Season 12, Episode 6: The Golden Age of the Qing Dynasty

Although Japan’s period of seclusion is likely the most readily-known among those casually aware of East Asian history in the west, it was far from the only nation in that broader region which attempted self-imposed isolation. We discussed last season how the Joseon Kingdom imprisoned several Dutch sailors who had wandered onto their peninsula without permission in 1653, including Hendrick Hamel, who wrote a sought-after account of his 14 years of detention among the Korean people. The Qing Dynasty who came to rule over China in the late 1600s also sought to prohibit the free entry of foreigners into their domain.

Last season, we discussed the reigns of the earliest emperors of the Qing Dynasty, which admittedly suffered from a relatively rough start. Although the Chinese government under their predecessors the Ming Dynasty had utterly collapsed, many of the Qing Dynasty’s early choices which were meant to synthesize their own Manchu culture with that of the Han served only to alienate their subjects and fuel the fires of sedition amongst previously loyal Han generals. However, by the reign of Emperor Kangxi, whom we discussed last season, the Qing Dynasty had successfully consolidated its hold over both the core regions of China and had even managed to expand its influence over Tibet and Mongolia.

When Emperor Kangxi died in 1722, he allegedly appointed his eleventh son Yinzhen to be his successor. I say allegedly because Yinzhen’s succession was a messy, disputed affair which may very well have been based on a forgery. Any practical objections at the time were quickly shoved aside as the newly-crowned Emperor Yongzheng took charge and adopted several tactics to nullify his primary would-be challengers - his four brothers. For some, he granted official titles which came with hefty government responsibilities. While seemingly empowering potential rivals might not sound like the wisest course of action, in this particular case their new appointments meant that his brothers were generally too busy with their official duties to plot a coup. One of his brothers refused to obey an order and another showed reluctance about recognizing his sovereignty, so the new emperor arranged for one to be exiled and the other to be placed under house arrest and later exiled to a different corner of the empire.

The legitimacy of Emperor Yongzheng’s succession remains a matter of debate among historians today. However, he successfully took the throne regardless of any questions of propriety and proceeded to continue his late father’s quest of smoothing over the differences between the Manchu ruling house and its multi-ethnic subjects. In 1725, he made the rather magnanimous unifying gesture of granting a noble title to the surviving head of the house of Zhu -- the remaining descendents of the Ming Emperors. They were granted the title of “Hou,” which is usually interpreted as “Marquis.”

In terms of his domestic program, Emperor Yongzheng banned the publication of works critical to the government, especially those which emphasized the new royal family’s origins as Manchu outsiders. He also reformed the appointment system which had previously been assigning those who passed the imperial service exams to government posts at random. Under the new system, different posts would be labeled according to their area’s relative difficulty in collecting taxes, crime rates, and commercial resources. Thus those areas which proved problematic for governance could be tackled by proven administrators with decent track records while easier areas were still decided according to random assignment.

Emperor Yongzheng had an extreme hatred for corruption, which had grown somewhat endemic during the reign of his father Emperor Kangxi. The new emperor had long observed common practices of officials lining their pockets with tax money and not only put measures in place to halt theft of public resources, but also enacted regulations which anticipated the most common ways that corrupt officials concealed their graft. He also made stricter consequences for those caught in public corruption, which now carried a sentence of property confiscation from the entire family of the guilty parties. This sentence was carried out so frequently that one of this sovereign’s nicknames was “The Emperor of Confiscation.”

Not content merely to wield the stick against those who violated public trust, he also raised salaries across the board and put a special fund in place to grant special stipends to cover officials’ regular personal expenditures. The custom of giving a gift to an official, so often used as cover for a bribe, was banned outright. Following the example of his father Emperor Kangxi, Emperor Yongzheng implemented a nationwide network of agents who reported directly to him regarding the state of the Empire.

In an effort to expand China’s agrarian infrastructure, Yongzheng’s administration announced short-term tax exemptions (between five and ten years) for officials and provincial authorities who increased arable land through reclamation. The years of devastation caused by the long decline of the Ming Dynasty and then exacerbated by the Revolt of the Three Feudatories had greatly reduced China’s population. Expanding farmland seemed a logical solution to provide for the now-growing population and on paper this program was a smashing success, allegedly adding a fresh one million acres of farmland nationwide. The reality, however, was that much of the new farmland acreage was the result of false accounting and many corrupt officials enjoyed several years of tax exemption while expanding their arable land only a little, if at all. Still, it did ultimately increase farmland nationwide and was likely a net benefit for the populace regardless of the graft that resulted.

You may recall from last season that China had suffered its own reversal of opinion with regard to Christianity. The Chinese custom of praying to one’s ancestors was declared prohibited for Christians by Pope Clement XI and the Chinese government reacted by expelling many foreign missionaries of the Roman Catholic faith. Emperor Yongzheng would continue this trend, ordering the expulsion of any foreign-born Christian priests found throughout the Qing domains. Foreign cultures, wares, and religions, so long a fascination of the Chinese people, were gradually being categorized as threats to the status quo. This generally negative attitude toward outsiders and anything associated with them was not limited to religion, nor was it limited to Europeans only.

Emperor Yongzheng was serious about controlling trade and in 1725 he established the Cohong, which was a merchant’s guild which had exclusive monopoly rights on import/export trade. Although this was the only official channel through which foreign merchants could trade with China, it was still in its infancy during Yongzheng’s reign and was a far cry from the well-evolved standardized system which it would become in the 1750s. Of particular concern for the sovereign was the perceived influx of recreational Opium.

Opium had been used in China since the 600s in a medicinal capacity but in the 1600s some new varieties were introduced by foreign traders, first by those from Arab nations but later by the Portuguese and Dutch. These new forms featured opium mixed with other substances and dried into cubes which the user could smoke to obtain a feeling of relaxing bliss. One of the most common forms was a mixture of Opium and Tobacco which was called “Madak.” By the 1700s, Madak had become one of the most popular means by which Chinese people could use Opium recreationally.

There is a lot of misunderstanding over Opium use in China, much of which is due to European misperceptions stemming from racial prejudice. Because it was imported, recreational Opium was mostly used throughout the southern coast of China and parts of Taiwan throughout most of the late 1600s, but when the dust settled from the Revolt of the Three Feudatories, this new hobby spread deeper into the mainland and was present in nearly every major city by the 1720s. For most users, Opium was for special occasions like passing the civil service exam or celebrating a friend’s new marriage. Contemporary estimates usually place Opium users at around 15% of the population and most of these were not addicts desperately seeking a fix, but were otherwise regular citizens in good standing who came to opium dens occasionally to unwind or celebrate. Addiction was not unheard of during this period, but it was relatively rare.

The European companies supplying the demand owned and operated many factories throughout central Asia where the Opium was produced and stored en masse. Shipping to China during the early, tumultuous years of the Qing Dynasty’s tenure was risky for many reasons, and Emperor Kangxi had occasionally banned imports outright during the Revolt of the Three Feudatories to try and prevent his enemies from resupplying by sea. Now that stability had largely returned, trade could flow once more but Emperor Yongzheng and his court cast a suspicious eye on Madak in particular as a potential source of problems.

The opium dens themselves were considered a threat to public order and moral decency by the Emperor’s court. These establishments were only open at night, which held a particular stigma in Chinese culture because of the similarity to heretical cults and political conspiracies. In 1729, Emperor Yongzheng declared Madak illegal for import and consumption. Opium was still permitted as an import but only in its medicinal form. While the import of Madak was not particularly significant, this ban would eventually be challenged by foreign merchants and the companies whom they represented.

Emperor Yongzheng attempted to build upon his father’s successes against the Dzungars and his armies successfully reconquered Lhasa, an important city in Tibet, in 1728. Because the domains of the Dzungars lay to the west of Tibet, Tibet itself served as a kind of buffer zone between them and the Qing. Emperor Yongzheng’s conquering armies proceeded to carry out a massive campaign of collective punishment, publicly torturing known Tibetan rebels and even brutally executing the sitting Dalai Lama. Many Tibetans were pressed into slavery and a massive Qing force of over 200,000 defeated an 80,000 strong army of Dzungar Mongols. The brutality of this campaign was likely meant to strike fear into the Tibetans, and it was certainly motivated in part by racial prejudice against Tibetans by the Qing administration.

This horrific incident was part of a larger movement by Qing officials to eliminate the little autonomy still enjoyed by independent ethnic groups within China’s borders. Groups like the Miao, whom we discussed in season 10, were violently forced to disband their indigenous government and submit to Qing regional authorities. The naked coercion utilized by the Qing dynasty served to alienate some of their long-time tributary allies like the Mongols, who now considered joining the Dzungars in joint campaigns against the hegemons of China.

The costs of both the large Tibetan campaigns and deploying defensive troops to the Mongolian border in the north rapidly drained the national treasury and Emperor Yongzheng considered making peace with the Dzungars to avoid plunging the nation into ruinous debt. This and whatever other plans he had in store were put on hold indefinitely in 1735, however, when he died. He was 56 years old and while later fantasies would claim that he was murdered by one of his wives, the official story is that he succumbed to poisoning after ingesting an elixir of immortality produced by his official Taoist practitioners. If this death sounds familiar, it’s because it is the same manner of death experienced by Qin Xi Huang, China’s first Emperor, who likewise died from mercury poisoning thanks to Taoist alchemists.

The process which took Emperor Yongzheng’s life was slow and extremely painful, but this meant that he had just enough time to determine a successor and even devise a system for ensuring that succession which reminds me somewhat of the safeguards used for nuclear launch protocol. He wrote the name of his chosen successor on two scrolls -- one was hidden in a sealed box and the other he held in his hands. If the scrolls contained different names, it meant that some tampering had occurred.

Luckily, when the time came to unroll both scrolls, they were both inscribed with the same name - Hung-Li, the fourth son of Emperor Yongzheng. A strapping young man of twenty-four, the newly-enthroned Emperor Qianlong was already an experienced army commander, a capable administrator, and had even served as regent during periods when his father fell into ill health or otherwise required a substitute. The late sovereign choosing him as the new emperor was probably no surprise to anyone.

Emperor Qianlong would go on to be one of the longest-reigning monarchs in Chinese history and his reign marked the high point for Qing power and influence throughout the east, central Asia, and beyond. It was also during his reign, however, that the seeds of decline and dissolution were sown which would ultimately spell an end to Chinese Emperors altogether.

The new emperor dealt with an immediate crisis which erupted in Guizhou Province to the southwest. The Miao people, unhappy with their loss of autonomy, rose in rebellion and raised a large army. The local Qing leaders suggested negotiation but the new emperor, likely eager to project his power, instead opted for a military campaign. The fighting lasted throughout much of 1736 but was resolved by the end of the year after a bloody suppression by Qing troops. The Miao were pacified for now and Guizhou Province subjected to further development through mining and infrastructure improvements.

The army would be extremely busy throughout Emperor Qianlong’s tenure, particularly in central Asia where they continued to seek out battle against the Dzungar Khanate. The mid-1700s saw the end of the long conflict against the Dzungar Mongols which began in 1687. In 1752 an opportunity presented itself when the Dzungar Khanate was split between two claimants. One claimant named Amursana petitioned the Qing Dynasty for aid, promising his fealty as a vassal if they helped him become the new Khan of the Dzungars. Emperor Qianlong agreed to this and sent a huge army to support his efforts. However, when the fighting concluded and the Qing troops departed, newly-crowned Dzungar Khan Amursana declared his independence and rallied the Dzungars to face off against the Qing once more.

The response from Emperor Qianlong was equal parts decisive and bone-chilling. He ordered his armies to return to Dzungar lands, which lay to the west of Tibet, and commit what can only be described as genocide. Sparing only the very old and weak, the Qing armies defeated what remained of Dzungar forces and then turned their swords, guns, spears, and bows against the civilian population, essentially eliminating the Dzungar identity altogether as the survivors fled to the Russian Empire to their north or threw themselves upon the mercy of Kazakh tribes to their west, but their former homeland was practically depopulated by Qing vengeance.

The slaughter and genocide of the Dzungar people was a horrific crime against humanity but it was also one of the few outright victories which the Qing army could claim during the latter 1700s. As the century stretched on, the Qing attempted to make further incursions into south Asia, allegedly to support valued allies in that region, but would meet with frustration and defeat in Myanmar and Vietnam. These many campaigns were extremely costly and continued to act as a drain on the treasury. They also ultimately failed to provide for domestic tranquility, as rebellions continued to erupt in annexed territory like Tibet and the official response continued to be brutality, suppression, and attempted intimidation.

However, while Emperor Qianlong understood that part of his role as sovereign was to engage in military campaigns, he also knew that the people expected the monarch to be a man of culture as well. Contributing to Chinese culture, history, and mythmaking was a vital part of overcoming persistent Han prejudice against their Manchu overlords, and Emperor Qianlong’s particular contribution was a massive anthology of Chinese history, philosophy, and poetry called “Siku Quanshu,” or “The Complete Library of the Four Treasuries.”

This gargantuan effort, which began in 1772, took over 360 scholars about ten years to complete. It is somewhat reminiscent of the Yongle Encyclopedia completed by order of Emperor Yongle of the Ming in 1403 as well as a similar encyclopedic collection produced by Emperor Qianlong’s predecessors. The Siku Quanshu dwarfed its predecessor and remains the largest collection of classic books in the history of Imperial China.

To acquire sources for this massive anthology, overtures were made to hereditary scholars throughout the realm to lend their copies of ancient works like The Art of War, The Analects of Confucius, The I Ching, and tens of thousands of other cultural classics. There was certainly some hesitation from these families at first but when they were assured that they would not be punished for producing a version of any work that contained Anti-Manchu bias, they volunteered their sources so that the work could continue.

While producing a massive collection of culturally significant work almost certainly improved the relationship between the Qing Dynasty and the majority-Han population of China, it was not a purely unbiased, high-minded endeavor. Every version of these classic works that was lent to the scholars who oversaw the process was thoroughly combed-through for any apparent anti-Manchu bias which would be edited out of the final product. This included obviously explicit pejorative terms for north Asians like “Barbarians” and outright slurs. Some accounts claim that the Qing returned the borrowed books, even those tainted by prejudice, though other accounts claim that the books were never returned. My best guess is that it was a little of both, but I’m far from certain.

Many works and versions of works which were submitted for inclusion in the Siku Quanshu ended up being cataloged on a different list - the Sika Jinshu. This was a list of works which were targeted for censorship through confiscation and destruction and it grew to include over 2,300 works. There were fifty-three subsequent cases of literary violations wherein owners of forbidden works would refuse to volunteer them and, after being caught with said works in their possession, would be subjected to execution, sometimes using the infamous “Lingchi,” which is better known as “Death by a Thousand Cuts.”

Regardless of the unsavory politics that surrounded its production, the Siku Quanshu was still considered an important contribution to Chinese culture and helped elevate the emperor’s cultural reputation. He also attempted to elevate his religious reputation through contributions to his preferred faith, Tibetan Buddhism. Manchu leaders had long been devoted adherents of Tibetan Buddhism, especially the Bodhisattva of transcendent wisdom, Manjushree (MON-JU-SHREE). The emperor arranged for the entire Chinese Buddhist canon to be translated into the Manchu language and also for the Tibetan Buddhist canon to be translated into Chinese and Manchu as well. Publicly he favored the “Yellow Church” sect of Tibetan Buddhism, claiming that patronizing this denomination would promote peace between the Qing and the Mongols, who also favored the Yellow Church sect.

Relations with China’s Muslim population, however, grew exceedingly worse during Emperor Qianlong’s reign. His predecessor Emperor Yongzheng had resisted efforts by some in his government to exact more severe punishments to Muslim offenders but Emperor Qianlong was suspicious of his Muslim subjects and heartily agreed to pursue collective punishment against their leaders when even one from their community was convicted of a crime. This policy began with vague recommendations in 1751 but was greatly exacerbated by 1762 when harsher punishments for Muslim offenders were adopted and a broader anti-Islam attitude pursued by regional governors with the emperor’s approval.

Some of this anti-Muslim sentiment was fed by contemporary developments within Islam like the the resurgence of Sufi mysticism and the fallout created when Muslim communities accepted or rejected some of these new practices. Public arguments over doctrinal issues may have contributed to the idea that the religion of Islam itself was a source of disorder for the Qing Dynasty.

In response to Qing brutality, there were a few rebellions staged by Muslims during the latter 1700s. 1781 and 1784 witnessed regional risings of dissatisfied Muslims who were protesting laws which prohibited a Sufi sect called Jahiryya. Both of these were brutally put down by Qing armies who also engaged in indiscriminate slaughter against Muslim civilians as well as combatants. This violent repression is generally considered to have been counterproductive, however, as Jahiryya adherents took their practices underground and gradually spread them secretly throughout the nation. This would not be the last time that the Qing Dynasty dealt with Muslim uprisings.

In spite of the Qing Dynasty’s increasing habit of using violent coercion to solve problems of unrest, the state was not entirely unsympathetic to those suffering from famine. Many Han Chinese farmers whose crops failed due to unseasonal conditions and natural disasters were relocated to lands north of the Great Wall in Manchuria itself. This was a departure from the previous policies which banned Han Chinese from entering the Manchu homelands and helped to shore up the emperor’s reputation as a benevolent, humanitarian leader.

On the issue of trade, the Cohong monopoly of merchants officially licensed for import/export continued to evolve throughout the 1700s. In 1745, the emperor granted the Cohong merchants the right to collect import taxes directly from the foreign merchants seeking trade. In 1757, Russian merchants were banned from trading with China and to help enforce this practically, all foreign trade was limited to the single port city of Guangdong, which is referred to by the British as Canton. Thus began the so-called Canton system wherein every nation hoping to trade with the Qing Dynasty was only allowed entry through Guangdong.

In 1755, a British merchant named James Flint violated the law by leaving Gwangdong and traveling further inland into southern China. He continued making such trips, hoping to find better opportunities for more exclusive and lucrative trade but in 1759 he was arrested on one of his expeditions and sent to prison on Macau until 1762. This led to further restrictions by the imperial court, who issued an edict closing Canton to trade throughout the winter, requiring a stricter imports inspection process and forbidding any Chinese merchants against taking loans from foreigners.

The nature of the Canton system ensured a trade deficit which favored the Qing and placed many foreign traders at a disadvantage. The British East India Company in particular began to worry over the outflow of silver, which was the only form of currency China would accept in exchange for tea. Thus in 1793 they sent an official embassy, partially sponsored by the British government, to meet with Emperor Qianlong and try to work out a more favorable, open trade system.

The Macartney Embassy, as it came to be known, was led by George Macartney after the man initially selected to lead the mission became ill and died. The diplomatic envoys were taken across China’s vast interior, shown the Great Wall and other impressive cultural sites, and finally brought to Beijing where they attended Emperor Qianlong himself. They brought a host of goods which they hoped would pique the interest of the emperor and inspire him to import more so that the trade deficit could be leveled. Among these gifts were brass cannons, state-of-the-art flintlock firearms, and a model of the British ship HMS Royal Sovereign. Because all of these gifts are related to military matters, it is believed that this embassy was meant to send a secret message of intimidation by the British Empire. However, while the emperor was impressed by these gifts, he did not increase the import allowance for the British and essentially continued to treat Great Britain as though it were just another backward, barbarian nation. A few minor compromises were made on both sides, but the mission was still ultimately considered a failure. It was a failure which would eventually have dire consequences for China.

In 1795, two years after the Macartney Embassy, Emperor Qianlong abdicated in favor of his son Yongyan, who would be remembered as Emperor Jiaqing. The final years of Qianlong’s reign witnessed two large uprisings which evolved into long-term conflicts that would prove exceedingly difficult for the government to suppress. Emperor Qianlong would not live to see either rebellion resolved. The year after his abdication, 1796, he died at the age of 81 and Emperor Jiaqing’s reign could begin in earnest.

The reign of Emperor Qianlong was one of the longest of any monarch in Chinese history, and the longest of any sovereign of the Qing Dynasty. His tenure, combined with his father Emperor Yongzhetng and grandfather Emperor Kangxi, are referred to as the High Qing Period by Chinese historians. In spite of the several wars, atrocities, uprisings, and punitive expeditions, for the average Chinese citizen the High Qing Period was fairly stable, peaceful, and prosperous. However, the tendency of the Qing Dynasty to react to perceived instability and political problems by utilizing unchecked terror, coercion, torture, and tyranny would ultimately create more instability among its populace. While Emperor Qianlong departed during a time of relatively unchallenged Qing domination, that time was coming to an end much faster than most of China and any of its Manchu overlords expected. Next time, we will discuss Qing Dynasty China’s continued social, political, and martial development during the 1800s, as the problem of unruly foreign traders would result in disaster for the Qing Empire.