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A review by harlando
Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China by Jung Chang
4.0
Really good! She was a strong and very clever person and must have been interesting to spend time with.
I wonder about the bad rap she has historically. She is generally characterized as scheming and grasping. She does clearly seem to have been doing some scheming, but she was on the right side of things more often than not. I think this a pretty common historical mistreatment of women. She is a bit like Hillary Clinton. People who have never met her speak ill of her, but the people who actually knew her seem to be almost universally impressed by her.
I learned a lot about the late imperial period which was more lively and interesting than I had suspected. She lived through the opium wars, Taiping and Boxer rebellions, European division of China, and the precursors to the Japanese invasion.
She had a difficult task ahead of her. The empire was in bad shape before she ever came to the palace and things mostly got worse inside and outside China. I think it would be a miracle for anyone to turn the situation around and generate a positive outcome under the circumstances. Maybe a really charismatic Westernizer could have pushed China into the modern world and played the western powers against each other, but that would require a unique person and some good luck.
I wonder about the bad rap she has historically. She is generally characterized as scheming and grasping. She does clearly seem to have been doing some scheming, but she was on the right side of things more often than not. I think this a pretty common historical mistreatment of women. She is a bit like Hillary Clinton. People who have never met her speak ill of her, but the people who actually knew her seem to be almost universally impressed by her.
I learned a lot about the late imperial period which was more lively and interesting than I had suspected. She lived through the opium wars, Taiping and Boxer rebellions, European division of China, and the precursors to the Japanese invasion.
She had a difficult task ahead of her. The empire was in bad shape before she ever came to the palace and things mostly got worse inside and outside China. I think it would be a miracle for anyone to turn the situation around and generate a positive outcome under the circumstances. Maybe a really charismatic Westernizer could have pushed China into the modern world and played the western powers against each other, but that would require a unique person and some good luck.