Li Hongzhang

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Li Hongzhang - in official costume , 1896

Li Hongzhang ( Chinese  李鴻章  /  李鸿章 , Pinyin Lǐ Hóngzhāng , IPA ( standard Chinese) [ / li˨˩˦ xʊŋ˧˥ ʈʂɑŋ˥˥ / ], W.-G. Li Hung-chang , obsolete after Stange Li Hung Tschang ; *  15 February 1823 in the village of Qunzhi, near Hefei ; †  November 7, 1901 in Beijing , China ) was a Chinese general who ended several major rebellions. As the “ Viceroy of Zhili ” he was one of the most powerful statesmen in feudal China of the late Qing period and oversaw numerous reforms aimed at modernizing the country.

origin

Li Hongzhang was born into an upper class family in Hefei City, Anhui Province . His great-grandfather and grandfather each had titles acquired through purchasing offices. In his youth the family got into economic difficulties. His father was able to secure the status of the family by achieving the highest title in the civil service examination and held a leading position in the imperial judiciary in the capital Beijing . Li Hongzhang spent his youth in Hefei - his birthplace Qunzhi - 群 治 村 - is 14 km northeast.

Life

Li Hongzhang - 李鴻章 1823–1901

education

Li Hongzhang passed the highest grade of civil servant examination in 1847 in a successful first attempt. Previously he had been teaching under the aegis of Zeng Guofan for three years on his father's behalf . Since they passed the highest level of examination together in 1837, they had a deep friendship with Li Hongzhang's father. As a result of his successful graduation, a patronage relationship between student and teacher was required, which laid the foundations for Li Hongzhang's further career. After graduating from Han-lin University, he actually wanted to pursue a career as a scholar.

Ascension during the Taiping Rebellion

During the Taiping Rebellion , he initially acted as an assistant to his former teacher and now influential general, Zeng Guofang, who had set up the Hunan army to defend his homeland, Hunan, against the Christian rebels. Zeng's army recruited local contingents of recruits that were as close as possible, based on personal loyalty, mostly based on family ties. In 1860/61, Zeng Guofan became the dominant actor in the war effort against the Taiping. He planned to set up additional armies in addition to his Hunan army, one of them in the Anhui province, which had just been recaptured by the rebels . He selected Li Hongzhang to lead this operation on the grounds that, as a Hanlin graduate, he was the most learned general. Li Honzhang began raising troops in the fall of 1862. Zeng put Li in the governor post of Jiangnan Province . In December 1863 he won Suzhou without a fight through a ruse. Here he convinced eight high officers of the local Taiping commander Tan Shaoguang to murder him and surrender. After the successful murder, he had the traitors executed. The execution led to a falling out with the Commander in Chief of the British Intervention Forces, Charles George Gordon , who sided with the Qing. In this capacity, Li set up his own military with the Huai Army, following the tried and tested pattern of his former teacher. Li participated as a military leader in the decisive offensives against the Taiping. After the revolt was successfully put down, he became governor of Jiangsu , Jiangxi and Anhui in May 1865 .

Central position of power in the empire

In 1870 he was appointed governor of Zhílì Province (now Hebei ), which is the capital of Beijing , and thus became one of the most powerful figures in Chinese domestic politics.

In the 1870s and 1880s he initiated economic reforms that resulted in a Chinese steamship company, telegraph connections, modernization in the mining industry and the establishment of a textile production facility in Shanghai .

A naval academy was established in Tianjin in 1880 by Li Hongzhang's instigation . A military academy for the army followed in 1885 in the same city, which continued to exist in the course of the Baoding Military Academy . When establishing these institutions, Li Hongzhang had to take into account the reservations of the traditional military elite, who saw their position threatened by a new training system. As governor of Zhili, he also pushed ahead with building the Beiyang fleet into the most modern fleet in East Asia. From 1884 two battleships from German production acted as the heart of the unit. To do this, he used both the purchase of ships and attempts to produce his own and the replica of foreign designs. The fleet was defeated during the First Sino-Japanese War and surrendered in the port of Weihaiwei in 1895 without intervention from the rest of the Empire's naval forces. After the end of the war he signed the Shimonoseki Treaty in 1895 . He was blamed for the defeat in the First Sino-Japanese War and released.

Otto v. Bismarck and Li Hongzhang, Friedrichsruh Palace, 1896

In 1896, Li Hongzhang went on a diplomatic trip around the world. During this time he visited France, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Great Britain and the USA.

Nevertheless, in 1898 he negotiated the Lüda lease agreement with the Russian government as an imperial plenipotentiary and traveled to the Russian Empire to sign the additional protocol . The additional agreement made it possible, among other things, to connect the leased Liaodong peninsula with the military port of Port Arthur to the Trans-Siberian Railway . He received a bribe of three million gold rubles from the Russian Finance Minister Witte in return for the concession to cross Manchuria with the Chinese Eastern Railway , a very important section of the Trans-Siberian before the completion of the Amur line (Amur Railway). When this payment became known, Li Hongzhang's reputation suffered severely. In 1901 he was again entrusted with the negotiations to end the Boxer Rebellion , but died before they were over.

On behalf of the company Krupp in Essen designed Otto Lang a monument to Li Hongzhang. This was set up in the garden of the memorial temple made for Li Hongzhang in Shanghai .

Names

Surname
Abbreviation : 李鸿章
Traditional characters : 李鴻章
Pinyin : Lǐ Hóngzhāng
Wade-Giles : Li Hung-chang
Polite salutation (字): Jianfu (漸 甫), Zifu (子 黻)
Pseudonyms (號):
(Yisou and Shengxin used
in old age)		 Shaoquan (少 荃)
Yisou (儀 叟)
Shengxin (省心)
Nickname : Mr. Li II. (李 二 先生) A
posthumous designation: Wenzhong (文忠) B.
annotation
A. 李 二 先生 - "second son of his father"
B. 文忠 - "well read and loyal"

literature

chronologically ascending

Web links

Commons : Li Hongzhang  - Collection of Pictures

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Kwang-Ching Liu: The Confucian as Patriot and Pragmatist: Li Hung-chang's Formative Years, 1823-1866. in Samuel C. Chu, Kwang-Ching Liu: Li Hung-Chang and China's Early Modernization. New York, 1994, 2015 p. 18f
  2. ↑ a b Stephen R. Platt: Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom - China the West and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War. New York, 2012, pp. 252-255
  3. ↑ It is interesting for the history of Li Hongzhang's impact that the sociologist Max Weber, in his work Politics as a Profession, sees the Chinese as an example of the ruler type "humanistically educated literary man". see. Weber, Max Politics as a Profession Stuttgart 1992, page 28 (Reclams Universal Library)
  4. ↑ Dr. Xiaobing Li: Li Hongzhang. in China at War - An Encyclopedia. Oxford 2012, pp. 221-224
  5. ↑ Stephen R. Platt: Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom - China the West and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War. New York, 2012, pp. 295-297, pp. 329-333
  6. ↑ Dr. Xiaobing Li: Li Hongzhang. in China at War - An Encyclopedia. Oxford 2012, pp. 221-224
  7. ↑ Dr. Xiaobing Li: Li Hongzhang. in China at War - An Encyclopedia. Oxford 2012, pp. 221-224
  8. ^ John K. Fairbank, Kwang-Ching Liu: The Cambridge History of China. Vol. 2 Late Ch'ing 1800-1911 . Part 2, Cambridge, 1980, pp. 266-268
  9. ^ Bernard D. Cole: The History of the Twenty-First-Century Chinese Navy. Naval War College Review Vol. 67, No. 3 (Summer 2014), pp. 43-62 pp. 47f; Available online as a pdf  ; last accessed on April 26, 2019
  10. ↑ Dr. Xiaobing Li: Li Hongzhang. in China at War - An Encyclopedia. Oxford 2012, pp. 221-224
  11. ↑
    Wikisource: Convention For The Lease Of The Liaotung Peninsula  - Sources and full texts
    (English)
  12. ↑
    Wikisource: Additional Agreement defining Boundaries of Leased and Neutralized Territory in Liaotung Peninsula  - Sources and full texts
    (English)
  13. ^ Memorial to Li Hongzhang
Note: This article places the family name before the person's first name. This is the usual order in Chinese. Li is the family name here, Hongzhang is the first name.
personal data
SURNAME Li, Hongzhang
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Li, Hung-chang (Wade-Giles); Li, Hung Tschang (rod); 李鴻章 (Chinese - traditional character); 李鸿章 (Chinese - abbreviation)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Chinese general who ended several major rebellions, Qing Dynasty statesman
DATE OF BIRTH February 15, 1823
PLACE OF BIRTH Qunzhi, Hefei
DATE OF DEATH November 7, 1901
Place of death Beijing