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Empress Dowager Cixi

Empress Dowager Cixi

1835 CE1908 CE · Beijing

Empress Dowager Cixi (1835-1908) was a Manchu noblewoman of the Yehe Nara clan who effectively controlled the government of the late Qing dynasty for much of its final half-century. Entering the palace as a concubine of the Xianfeng Emperor and mother of his heir, she rose after his death in 1861 to rule as regent for her young son and later her nephew, the Tongzhi and Guangxu emperors. She suppressed the 1898 Hundred Days' Reform and supported the Boxers against foreign powers in 1900, an act that led to the occupation of Beijing; though she sanctioned reforms in her last years, she died in 1908 with the dynasty deeply weakened.

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Beijing

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