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As the last feudal dynasty in Chinese history, the Qing Dynasty seems to have endless topics to talk about, both in China and in the whole world.
With the outbreak of the industrial revolution in Western countries, Western civilization has also begun to continuously impact the ancient land of China.
Therefore, the complexity of all the dynasties before the Qing Dynasty cannot be compared with the situation it faced.
And all this is also destined to make the historical evaluation of the Qing Dynasty very complicated, especially for the late Qing Dynasty after the Opium War, the words that are entangled around it are often inseparable"Loss of power and humiliation of the country", "Disaster to China", "Decadence and darkness".Such words.
But these words can only refer to the late Qing Dynasty, and cannot include this Qing Dynasty. Speaking of the entire Qing Dynasty, from the founding of the Qing Dynasty in 1616 to the abdication of Emperor Xuantong in 1912, the Qing Dynasty lasted for 296 years.
Even since Emperor Shunzhi entered the customs and became the unified power of the whole country, the Qing Dynasty lasted for 268 years, which is definitely not a short time.
According to the average length of the feudal dynasty, the life span of the Qing Dynasty has also reached the average level, and if it is measured by the identity of its ethnic minorities to establish a unified regime, the Qing Dynasty far exceeds the Yuan Dynasty, which is also a great unified dynasty, and is more than twice the life span of the Yuan Dynasty.
This objective reality completely destroys the classic prophecy in the "Huayi Debate", the core of traditional Confucian culture:"Hulu has no luck for a hundred years".
Among the historical mysteries about the Qing Dynasty, the most worthy question is probably why the Qing Dynasty, established by ethnic minorities, has also reached a national fortune of nearly 300 years
First of all, after the Qing Dynasty entered the Central Plains, it not only had the inherent disadvantage of solving the Central Plains problem, but it cannot be denied that it also had the innate advantage of solving the frontier problem.
Obviously, the Mongol Yuan regretted that they did not take advantage of this, so the Yuan Dynasty was also a short-lived dynasty. On the contrary, the Qing Dynasty made good use of this advantage.
The frontier problems faced by the Qing Dynasty were actually not much different from those of the Ming Dynasty, and the most important thing was the harassment of the Mongols on the frontier.
However, compared with the Ming Dynasty, the Qing Dynasty threw away one of the biggest burdens, that is, the "Huayi Debate" problem, after all, the Manchus were originally alien in the "Huayi Order", and no matter how bad their status was, what could they be worse?
Therefore, for the Mongols, the royal family of the Qing Dynasty creatively adopted a method that the Han dynasty of the Central Plains would basically not take, that is, marriage.
Speaking of which, some people may ask, doesn't the Central Plains also have a policy of harmony?Isn't it also a marriage with relatives?But what we should note here is that the relatives basically marry the women of the Central Plains royal family to the male rulers of the grassland regime, but the royal family of the Central Plains basically does not marry the aristocratic women of the grassland regime as wives.
Of course, the main reason for this is that the so-called "barbarian" blood of the grassland regime will affect the choice of the heir to the throne, and the core is to prevent the grassland regime from having the possibility of directly getting involved in the Central Plains regime.
But in this way, the grassland people will always think that the rulers of the Central Plains have reservations about their friendship, provided that they have no way to contact the supreme power, so it is impossible for the grassland regime to really accept you in such a defensive situation.
Therefore, the settlement of disputes between the Central Plains Dynasty and the grassland peoples can only play a role of "treating the symptoms but not the root cause". The three generations of emperors, Kangxi, Qianlong, and Yongzheng, had no choice but to use force to solve the Mongolian problem.
But the Qing Dynasty was completely different, the Qing Dynasty's governance of the grassland peoples, in line with the principle is to have contacts with each other, for a simple example, the Shunzhi Emperor's mother is the Empress Dowager Xiaozhuang, and the Empress Dowager Xiaozhuang is the Mongolian Horqin Department.
Later, whether it was Kangxi, Yongzheng or Qianlong, among the concubines in their harem, there were many Mongolian origins, and these Mongolian concubines also gave birth to princes for the Qing Dynasty emperors, that is to say, the core of the marriage between the Manchus and the Mongols is a kind of mutual integration, and the princes with Mongolian blood are also fully qualified to compete for the throne of the Qing Dynasty.
This kind of marriage will make the Mongols gradually feel that the Qing imperial family really regards them as their own, and their centrifugal force towards the Qing Dynasty is far lower than that of the Ming Dynasty before it. Therefore, the Mongolian issue did not become a border trouble in the real sense of the word throughout the Qing Dynasty, which has a lot to do with the Qing Dynasty's policy of "Manchu and Mongolian marriage". However, in response to this problem, the three generations of emperors Kangxi, Qianlong, and Yongzheng had no choice but to use force to solve the Mongolian problem.
In addition, the Qing Dynasty was by no means only entrenched and gentle for Mongolia, in order to eliminate the hidden dangers that the Mongols might cause to themselves, the Qing Dynasty also vigorously promoted Lamaism in the Mongolian steppe, using religion to improve the fighting spirit of the Mongolian people, and greatly reduced the population of the Mongolian people.
Because those who believe in this religion cannot get married, and if they do not get married, they will have no offspring, so through religious means, the Qing Dynasty soldiers bloodlessly eliminated the hidden dangers that the Mongols may pose to themselves in terms of population.
Of course, in the late Qing Dynasty, it was a different situation when facing the West, but the problems of the Western powers could not be referred to in the previous dynasties, and the Qing Dynasty dealt with it poorly, although it was very ugly, but it was not incomprehensible.
It's just that the Qing Dynasty is too close to us now, so the sense of humiliation it brings us is even stronger.
Of course, if we want to sit firmly on the orthodoxy of the Central Plains, it is not enough to solve the problem of border troubles. Internal problems also had to be solved, and the way the Qing Dynasty solved internal problems was much less constrained than the Han dynasty in the Central Plains.
First of all, we must know that many Han dynasties in the Central Plains did not want to solve the problem of land annexation, they could not solve it, and it was largely limited by the legitimacy of imperial power**.
The legitimacy of the imperial power of the Han dynasty is essentially the first of the local landlords, that is to say, only when the small and medium-sized landlords and large landowners unite to support the emperor of the Han dynasty, can he sit on the throne of the Central Plains.
In other words, the Han landlord class was the basic card of the Han emperors, and it was also the core driving force for them to maintain the normal operation of the dynasty.
But for the Qing Dynasty, foreign origins became a good thing on this issue, because in addition to the Han scholars and landlords in the Central Plains, they also had their own basic plate, that is, the Eight Banners aristocracy.
Therefore, a reward method often used by the emperors of the Qing Dynasty was to raise the flag of favored ministers and important ministers who had made meritorious contributions, so that they could break away from their original identity and become banner people, and in this way, the class was naturally divided.
It is precisely because of the strength of the Eight Banners aristocracy that the Qing Dynasty royal family is not worried about the problem of employing people, even if the Han landlord class does not cooperate, the Qing Dynasty can also have a group of manpower reserves of its own.
Moreover, when the Qing Dynasty entered the customs, the methods were also very cruel, creating a lot of bloody incidents, using these bloody events, the Qing Dynasty also shocked the Han landlord class in the Central Plains, which was equivalent to telling them: "I am a barbarian, if you resist me, I will use barbarian means to deal with you." ”
Of course, this trick is more ruthless, but it works well.
For example, Emperor Yongzheng, who we are all very familiar with, in order to change the land annexation problem that gradually appeared in the late Kangxi Emperor, he began to apportionment of land into mu and the integration of grain payment by the gentry.
The core of the land is to re-collect the land belonging to the local landlord class to the ** imperial court, divide the fields according to the population, and directly collect taxes, which objectively interrupts the process of land annexation, weakens the power of local landlords, and re-extends the vitality and vitality of the Qing Dynasty.
The integrated payment of grain by the gentry meant the abolition of the privileges of the scholars and the bureaucracy, so that they could pay taxes in the same way as ordinary people, instead of enjoying tax exemption.
The significance of this incident is to re-divide the rentier class and the parasitic class of the original Qing Dynasty, so that they can also bear the tax obligations of ordinary people, which is a way to expand fiscal revenue and increase mobilization.
And the core of what Yongzheng did was because he didn't care about the ideas of Han scholars, and he had his own basic plate.
If Yongzheng was an emperor of the Ming Dynasty, it would be difficult for him to do this, because the number of Han scholars and landlords he wanted to offend was too large, but Yongzheng, as the emperor of the Qing Dynasty, could achieve this.
In addition, we cannot ignore one point, that is, the Qing Dynasty was also very strict with the education of the prince.
Compared with the experience of the Ming Dynasty, which often gave birth to strange emperors, the imperial education of the Qing Dynasty was very well done. According to later documents, the prince of the Qing Dynasty began to receive the teacher's education before dawn every day from the age of five or six, first to do Confucian cultural enlightenment and learning, but also to learn Manchu and Mongolian, and even Tibetan Hui and other foreign languages, and finally the body can not be left behind, to learn archery and horse riding, to ensure that "the Qing Dynasty is the foundation of the country".
According to the current words, the Manchu court has done a very good job of the "chicken baby" policy for the descendants of its royal family, and it is crazy to roll in. It's certainly not a good way to educate and you can't sit back and relax, but the next emperor is not too outrageous. Of course, there will be exceptions to everything, such as the death of Emperor Tongzhi at the age of 19, and the reasons may be known to everyone, so I won't say much here.
But for that era, only such an education could cultivate a truly excellent heir, not a group of wastes, so objectively speaking, the personal ability and level of the Manchu princes wereRelativelyRelatively outstanding.
This can also be seen from the level of the emperors of the Qing Dynasty, the emperors of the Qing Dynasty also have relatively mediocre abilities, but the bottom line of personal ability is still much higher than that of other dynasties.
Even the Guangxu Emperor, who was later imprisoned in Yingtai, once tried his best to revitalize the Qing Dynasty, he was not satisfied with being a puppet.
Together, these reasons established the Qing Dynasty's stable rule over the Central Plains.
However, the general trend of history will never change by the personal will of a small group of people, and in the face of the crushing of the Western powers and the industrial revolution, the Manchu Qing Dynasty could not avoid the end of destruction even if the feudal system had done its best.
And it was precisely because of its demise that the road to the modernization of Chinese society was opened.