China under the Empress Dowager: Being the history of the life and times of Tzŭ Hsi

About this book

This volume is a scholarly biography of Empress Dowager Cixi, presented as a chronological study of her life and the turbulent politics of late‑imperial China. The authors open with a series of formal acknowledgments, then lay out a detailed contents list that traces Cixi’s ancestry, her early years as Yehonala, the various regencies she presided over, and the major crises of the era, Taiping rebellion, the Boxer uprising, the 1898 reform movement, and her final years. The opening text also supplies extensive illustration credits and a catalogue of palace architecture, underscoring the work’s reliance on contemporary photographs, maps, and journal articles to reconstruct the court’s inner workings.

Written in the measured, documentary style of early‑20th‑century British scholarship, the narrative combines factual reporting with occasional editorial commentary. Its language reflects the period’s formal tone, and the dense footnote‑like descriptions of gates, halls, and rituals will appeal to readers interested in detailed political history, architectural heritage, or the intricate court culture of Qing China.

Opening lines

The thanks of the Authors are hereby gratefully expressed to Miss Katharine A. Carl, for permission to reproduce the photograph of her portrait of the Empress Dowager; to Mr. K. Ogawa, art publisher of Tokyo, for the use of his unique pictures of the Palace at Peking; to Mr. Geo. Bronson Rea, of the Far Eastern Review, for permission to reproduce illustrations originally published in that journal; to Messrs. Betines, of Peking, for the right to publish their views of the capital; and to the Editor of The Times, for his courtesy in permitting the inclusion in this volume of certain articles written for that paper. …

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