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Person1811 – 1872

Zeng Guofan

Also called: Tseng Kuo-fan

Han Chinese official who raised the Xiang Army to crush the Taiping and launched the Self-Strengthening Movement

A Neo-Confucian scholar-official from Hunan, he raised a volunteer force, the Xiang Army, in his home province when the regular Qing armies proved helpless against the Taiping, and recaptured Nanjing in 1864. As viceroy of Liangjiang he founded the Anqing Arsenal and the Jiangnan Arsenal and proposed sending students to America, launching the Self-Strengthening Movement. He groomed his protégé Li Hongzhang to form the Huai Army and opened the way for Han officials to stand at the centre of Qing government. His collected letters to his sons and brothers became a widely read guide to conduct.

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2 related events

  1. 1
    1851 – 1864Taiping Rebellioncommander

    A peasant army led by Hong Xiuquan rose to "destroy the Manchus and restore the Han", set up the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom with Nanjing as its capital and defied the Qing for fourteen years until Han Chinese militias and Western-led troops crushed it.

  2. 2
    1861 – 1895Self-Strengthening Movementleader

    Han Chinese officials who had crushed the Taiping adopted Western arms and technology under the slogan "Chinese learning as substance, Western learning for use", founding arsenals, shipyards and modern enterprises. Defeats by France and Japan exposed its limits.

People who appear alongside

  • Li Hongzhang1823 – 1901

    Qing viceroy who steered policy toward Korea after 1882 and signed the Tianjin Convention and the Treaty of Shimonoseki with Itō Hirobumi

  • Hong Xiuquan1814 – 1864

    Founder of the God Worshipping Society and the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, who called himself the Heavenly King and made Nanjing his capital

Themes this person appears in

  • The Opening of East Asia1839 – 1901

    From the Opium War to the Boxer Protocol — sixty years in which China, Japan and Korea, forced open by Western gunboats, each tried to reform and went separate ways