The Odd World of Royalist Conspiracy Theories

There is a man, probably unknown to most younger Americans today, named Lyndon LaRouche who was once fairly well known as someone who was constantly running for president without ever winning. He ran on his own at least once as I recall but usually as a Democrat though he never made any headway, never won a primary and thus was never actually nominated. An ardent socialist from a French-Canadian family, he was known for his many and diverse conspiracy theories and his, perhaps, most overriding conspiracy theory involved monarchism and, in particular, the most prominent monarchy in the world, namely the British monarchy. There have, of course, been numerous individuals throughout American history, and doubtless in other countries, who have portrayed the British as the villains of the world but I do not know of any who took it to such an extreme as Lyndon LaRouche or of any other who so particularly singled out the British Royal Family as the authors of this villainy.

To summarize the views of LaRouche and his movement, this man believed that the British Empire was and still is alive and well, despite all evidence to the contrary. He maintains that the supposed global super-power, the United States of America, is, in fact, not even an independent country but is, rather, simply one of the pawns of the British Empire which still dominates the world and that HM Queen Elizabeth II is the unquestioned and absolute ruler of this British Empire which secretly dominates the world. He has claimed that the Queen maintains her position by being at the top of a vast, global, drug cartel network and has never missed on opportunity to accuse the British Royal Family of being responsible for every tragedy and atrocity that has ever come about. Some of these have gained more traction than others, such as his assertion that Diana, Princess of Wales, did not die as a result of a drunk driving accident but was assassinated by British secret agents on orders from the Duke of Edinburgh.

However, while LaRouche insists that the British monarch is the mastermind of this sinister conspiracy, he by no means limits it to the British royals alone. He has often referred to an Anglo-Dutch empire of drug traffickers and, in fact, concludes that since 1688 the Dutch took over the British Empire and set all of this up, so while the House of Windsor is on top today, it is only thanks to their Dutch co-conspirators of days gone by. He, of course, has also played up the German ties of the British Royal Family, past and present, such as by portraying Prince Philip and the late consort of the Dutch monarch, Prince Bernhard, of being Nazis and that the Anglo-Dutch royals are still carrying on the Nazi campaign of genocide on a global scale. He also once made a point to write that Prince Philip was Danish as if this was equivalent to being a Nazi German so, presumably, the Danish Royal Family is implicated as well as the British, Dutch and German royal houses. So, the British Empire rules the world through drug trafficking, except it is actually the Dutch empire under another name and is run by German royals who are all Nazis. Are we clear now?

LaRouche was a very big fan of Franklin D. Roosevelt, but certainly all recent American presidents have simply been the puppets of this Anglo-Dutch British Empire in his view. All of this may seem quite entertaining for southern Europeans but, rest assured, LaRouche does not let you off the hook either. After all, he also asserts that the Anglo-Dutch empire, run by Germans, was established in order to supplant the Venetian empire which dominated European affairs and held all of Europe in its grip previously. So, in the annals of the secret history of the world according to Lyndon LaRouche, before the British Empire dominated the world through banks and drug cartels, it was the Venetian republic which did so, all of the supposedly powerful kings of Spain and France, the German and Italian princes simply being the powerless puppets of the villainous and all-powerful Doge of Venice!

Does this sort of thing happen in other parts of the world? Not to any great extent from what I can tell. I have never heard of any equivalent in Africa or the Islamic countries. In Japan the native monarchy is certainly not talked about in such a way though I have seen a few examples in Japanese entertainment of portrayals of the (again) British monarch being the one who secretly calls the shots, that the British royals and hereditary aristocracy are still the ones really in control of the country, they just do everything behind the scenes so as not to attract notice. That being said, I have to believe this is simply a tool of imaginative fiction and I doubt very seriously anyone in Japan actually believes that. The only non-western equivalent I have ever heard of is the conspiracy regarding the late Qing Dynasty which is prevalent among the more bizarre elements of the Han Chinese nationalists though, obviously, in a country like Communist China, it is hard to know how much of this to take seriously since it is all necessarily based on rumors and such. As conspiracy theories go, it is a fantastic one.

According to these Han-supremacists, depending on which version of the conspiracy you choose to believe, the Great Qing Empire is, like the British Empire, still alive and well and still ruling China secretly, behind the scenes. Some versions of the story say that the Manchu princes themselves are running the show, others that it is simply a conspiracy of Manchurians in general who maintain Manchu supremacy over the Han Chinese. This is quite an accomplishment considering that the Han account for about 92% of the population of China while the Manchurians are practically nonexistent. Even simply counting those with some Manchu ancestry would still be a statistically irrelevant number. Nonetheless, the Han-supremacists who push this conspiracy, carrying on the anti-Manchu sentiment of the late Qing period, believe that the Chinese government and military are riddled with Manchurians who manipulate policy, kill off Han Chinese rivals and guide national affairs. Probably their most well known accusation is that the former “one child policy” was actually a secret program of genocide by the Manchurians to wipe out the Han population.

The idea that there are anti-Han Manchurians in control of China at a time when non-Han minorities have been reduced to a miniscule fraction of the Chinese population is clearly absurd but hardly more absurd than LaRouche arguing that U.S. President Obama, the son of a man imprisoned by the British colonial authorities in Kenya, would be the pliant stooge of the British monarch. It is no less absurd than the conspiracy put forward by the recently deceased Jack Chick that the Islamic religion was created by the Pope as an instrument of the Catholic Church, that the Catholics, Muslims, Jews, pagans and Freemasons were all playing for the same team against his version of “true” Christianity. How can anyone possibly believe any of this?

A simple explanation is that they take certain actual facts and then build absurdities on top of them. The “one child policy” was real, after all. The British Empire did fight the Opium Wars with China and the Catholic Church did absorb many pre-Christian customs of pagan Europe. The Italian city-states and the Dutch republic were major banking centers and London today is one of the financial centers of the world. The conspiracy theories mentioned above take these facts, expand on them and the next thing you know, the Queen is running a drug cartel, Qing princes are ruling Communist China and the Jesuits are the papal assassination squad. As it stands, very few people believe these stories and those who do find them attractive, I think, because they allow people to believe themselves powerless and thus not responsible for the sad state of affairs in which they find themselves. It may reduce people to being powerless dupes but at least it means someone else is to blame, it is not your fault and all you have to do is believe it and support those who told you the “truth”. You do not have to actually take any action as these all-powerful forces would easily thwart you after all, so it is also extremely convenient and requires very little effort on your part, which is how most like it.

There a myriad of these types of conspiracies, aimed against various groups, large and small alike and they can be quite irritating. I find them irritating because, for one thing, secrets are hard to keep and most people with a sinister agenda are quite open about what they are doing because they do not think it is sinister. Focus on winning the game, not dissecting the motives of the other player. I also find it irritating because it gives permission for people to stop taking responsibility for their own actions or, more usually, their inaction. It encourages people to see themselves as victims and there are few things more destructive in the modern world than the victim mentality. It also leads to the same sort of thing that the tens of thousands of Christian denominations led to in western religion which was an ever increasing amount of skepticism. When people do not know what to believe, when there are so many different narratives that are being pushed, people simply give up, stop believing anything they hear and, again, become inactive.

Most intelligent people, I would think, can easily see that conspiracies such as the unseen, all-powerful British Empire or the secret society of Manchurian loyalists are complete and utter nonsense. However, conspiracies do exist. Many people, in America for example, said that all talk of the “Deep State” was a silly conspiracy theory but we now know it to be completely true. Conspiracies exist but they are rarely, if ever, secret or, at the very least, do not stay secret for long. It is also true that not everything that looks like a conspiracy actually is, often it is simply a group of like minded people, working toward the same goal who thus inadvertently assist each other and this can be easily portrayed as a conspiracy even when nothing of the sort was going on. Again, what matters is what they are doing, not who is doing it or how much they coordinate with each other. So, for a monarchist perspective, I would say it does not matter to me so much whether the French Revolution was a Masonic conspiracy, it only matters to me that I think the Revolution was horrible and should have been prevented or stopped. I would oppose anyone favoring the French Revolution whether they were a Freemason or not.

I would also add, frivolously, that these types of conspiracies do make me laugh in as much as the enemies of monarchy tend to have a loftier view of existing monarchs than many monarchists do. While monarchists lament the powerless state of western monarchs, the enemies of monarchy like LaRouche followers still think they are the most powerful people in the world, secretly dominating world affairs behind the scenes. Sometimes, one must simply appreciate the irony of the situation.

Monarch Profile: Emperor Tongzhi of China

It is an unfortunate fact that many, when looking back on the history of fallen dynasties, tend to take that downfall as an inevitable fact and allow this to prejudice their view of monarchs ruling during what is, retroactively of course, referred to as the latter stages of a dynasty. This causes them to emphasize the negative, discount the positive and ignore what were real and legitimate instances of a reversal in fortunes or at least the possibility for rejuvenation. Such is the case with the Tongzhi Emperor, tenth monarch of the Qing Dynasty of Manchuria. He was born, Prince Zaichun, on April 27, 1856 the only son of Emperor Xianfeng by his powerful consort Tzu-hsi (Cixi). He was only five years old when his father died and from that moment on was at the center of intrigues on the part of his formidable mother. Emperor Xianfeng had originally intended for General Sushun to act as head of a regency committee for his young son but this plan was thwarted by an alliance Cixi forged with Empress Xiao Chen (who had given the Emperor a daughter) and the Emperor’s brother Prince Kong (Aisin-Gioro Yixin). Cixi and Xiao Chen were both raised to the status of Dowager Empress and for Cixi it would mark the beginning of her fifty year hold on power in China.

However, the alliance was an uneasy one. Whereas Empress Dowager Cixi tended to be suspicious of any change to the established, traditional system, Prince Kong was in favor of modernization (especially in the military) and tended to prefer cooperation with the western powers over antagonism. Under this triumvirate the Great Qing Empire first began to step onto the world stage, establishing a Ministry of Foreign Affairs and promoting the study of foreign languages. As a child, Emperor Tongzhi was left mostly in the care of a small army of fawning eunuchs who were not always a good influence on him. While his tutors strove to instill in him the traditional Confucian virtues, the eunuchs were all too willing to please him by indulging his every whim and, at times, introducing him to some he might not have considered on his own. In 1873 the young Emperor was declared to be of age and he began his official duties. One of these, keeping with the changing times, was to receive foreign ambassadors and he did so, meeting with the representatives of Japan, Russia, Great Britain, France, The Netherlands and the United States. As an another sign of how things were changing, none were obliged to kowtow in the presence of the young ‘Son of Heaven’.

In spite of official declarations, Empress Dowager Cixi continued to be the real power behind the throne, though initially she was not the only one struggling to dominate the halls of power in the name of the Tongzhi Emperor. The young monarch became listless and disheartened under such domination and drifted back to the eunuchs he had known all his short life who were more than willing to help him flee his troubles through overindulgence in women and alcohol. His mother responded by getting her 16-year old son married, though she clashed with Empress Dowager Xiao Chen over who it should be, until Tongzhi chose Xiaozheyi of the Alute clan, Mongol Plain Blue Banner, daughter of a prominent nobleman and scholar. However, marriage brought little lasting peace to the life of the Emperor. He had other concubines but favored his Empress above all and spent most every night with her. Empress Dowager Cixi, never terribly fond of the girl, accused her of trying to monopolize the affections of her husband and depriving the other consorts of his affections. Eventually, she would go so far as to order the two to separate.

Meanwhile, on the political scene, some actions where being taken in an effort to strengthen and modernize China as the recent defeats in the Opium Wars and the exorbitantly costly victory over the Taiping Rebellion had proven to all that some change was necessary or China would be surpassed and swallowed up by foreign powers. The shining example on how this could be done was the Meiji Restoration in Japan. In a very short period of time, the Empire of Japan had become a major regional power with modern industry, infrastructure and military might that secured it against foreign interference while also maintaining the imperial system and the traditional culture and values of Japan. This would not be the last time that something similar for the Great Qing Empire was considered. Toward that end, a number of reforms were enacted as part of the so-called Tongzhi Restoration. This included the aforementioned establishment of the Foreign Ministry and Institute for Foreign Languages as well as enlisted the aid of foreign powers in certain areas. Primarily, this meant the Imperial Maritime Customs Service which was essentially set up to enlist foreigners in China to deal with the foreigners who had dominated the Chinese coast since 1860. It was staffed by foreigners and a British national was put in charge. The IMCS collected revenue and excise duties for the imperial government and it proved to be a major success and has been described by more than a few as the only arm of the Chinese government that worked efficiently and well.

The Tongzhi Restoration, however, did not go anywhere close to the lengths that the Meiji Restoration did in Japan. It was intended to focus on “practical knowledge” while shunning western ideas about philosophy or politics. That would probably have been okay but there was such opposition that permission to limit modernization was often stretched to mean that many refused to implement any real modernization at all. There were also problems at court with the Emperor and his mother not on good terms and with cracks beginning to appear in the triumvirate that still held considerable power despite the fact that Emperor Tongzhi was supposed to be in charge. Empress Dowager Cixi suggested that the Emperor build himself a new residence and he seemed quite taken by the idea but Prince Kong refused to allocate the funds for it. Some have wondered since if the Empress Dowager expected this. Emperor Tongzhi was enraged and distraught by this, yet another example of how he was not being allowed to rule as he pleased and how everyone seemed dedicated to thwarting him and his happiness. He went back to trying to forget his sorrow, came down with smallpox but seemed to recover from it. Then, quite suddenly, Emperor Tongzhi died on January 12, 1875.

Due to the circumstances, many wondered if the Empress Dowager had not had her own son poisoned to remove him from the influence of his wife and prevent him from removing her from power. When the Empress Consort later committed suicide many also suspected the Empress Dowager of being behind it. Whatever the case may be, it was a sad end to a monarch who, despite much over-indulgence, had lived a rather sad life from start to finish. Emperor Tongzhi is often portrayed very critically as being willful, over-emotional and dissolute. However, what faults he had were mostly not of his own making but were the result of how he was treated by others. He also possessed positive qualities which are often overlooked. Had he been free to rule as he wished, aided by his very intelligent Empress consort, and had the Tongzhi Restoration lived up to its potential, there is every possibility that the era of Tongzhi might have gone down in Chinese history as the period when the Manchu dynasty revived itself and put Imperial China on the path to prestige and prosperity.

Where Chinese Rule Is Wrong

The title of this may be a bit confusing. As a monarchist, I find everything about the rule of communist China (or “communist” China) wrong but what I am talking about here specifically is the controversy about certain areas that are currently ruled by the People’s Bandit Republic of China which that regime has absolutely no right to. The most prominent of these areas, certainly in the west and which probably has the highest profile worldwide, is Tibet. Why is there a dispute over the Chinese rule of Tibet? Why is this the only dispute most people have heard about? More people know about Tibet mostly because the Tibetan exile community has elements in many countries and because of the inspirational leadership of His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama who so many people around the world have come to respect and admire for his compassion and devotion to peace. The bandit regime in Peking has absolutely no right to Tibet but it also has no right to some other areas most people do not think about such as Manchuria (now called simply the northeast as part of the program, sadly mostly successful by this point, to eradicate Manchuria from existence) and Mongolia. Now, as most probably know, China does not rule Mongolia which is an independent country though teetering between dependence on China and Russia. However, the communists in Peking have claimed it in the past and the Republic of China, on Taiwan, which still maintains a claim to rule the whole of mainland China, also still, technically, include Mongolia in that claim. So, why all the confusion?

Song Empire

Basically, it all goes back to the last time China had a monarchy and the efforts by the republicans and communist bandits to claim the entire legacy of traditional, imperial China as their own. Save, perhaps, for the period when China was part of the Mongol Yuan Empire, the place most in the world think of as China reached its greatest height under the Manchu emperors of the Great Qing Dynasty. The borders that existed at the height of the Great Qing Empire are the borders the communists in Peking would most like to see restored. The problem with that is that those were the borders of the Great Qing Empire and not really the borders of China. Confused yet? It can seem quite complicated so pay close attention and we will try to take this one step at a time. What most of the world calls “China” is, of course, not a Chinese term but is a western term. The Chinese never called their country “China” in all of their multi-thousand year history prior to the revolution. This area was referred to as “the Middle Kingdom” which can itself be a bit confusing since this referred not only to China proper but actually meant the entire world; everything above the underworld and below Heaven -the “Middle Kingdom”. The ruler of China was considered, in traditional Chinese political philosophy, to be the ruler of the entire world it was only that some remote, barbarian peoples on the edges of the earth were too ignorant to understand this. It was a way of thinking which must be kept in mind when considering how China interacted with foreign powers and why the communists today seize on this interaction to justify their claims for more territory.

Traditionally, Chinese rulers would not deal with any outsider unless they presented themselves as a supplicant and recognized or at least pretended to recognize the Chinese Emperor as their superior. This attitude persisted for almost the entirety of Chinese history. For example, when China and Japan first established diplomatic relations things got off to a bad start as the message from the Emperor of Japan to the Emperor of China was addressed as ‘from the land where the sun rises to the land where the sun sets’ referring to Japan being to the east of China. However, the Chinese took this as being extremely rude and offensive as they saw it as implying that the Emperor of Japan was the equal of the Emperor of China. Move forward many, many centuries in time and we can see again the case of the first British diplomatic mission to China which ran into a considerable obstacle over the refusal of the British ambassador to present himself as a subject and kowtow before the Manchu Emperor, getting down on both knees and touching his forehead to the floor. Today, the Chinese Communist kleptocracy claims that any ruler or representative of a ruler who recognized the Chinese Emperor as his superior or overlord in this fashion was effectively making his country a part of China when, as we can see, this would apply to almost every foreign ruler or dignitary any Chinese Emperor ever met because they would not deal with anyone unless they assumed such a posture.

Viet envoys to Qing court in China

This situation is further complicated by the fact that not all such tributaries were of equal status. The Emperor in China might have more or less influence in one of the other but none were directly under Chinese rule or were considered a part of China. As early as the Tang Dynasty, for example, the kingdoms in what is now Korea were nominal vassals of the Tang Emperor but retained their own rulers. Under the Ming Dynasty, the unified Kingdom of Korea was likewise a vassal of the Ming Emperor or, in terms more familiar to westerners perhaps, a Chinese protectorate. So, when Japan invaded Korea in 1592 the Ming Emperor sent hundreds of thousands of Chinese troops to defend (or in this case re-take) Korea. However, the King of Korea was still the local authority and Korea was never considered a part of China itself. Similarly, there were periods when Chinese Emperors ruled Vietnam but they were invariably driven out. However, every time this occurred, almost immediately, the victorious Vietnamese dynasty would send envoys to Peking to present themselves as the vassals of the Emperor in China and to request his ‘seal of approval’ on their government. The Chinese did not rule Vietnam and, in fact, inside Vietnam the monarch was often referred to as the ‘Emperor’ while he was referred to as ‘King’ when dealing with the ruler of China. It was a way to keep the peace by allowing the Emperor in China to save face, being treated as the superior while in fact the local Vietnamese monarch actually ruled the country. Again, this was rather like a protectorate as when the last Le dynasty emperor was overthrown, he called on China to restore him and this situation endured until the Sino-French War.

Obviously, no one today would consider Korea or Vietnam to be a part of China nor any of the other neighboring countries which paid tribute to the Chinese Emperor. Problems, and confusion, arise partly because of the different understanding of what makes a country. As stated earlier, the Chinese did not view their country as “China” in the same way that foreigners viewed their own countries. When the Chinese referred to their country, when not referring to it as the broader “Middle Kingdom” the Chinese always referred to the dynasty so that the country was whatever territory the Emperor had under his direct control which might have included most, some or even relatively little of what is labeled as China on maps of today. So, rather than saying “China” the Chinese would refer to their country, under the Ming Dynasty for example, as the “Great Ming Empire” (Ta Ming Kuo) and then as the “Great Qing Empire” (Ta Qing Kuo) under the Manchurian dynasty. The Ming Empire, for example, included all of “China” which is to say the historic lands sometimes referred to (somewhat oddly) as “China proper” but did not include Tibet, Mongolia or Manchuria though parts of southern Manchuria and southern Mongolia were under Ming rule for a relatively short time. Today, what the Chinese government likes to claim is that territory which was part of the Great Qing Empire at its height, which included Tibet, Mongolia and Manchuria (obviously, as the Qing Dynasty was the native dynasty of Manchuria) as well as smaller parts of various neighboring powers.

Emperor Nurhaqi of Manchuria

The absurdity of this can, perhaps, best be illustrated by skipping backward, over the Ming Dynasty, to the Yuan Dynasty. As regular readers will know, the Yuan Dynasty was the Mongolian dynasty and refers to that period when China was part of the vast Mongol Empire founded by Genghis Khan with his grandson Kublai Khan being counted as the first Yuan Emperor as it was he who conquered the remainder of China itself; what had been the southern Song Dynasty. What was directly under the rule of the Yuan Emperors was restricted to basically the east Asian mainland north of Vietnam, extending all the way into Siberia. However, the wider Mongol Empire stretched all the way to well inside Eastern Europe. For China today to claim Tibet or Manchuria as being a part of China because all were part of the Qing Empire would be just as absurd as claiming that Siberia is a part of China because it was part of the Yuan Empire. Any claim to Mongolia is just as silly. No Chinese Emperor, meaning an Emperor of the Han nationality from “China proper” ever ruled all of Mongolia or Manchuria but under the Yuan and Qing Dynasties the Mongol and later Manchu Emperors did rule all of China. To put it another way, Mongolia nor Manchuria were ever a part of China but China was, in a manner of speaking, a part of Mongolia and Manchuria during those eras when the Mongol and Manchu Emperors ruled China.

This is the history: When the Ming Empire was in its final days the Qing Dynasty was already well established as the leaders of the Empire of Manchuria. The Manchu Emperor formed an alliance with the Mongols and was granted sovereignty over them when the son of Ligden Khan (last Mongol Emperor of the Yuan Dynasty that had previously ruled most of Asia) handed the imperial seal over to the Manchu Emperor Hong Taiji, who was himself the son of the first Qing Emperor Nurhaqi. Thus Hong Taiji became Emperor of Manchuria and Great Khan of Mongolia. Meanwhile, to the south, the Ming Empire was coming apart. In 1644 Peking was taken by the rebel army of Li Zicheng with the last Ming Emperor, Chongzhen, committing suicide. Li Zicheng proclaimed himself the master of a new Shun Dynasty but a combined force of Chinese, Manchu and Mongol troops ousted him and he disappeared, making the Manchu Emperor Shunzhi the ruler of China, having dispatched an illegitimate usurper and restoring peace and order to China, which became part of the Great Qing Empire -an empire that already existed in Manchuria and Mongolia. Emperor Shunzhi also received an official visit by His Holiness the “Great Fifth” Dalai Lama. The Qing emperors had been protectors of the Tibetan style of Buddhism since the reign of Nurhaqi and, of course, there were deep ties between Mongolia and Tibet with the Mongols having helped establish the Dalai Lamas in the first place and with the Dalai Lamas holding spiritual authority over Mongolia as well as Tibet.

Emperor KangXi of the Great Qing

As we have seen, Mongolia and Manchuria were independent countries which came to share a monarch and then that monarch was also recognized as the ruler of China, holding the Mandate of Heaven. China never conquered or annexed Manchuria and Mongolia, in fact, what happened was closer to the reverse of that. In the same way, it is important to note that when the Great Fifth visiting Peking it was as one sovereign visiting another. His successor, was overthrown and in the ensuing chaos the Qing Emperor Kangxi sent troops to see order restored and the legitimate Dalai Lama secured on his throne. It was at that point and only at that point that the Kingdom of Tibet was declared a protectorate of the Great Qing Empire. That, of course, did not make Tibet a part of China. The Dalai Lama remained the ruler of Tibet with the only change being that two Qing commissioners and a small military force were stationed there and, in the future, Tibet did call on the Qing Empire for assistance in times of crisis. For those who claim that Tibet has “always” been a part of China, one would have to ask why there were no representatives from Peking there in the first place. Why is mention made of the annexation of Tibetan border territories to Chinese provinces if Tibet was entirely part of China already? Obviously, this is nonsense. Tibet was an independent country and it was only when neighboring countries invaded Tibet and Qing troops were sent in to defend the place that Qing Imperial influence was most felt in the aftermath.

Hopefully, this has made clear the absurdity of the Republic of China (and more so the People’s Republic of China) claiming Tibet, Mongolia and Manchuria to have “always” been a part of China. When the revolution occurred, Manchuria naturally had no part in it and Mongolia and Tibet were both quick to make clear to the rest of the world that they were independent, issuing joint declarations to that effect. This was because their association with China was based solely on their relationship with the Qing Emperor and not the country of China itself. Once the Manchu Emperor was deprived of his throne, all deals were off. That independence was temporarily retained for Tibet, remaining independent until communist Chinese troops conquered the country in 1951. Mongolia (or at least Outer Mongolia) remains independent to this day though it was certainly not an easy achievement. Manchuria became, effectively, a warlord “monarchy” ruled by a warlord father and son in succession while they offered nominal allegiance to the Republic of China. All of that changed when the Japanese occupied Manchuria and in 1932 independence was declared for the State of Manchuria, later to be fully restored as the Empire of Manchuria. That, of course, is what should have happened from the beginning and some Chinese officials even admitted as much.

Empire of Manchuria

There was no justification for the Han Chinese to think they were somehow entitled to Manchuria just because China and Manchuria had been part of the same empire. As soon as the Qing Emperor was forced to abdicate in Peking, he should have been able to immediately withdraw to the old Qing Imperial Palace in Mukden and continue to rule over Manchuria as his ancestors had done before accepting the allegiance of the Chinese. For China to claim Manchuria as part of their own national territory would be as absurd as the United States, after winning the Revolutionary War, claiming Great Britain and Ireland to be American territory just because both had previously been part of the same empire. That being so, when the polyglot army of Baron von Ungern-Sternberg drove the Chinese out of Mongolia in 1921, he was expelling invaders and restoring the country to its only available legitimate leader. Likewise, when the Japanese restored the last Qing Emperor to the throne of Manchuria they were correcting a gross historical injustice and when the Soviets (in total violation of their pledged word) invaded and destroyed that empire and handed it over to China again, they were essentially giving recovered property back to the thieves. In the same way, if by some chance the Dalai Lama is ever restored to the Potala Palace in Tibet, it will be correcting a horrible injustice. When the republicans, and certainly the communists, took over China, they turned their back on and even attempted to destroy all that had gone before them and the legacy of the emperors in particular. It is the height of hypocrisy to then attempt to claim those borders which only existed because of the emperors as their own inheritance.

Understanding the Last Emperor, Part III

Continued from Part II

The Emperor hoped he would finally have the opportunity to prove himself as an independent ruler but he was hampered by the degree to which Manchukuo depended on Japan for security and economic development. As Japan was the primary source of investment in Manchukuo, they naturally had the most influence in the country. Both then and in the years since this has been exaggerated to ridiculous proportions. However, because Japan was the primary source of support for the new regime and because the Emperor desired to show solidarity with Japan during times of increasing difficulty, the Emperor signed into law many directives to show that Manchukuo stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Japan. Some of these, such as Japanese being made the official language taught in Manchukuo schools, have since caused a great deal of unfair criticism to be heaped on the Emperor. However, in every government position it was a Manchu who held the top ministerial role with the Japanese being restricted to the position of deputy ministers. Many critics hold Manchukuo and Japan to an unfair standard in this regard, ignoring other countries which acted similarly. The United States, for example, recognized the independence of The Philippines after World War II but still imposed many conditions to give American interests a favored position and to maintain American military forces in the country.

Enemies of the Empire of Manchukuo, in and outside the country, worked tirelessly to spread fear and paranoia about the Japanese presence in the country. Especially after the start of World War II any person who died or left the country was immediately accused of having been assassinated by the Japanese. Even the Emperor's consort, Tan Yuling, who died in 1944 is an example of this. Despite the lack of any evidence at all that she died of anything but natural causes it is still widely held, whether outright or through innuendo, that she was murdered by Japanese doctors after opposing their influence in Manchukuo. What is certain is that the Japanese officials always treated the Emperor with the utmost respect and, though he later expressed misgivings, the Emperor gave his full support to Japan and the "holy war" for Greater East Asia and showed this support by proclaiming Shinto as the official state religion of Manchukuo. And yet, the Emperor himself was not immune from the fear-mongering going on throughout the country. Concerns about security became causes for suspicion and in time the Emperor himself became very worried about his safety and constantly consulted Buddhist oracles and delved into divination to try to protect himself. Empress Wan Jung dealt with the situation by becoming addicted to opium, a fact which particularly distressed the Emperor as his mother had died of an opium overdose when he was young.

In actuality, the life of the Emperor had in a way regressed to what it had been like for him as a boy in the Forbidden City, only with a change in handlers. He signed what documents the Japanese put before him, he followed their advice on who he was to meet and what he was to say and was not allowed to leave the palace unless the trip had been cleared by the Japanese and he was accompanied by an official escort. Today this is all portrayed in the most negative light possible, yet is little different from the role of any constitutional monarch and, indeed, was not terribly dissimilar to what life was like for the Emperor of Japan at the same time. There was a war going on and it would not be the first or only time that progress toward greater independence for a client state was put on hold because of an on-going conflict. Moreover, the conflict was increasingly going against Japan and by extension for Manchukuo. Japanese security around the Emperor and his own paranoia only increased as the defeat of Japan loomed closer. This is unfortunate because the Emperor was legitimately popular among the native Manchu people, if for no other reason than that he was one of their own. Even those who grumbled about the Japanese being too heavy-handed still felt sympathy for their Emperor in whom they saw a brief vision of their former glory and status. And though things were far from ideal, it was lost on no one that without Japan the restoration would never have hapened at all, and if they were defeated the restored monarchy was surely doomed. When the end finally came PuYi hoped to fly to Japan where he could surrender to the Americans, but unfortunately for him, he was overtaken by the Russian invasion, captured and placed under house arrest in the Soviet Union for five years. Having long held the Communists to be the worst of all revolutionary, republican groups, he was certain that his fate was sealed.

His fear turned out to be misplaced. The Russians, for their own part, cared very little about him. The Soviet Union had, after all, originally recognized Manchukuo as a legitimate country and had only declared war on Japan at the last minute, after the atomic bomb had been dropped and Japan was all but defeated, in order to grab territory and extend their influence in the Far East. The actual state of mind of the former Chinese Emperor, at this period, is hard to estimate. He made gushing overtures to Joseph Stalin about how his mind had been liberated by reading Karl Marx, yet at the same time he named a cousin to be his successor in the imperial line. Was he genuinely being changed or was he simply throwing himself at the mercy of the powers that be as he had done before with the Chinese republic? He had, after all, testified at the war crimes trials in Tokyo in 1946 and claimed that he had been kidnapped by the Japanese, used against his will as their instrument and pleaded his total opposition to these people to whom he had once expressed his deepest thanks, loyalty and admiration to. Which stance represents his true beliefs? Only PuYi himself could say for sure and his story changed constantly. He was hardly in a position to be perfectly honest with anyone.

Whatever his feelings about Marxist doctrine he certainly did not want to go back to China and fall into Red Chinese hands, certain that he would face death at their hands. The Soviets soon grew uncomfortable keeping him and realized they could not use him to their benefit. So, as a gesture of friendship to the government of Chairman Mao Tse-tung who had recently seized power; even standing triumphantly over the gates of the Forbidden City announcing that the world had stood up, and turned over the despised former monarch to them in 1950. PuYi and his entourage were returned to Manchuria and incarcerated in the Fushun prison for war criminals. He underwent a constant battery of communist indoctrination and reeducation through labor. Famously, he had to learn to dress himself, tie his own shoes, make his own bed, wash his own clothes; all of which he had no idea how to do since he had never had to do anything for himself. He was a tragic figure, especially at that time, being a man who had never known real personal freedom except perhaps for his few years in Tientsin, and yet even the comfort of his previous prisons denied him of any independence and self worth because of his pampering.

In time, PuYi overcame his fear of being killed. The Communists had decided that he would be more useful to them alive than as a traditionalist martyr. Across China, as in most every Communist country, there was an effort to create a "new man" who would see no class distinctions, who would idolize the party, revere the Chairman and march lock-step with the dictates handed down by the absolutist government, even in terms of dictating thoughts and opinions. They saw in PuYi the chance for a great propaganda coup, that they could "reform", as they called it, the Emperor himself, the man once called the Son of Heaven and the Lord of 10,000 Years, as an ordinary working communist. Unfortunately, they were successful in this, though it took ten years to do it. It is hard to say how much individualism he ever had and the Communists have always been masters at denying the value of any individual and by the time of his release PuYi was praising his Communist captors, scorning his imperial background, voicing shame for his great crimes and thanking the Communist government for their charity, benevolence and wisdom.

Chairman Mao officially pardoned PuYi who returned to Beijing and became a simple worker at the Botanical Gardens. Having abandoned his wives in Manchukuo, Empress Wan Jung died in Communist prison in 1946 and his surviving concubine divorced him, the government played matchmaker to see him married to a nurse, also a member of the Communist Party of course, who he stayed with for the rest of his life. PuYi served on the Chinese People‘s Political Consultative Conference from 1964 and wrote his memoir, "From Emperor to Citizen" in which he recounts the story of his life, remarking on how very wicked he and his compatriots were in his time as Emperor and lavishing praise on the Communists for saving his life and helping him to see the truth and be apart of their remaking of China into a much better country than it had ever been before -as he had been duly taught. The life of the last Emperor of China finally came to an end in 1967 when he died in a hospital in Beijing from cancer. At this time, China was at the height of the horrific Cultural Revolution and rumors began that he had been assassinated by Red Guards. The truth, as with much of his life, may never be known. The Cultural Revolution was a reaction against all things traditional, and as the former Emperor PuYi inherently represented the old China, yet as a reborn Communist he also represented the new China and it would seem a little late to kill him. Interestingly, that night the sky turned brown and eerie from a Mongol sand storm that was quite unheard of at that time of year. The strange light and sounds caused many elder Chinese especially to guess that the "last dragon" had flown into the clouds.

Initially, after his death, PuYi was cremated and buried in a Communist Party cemetery alongside government elites and older graves of imperial concubines and eunuchs. Later, in 1995, his widow moved his body to a private cemetery near the old Qing dynasty tombs, paid for by a Hong Kong businessman who admitted that he hoped the presence of the last Emperor would help boost his sales for plots. He also stated that he planned to build a larger memorial for the Emperor and his later wives as a sort of tourist attraction. The Aisin-Gioro, never very taken by PuYi's last wife, were reportedly extremely upset about this action. Even in death, it seems, PuYi is still being used as an instrument for the cause of others.

Understanding the Last Emperor, Part I

The last Emperor of China is not a well known figure, and it is an unfortunate truth that most of the notoriety he does hold is on account of the famous Academy Award-winning film about his life. Though he lived not a very long time ago, the last Chinese Emperor remains a very enigmatic figure. The accounts of his life written by others invariably come from biased sources, people who have some agenda to push and in his case it involves the necessity of vilifying the Emperor. Yet, even reading his own accounts, it is hard to come to a very clear understanding of the man. In his youth in the Forbidden City of Peking, surrounded by traditionalist mandarins and submissive eunuchs he was a staunch Chinese imperialist. When he was head of state of Manchuria under Japanese protection he was a staunch ally of Japan and finally when he was taken by the Communists he voiced his disgust at his past life and praised the People‘s Republic. Which opinion was the sincere one? Where any of them sincerely felt? What sort of man was he or was his life spent so dominated by others that any individualism in him was stamped out? Regarding the last Chinese Emperor anyone will find that there are many more questions than answers.

The last Emperor was born Aisin-Gioro Pu-Yi on February 7, 1906 to Prince Chun II; the half brother of Emperor GuangXu, and Princess Youlan; daughter of General Ronglu. He had very little time for a normal childhood however as he was summoned to the Forbidden City by the Empress Dowager Cixi when he was not yet three years old. Empress Dowager Cixi was ruling in the place of the nominal monarch, Emperor GuangXu, whom she had suppressed in a military coup after he tried to modernize the country. Now on her deathbed, Cixi wanted to make sure that the Emperor could not retake power after her death and ensure that the system she had in place would continue. An infant monarch would allow those she trusted to hold real power and bring up the child in line with their way of thinking and so she chose PuYi to be the adopted heir of his uncle and succeed as the next emperor. She possibly had GuangXu poisoned as he died on November 14, 1908 with Cixi herself dying the following day. The following month PuYi was officially enthroned as Great Emperor of the Great Qing Dynasty, Grand Khan of Tartary, Lord of 10,000 Years and the Son of Heaven with the reigning name of Hsuan-tung. Already the victim of circumstances beyond his control this occasion marked the beginning of the end of the ancient Chinese Empire.

Because of his age, the little emperor was watched over by his adopted mother, Empress Dowager Longyu and his father who served as regent on his behalf. Opinion varies considerably on Prince Chun, encouraged by the fact that he was quite adept at being acceptable to the powers-that-be at all times. Some view him as a potential reformer, others as a hopeless reactionary. Regardless though, he had relatively little time at the helm of the Chinese Empire before the outbreak of the republican revolution in 1911. The revolt happened almost by accident and was led by the American educated Sun Yat-sen who received the aid of the notorious General Yuan Shihkai. This general had already betrayed the previous emperor, betrayed PuYi and would ultimately betray Sun Yat-sen when after being given the presidency in return for convincing the Qing Dynasty to abdicate he declared himself emperor and tried to found a new dynasty. The Qing were quickly overwhelmed, intimidated and through the persuasion of Yuan Shihkai convinced that they had to come to terms with the revolution in order to survive.

Prince Chun gave up being regent on December 6, 1911 and passed the position to Empress Dowager Longyu who was left to deal with the disaster. It was she, on behalf of the Hsuan-tung Emperor, signed the "Act of Abdication of the Emperor of the Great Qing" on February 12, 1912. The agreement which brought about this abdication, an unprecedented event in world history, was extremely interesting. For one thing, it stated that the Emperor was bowing to the Mandate of Heaven as expressed through the will of the people; which had certainly never been done before in the history the succession of Chinese dynasties. Likewise, in return for the peaceful surrender of the monarchy, the newly born Republic of China agrees to the Articles of Favorable Treatment which guaranteed the title of the Manchu Emperor, the protection of the imperial tombs and monuments, imperial ownership of the imperial palaces within the Forbidden City and the Summer Palace, the treatment of the emperor with the respect of a foreign head of state and the payment of four million dollars a year to the imperial court. It was a remarkable agreement in the history of fallen monarchies especially in that, even though China had embraced republicanism, a certain mystique still surrounded the child emperor and even the republic would not deny that the emperor was an emperor and thus worthy of a certain respect. Unfortunately, the republic did not ultimately live up to this agreement, especially in terms of the payments which were stopped fairly quickly, but neither did the imperial court which never accepted the republic as permanent and continued to hope for a restoration.

During this period PuYi led a rather uneventful life. There were occasional ceremonies for him to participate in, dignitaries to be received and of course his education at the hands of the mandarins, particularly his tutor Chen PaoShen who was to be one of his closest advisors throughout much of his life. It is interesting to note how many of the republican officials treated the Emperor. China, especially during this period, was a place where everyone tried to keep all bases covered as to whom might one day be in a position to benefit them. When republican officials would come to the Forbidden City on some errand they would often enter in western clothes, deliver their speech on behalf of the republic in a dignified manner and then leave again, don traditional robes, come back in and bow down to address the Emperor as a private individual. There was a constant dance between the imperial court, the republican government and the military warlords who held most of the actual cards, each one paying lip service to the other for momentary support and looking for a chance to gain political power with the little emperor caught in the middle.

General Chang Hsun

This situation seemed to reach a pivotal moment for the Qing in 1917 when a monarchist warlord, General Chang Hsun, marched on Peking. His troops were known as the Pigtail Army because they retained the Manchu queue hairstyle as a symbol of their continued loyalty to the Qing. The General offered to restore the young monarch and with the assurance that the republican government was supportive, and that the President would step down, the court agreed and announced the official return of Emperor Hsuan-tung to nominal power on July 1. For a brief time dragon flags appeared on the streets and imperial-era robes were being worn again. There was even a rush on costume shops to obtain horse hair queues to give the appearance of having been ever loyal. Yet, not everyone was convinced, and vendors were selling imperial pronouncements with the advertisements that they would soon be antiques. True enough, the President of the republic did not go along with the restoration and soon Peking was besieged by republican forces under General Duan Qirui. There was even a brief air raid when a republican plane dropped a bomb in the Forbidden City which did little damage but caused considerable fright simply because of the novelty of it. By July 12, 1917 the Pigtail Army had been dispersed and Chang Hsun was forced to flee to the Dutch legation. Another abdication announcement was hastily issued on behalf of the young Emperor and once again China reverted to republicanism and warlord rule.

Inside the Forbidden City life went on under the usual routine for PuYi. In the hope of gaining foreign aid and to give the Emperor a more western education a British official named Reginald F. Johnston was employed as tutor to the Emperor. He befriended his pupil and would remain a defender of the last Emperor for the rest of his life, even after certain political problems arose during the 1930's between Britain and some other friends of the last Emperor. It was with Johnston that PuYi chose a name for himself from a list of British monarchs, picking Henry in reference to Henry VIII and so became known by many in the English-speaking world as Emperor Henry of China. In 1922 it was decided that, as he was 16 years old, it was high time for the Emperor to marry. He was given a number of candidates to choose from, but his first choice, the Princess Wen Xiu, was deemed too ugly by the courtiers and so Princess Wan Jung was chosen for the job of wife and Empress with Wen Xiu coming along as concubine.

To be continued in Part II...

MM Video: The Last Emperor in Color

Royal Profile: Prince Pu-Chieh of China

His Imperial Highness Prince Aisin-Gioro Pu-Chieh was born on April 16, 1907 to Prince Chun (Zaifeng) and the Lady Youlan. He is mot well known for being the younger brother of the last Emperor of China. As a child he was taken to the Forbidden City to be a playmate of his brother who had never met another child in his life before that time. Prince Pu-Chieh was taught to treat his brother with extreme deference and was quite happy and relieved to see that he was, in fact, a “normal” child. In his memoir the Emperor relates playing hide-and-seek with his brother and a sister only to become outraged when he noticed Prince Pu-Chieh was wearing a yellow gown -a color reserved for the Emperor alone. Most people know of this incident due to its inclusion in the famous film about “The Last Emperor” but too much can be made of it. The two brothers developed a very close bond and remained devoted to each other for the rest of their lives with very few problems ever arising between them.

Both boys lived very sheltered lives within the Forbidden City and were allowed to do nothing for themselves. Both dreamed of escaping and going abroad to see the world. As they grew older they began to plan for this eventuality. Since he had more freedom to come and go than his brother, Prince Pu-Chieh was tasked with smuggling valuable items out of the Forbidden City to save up for the day when they could effect their getaway. Of course, nothing came of the plan and Prince Pu-Chieh was still with his brother when a republican general evicted them from the Forbidden City, forcing them to relocate, ultimately to the Japanese concession in Tientsin. An informal alliance was already being formed between those around the Emperor and the Japanese who were the only ones willing to help and who were about the only Asian power that was an independent monarchy and still considered monarchy of paramount importance. To some extent it was only natural that the two would come together.

Anything involving the Emperor was delicate but Prince Pu-Chieh was someone who was free to move about, had yet to really establish a role for himself and so was a better candidate for solidifying ties between the Japanese and the Qing Dynasty. Prince Pu-Chieh learned Japanese from a well-connected tutor the Emperor selected for him and he began to enquire about going to Japan to study, perhaps even to attend the Imperial Japanese Army Academy. He was told this would not be possible right away but that another school could certainly be found to give Pu-Chieh the proper educational preparation. The only potential complication was that in 1924 the Prince had married the Manchu Princess Tung Shih-hsia. However, as the two had no children it was not considered a totally “solidified” marriage as most would understand it and so would not prevent him from going off on his own.

So, in 1929, Prince Pu-Chieh was, with the permission of his brother, sent to Japan to be educated. He attended Gakushuin Peers’ School, an institution for educating the sons of Japanese nobles and he was talented enough to be admitted to the Imperial Japanese Army Academy from which he graduated as an officer in July of 1935. By that time the Japanese had already helped establish the Empire of Manchukuo over which the last Qing Emperor was reigning as Emperor Kang Teh. After his graduation from the Japanese military academy, Prince Pu-Chieh joined his brother in Manchukuo and the Japanese authorities began discussing with the Emperor the marriage of his brother to a Japanese lady of appropriate rank to further strengthen the ties between them. The Emperor agreed and the Kwantung Army (the Japanese military presence in Manchuria) provided a selection of appropriate brides for Prince Pu-Chieh to choose from. Like his brother before him, he had to choose his wife simply from looking over a collection of photographs. His choice was a distant relative of the Japanese Imperial Family, Lady Hiro Saga. As it turned out, he had made a very fine choice.

Prince Pu-Chieh returned to Japan to collect his bride-to-be and on February 2, 1937 they held their formal engagement ceremony at the Manchukuo embassy in Tokyo. On April 3 the two were married at the Imperial Army Hall in Kudanzaka, Tokyo. In the fall the newlyweds moved to Hsinking (Changchun) in Manchukuo to be near the Emperor. Part of the reason for the Japanese insistence on this marriage was because the Emperor had no children and so, in Manchukuo at least, Prince Pu-Chieh was heir to the throne. They were determined that by this marriage the future Imperial Family of Manchukuo would be a mixture of Manchu and Japanese royal bloodlines. Because of all of these political considerations it would be easy to dismiss the marriage of Prince Pu-Chieh and Princess Hiro Saga as being merely for show; all form and no substance. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The two were extremely devoted to each other and their commitment remained steadfast throughout the years and all the political turmoil (including a world war) that was soon to come. Prince Pu-Chieh truly loved his wife and she him.

In Manchukuo, Prince Pu-Chieh did his best to assist his brother and promote Manchu-Japanese friendship. Because of his position and military training he was appointed to the (largely ceremonial) post of commander of the Imperial Guard. In 1939 he became a father for the first time when Princess Hiro Saga gave birth to their daughter, HIH Princess Huisheng. A son, it was hoped, would follow, but this was not to be. In 1941 another baby was born, another daughter, HIH Princess Yunsheng. Prince Pu-Chieh was proud of his family and devoted to them, however, he also continued his military training, even after the onset of World War II, returning to Japan for a short time in 1944 to attend the Army Staff College. The worsening war situation necessitated his return to Manchukuo where, in the final days of the war, after the U.S. had already dropped the atomic bomb on Japan, the Soviet Union broke their non-aggression pact and invaded in August 1945. The Imperial Family was split up with the Empress and Princess Hiro Saga and the children trying to reach Japan via Korea and the Emperor and Prince Pu-Chieh trying to reach Japan by airplane, hoping to avoid the communists at all cost and surrender themselves to the Americans who would possibly treat them with more fairness.

Unfortunately, the evacuation was not fast enough and Prince Pu-Chieh was captured along with the Emperor and his entourage before their plane could take off. They spent the next five years in prison in Siberia before, in a new show of Sino-Soviet friendship, they were handed over to the Communist Chinese government in 1950. With his brother he was held at the Fushun War Criminals Prison to undergo “reeducation through labor”. During his years of confinement he learned in a letter from his wife in Japan that his eldest daughter had been murdered. Whether the indoctrination he received worked or if the Prince was putting on an act for the authorities, we will never know, but the official story is that Prince Pu-Chieh was a model prisoner even, toward the end of his term, writing propagandistic plays extolling the “New China” and ridiculing her enemies. After he was released he was reunited with his wife, Princess Hiro Saga, in 1961 who had faithfully waited for him and left her own country to live in China with him. The two resumed their married life as if no time at all had elapsed. Like the rest, Prince Pu-Chieh joined the Chinese Communist Party and was given a number of minor government positions as a show of how the Maoist system could “reform” anyone.

Princess Hiro Saga died in 1987 and the grief of Prince Pu-Chieh was clearly evident in the media coverage of her funeral. Previously that year he had served as an advisor on the famous film “The Last Emperor”, the first time the Chinese government allowed foreign film crews inside the Forbidden City. HIH Prince Aisin-Gioro Pu-Chieh died on February 28, 1994 at the age of 86.

Consort Profile: Empress Xiaozheyi of China

It seems that in Imperial China, many of the consorts we most remember are those who met a tragic or mysterious end. This was certainly the case with Empress Xiaozheyi (Xiao Che), consort of the Emperor Tongzhi, who remains the subject of one of the great unsolved mysteries of the Great Qing Dynasty. She was born on July 25, 1854 into the Alute clan of the Mongol Plain Blue Banner. Because of her background many works refer to her as Empress Alute. Her father, Chong Ji, was a highly respected mandarin, a professor at the Hanlin Academy and the Secretary of the Bureau of Revenue, probably the most esteemed and accomplished Mongol scholar of his time. Her mother was the daughter of a high-ranking Manchu prince, so she was well placed in the upper echelons of Qing society from the very beginning. Alute was noted for her exceptional intelligence, which is not surprising given the scholarly achievements of her father and he kept his daughter close to him when he was at court, personally seeing to her education. Because of this she had a far more developed intellect than was normally expected for a princess but her proximity to the halls of power also caused her to be noticed by the Empress Dowager Cixi as well as her son Emperor Tongzhi who was immediately taken with her.

Tongzhi had reigned as the “Son of Heaven” since he was five years old, coming to the Dragon Throne in 1861 but it was his mother who was the real power. When the time came for a bride to be chosen for the Emperor it was Tongzhi himself who insisted on the knock-out book-worm Alute as an ideal bride for himself and certainly few would have disputed the wisdom of such a choice. Alute was equally famous for her great intelligence, her great virtue and character as well as her great beauty. One would have been hard pressed to imagine someone better suited to be an empress. Empress Dowager Cixi, on the other hand, was not so impressed but, nonetheless, on September 15, 1872 Alute formally became Empress consort to Emperor Tongzhi while the other candidates, favored by the Empress Dowager, were given the consolation prize of becoming concubines. However, their lives were to be rather boring as Emperor Tongzhi favored Alute more than any other and spent almost every night with her, hardly, if ever, calling for any of his other concubines. Even as a youth, Tongzhi had a reputation for, shall we say, a great deal of diverse romantic experience, but all that seemed to change with his marriage to Alute and while his mother might have been pleased with that, she was not at all pleased that he was spending all his time with his wife to the neglect of the consorts she favored and he was soon taking some interest in actually ruling China. She didn’t like that either and was inclined to put the blame on his new wife.

Emperor Tongzhi

The Empress Dowager took Empress Alute aside and explained to her that she should not keep her husband all to herself, that whether she recognized it or not she was causing harm but making Tongzhi neglect his other consorts. Alute, of course, was intentionally doing nothing of the sort. She came when the Emperor called and could hardly be held to blame for him not calling others. Appealing to her famous intellect, the Empress Dowager also suggested that Alute and the Emperor devote more of their time to study rather than romance and, of course, to do so separately so that the lovely girl would not distract her lustful husband. Tongzhi, however, wanted nothing to do with anything that kept him apart from Alute for long and she was just as devoted to him, no matter how odd a couple they seemed, the playboy and the nerdy girl, so finally the Empress-Dowager acted on her own considerable authority to have the two kept apart. This was unfortunate as the Emperor, deprived of the companionship of his wife, soon returned to his former licentious ways with the help of his eunuchs who were eager to indulge his every whim. Soon he was being smuggled out of the palace to the various dens of iniquity around Peking where, by most accounts, his lifestyle led him to contract syphilis.

Emperor Tongzhi became increasingly bad tempered as well as increasingly ill because of this state of affairs and Empress Alute became more and more depressed, however, she had enough intellect and sufficient will to hold out hope. When she was allowed to tend to her husband her thoughts were always on his recovery and what changes they would make when that time came. Eunuchs reported to the Empress Dowager that Alute often complained about her dominance of the government and interference in her life and that of her husband. Needless to say, the Empress Dowager did not take kindly to this and began to view her daughter-in-law not only as a hindrance to her but as an actual threat and perhaps her son as well, though that was of course blamed on the influence of his over-intelligent wife. Reportedly, the Empress Dowager listened in on one such conversation and then burst into the room in a rage, attacked Alute and ordered her to stay away from the Emperor, having her eunuchs take the Empress away and keep her more or less under guard.

Empress Dowager Cixi

Empress Alute was despondent and her despair increased when Emperor Tongzhi died on January 12, 1875. The Empress was reportedly pregnant at the time but as the Emperor had no children it was up to the Empress Dowager to decide the succession and she chose her nephew who became the tragic Emperor GuangXu. Empress Alute was refused the title of Dowager Empress or any of the other traditional privileges of the widow of an Emperor of China. She was kept virtually in a state of arrest and her food allowance was drastically cut, weakening her considerably. Here is where the real mystery begins. The generally accepted story is that she wrote to her father asking for help and that he replied telling her, in so many words, that suicide was the only honorable way out. Not long after, on March 27, Alute was dead, the official verdict from the imperial court being that she succumbed to an illness.

Immediately though many believed she had killed herself in despair over her situation and on the advise of her father. However, there are some problems with this story which cause many to doubt it. For one thing, it would have been no small trick for her to get a message out of the Forbidden City to her father without the knowledge of the Empress-Dowager, to say nothing of him being able to freely reply back. If this did happen, was his response authentic? Given how he had always been so close to his daughter it seems at least slightly questionable that he would advise her to take her own life. Likewise, the sudden onset of so terrible an illness has caused some to believe that she had been poisoned, probably on orders from the Empress Dowager who was certainly not above such tactics. The angry reaction of the Empress Dowager to any kind words about Alute would seem to support this theory. Additionally, even if it was simply a death from natural causes, the fact that her food allowance had been cut so dramatically would have weakened her health and made her more susceptible to illness, so the Empress Dowager would still not be totally free from blame in that case. So, what was it? Did she die of natural causes as the court claimed, did she commit suicide or was she poisoned by a spiteful mother-in-law. We may never know for sure and so the true fate of the tragic Empress Alute will likely remain one more of the many secrets held within the massive walls of the Great Within.

MM Video: Kangxi Emperor

Monarch Profile: Emperor GuangXu of China

One of the great “might have been” figures of late Imperial China was the weak but romantic and high-minded Emperor Guangxu, the last monarch but one of the Qing Imperial Dynasty. He was born Prince Aisin-Gioro Zaitian on August 14, 1871 to Yixuan, the first Prince Chun (son of Emperor Daoguang) and Yehenara Wanzhen who was a younger sister of the formidable Empress Dowager Cixi. He had little time for a normal childhood when Emperor Tongzhi died in 1875. Empress Dowager Ci’an (second empress consort of Emperor Xianfeng) first suggested the family of Prince Gong to carry on the family line but Empress Dowager Cixi blocked that idea and instead put forward her nephew Zaitian for the job. The Imperial Family agreed, Empress Cixi adopted her nephew as her own son and on February 25, 1874 the four-year-old boy formally became Guangxu (“The Glorious Succession”), “Great Emperor of the Great Qing Dynasty, Grand Khan of Tartary, the Son of Heaven and Lord of 10,000 Years”. For the sake of tradition he was legally declared the successor of Emperor Xianfeng rather than Emperor Tongzhi but “Holy Mother Empress Dowager Cixi” continued to rule herself as regent.

As a child, Emperor Guangxu was terrified by the Empress Dowager and remained intimidated by her throughout his life. However, he had a good relationship with his tutor (later the Minister of Revenue) Weng Tonghe, a Confucian scholar who had previously been tutor to Emperor Tongzhi. As he grew up there was no escaping the fact that Imperial China was being overtaken as the preeminent power in East Asia. The British had moved into Burma, France was in control of Indochina, Russia was taking a greater interest in the region, Japan was rapidly modernizing and China seemed to be standing still. As he grew into adulthood, Emperor Guangxu became more concerned with this situation and finding a way out of the downward spiral China seemed to be in. His tutor, Weng Tonghe, suggested a reform-minded mandarin named Kang Youwei who, in turn, recommended to the Emperor others who were committed to reforming Chinese society. Empress-Dowager Cixi retired to the Summer Palace, leaving politics behind (or at least so she claimed) which put Emperor Guangxu in actual control of China for the first time. With the support of men like Kang Youwei and Liang Qiqao, in June of 1898 Emperor Guangxu began what is now known as the One Hundred Days Reform.

Emperor Guangxu, and his entourage of like-minded mandarins, issued a veritable flood of imperial edicts aimed at reforming virtually every segment of Chinese society. The idea was to remake the Qing Empire along lines inspired by western countries and particularly the Empire of Japan. Just like the Japanese they hoped to create a modern infrastructure, economy, military, educational system and even a constitutional government with representative assemblies but doing it all within the traditional imperial system and with the Emperor retaining final authority. However, while Japan had modernized at breathtaking speed, Emperor Guangxu was trying to go even faster and Chinese society reeled from the impact of all the proposed changes. It also upset the old order which went looking for help at the door of Empress-Dowager Cixi. These included many officials Emperor Guangxu dismissed for being incompetent at worst or opposed to his reforms or reform schedule at best. There were also those who stood to lose power or position as a result of the reforms. Some were also genuinely concerned that foreign powers stood to take advantage of China through the flood of reforms, gaining influence in details of the mountain of edicts Emperor Guangxu put his seal on.

Empress Dowager Cixi and her supporters gathered military support with the aim of effectively deposing Emperor Guangxu to put a stop to all the drastic changes. A key figure was General Yuan Shihkai who was put in charge of the primary defensive force around the Emperor. However, at a key moment, he threw his support behind the Empress-Dowager whose own military forces, led by General Guwalgiya Ronglu. His troops surrounded the Forbidden City, took Guangxu prisoner and this was followed by an edict from the Empress-Dowager which effectively declared the Emperor unfit to rule. He was placed under house arrest, deprived of all rights and privileges and was under constant surveillance. Some wished to depose him formally while other traditionalists recoiled at this and wished him to remain powerless but still nominally emperor.

Some of his supporters were executed by the Empress-Dowager, others punished in lesser ways and some, like Kang Youwei, fled the country and founded the “Protect the Emperor Society” to advocate for a constitutional monarchy for China. Those who viewed Emperor Guangxu as being duped by foreign powers felt their prejudice confirmed when he opposed the Empress-Dowager declaring war on the great powers of Europe and the United States in support of the Boxer Rebellion. He could not influence events at all of course and was eventually proven correct when the Boxers and regular Chinese forces were defeated by the Eight Nation Alliance (Great Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia, the United States and Japan) which saw the foreign armies take Peking, even the Forbidden City and ransacking the place. Emperor Guangxu was persuaded by his favorite consort (the tragic “Pearl Concubine”) to treat with the foreigners himself but before he could do so the Empress-Dowager had the concubine thrown down a well by her eunuchs and when she fled the Forbidden City in disguise ahead of the foreign armies, she took the Emperor with her. She was greatly offended when the foreign officials stated that any agreement had to be made, at least nominally, with Emperor Guangxu rather than herself since he was, legally, still the chief-of-state.

Once the foreigners withdrew from Peking the Emperor was returned to the Forbidden City where he was still kept isolated and confined, indulging his childhood interest of tinkering with clocks and assorted gadgetry. It seems he still had hopes of putting China on the path he thought best once the increasingly old and frail Empress-Dowager passed away. He still had loyal supporters outside of China, and a few within the country, who might rally to him and restore him to power on that occasion. However, the most widely accepted version of events is that the Empress-Dowager was not allowed to run the risk of that happening and so, when she was herself on her deathbed, ordered Emperor Guangxu to be poisoned. Whatever the case may be, he died suddenly on November 14, 1908, only one day before the Empress-Dowager, at the age of 37. His successor, Aisin-Gioro Puyi, later said that he had been told that Yuan Shihkai had employed a eunuch to murder the Emperor and then had the eunuch murdered to cover his tracks for fear that he would be executed for treason if Guangxu ever returned to power.

The funeral for Emperor Guangxu was the last such ceremony China would ever see. The Republic of China, which came into being after 1911, funded the building of his mausoleum in the Western Qing Tombs as part of an agreement made with the late dynasty. Republican leader Dr. Sun Yat-sen even managed to praise Emperor Guangxu for his open-mindedness and commitment to reform and even post-civil war communist historians have been less inclined to be harsh toward him. His efforts at widespread reform may have been rushed and not handled in the proper way yet many still point to his reign as a great opportunity lost. One cannot help but speculate about what might have been if he had been allowed to see things through as he wished. Might Imperial China have become a modern, constitutional monarchy, enjoying the advances of modern innovation while remaining faithful to long-held traditions? We can, of course, never know but it does provide a precedent which can be pointed to as an alternative for monarchists in China to this day. If China were to ever become the modern monarchy he envisioned, Emperor Guangxu would finally be vindicated in his vision for the future.