Empress Dowager Cixi
1835 – 1908 Chinese Empress dowager and regent of the Qing dynasty
Empress dowager who effectively ruled China for much of the late Qing, through the Hundred Days' Reform and the Boxer Rebellion.
- Affiliations
- Qing dynasty
Cixi entered the palace as a concubine and rose to dominate the Qing court for nearly half a century after the death of the Xianfeng Emperor, ruling as regent behind a succession of young emperors. She backed some modernisation but is best known for crushing the 1898 Hundred Days' Reform, placing the reforming Guangxu Emperor under house arrest. In 1900 she sided with the anti-foreign Boxer Uprising against the foreign powers, a decision that ended in a crushing occupation of Beijing and a huge indemnity. Historians disagree on how much of the Qing collapse to blame on her, but her reign is tied to the dynasty's failure to reform in time.
In the timeline
- 1898 Hundred Days' Reform the regent who suppressed the reform
- 1899 – 1901 Boxer Rebellion the regent who backed the uprising