Kangxi

Kangxi (born May 4, 1654, Beijing, China—died Dec. 20, 1722, Beijing) was the second emperor (reigned 1661–1722) of the Qing (Manchu) dynasty (1644–1911/12). To the Chinese empire he added areas north of the Amur River (Heilong Jiang) and portions of Outer Mongolia, and he extended control over Tibet. He opened four ports to foreign trade and encouraged the introduction of Western education and arts and of Roman Catholicism.

Early life

The third son of the Shunzhi emperor, Xuanye was born to the empress Xiaokang, daughter of Tulai, a famous Qing general from the prestigious Tong clan. Upon Shunzhi’s sudden death from smallpox at age 23, in February 1661, Xuanye was immediately raised to the imperial throne over his five brothers, who had been born to mothers lower in birth than his; his chosen reign name, Kangxi (Manchu: Elhe Taifin), means “Peaceful Harmony.”

Because the new emperor was not yet quite seven years old, his government was first administered by Sonin, Suksaha, Ebilun, and Oboi—four conservative Manchu courtiers from the preceding reign. One of the first political acts of the four imperial advisers was to replace the so-called Thirteen Offices (Shisan Yanmen) with a Neiwufu (Dorgi Yamun), or Office of Household. The Thirteen Offices, all organized solely by Chinese eunuchs, had been the abomination of the Manchus ever since they had been introduced by the late emperor, to handle affairs of the imperial household, patterned after an elaborate model that had existed under the preceding dynasty—the Chinese Ming. Now the private sector of the emperor’s life would be run by his personal Manchu bond servants who staffed the newly created Office of Household. Thus, the Qing rulers successfully prevented court eunuchs from meddling with politics, in sharp contrast to many other dynasties, the Ming in particular, that had recurrently let eunuchs gain access to actual power, often with disastrous results.

In 1667, advised by Sonin and other ministers, the Kangxi emperor began attending to affairs of state at the age of 13, as his father had done before him. He ruled only in name, however; the real power was still firmly in the hands of the four advisers. Sonin soon died, and Oboi became a virtual dictator, putting Suksaha to death for an alleged crime and cowing Ebilun into submission. Finally, in 1669, Oboi and Ebilun were eliminated by Kangxi himself, who must have enlisted the help of his grandmother, the grand empress dowager, and of Xiong Cili, his Chinese tutor. The actual arrest of Oboi was made in the audience room by young wrestlers, who jumped upon the powerful minister from their hiding place behind the throne. With this coup the 15-year-old emperor proved to the public that he was their real master.

Acquisition of actual power

Once in power, the Kangxi emperor was confronted by the grave problem of what to do with three vassal kings in South China. The three kings—Wu Sangui of Yunnan, Shang Kexi of Guangdong, and Geng Jimao (after his death succeeded by his son Geng Jingzhong) of Fujian—were among the Chinese warlords who, with their powerful firearms, had been welcomed into the Manchu camp even before the Manchu conquest of China in 1644. When the Shunzhi emperor had entered Beijing in that year, the rest of China was still in the hands of the remaining Ming forces or of roving bands of robbers. Having made a major contribution toward subduing them, the three warlords had been created kings and had stayed in South China with their private armies. It was inevitable that the three vassal kings, with their virtual immunity, should become a menace to the Beijing government.

Britannica Quiz

Kings and Emperors (Part III) Quiz

A chance to improve the situation came in 1673, when Shang Kexi offered to give up the command of his army and retire to Manchuria, his birthplace. The offer was so promptly accepted by Kangxi that the other two kings were forced to make the same offer, if only for courtesy’s sake. Now the chief issue at the imperial council in Beijing became whether or not to challenge the formidable military strength of Wu Sangui, the very person responsible for the 1644 Manchu takeover of the capital. The young emperor again showed his resoluteness by deciding in favour of trying to deprive Wu of his army, arguing that the three kings were sure to eventually rebel against Beijing and that it would be better to forestall them by taking advantage of this opportunity. A shocked Wu immediately went to war against the Manchus, starting the so-called Revolt of the Three Feudatories. Initial reverses suffered by the imperial forces prompted Burni of the Chahar Mongols—the supreme royal tribe until the Manchu conquest of Inner Mongolia in 1635—to revolt also against the Qing and sent ripples of political unease among other East Asian countries. Kangxi’s youthful energy and genius in military strategy finally triumphed over the senility of Wu Sangui, who never even attempted to march on Beijing but died soon after, styling himself emperor. The Qing army entered the city of Kunming, in Yunnan, in 1681; the war was over, and the dynasty was saved.

After eliminating the three kings, Kangxi turned his attention to the Zheng regime on Taiwan. Originally from Fujian, the Zheng family had been for generations a sea power that monopolized trade across the vast expanse of the China seas. Gen. Zheng Chenggong (known to Westerners as the Koxinga), who refused to submit to the Manchus, had moved his headquarters to Taiwan, which he took from the Dutch in 1662, and his descendants had continued resistance to the Qing from there. Lack of naval power prevented the Qing from mounting an effective attack on Taiwan. Their only strategy, adopted in 1661, though to little avail, was the forced relocation of the inhabitants of coastal areas deeper into the continent, so that the Zheng might be isolated. In 1683 an internal strife in the Zheng family gave Kangxi a chance to order his troops across the Taiwan Straits. The Zheng surrendered, and Taiwan was incorporated into the province of Fujian.

Are you a student?

Get a special academic rate on Britannica Premium.

Subscribe

With China securely under his power, the Kangxi emperor next turned to face his enemies in the north. The Russians in Siberia, who had reached the Amur River valley in the mid-17th century, had been expelled from their fortresses of Albazin and Nerchinsk by the Qing army before Kangxi’s reign. But the Russians restored the two fortresses and were building many more in that region, and Kangxi prepared to deal them a blow. In 1685 Qing forces attacked Albazin and captured it in a few days. As soon as they withdrew, however, the Russians manned the fortress again. Kangxi ordered another expedition to Albazin the following year and began a protracted siege. Concurrent diplomatic negotiations between Kangxi and Tsar Peter I the Great of Russia led to the signing of the Treaty of Nerchinsk (1689). Drafted under the pressure of a superior number of Qing troops sent into Nerchinsk by Kangxi, the treaty drew the Sino-Russian borderline along the Gorbitsa, an outer tributary of the Amur, and the Stanovoy Range, thereby leaving the Amur valley and Manchuria, homeland of the dynasty, in the hands of the Qing. Next, Kangxi brought Outer Mongolia under his power. Dga’l-dan Boshogtu (Galdan Boshigt) Khan of the Dzungar Oyrats, a nomadic people who lived to the west of Outer Mongolia and to the north of the Tien Shan, was an ambitious ruler who had conquered east Turkistan and then invaded the territories of the Outer Mongolian Khalkhas. The Khalkha Mongols fled in great numbers to Inner Mongolia, seeking protection under the Qing. In 1691 Kangxi met with representatives of the Khalkha tribes at Doloon Nuur (now Duolun) in Inner Mongolia, where he received their formal pledge of allegiance. In 1696 he embarked on a daring and extremely dangerous venture—a military expedition to Outer Mongolia across the scorched Gobi. In personal command of the middle corps, Kangxi managed to overcome hunger and thirst in the hostile terrain and annihilated the Dzungars at Dzuunmod, east of the present-day Ulaanbaatar. Dga’l-dan committed suicide the following year at his hideout in the Altai Mountains. With the return of the Khalkhas to their homeland, Outer Mongolia became an integral part of the Qing empire.

Two decades of peace between the Qing and the Dzungars ensued, until the latter invaded Tibet and took Lhasa in 1717. Mindful of the spiritual sway of Tibet’s Dalai Lama over the Mongols, Kangxi sent his army into Tibet and expelled the Dzungars from Lhasa in 1720 and thus incorporated the country into his empire. Hoping to check the Dzungar power, Kangxi sent, in 1712, an embassy to the Torguts, or Volga Kalmyks, who had migrated to southern Russia in the earlier half of the 17th century. When the Manchu envoys, who traveled the length of Siberia back and forth by its myriad waterways, returned to Beijing three years later, one of them, Tulishen, wrote a detailed account of the journey under the title of Yiyulu (Record of Strange Regions).