Empress Dowager (太后)

Overview

The translated histories identify Empress Dowager as a consort, royal family member, and ruler. This record brings together 5 passages from 1 chapter across 1 history, with names, dates, relationships, offices, and events preserved as source-backed claims.

Names

Type	English	Chinese	Pinyin
Personal	Empress Dowager	太后	Taihou
Title	Empress Dowager	太后	Taihou
Descriptive kinship	Empress Dowager	太后

Identity

Historicity: Historical
Identification: Named
Sex: Female

Sex: female
Explicit · qingshigao:473:s0088

Roles

Consort
Royal Family Member
Ruler

Life and dates

Attested activity

Source Date: Text: 二十四年 · Western Year: AD 1898
Explicit event contextual date · qingshigao:473:s0088, qingshigao:473:s0073
Source Date: Text: 拳匪起 · Western Year: AD 1900
Explicit event contextual date · qingshigao:473:s0104

Source notes

Historicity: historical
Explicit · qingshigao:473:s0056

References in the histories

Open any source group to read the Chinese and English passage in context.

Draft History of Qing, Chapter 473Volume 473 Biographies 260: Zhang Xun, Kang Youwei · 5 passages

Open chapter

上雖親政，遇事仍承太后意旨，久感外侮，思變法圖強，用有為言，三月維新，中外震仰。 Although the emperor personally ruled, in affairs he still followed the empress dowager's intent; long feeling foreign humiliation, he thought to reform and strengthen the state, adopted Kang's words, and for three months carried out the Hundred Days' Reform, astonishing court and country alike.

時傳將以兵圍頤和園劫太后，人心惶惑。 At the time it was rumored that troops would surround the Summer Palace to seize the empress dowager, and hearts were alarmed and unsettled.

於是太后复垂簾，盡罷新政。 Thereupon the empress dowager again ruled from behind the curtain and abolished all the new policies.

初，太后議廢帝，稱病徵醫，久閉瀛台，旦夕不測。 At first the empress dowager considered deposing the emperor. Physicians were summoned on the pretext of illness; he was long confined on the Ocean Terrace, with his fate uncertain day by day.

拳匪起，以滅洋人、殺新黨為號，太后思用以立威，遂肇大亂，凡與有為往還者，輒以康黨得奇禍。 The Boxers rose under the banner of destroying foreigners and killing reformers. The empress dowager hoped to use them to assert her authority, and great chaos followed. Anyone who had dealt with Kang was labeled a Kang partisan and met extraordinary punishment.