Empress Dowager Cixi Impact On Society

In 1904, an international exposition was held in St. Louis, Missouri, dubbed as the St. Louis World’s Fair. In preparation for the event, Katharine Carl, an American painter, was offered an opportunity to depict a portrait of the empress of the Qing Dynasty, the Empress Dowager Cixi, to be displayed in the Chinese exhibit. Nine months and four portraits later, Carl returned home to discover newspapers boasting unfavorable material on the Empress, cited incorrectly as Carl’s own words. This blatant slandering of the Empress only foreshadowed the vilifying that would come just two years after her death.
Though Empress Dowager Cixi took part in the eventual crumbling of the Qing Dynasty, Cixi, at the end of her reign, was ushering in a new age
This state of dysphoria is encapsulated in her own reminiscence, once stating that, “I have had a very hard life ever since I was a young girl. I was not a bit happy with my parents, as I was not a favorite. My sisters had everything they wanted, while I was, to a great extent, ignored altogether.” In an odd twist of fate, at fourteen, Cixi was nominated to be a concubine, an impressive distinction that would lead to her being chosen as a potential concubine for Emperor Xianfeng. Moving to the Forbidden City, Cixi became a royal concubine at the age of eighteen, just one among eleven. However, her paramount disparity was in her bearing of Emperor Xianfeng’s only son, Zaichun, who, at the age of five took the throne in the wake of his father’s death. This left Xianfeng’s wife, Empress Niuhuru, and Cixi as co-Empresses Dowager. While the name was just a formality, Cixi and Niuhuru held the power of veto, and through public censures and allies, Empress Dowager Cixi dismantled any attempts to take the power of the throne. At the death of Zaichun, Cixi successfully kept power by shoehorning her nephew Zaitian into the position of Guangxu Emperor. With the death of Empress Dowager Niuhuru at the clutches of a sudden stroke, the strings of sovereignty remained firmly in the hands of Empress Dowager Cixi at the dawn of a
She stood defiant before the Grand Council and expounded, "Now they [the Powers] have started the aggression, and the extinction of our nation is imminent. If we just fold our arms and yield to them, I would have no face to see our ancestors after death. If we must perish, why not fight to the death?"4 Whether or not this was the wise decision for China, Cixi’s connection to the passion and determination imbedded in its people is undeniable. Cixi craved revenge and the consummation of a dark horse legend just as much as her people did. She was ready to face the end of the dynasty, to see retribution against the Allied Forces. Despite this determination, the Battle of Peking brought a swift end to the war. The Chinese Imperial Court escaped the Foreign City in an ox cart, and the Allied forces prevailed. Drawing up a treaty, the Allied forces promised China their territory, and Cixi found the stipulations lenient enough to agree. Though the Allied forces allowed the Qing dynasty to continue, the war foretold a dark future for the dynasty. With the Boxer Protocol implemented, an international military presence in Beijing, Cixi’s subjects were no longer supporting her ideals. The republican uprisings were gaining new