The Kangxi Emperor was the fourth emperor of China's Qing Dynasty, and the second to rule over China proper (i.e. following the fall of the Ming Dynasty). His lengthy reign is often described as a period of the consolidation of Qing rule.
The Kangxi Emperor ruled for sixty years, from 1661 when he was seven years old, wielding actual power from the age of 13 until his death in 1722 at the age of 68. He is said to have woken up early every day to read memorials to the throne, before meeting with officials, presiding over palace examinations, and engaging in other obligations. The emperor is said to have been an extremely knowledgeable scholar, and a great supporter of scholarship, supporting the compilation of a new dictionary, a vast 5,000 volume encyclopedia, and the official History of the Ming (Míng shǐ), the last of which was begun under his predecessor, the Shunzhi Emperor, and was completed under the Qianlong Emperor in the 1730s.
Minority
In the first years of his reign, government was dominated by a group of four regents, led by the Manchu general Oboi. Armed with a document they claimed was written by Kangxi's father, expressing regret for many of his policies, these regents forced through a series of wide-ranging reforms. Seeking to restore power to the Manchus, they stripped many Chinese scholar-officials of their scholarly qualifications, executed the top palace eunuch and abolished the eunuch offices, imprisoned Jesuit scholar Johann Adam Schall von Bell, and promoted a number of Manchu officials to higher positions, while demoting their Chinese counterparts. Expanding on the qianjie policy put into place in 1657, the regents also in 1661 pulled all Chinese twenty miles inland from the East China Sea coast, a move aimed at protecting them from pirate raids, but which caused considerable suffering.[1]
The young Kangxi began vying against the regents to wield power for himself in 1667, at age 13, and two years later, with the help of his grandmother and a number of Manchu guard officers, he managed to have Oboi arrested; the regent later died in prison.
Majority
The emperor also made six tours of the southern provinces, and oversaw the renewal of dikes on the Huai and Yellow Rivers, the dredging of the Grand Canal, and the opening of four ports to foreign trade. He maintained Jesuit astronomers in his court and encouraged the continued adoption of elements of European science.
He also enforced continued policies of ethnic separation aimed at ensuring that Manchus, and not Han Chinese, retained superiority and control of the state. Though clearly devotedly engaged in pursuits of Chinese scholarly cultivation, the Kangxi Emperor also practiced and performed his Manchu identity, building a summer palace on the Mongolian steppe, where he often engaged in falconry and hunted on horseback. However, he also took various steps to earn the support of the Chinese scholar-bureaucrats, and of Han Chinese more broadly.
The Kangxi reign saw the suppression of the Revolt of Three Feudatories (1673-1681) and the final defeat of the last of the Ming loyalists, as the Qing took Taiwan in 1684. Kangxi strengthened the borders of the empire, and established in 1668 a "willow palisade" blocking off Han Chinese access to large portions of the Manchu homelands. He also restored the civil service examination system, improved official communication networks (including those for covert state information). Kangxi's reign also saw considerable agricultural and commercial expansion, but the Court failed to revise its tax codes appropriately to best capture state revenues from these developments.[2]
| Preceded by Shunzhi Emperor |
Emperor of Qing 1661-1722 |
Succeeded by Yongzheng Emperor |
References
- Albert M. Craig, The Heritage of Chinese Civilization, Third Edition, Prentice Hall (2011), 115.