The Much Maligned Empress Dowager: A Revisionist Study of the Empress Dowager Tz'u-hsi (1835–1908)

Clio, the Muse of History, has not been kind to the Empress Dowager Tz'u-hsi (1835–1908). Traditional Chinese historians always have been prejudiced against feminine influence in court. Moreover, historians have long relied upon the works of men such as K'ang Yu-wei (1858–1927) and Liang Ch'i-ch'ao (1873–1929), the two leaders of the radical reform movement, and other pro-Emperor radical reformers, most notably Wang Chao (1859–1935), Yün Yü-ting (1863–1918), Lo Tun-jung (d. 1923), and Li Hsi-sheng, for their information about the workings of the Ch'ing court during the period 1898 to 1900. Since these men were opposed to the power and conservatism of the Empress Dowager, their prejudice is reflected in their writings about the court at that time. Many historians also have relied upon the works of Western writers such as J. O. P. Bland, Sir Edmund Backhouse, and Hosea B. Morse for their information about this period. In fact, Bland and Backhouse'sChina Under the Empress Dowageris the book which has shaped many of our present-day negative images of Tz'u-hsi. Recently the reliability of Sir Edmund Backhouse has been seriously challenged by Hugh Trevor-Roper in his excellent study,Hermit of Peking. There can be no doubt that Western writers drew their facts from exchanges with the writings by the Chinese radical reformers, from unreliable eunuchs, and from highly biased newspapers, such as theNorth China Herald(a pro-reform Western-oriented Shanghai newspaper) and theCh'ing-i pao[China Discussion], which was edited by Liang Ch'i-ch'ao and published in Yokohama.