Shunzhi

Emperor of China (r. 1644-1661)

• Born: March 15, 1638
• Birthplace: Manchuria (now in China)
• Died: February 5, 1661
• Place of death: Beijing, China

Shunzhi was the first emperor of the Qing Dynasty. The Qing were Manchus, but Shunzhi was attracted to many aspects of Chinese culture and was criticized after his death for abandoning his Manchu heritage. He was the father of Kangxi, one of the greatest rulers in China’s long history.

Early Life

Shunzhi (shoon-jih), whose given name was Fulin, was born in 1638. His grandfather, Nurhaci, was a Manchurian of noble birth who had, by 1610, emerged as a leader among the Manchus, descendants of the Jin, who ruled China in the twelfth century. In 1616, Nurhaci declared himself the leader of a second Jin dynasty. By the 1620’s, Nurhaci and the Manchus occupied the Shengking region (now Liaoning province), an area claimed by China’s Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). Nurhaci died in 1626, and his eighth son, Abahai (Hong Taiji), succeeded him, establishing a new dynasty called the Qing, meaning “pure” or “clear.” Much of Ming China was under the control of rebel bands, and several Ming generals deserted to the Manchus. Abahai died in 1643, and Fulin, his ninth son, became his heir, with Abahai’s younger brother, Dorgon, as regent.

The following year, the last Ming emperor, Chongzhen, hanged himself, and Dorgon and the Manchus, allied with the Ming general Wu Sangui, occupied Beijing and enthroned Fulin as emperor under the reign name Shunzhi. The Chinese character for shun is the same as “obedience,” and the character for zhi means “to rule.” Dorgon and the Manchus thus claimed the traditional “mandate of heaven” and the right to rule China, even though they were only approximately 2 percent of the total population.

Life’s Work

Shunzhi was only six years old when he ascended the throne, and it was his uncle Dorgon, the regent, who ruled China for the next decade and who consolidated Qing control over much of the country. Although Shunzhi was proclaimed emperor, there were many Chinese, including high officials, who refused to accept another foreign dynasty, such as the Mongols or the Yuan Dynasty, who had ruled China before the Ming. In addition to this dissension by legitimate citizens, Dorgon had to face the rebels who had so weakened the Ming as to allow the Manchus to seize power. The two major rebel leaders, Li Zicheng and Zhang Xianzhong, were eliminated, the first in 1645, possibly by suicide, and the second in 1647 by Manchu troops.

Ming princes were also obstacles to Qing rule. The Ming prince of Fu attempted to negotiate with the Manchus, but when negotiations flagged, the prince and his Ming supporters established a military resistance around Nanjing, in central China. After the horrific Manchu sack of nearby Yangzhou, however, the defenders at Nanjing offered little opposition. The prince of Fu was captured and died in 1646 in Beijing. Canton in the south fell to the Manchu armies in 1647. The last major Ming prince, Zhu Youlang , retreated into the interior and finally to Burma. Under threat of a Qing invasion, the Burmese turned Zhu over to the Manchus, and in 1662, after Shunzhi’s death, the last major Ming claimant to the imperial throne was strangled.

While regent for Shunzhi, Dorgon initiated one of the most controversial actions of Manchu rule: He ordered that all Chinese adopt Manchu dress and hairstyles. Traditionally, Chinese males wore their hair long as a sign of masculinity. The Manchus shaved their foreheads and braided their hair in the back, the so-called queue. There was considerable opposition to the order, but ultimately the Chinese were left with the choice of keeping their hair and losing their heads or losing their hair and keeping their heads. The queue remained controversial until the fall of the Qing in 1912. Males were also required to wear the Manchu high collar and tight jacket rather than the loose robes of the Ming, and Manchu women were forbidden to practice foot binding, the Chinese custom wherein the feet of young girls were tightly bound and thus deformed, supposedly to make them more attractive to males.

Military reforms implemented even before the Manchu conquest were continued during Shunzhi’s reign. Nurhaci had established eight different military units, mostly Manchus, each identified by different colored banners. Under Shunzhi, eight banners were established in areas around Beijing. Hundreds of thousands of acres of agricultural land were confiscated by the new regime, much of it Ming family land, and each bannerman was given six acres to farm, with officers receiving larger allocations. Most Manchus were not farmers, and Chinese worked their lands, often under appalling conditions. By necessity, given the relatively small number of Manchus, the regime used as government officials those Chinese who had proven their loyalty to the new dynasty. It was, particularly during the first decades after the conquest, an uneasy relationship, as the Manchus did not entirely trust the Chinese, even those who seemingly collaborated with the new regime, and many Chinese had little respect for the Qing.

During the early years of Shunzhi’s reign, Dorgon not only ruled for the young emperor but also dominated his fellow Manchus, removing the generals of the banners at will, building a fortress-palace outside Beijing, and demanding concubines from Korea. Dorgon died in 1650 while hunting, and after his death the dynasty seemed in danger of disintegrating and disappearing, as the Manchu elite began to war among themselves.

Although he was only twelve or thirteen, with Dorgon’s death Shunzhi became emperor in his own right. He pursued the military policy of tracking down and eliminating the Ming claimants to the imperial throne, but he broke with Dorgon and most Manchu nobles in being more willing to adopt many Chinese customs and mores. He studied the Chinese language to enable himself to read court documents, and he was an admirer of Chinese plays and novels. Chinese Buddhist monks were welcomed at his court, as was a Catholic Jesuit missionary, Johann Adam Schall von Bell. Catholic missionaries, especially Jesuits, had been active in China during the latter decades of the Ming dynasty. Because of their knowledge of Western science, they had become advisers and confidants of the emperors, and Shunzhi appointed Schall as director of the Imperial Bureau of Astronomy. The Jesuit also became something of a father figure, as Shunzhi often referred to Schall as “Grandpa.”

Shunzhi also gave the palace eunuchs, or castrated males, more authority and responsibility than they had had under Dorgon, to the disgust of the Manchu nobles, who saw this as an act of decadent corruption. The emperor deposed his first empress, Xiao Kang, in 1653. His second empress, Xiao Hui, did not die until 1713, long after Shunzhi. Shunzhi became infatuated with one of his concubines, Xiao Xian, a Mongolian of noble birth, who also admired Chinese culture and Buddhism, and after she died at the age of twenty-two, Shunzhi was inconsolable, threatening to become a Buddhist monk. Toward the end of his life, he possibly suffered from tuberculosis. He died of smallpox in 1661, just four months after the death of his beloved Xiao Xian. His successor, Kangxi, his third son, was only eight years old.

Significance

After his death, many Manchu nobles harshly criticized Shunzhi. The regents for the young emperor Kangxi produced and publicized a statement, supposedly composed by Shunzhi, confessing that he had abandoned Manchu military values, had become corrupted by Chinese culture, and had favored native Chinese and eunuchs rather than his fellow Manchus. Under the new chief regent, Oboi, the eunuchs were removed from positions of influence, Schall was imprisoned, and Chinese advisers were denigrated.

However, Kangxi removed much of the anti-Chinese discrimination when he became emperor in his own right at the age of fourteen, and over his long reign, he became the paradigm of a traditional Chinese emperor, governing the vast Chinese empire according to the principles of Neo-Confucianism. Kangxi was one of the greatest emperors in China’s long history, and his reign and those of his two successors overshadowed that of Shunzhi, but Shunzhi was the first of the Qing emperors, and his admiration of and willingness to adopt Chinese culture prefigured the path followed by his Manchu successors.

Bibliography

Crossley, Pamela Kyle. The Manchus. Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1997. A volume in the People of Asia series, Crossley’s work is an exemplary study of the Manchus and includes a discussion of Shunzhi and the origins of the Qing Empire.

Hummel, Arthur, ed. Eminent Chinese of the Ch’ing Period, 1644-1912. 2 vols. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1943. This classic work contains biographies of the major figures of Qing China, including the emperors.

Paludan, Ann. Chronicle of the Chinese Emperors. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1998. This valuable work contains biographies of all of China’s many emperors and also includes numerous illustrations.

Spence, Jonathan, and John Wills, eds. From Ming to Ch’ing: Conquest, Region, and Continuity in Seventeenth-Century China. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1979. An excellent series of essays on seventeenth century China, including the enthronement of Shunzhi.