Zeng Guofan

Kuo-fan Tseng (Zeng Guofan) 1811-1872 Born: November 26, 1811 in Hsiang-hsiang, Hunan, China Died: March 12, 1872 in Nanking, China Nationality: Chinese. Occupation: Soldier. Table of Contents:Awards | Biographical Essay | Further Readings Tseng directed the Ch'ing Dynasty's extraordinary suppression of the Taiping Rebellion. His strategy used locally recruited but professional armies and required twelve years to succeed. He continued to serve in high office and its recognized as a key figure in the Ch'ing restoration that began in the 1860's. Renowned for his probity, Tseng recruited men who became the dynasty's chief ministers after his death, but few approached his talents or his upright character.

Biographical Essay:

Early Life Tseng Kuo-fan came from a large landowning family striving to become part of the scholar-official elite. In 1838, he passed the highest imperial examination and became a member of the prestigious Hanlin Academy, where he had considerable leisure to develop his theories of government. In 1849, he was appointed to an important post in the central civil bureaucracy. Over the next three years, he acquired broad experience in the upper echelons of government. The teachings of T'ang Chien, a scholar-official who adhered to the orthodox school of Neo-Confucianism associated with Chu Hsi, had great influence on Tseng. T'ang advocated a combination of Neo-Confucian self-cultivation and active service to the state. Chu Hsi had followed that pattern; it was also to characterize Tseng's life. Tseng was a thin, stern-looking man with a long beard, whose whole demeanor reflected his lifelong practice of Puritan self-denial. Tseng is famous for having kept a daily diary reflecting his moral concerns and for his regular practice of self-examination and self-improvement in the Neo-Confucian mode. Tseng's father and his four younger brothers all gained distinction in service against the Taipings. Following Chinese social practice, Tseng was married at age sixteen to a woman chosen by his parents. Tseng had a typically large family, two sons and five daughters. One son became a distinguished diplomat and his daughters married prominent men. Tseng's family life was exemplary in terms of Neo-Confucian morality, because he avoided personal corruption and family favoritism while still harnessing his family's talents to the dynasty's service. Tseng should be counted among Peking's intellectual elite before 1852. His own ideas were eclectic and focused on questions of practical administration or statecraft. He believed that the Ch'ing Dynasty had been harmed by too much autocratic power. His solutions stressed practical measures that would decrease

centralization while maintaining the emperor's role in the system. Thus, he was not a reformer but sought the regular practice of Neo-Confucian principles of good government by morally upright men. Tseng believed that if good officials, on the emperor's behalf, emphasized three matters—recruiting able subordinates, conducting careful financial management, and maintaining appropriate military strength—then the dynasty's future would be assured. These principles became the hallmarks of his career.

Life's Work In 1852, Tseng returned to his home district as the tide of the Taiping Rebellion swept out of south China and across the Hunan Province in the central Yangtze valley region. Tseng Kuo-fan was in retirement to observe the proper mourning following his mother's death, but he nevertheless accepted an imperial appointment to lead local defense efforts. The Taiping siege of the Hunan provincial capital of Changsha had not succeeded, but the rebel forces, swollen to more than half a million, had taken other cities and were preparing to attack eastward into the richer economic regions along the lower Yangtze River. In April, 1853, the city of Nanking in Kiangsu Province fell to the Taipings, who ruled from there until July, 1864. Using the somewhat vague authority of his post, Tseng raised a new-style military force, the Hunan Army. This command, which became the model for other regional armies, combined bands of mercenary fighters with local self-defense forces under the leadership of an officer corps dominated initially by local literati. Tseng insisted upon sound organization, professional fighting skills, and absolute loyalty to the Ch'ing Dynasty. He believed that the Hunan Army had transcended its origins as a local militia and often stressed the differences between it and the many unruly militia units that flourished in the 1850's and 1860's. His army numbered as many as 130,000 and contained both land and naval fighting forces, but it was not large in terms of the period. Such locally organized and led military units were anathema to the dynasty, which feared that they might turn upon the throne, but Tseng's loyal service in Peking and his reputation as a staunch orthodox Neo-Confucian won important backers at the court for his experiment. Initially the Hunan Army operated as an adjunct to the regular Ch'ing armies. Although the Hunan Army had only limited success in the mid-1850's, it took pressure off the hard-pressed regular Ch'ing armies and became accepted as a part of the anti-Taiping forces. Command of the Ch'ing forces remained in the hands of regular generals, many of whom were Manchus or Mongols. They made their headquarters at the socalled Great Camp of Kiangnan near Nanking. In 1856, the Taiping movement underwent an internal crisis which weakened their cause for more than three years. During this time, the Ch'ing regular military could not subdue the rebellion; then, in 1859, a new prime minister revived the Taipings. A spring offensive by the Taiping armies overran the Ch'ing headquarters at the Great Camp of Kiangnan in May, 1860, killing several top Ch'ing generals and destroying their units. This Taiping offensive of 1860 became the turning point of the war. At this juncture, the dynasty turned to Tseng, who was elevated to the position of viceroy in the lower Yangtze region and given overall command of the efforts against the Taipings. Tseng initiated a plan to capture the Yangtze river city of Anking, above Nanking, which he saw as the key to control of the whole region. He placed his brother Tseng Kuo-ch'uan in command and, after a carefully prepared siege, Anking fell in September, 1861, with a slaughter of most of the city's inhabitants. Tseng's next move was to advance his protégés, Li Hung-chang and Tso Tsung-t'ang, to be governors of key provinces in the lower Yangtze valley. They led their own provincial armies and pressed inward from the coastal region toward Nanking, while Tseng's forces deployed eastward from Anking. By mid-1862, Tseng's combined forces had hemmed in the Taipings. Another two years of bloody fighting ensued before the Taiping emperor was killed and most of his forces were slaughtered or captured. Tseng had accomplished a great victory that revived the Ch'ing Dynasty's rule of China. Tseng's victory marked a shift that gave increased power and importance to Han Chinese officials in the Ch'ing system. Also, Tseng's success realized some changes that he had advocated in Peking prior to 1852. The creation of provincial armies, still loyal to the dynasty, and their leadership by Han Chinese modified the autocratic, centralized rule that he had criticized. The armies themselves, partly armed with Western weapons, embodied his concern with appropriate military strength. The civil war was financed by new taxes which embodied both innovation and prudent fiscal measures. The most notable was an internal transit tax on shipments of goods known as likin. This tax itself produced a more decentralized financial administration, thus also lessening central control, but avoided a fiscal crisis for the dynasty. Finally, Tseng made every

effort to select the best men to serve in his own headquarters. He did not initiate each of these measures, but they all fit into his approach to statecraft. Tseng maintained his Neo-Confucian reliance on achieving good government through men of moral character, rather than upon laws or formal discipline. Yet he sometimes despaired at the corruption among his own military and civilian subordinates. He lived with their failings, but he was extremely severe toward the Taipings. On the battlefield or in defeat, soldiers and civilians alike received little mercy from Tseng or his armies. Tseng began the task of reconstruction while still fighting. Again, his approach stressed careful plans and administration. As always, he looked to the matters of prudent defense measures, recruiting able officials, and sound fiscal management. Within months of defeating the Taipings, he began disbanding most of the Hunan Army, searched carefully for the men of highest character to fill official posts, and tried to return the tax system to a peace-time basis so that both farmers and the dynasty could prosper. As the reconstruction was beginning, the court again called on Tseng for help against a major rebellion, the Nien. These rebels had operated from nests or lairs in Anhwei and Honan provinces since the early 1850's. Remnants of the Taiping forces joined the Nien in late 1864, and then in May, 1865, Nien cavalry killed the Ch'ing commander, the Mongol general Senggerinchin. Within days, the frightened court, which had no effective armies between themselves and the Nien, assigned Tseng to take command. Tseng's own forces were already disbanded, so he relied upon the available Ch'ing and local forces, stiffened by Li Hungchang's Anhwei army. Tseng led the anti-Nien efforts until December, 1866, during which time he penetrated the Nien's home territory and broke up their links to the villages. Tseng's strategy then called for his armies, stationed at key points in large encampments, to attack the columns of Nien cavalry as they moved outward from their former base areas. After Li Hung-chang assumed command in 1867, he followed a variation of this strategy and defeated the Nien within a year. In addition to his role in the suppression of the Taiping Rebellion, Tseng played a part in the so-called Selfstrengthening movement, which promoted the use of Western technology. His association with this movement began in 1861, when he and his subordinates began employing foreign units, especially foreign artillery and ships, against the Taipings. These foreign-equipped and foreign-led units were mercenaries. The most famous was the "Ever Victorious Army," which was led after 1862 by Charles "Chinese" Gordon, a British Victorian adventurer and hero. The battlefield effectiveness of these foreign units was undeniable, and Tseng accepted the suggestions that the Ch'ing forces should acquire new foreign equipment. Tseng remained an advocate of such borrowing until the end of his life, but he always saw Westernization as a secondary element in making China strong. Western weapons and technology had practical uses, but for matters of principle Tseng never wavered in his Neo-Confucian orientation. In 1867, Tseng was appointed to a top position in Peking, and in 1868 he became viceroy of the metropolitan region around Peking. There is evidence that Tseng's health was already in serious decline at this time, but he remained a hard-working administrator. In 1870, he was called upon to settle the difficult diplomatic situation arising out of the Tientsin massacre, when Catholic missionaries were murdered by mobs who believed that Catholic sisters were killing the foundling babies they took in. Tseng took a conciliatory approach to the foreign demands, which angered some belligerent officials, so his protégé Li Hung-chang again relieved him. Tseng was transferred to the viceroy's post in Nanking and died in March, 1872, shortly after arriving there.

Summary The dynasty granted Tseng Kuo-fan the hereditary title of marquis for his extraordinary service, and this unprecedented honor for a Han Chinese official was fully deserved. Without his leadership, the Manchu rule of the Chinese Empire would have fallen to the mid-nineteenth century internal peasant rebellions. Tseng, although never the most powerful or influential official during his lifetime, has come to symbolize the revival of Ch'ing fortunes in the mid-nineteenth century. He became a model particularly to those who wanted to find in recent history a Chinese figure who upheld the highest virtues of traditional NeoConfucianism. Tseng's austere, frugal, serious life of self-improvement and service to the state was invoked by Chiang Kai-shek, in particular, between 1928 and 1949.

Tseng's legacy also has its detractors. His own high principles proved insufficient to wean others away from self-aggrandizement and personal enrichment while in government service. Self-strengthening began the difficult business of matching the burgeoning power of the Western industrial nations, but it stopped far short of the adaptations China needed to ensure its own territorial integrity and military strength. The T'ung-chih restoration was real, but the institutional and personal weaknesses that Tseng found rampant survived under the Kuang-hsu emperor and produced a great crisis following the dynasty's defeat in the First SinoJapanese War. Ultimately, Tseng's approach rested on the service of upright men as loyal officials to the state. The standards of duty, sacrifice, and service that Tseng himself embodied proved, however, too lofty for even his most able followers to achieve. With their lesser stuff the dynasty's slide resumed after Tseng's death.

Awards:

Areas of Achievement: Politics and the military

FURTHER READINGS •

Kuhn, Philip A. "The Taiping Rebellion," Cambridge University Press, The Cambridge History of China. Ed. John K. Fairbank. 10(1978) An excellent summary of Tseng's career and his ideas; places him in the historical context of his times. For more detailed treatment see Kuhn's Rebellion and Its Enemies in Late Imperial China: Militarization and Social Structure, 1796-1864 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1970)

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Kuo, Ting-yee; Kwang-ching Liu. "Self-strengthening: The Pursuit of Western Technology," The Cambridge History of China. Ed. John K. Fairbank. 10. A description of the late nineteenth century effort at modernization which explains Tseng's influence without over-emphasis on his role

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Liu, Kwang-ching. "The Ch'ing Restoration," The Cambridge History of China. Ed. John K. Fairbank. 10. A reconsideration of the T'ung-chih restoration and Tseng's place in it

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Shen, Han-yin Chen. "Tseng Kuo-fan in Peking, 1840-1852: His Ideas on Statecraft and Reform," Journal of Asian Studies. 27(November 1967): 61-80. A discussion of Tseng before he became famous, with attention to his place in the intellectual milieu of mid-nineteenth century China

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Wright, Mary C. The Last Stand of Chinese Conservatism: The T'ung-chih Restoration, 1862- 1974. Rev. Atheneum, 1966. This is the strongest presentation of the case for a mid-nineteenth century restoration inspired by Tseng's ideal

Source Citation: Buck, David D. "Tseng, Kuo-fan (1811-1872)." DISCovering World History. Online ed. Detroit: Gale, 2003. Student Resource Center - Bronze. Gale. Concordian International School. 23 Aug. 2009 .