luke Skywalker flew in to the announcement ceremony and Alice from Wonderland made the tea: jasmine, no milk]
1855 CE: Third plague pandemic: A
plague pandemic began in Yunnan which would kill hundreds of thousands in China
and millions worldwide [not COVID surely]
Punti-Hakka Clan Wars: An ethnic conflict began in Guangdong between the Punti and Hakka peoples which would claim roughly a million lives: [click here for all four of the native Hong Kong peoples]
1856 CE: 23 October: Second Opium War: The British navy began a bombardment of Guangzhou [at the top-right of the map]
1858 CE: 28 May: The Qing dynasty signed the Treaty of Aigun, ceding to
Russia the land north of the Amur River [for the treaty here, but also this is rather interesting from an entirely different perspective]
June:
Second
Opium War: The Qing dynasty signed the Treaty of Tientsin, under which
foreigners were granted greater freedom of movement within China, and France
and the United Kingdom were promised war reparations [in
other words, China surrendered and agreed to pay a large sum of tribute]
18 November: Battle of Sanhe: A Taiping army encircled and destroyed a
much smaller Qing force in Anhui
1860, 18 October: Second Opium War: British and
French forces looted and burned down the Old Summer Palace in the Qing capital
Beijing
[I have a page on this elsewhere in The Book of Days, based on a
piece by Max Sebald: see Jan 11]
24 October: The Qing Prince Gong
signed the Convention of Peking, ratifying the Treaty of Tientsin and ceding
the Kowloon Peninsula in perpetuity to the United Kingdom [in
other words a further surrender to imperialist militarism: what possible “right” can
one country ever have to owning someone else’s land, even if it is close to
your own, let alone one that is six thousand miles away, by the eastern land
route, a great deal further going west by sea? apparently the Argentine
government has laid claim to the Isle of Wight and is sending an expedition to
enforce it... mind you, this does help up understand why China today operates in the world the way it does: just doing to you what you did to us: our turn now. Click here for the treaty]
1861 CE: Gong established the
Zongli Yamen to temporarily supervise the conduct of foreign affairs throughout
the Qing government [what exactly was it? “office
for General Management”, ie a Foreign Office]
22 August: The Xianfeng Emperor died
11 November: The Xianfeng Emperor's young son the Tongzhi Emperor became
emperor of the Qing dynasty [His
birthname was Zaichun, his Temple name Muzong; Tongzhi means “same will” or
“same purpose” and is therefore used as the equivalent of “comrade” - so was
this the first Communist revolution? Or perhaps it was the first outbreak of
Gay Pride: apparently the word is used in today’s China with that meaning.]
1862 CE: Dungan Revolt: A disordered uprising began among the Hui
people living on the west bank of the Yellow River [alternate reading: “a
well-organised and carefully coordinated uprising against state corruption and
injustice began on this day”: encyclopedia have to try to be neutral! and of course Wikipedia doesn't feel it necessary to point out that the Hui people were Moslems: click here and here and see again my comment at 1682 CE]
The Tongwen Guan school of European languages was established [and
it’s still there: or here
actually, though I’m amused that the school still calls itself Peking
University, rather than Bei-Jing; a British view of the matter here]
1864 CE: May: The Ever
Victorious Army of the Qing dynasty was disbanded [which
describes at least one defeat, so the name is a misnomer]
1868 CE: 22 August: Yangzhou riot: Scholar-officials resident in Yangzhou instigated a riot in which the headquarters of the British missionary society OMF International were attacked and burned [Yangzhou, city, southwest-central Jiangsu province, eastern China. It lies to the north of the Yangtze River; click here if you live outside the UK, here otherwise]
Nian Rebellion: The last of the rebel armies was destroyed [alternative reading: “the last of the forces fighting valiantly for the liberty of the oppressed people was defeated”: it all depends which side you are on]
1870 CE: June: Tianjin massacre: A riot took place
in Tianjin in which some sixty people, including foreigners and Chinese
Christians, were killed [local news, not worth a place in a history
timeline: as we get into modern times, more and more of these will come up;
indeed, the very next item:]
1871 CE: Li Hongzhang was appointed Viceroy of Zhili [where is that and why does it matter? see 1898, below]
1873 CE: Panthay Rebellion: The last surviving Panthay rebels were
defeated by the Qing dynasty in Tengchong
1875 CE: 12 January: The Tongzhi Emperor died
21 February: Margary Affair: The British diplomat Augustus Raymond Margary was murdered with his retinue in Tengchong [see 1793 CE for the Macartney incident]
25 February: The young Guangxu Emperor became emperor of the Qing
dynasty, with the empress dowagers Ci'an and Cixi acting as regents [birthname Zaitian, temple name
Dezong of Qin, meaning...”glorious succession”]
1884 CE: 23 August: Battle of
Fuzhou: A French fleet destroyed the Qing Fujian Fleet at the mouth of the Min
River [Rome, Portugal, Spain, Holland, Britain... the French were
bound to turn up eventually and see if there was anything left that they could
steal (there was, they did: click here); and
no doubt the Germans couldn’t be very far behind (they weren’t, click here)]
1887 CE: September: The Yellow
River flood kills up to 2 million people and makes an additional 2 million
homeless. At the time, it was the deadliest natural disaster ever recorded
1891 CE: Foreign businessmen
established the Shanghai Sharebrokers' Association in Shanghai
1894 CE: 1 August: First Sino-Japanese War: War was officially declared
between Japan and the Qing dynasty [odd name, given the
events of the 1590s]
1895 CE: 17 April: First
Sino-Japanese War: The Qing dynasty signed the Treaty of Shimonoseki, under
which it recognised the independence of Joseon, granted Japan MFN status and
ceded to it Penghu, Taiwan and the Liaodong Peninsula [so we
can see why the Chinese empire collapsed into the Communist revolution: the
country was destroyed by foreigners, breaking it up piecemeal into their
imperial conquests, forcing more and more surrender on it, and raping its
resources for their personal gain]
1898 CE: 11 June: Hundred Days' Reform: The Guangxu Emperor instituted reforms including radical changes in the imperial examination and the elimination of sinecures
WHICH
MAKES A WONDERFUL LEAD-IN TO
21 September: The Guangxu
Emperor was removed from the imperial palace in a coup organized by Cixi and
Ronglu, the Viceroy of Zhili [actually we saw exactly the same thing earlier - but I need to track the date down, when an emperor tried to introduce egalitarianisms and the barons got rid of him to prevent him]
AND
THEN SEE 1908 CE
1900 CE: 21 June: Boxer
Rebellion: Cixi responded to anti-foreign unrest by issuing the Imperial Decree
of declaration of war against foreign powers in the Guangxu Emperor's name [alas,
too late! it needed to have been done anything up to 200 years before; but it also means that Cixi is now (see 1875) Empress-in-all-but-name, because the Emperor is still alive (see 1908); so the coup described above isn't really a full-scale coup, simply that the dowager empress has placed the theoretical emperor in a position of puppetry and is ruling in his name, as she will do with his successor]
1901 CE: 7 September: Boxer Rebellion: The Qing dynasty and Eight-Nation
Alliance signed the Boxer Protocol, under which the Alliance was granted war reparations
and the right to station troops in the capital Beijing [still more surrender: the complete collapse must be imminent]
1908 CE: 14 November: The Guangxu Emperor died of arsenic poisoning
2 December: The Guangxu Emperor's young nephew Puyi Aisin-Giro [the latter was his Manchu surname, the former his birthname] became emperor of the Qing dynasty [and he the very last emperor - he died in 1967 but was out of power fully two decades by then: and actually he ruled three times, but always as a puppet: first from 1908-1912 as the Xuantong Emperor, under the thumb of the dowager Cixi, with his era name meaning "proclamation of unity; then for 11 days of restoration in July 1917, under the thumb of the warlord Zhang Xun; and then under the Japanese Manchukuo regime from 1932-1945. His full story here]
1911 CE: 27 April: Second Guangzhou Uprising [I am
leaving these latter events in green, because these are the stages of the final
collapse of China, and therefore crucial to our understanding of contemporary
China, of why it is the way it is, and the position especially of President Xi]
10 October: Wuchang Uprising: New
Army soldiers staged a mutiny in Wuchang District and occupied the residence of
the Viceroy of Huguang
29 December: Chinese provisional
presidential election: Sun Yat-sen was elected president of the Provisional
Government of the Republic of China, with a majority of sixteen of the
seventeen provincial representatives of the Tongmenghui in Nanjing [read
that again, slowly: “provisional presidential election”: provisional to who? to
what? “the Republic of China”, the one about to be born in the wake of the
crash-from-its-last-height of the wave of Empire]
And how ironic that China should die as a civilisation, and enter the new epoch of the Proletarian Revolution, at exactly the same moment of history that Europe was about to do the same! Perhaps Europe was itself the reason.
You can find David Prashker at:
http://theargamanpress.com/
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