Empress Dowager Cixi: China's Most Misunderstood Rule

Empress Dowager Cixi ruled China for almost fifty years from behind a literal curtain, without ever officially being allowed to rule anything. She staged a coup in her twenties, ordered the drowning of a rival's favourite consort, and was branded a monster in the West by a book built substantially on a forged diary. When her reputation collapsed after the Boxer Rebellion, she hired a Manchu photographer trained in Paris and an American portrait painter and built one of the most sophisticated personal image campaigns of the nineteenth century to fight back. This episode covers her rise from a minor Manchu family, the coup that put her in power, Manchu court dress and the fashion choices that signalled her authority, her decade-long conflict with the Guangxu Emperor, the Boxer Rebellion, the still-unsolved poisoning that killed Guangxu one day before her own death in 1908, and the ongoing historians' fight over who she actually was. More on this over on Substack, including a much longer look at Xunling, the photographer behind her most famous images: thefashionmemoir1.substack.com ------------- Find our Podcast on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music or where ever you listen to your podcasts. - open.spotify.com/show/5hAxuFR05MaeT2dRuDkJSZ We have a Substack as well - https://thefashionmemoir1.substack.com/ ------------- Watch our other videos: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLM3OqLHVo6eGkl86dsCJlWdQg9UNuNoWm https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLM3OqLHVo6eH5hSfU