Zeng Guofan

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Zeng Guofan

Zeng Guofan ( Chinese  曾國藩 , Pinyin Zēng Guófān ; born November 21, 1811 in Hunan , Chinese Empire , † March 12, 1872 in Nanjing ) was a high Chinese official and military leader of the Qing Dynasty.

He served as the leading military theorist and military leader of the Qing Dynasty and was a leader in the suppression of the Taiping Rebellion . For this purpose, he created his own army in addition to the existing Qing army system based on rural staff and relatives in his home province. In the course of the rebellion, he was the first Han Chinese to gain a central military position of power in the Qing state that was previously reserved for Manchu only. The army he introduced is seen in part as a precursor to the warlord armies in China in the early 20th century.

Origin and early years

Zeng Guofan came from a not very wealthy but literary family who ran agriculture. His father achieved a successful completion of the civil service examination at the district level ( Xiucai degree ) after sixteen failed attempts in 1832 when he was already advanced into middle age.

Zeng Guofan was the first of five sons to achieve the Xiucai degree in 1833 after six failed attempts. In 1834 he successfully completed the procedure at the provincial level. In 1838, after two failed attempts with the Jinshigrad, he achieved the highest possible degree in the examination system with distinction.

Ascent

Because of his academic achievements, he was accepted into the elite Hanlin Academy , where he received a scholarship. This comprised only several hundred scholars from whom the emperor's teachers were recruited. Zeng Guofan's family had to go into debt for the academic career of Zeng Guofan. In 1843 he was given the post of administering the Sichuan Province Civil Service Examination . Thanks to gifts from graduates and the families of the candidates, this position brought great financial gain. In the summer of 1849 he received the post of sub-chancellor at the Great Secretariat , an advisory body to the emperor, and became vice-president of the Ministry of Rites . From 1850 he became increasingly concerned with geography and found a view of the military of the empire. In April 1851, in view of the outbreak of the Taiping Rebellion, he wrote a memorandum to the emperor in which he complained about the poor state of the military system in the empire and made suggestions for improvement. Zeng Guofan's supporter and patron at court was the Manchu nobleman Sushun , who held the influential posts of Grand Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer .

Zeng Guofan joined neo-Confucian circles and criticized corruption , buying offices and the orientation of court society to material values. He subjected his personal lifestyle to a strict ritual which was based on Confucian wisdom. With the death of his mother in 1852, he returned to his home province of Hunan for funeral and traditional mourning. The province was already caught up in the Taiping revolt. There was uncertainty in the province as the Qing troops were no longer available to maintain public order. The provincial capital Changsha was besieged by the Taiping and successfully defended by a militia of around 2,000 men in the province . Zeng Guofan reached his hometown bypassing the provincial capital.

In January 1853, the emperor's government began to have high dignitaries set up military units in the provinces in order to cope with the threat posed by the rebels. Zeng Guofan received the order to raise an army in his home province of Hunan. Zeng Guofan initially declined due to the period of mourning for his mother and his lack of military knowledge, but was ultimately convinced by his father and brother.

Taiping Riot

Zeng Guofan criticized the units of the Green Standard as overloaded with soldiers and these as undisciplined and only slightly motivated to fight. As a result, he envisaged the development of armed forces according to a new model, which should make a more effective military organization through personal loyalty and rigid training. The recruitment of soldiers was limited to rural and mountainous regions. Zeng Guofan justified this with the lack of character virtues of the population of the cities and river valleys. The recruitment took place individually on the Confucian principle of the family. Zeng Guofan turned brothers into generals and officers recruited residents of their home villages as soldiers who formed units as closed groups. The command over the soldiers remained with the hiring officer. At the top of the command hierarchy was Zeng Guofan himself. Since the army relied on class instead of quantity, the common soldier was paid four times the pay of the Green Standards. There was an institutionalized system of rewards for accomplishments such as capturing enemy weapons, killing in combat, or capturing an enemy horse. The highest bonus, equivalent to five months' wages , was given for capturing a rebel. This was complemented by a penal code, which provided for the death penalty for desertion in battle or the fraudulent use of rewards . The cooperation with the regular soldiers of the Green Standard turned out to be difficult at first because the soldiers attacked the militia . Among other things, the headquarters of the militia was set on fire in 1853 by soldiers of the Green Standard. In February 1854, Zeng Guofan's army had 14 battalions of 505 soldiers and 180 porters. The associated naval units comprised 200 boats, 100 junks and a flagship . Zeng Guofan financed the establishment of the militia through the privileges of taxation and title sale granted to him by the emperor. Zeng Guofan's first military operations failed. After he was able to transfer the field command to subordinate leaders, the armed forces he had created were able to drive the rebels out of Hunan Province by the fall of 1854. Zeng Guofan received the honorary title of Deputy Head of the War Ministry of the Qing Empire. In October 1854, Zeng Guofan's Hunan Army took the strategically important city of Wuchang in Hubei Province , which previously could not be captured by imperial troops.

At the end of 1854 the civil war was in a stalemate. The rebel capital, Nanjing , was besieged by Green Banner troops. However, since the rebels controlled the fortified cities in the direction of Nanjing along the Yangtze River, the siege remained ineffective because of the open supply route across the river. Zeng Guofan received the order with his Hunan army to conquer these cities. At Jiujiang in February 1855, however, the army was severely defeated by the rebels. The army was pushed into Jianxi Province , from whose officials Zeng Guofan could not expect any support. Part of the fleet was trapped by the rebels and the flagship was destroyed by fire. In April the Taiping retook Wuchang. Zeng Guofan tried several times in public in the face of defeats suicide to commit, but was restrained by his officers. Only the rebellion of Taiping leader Yang Xiuqing against the authority of Hong Xiuquan in 1856 weakened the rebels and allowed the military situation of the Hunan army to improve. At the end of 1857, Zeng Guofan's father died and he returned to his native Hunan because of this. He described himself as disaffected and discouraged in the face of previous defeats and left the Hunan army to his officers. The emperor agreed to resign from his post on condition that he could recall him. After about a year, Zeng Guofan returned to the service of the Qing State.

In the fall of 1858, Zeng Guofan lost one of his brothers who, as a general of the Hunan Army, led troops in Anhui province. The troop contingent of 6,000 men was completely destroyed by the Taiping. In 1859 the Hunan Army recaptured the economically important city of Jingdezhen due to its porcelain production . While most of the army was tied up there, Zeng Guofan was able to prevent Taiping General Shi Dakai's attack on Hunan Province with some improvised troops . In May 1860, the Taiping rebels were able to break open the siege ring around their capital Nanjing and smash the siege troops of the Green Standard. The two commanding generals of the Green Standard were killed. This led to an increase in the status of the Hunan Army and its commander Zeng Guofan, as it now represented the most important armed force against the Taiping south of the Yangtze with its 60,000 soldiers. As a consequence, the court ordered Zeng Guofan to turn the army south to protect the city of Shanghai, which is important for foreign trade . However, Zeng Guofan did not do this, but tried to convince the emperor to lead a campaign against the cities on the Yangtze that were fortified by the rebels. The aim of this strategy was first to take away the space for the rebels to move their armed forces. This was intended to deprive the rebel state of income and natural resources through looting or taxes from the population under their military control. The plan was to finally smash the logistically and economically weakened rebel state by conquering the capital Nanjing. During this time, Zeng Guofan also formulated writings on military theory. They recognized the higher combat strength of the Taipin forces due to the high motivation and discipline of the soldiers, larger numbers and innovative formations and tactics in battle. As a means, Zeng Guofan proclaimed a methodical preparation for the battle, especially with regard to the place of the battle and the time, which in no case should be determined by the enemy. Zeng Guofan managed to enforce his strategy against the imperial court and was also able to prevent troops to defend against the Western expedition against the capital Beijing.

Zeng Guofan's rise was reflected in formal government functions. In May 1860 he was appointed by the court to put down the rebellion in southern China . By adding military units outside the Hunan Army, this increased the number of soldiers under his command to around 120,000. He was also awarded the governorship of Jiangnan and Jiangxi Provinces . On the initiative of Prince Gong , from 1860 onwards, he was also consulted on foreign policy issues as a member of the commission in his foreign ministry. Zeng Guofan did not categorically refuse to accept foreign military aid against the Taiping, but feared an increase in the power of the foreign powers over the Qing state and urged caution. In 1861, Zeng Guofan was in dire straits when his field headquarters in Qimen was cut off by Taiping troops. After a failed escape attempt, Zeng Guofan and his headquarters were finally shocked by troops brought in. In September, the Hunan Army finally captured Anqing after the siege. On the orders of Zeng Guofan, the troops massacred the already starved civilian population. He justified this with the benefits which the deterrence of future rebellions will bring.

He personally led the reconstruction of the city. He began rebuilding the Taiping city walls, temples, and resuming official exams for Anhui Province. He also set up meals for refugees in the country, which could feed 21,000 people a day. Zeng Guofan intended to pass Anqing off as the center of the territory he controlled. Regarding the course of the war, he came up with the plan with three armies to cut off the rebel capital Nanjing from the Yangtze, to enclose it and to conquer it. In order to put this plan into practice, he commissioned his previous secretary, Li Hongzhang, to set up an army modeled on the Hunan army from loyal farmers from Anhui Province.

Emperor Xianfeng died before the conquest of Anhui , but Zeng Guofan only found out about it after the victory. Power was taken over by Cixi and Prince Gong, who reigned in the name of the child emperor Tongzhi . His former patron, Sushun, was executed. To ensure his loyalty, they expanded his powers and showered him with titles. From 1862 onwards, Zeng Guofan was able to bring almost the entire civil administration of the east China coast under his control through his middlemen and use their income for his war efforts. Zeng Guofan thus had an unprecedented position of power in the Qing state for a Han Chinese.

In 1862 Zeng Guofan was made Secretary of State and in 1864 - after the final suppression of the Taiping uprising through the capture of Nanjing under his leadership - Margrave. He then put down the Nian uprising in Shandong .

Tongzhi restoration

Zeng Guofan's residence, built in 1865, in Heye Zhen , Hunan Province , view of the residence across the animal pond

In spite of all his traditional Confucian character, Zeng Guofang was quite open to innovations, especially from abroad. In the 1860s, he was instrumental in the implementation of the so-called Tongzhi Restoration at the side of Regent Cixi , with which China wanted to catch up its technical, economic and military deficit compared to the West.

At the beginning of his military career, Zeng Guofan was traditional in the field of weapons technology. In the field of close combat and rifle weapons, he did not consider it necessary to imitate western technology. At first he also saw the military role of steamships only in terms of their difference to what was previously familiar. In his writings, he emphasized that the general's leadership and the morale of the troops were crucial for success in the field. In the course of his career he developed into the organizer and pacemaker of military modernization. In 1862 he bought a small foreign steamship and made it available to his engineers for study purposes. The following year they built their first steam-powered river warship with a steam engine made in China. He also supported Yung Wing's diplomatic mission to the United States in 1864 , with the aim of acquiring machine tools for the production of military industrial goods through the ambassador.

At this point, his personal career had already exceeded its climax. The accumulated top military and political positions were successively largely lost. Zeng died in Nanjing in 1872 .

Literary work

Zeng also had literary talent: his entries to the throne and essays are highly valued by Chinese literary criticism. In 1865 he wrote an appreciative preface to the translation of Euclid's "Elements" by the British missionary Wylie. Zeng's Collected Works, comprising 156 volumes, were edited by Li Hongzhang in 1876 .

historiography

Shortly after Zeng Guofan's death, his confidante Li Hongzhang commissioned Xue Fucheng to write an eulogy which placed his work in line with the most prominent statesmen in Chinese history. In the course of the political upheavals in China, Zeng Guofan's historical role was revalued several times. Under the founder of the Republic of China Sun Yat-sen , Zeng was seen as a traitor to the Han ethnic group because he had served the Manchu dynasty that had been overthrown by the republic. Under the authoritarian leader Yuan Shikai , his legacy was instrumentalized as a Confucian model for the establishment of an authoritarian state. Zeng Guofan's memory experienced a resurgence under Chiang Kai-shek . He was seen as a model for building a modernized state. His writings were used in abbreviated form in military teaching materials for the armed forces. From 1930 until the end of the Chinese Civil War, several books about his life were published on the Republican side.

In the Marxist historiography of the People's Republic of China , Zeng Guofan became a figure with very negative connotations as a traitor to the Han ethnic group, a traitor to his own country and as the butcher of the Taiping revolt. As a research subject it was taboo from 1949 until the beginning of the reform and opening policy in 1978. The Taiping themselves were transfigured by party history to become the first revolutionary and democratic movement in China. After the end of the Cold War , in addition to the orthodox historiography prescribed by the party, numerous works were published which honor Zeng Guofan's achievements as the sustainer of the Qing Empire and the Taiping as the destroyer of the cultural continuity of the Chinese nation. Often times, a revaluation of history served as an outlet for criticism of the CCP , which still does not allow open criticism. The preoccupation with Zeng Guofan's life experienced a revival among both historians and writers. In 1993, Tang Haoming published a three-volume historical novel about his life, which became a bestseller in the People's Republic .

See also

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Stephen R. Platt: Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom - China the West and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War. New York 2012, p. 114 f.
  2. ↑ a b c Xiaobing Li: Zeng Guofan . In: China at War - An Encyclopedia . Oxford 2012, pp. 525-528
  3. ↑ Stephen R. Platt: Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom - China the West and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War. New York 2012, p. 168
  4. ↑ 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. 115-118
  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. 118-128
  6. ↑ Stephen R. Platt: Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom - China the West and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War. New York 2012, pp. 130 f.
  7. ↑ Stephen R. Platt: Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom - China the West and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War. New York 2012, pp. 132-138
  8. ↑ Stephen R. Platt: Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom - China the West and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War. New York 2012, pp. 192-215
  9. ↑ 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 f.
  10. ↑ 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
  11. ↑ 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. 324f
  12. ↑ a b Yingjie Guo, Baodang He: Reimagining the Chinese Nation The “Zeng Guofan Phenomenon” . In: Modern China , Vol. 25 No. April 2, 1999 142-170; doi: 10.1177 / 009770049902500202 , researchgate.net (PDF) accessed on May 14, 2019
Note: This article places the family name before the person's first name. This is the usual order in Chinese. Zeng is the family name here, Guofan is the first name.
personal data
SURNAME Zeng Guofan
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Marquis Yiyong; 曾國藩 (Chinese); Zēng Guófān (Pinyin Romanization)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Chinese official
DATE OF BIRTH November 21, 1811
PLACE OF BIRTH Hunan
DATE OF DEATH March 12, 1872
Place of death Nanjing