["[Dialogue between User and Assistant on 2024-01-01 00:00]\n<User>I've gathered some additional data to share:\nDorgon's controversial July 1645 edict (the \"haircutting order\") forced adult Han Chinese men to shave the front of their heads and comb the remaining hair into the queue hairstyle which was worn by Manchu men, on pain of death. The popular description of the order was: \"To keep the hair, you lose the head; To keep your head, you cut the hair.\" To the Manchus, this policy was a test of loyalty and an aid in distinguishing friend from foe. For the Han Chinese, however, it was a humiliating reminder of Qing authority that challenged traditional Confucian values. The Classic of Filial Piety (Xiaojing) held that \"a person's body and hair, being gifts from one's parents, are not to be damaged.\" Under the Ming dynasty, adult men did not cut their hair but instead wore it in the form of a top-knot. The order triggered strong resistance to Qing rule in Jiangnan and massive killing of ethnic Han Chinese. It was Han Chinese defectors who carried out massacres against people refusing to wear the queue.. Li Chengdong, a Han Chinese general who had served the Ming but surrendered to the Qing, ordered his Han troops to carry out three separate massacres in the city of Jiading within a month, resulting in tens of thousands of deaths. At the end of the third massacre, there was hardly any living person left in this city. Jiangyin also held out against about 10,000 Han Chinese Qing troops for 83 days. When the city wall was finally breached on 9 October 1645, the Han Chinese Qing army led by the Han Chinese Ming defector Liu Liangzuo (\u5289\u826f\u4f50), who had been ordered to \"fill the city with corpses before you sheathe your swords,\" massacred the entire population, killing between 74,000 and 100,000 people. The queue was the only aspect of Manchu culture which the Qing forced on the common Han population. The Qing required people serving as officials to wear Manchu clothing, but allowed non-official Han civilians to continue wearing Hanfu (Han clothing).\n<Assistant>I understand. I'll keep this in mind.", "[Dialogue between User and Assistant on 2024-01-02 00:00]\n<User>I'd like to tell you about some recent findings:\nAlthough his support had been essential to Shunzhi's ascent, Dorgon had through the years centralised so much power in his hands as to become a direct threat to the throne. So much so that upon his death he was extraordinarily bestowed the posthumous title of Emperor Yi (Chinese: \u7fa9\u7687\u5e1d), the only instance in Qing history in which a Manchu \"prince of the blood\" (Chinese: \u89aa\u738b) was so honored. Two months into Shunzhi's personal rule, Dorgon was not only stripped of his titles, but his corpse was disinterred and mutilated.[b] to atone for multiple \"crimes\", one of which was persecuting to death Shunzhi\u2019s agnate eldest brother, Hooge. More importantly, Dorgon's symbolic fall from grace also signaled a political purge of his family and associates at court, thus reverting power back to the person of the emperor. After a promising start, Shunzhi's reign was cut short by his early death in 1661 at the age of twenty-four from smallpox. He was succeeded by his third son Xuanye, who reigned as the Kangxi Emperor.\n\nThe Manchus sent Han Bannermen to fight against Koxinga's Ming loyalists in Fujian. The Qing carried out a massive depopulation policy and seaban forcing people to evacuated the coast in order to deprive Koxinga's Ming loyalists of resources, this has led to a myth that it was because Manchus were \"afraid of water\". In Fujian, it was Han Bannermen who were the ones carrying out the fighting and killing for the Qing and this disproved the entirely irrelevant claim that alleged fear of the water on part of the Manchus had to do with the coastal evacuation and seaban. Even though a poem refers to the soldiers carrying out massacres in Fujian as \"barbarian\", both Han Green Standard Army and Han Bannermen were involved in the fighting for the Qing side and carried out the worst slaughter. 400,000 Green Standard Army soldiers were used against the Three Feudatories besides 200,000 Bannermen.\n\nThe sixty-one year reign of the Kangxi Emperor was the longest of any Chinese emperor. Kangxi's reign is also celebrated as the beginning of an era known as the \"High Qing\", during which the dynasty reached the zenith of its social, economic and military power. Kangxi's long reign started when he was eight years old upon the untimely demise of his father. To prevent a repeat of Dorgon's dictatorial monopolizing of power during the regency, the Shunzhi Emperor, on his deathbed, hastily appointed four senior cabinet ministers to govern on behalf of his young son. The four ministers \u2014 Sonin, Ebilun, Suksaha, and Oboi \u2014 were chosen for their long service, but also to counteract each other's influences. Most important, the four were not closely related to the imperial family and laid no claim to the throne. However, as time passed, through chance and machination, Oboi, the most junior of the four, achieved such political dominance as to be a potential threat. Even though Oboi's loyalty was never an issue, his personal arrogance and political conservatism led him into an escalating conflict with the young emperor. In 1669 Kangxi, through trickery, disarmed and imprisoned Oboi \u2014 a significant victory for a fifteen-year-old emperor over a wily politician and experienced commander.\n\nThe early Manchu rulers also established two foundations of legitimacy which help to explain the stability of their dynasty. The first was the bureaucratic institutions and the neo-Confucian culture which they adopted from earlier dynasties. Manchu rulers and Han Chinese scholar-official elites gradually came to terms with each other. The examination system offered a path for ethnic Han to become officials. Imperial patronage of Kangxi Dictionary demonstrated respect for Confucian learning, while the Sacred Edict of 1670 effectively extolled Confucian family values. The second major source of stability was the Central Asian aspect of their Manchu identity which allowed them to appeal to Mongol, Tibetan and Uighur constituents. The Qing used the title of Emperor (Huangdi) in Chinese while among Mongols the Qing monarch was referred to as Bogda khan (wise Khan), and referred to as Gong Ma in Tibet. Qianlong propagated the image of himself as Buddhist sage rulers, patrons of Tibetan Buddhism. In the Manchu language, the Qing monarch was alternately referred to as either Huwangdi (Emperor) or Khan with no special distinction between the two usages. The Kangxi Emperor also welcomed to his court Jesuit missionaries, who had first come to China under the Ming. Missionaries including Tom\u00e1s Pereira, Martino Martini, Johann Adam Schall von Bell, Ferdinand Verbiest and Antoine Thomas held significant positions as military weapons experts, mathematicians, cartographers, astronomers and advisers to the emperor. The relationship of trust was however lost in the later Chinese Rites controversy.\n\nYet controlling the \"Mandate of Heaven\" was a daunting task. The vastness of China's territory meant that there were only enough banner troops to garrison key cities forming the backbone of a defense network that relied heavily on surrendered Ming soldiers. In addition, three surrendered Ming generals were singled out for their contributions to the establishment of the Qing dynasty, ennobled as feudal princes (\u85e9\u738b), and given governorships over vast territories in Southern China. The chief of these was Wu Sangui, who was given the provinces of Yunnan and Guizhou, while generals Shang Kexi and Geng Jingzhong were given Guangdong and Fujian provinces respectively.\n\nAs the years went by, the three feudal lords and their extensive territories became increasingly autonomous. Finally, in 1673, Shang Kexi petitioned Kangxi for permission to retire to his hometown in Liaodong province and nominated his son as his successor. The young emperor granted his retirement, but denied the heredity of his fief. In reaction, the two other generals decided to petition for their own retirements to test Kangxi's resolve, thinking that he would not risk offending them. The move backfired as the young emperor called their bluff by accepting their requests and ordering that all three fiefdoms to be reverted to the crown.\n<Assistant>Sure I will remember them.", "[Dialogue between User and Assistant on 2024-01-03 00:00]\n<User>Let me update you with some new information:\nFaced with the stripping of their powers, Wu Sangui, later joined by Geng Zhongming and by Shang Kexi's son Shang Zhixin, felt they had no choice but to revolt. The ensuing Revolt of the Three Feudatories lasted for eight years. Wu attempted, ultimately in vain, to fire the embers of south China Ming loyalty by restoring Ming customs, ordering that the resented queues be cut, and declaring himself emperor of a new dynasty. At the peak of the rebels' fortunes, they extended their control as far north as the Yangtze River, nearly establishing a divided China. Wu then hesitated to go further north, not being able to coordinate strategy with his allies, and Kangxi was able to unify his forces for a counterattack led by a new generation of Manchu generals. By 1681, the Qing government had established control over a ravaged southern China which took several decades to recover. Manchu Generals and Bannermen were initially put to shame by the better performance of the Han Chinese Green Standard Army, who fought better than them against the rebels and this was noted by Kangxi, leading him to task Generals Sun Sike, Wang Jinbao, and Zhao Liangdong to lead Green Standard Soldiers to crush the rebels. The Qing thought that Han Chinese were superior at battling other Han people and so used the Green Standard Army as the dominant and majority army in crushing the rebels instead of Bannermen. Similarly, in northwestern China against Wang Fuchen, the Qing used Han Chinese Green Standard Army soldiers and Han Chinese Generals such as Zhang Liangdong, Wang Jinbao, and Zhang Yong as the primary military forces. This choice was due to the rocky terrain, which favoured infantry troops over cavalry, to the desire to keep Bannermen in the reserves, and, again, to the belief that Han troops were better at fighting other Han people. These Han generals achieved victory over the rebels. Also due to the mountainous terrain, Sichuan and southern Shaanxi were also retaken by the Han Chinese Green Standard Army under Wang Jinbao and Zhao Liangdong in 1680, with Manchus only participating in dealing with logistics and provisions. 400,000 Green Standard Army soldiers and 150,000 Bannermen served on the Qing side during the war. 213 Han Chinese Banner companies, and 527 companies of Mongol and Manchu Banners were mobilized by the Qing during the revolt. 400,000 Green Standard Army soldiers were used against the Three Feudatories besides 200,000 Bannermen.\n\nThe Qing forces were crushed by Wu from 1673-1674. The Qing had the support of the majority of Han Chinese soldiers and Han elite against the Three Feudatories, since they refused to join Wu Sangui in the revolt, while the Eight Banners and Manchu officers fared poorly against Wu Sangui, so the Qing responded with using a massive army of more than 900,000 Han Chinese (non-Banner) instead of the Eight Banners, to fight and crush the Three Feudatories. Wu Sangui's forces were crushed by the Green Standard Army, made out of defected Ming soldiers.\n\nTo extend and consolidate the dynasty's control in Central Asia, the Kangxi Emperor personally led a series of military campaigns against the Dzungars in Outer Mongolia. The Kangxi Emperor was able to successfully expel Galdan's invading forces from these regions, which were then incorporated into the empire. Galdan was eventually killed in the Dzungar\u2013Qing War. In 1683, Qing forces received the surrender of Taiwan from Zheng Keshuang, grandson of Koxinga, who had conquered Taiwan from the Dutch colonists as a base against the Qing. Zheng Keshuang was awarded the title \"Duke Haicheng\" (\u6d77\u6f84\u516c) and was inducted into the Han Chinese Plain Red Banner of the Eight Banners when he moved to Beijing. Several Ming princes had accompanied Koxinga to Taiwan in 1661-1662, including the Prince of Ningjing Zhu Shugui and Prince Zhu Honghuan (\u6731\u5f18\u6853), son of Zhu Yihai, where they lived in the Kingdom of Tungning. The Qing sent the 17 Ming princes still living on Taiwan in 1683 back to mainland China where they spent the rest of their lives in exile since their lives were spared from execution. Winning Taiwan freed Kangxi's forces for series of battles over Albazin, the far eastern outpost of the Tsardom of Russia. Zheng's former soldiers on Taiwan like the rattan shield troops were also inducted into the Eight Banners and used by the Qing against Russian Cossacks at Albazin. The 1689 Treaty of Nerchinsk was China's first formal treaty with a European power and kept the border peaceful for the better part of two centuries. After Galdan's death, his followers, as adherents to Tibetan Buddhism, attempted to control the choice of the next Dalai Lama. Kangxi dispatched two armies to Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, and installed a Dalai Lama sympathetic to the Qing.\n<Assistant>Thanks for sharing. I've committed this to memory.", "[Dialogue between User and Assistant on 2024-01-04 00:00]\n<User>Here's some valuable information I collected:\nAfter the Kangxi Emperor's death in the winter of 1722, his fourth son, Prince Yong (\u96cd\u89aa\u738b), became the Yongzheng Emperor. In the later years of Kangxi's reign, Yongzheng and his brothers had fought, and there were rumours that he had usurped the throne(most of the rumours believe that Yongzheng's brother Yingzhen (Kangxi's 14th son) is the real successor of Kangxi Emperor, the reason why Yingzhen failed to sit on the throne is because Yongzheng and his confidant Keduo Long tampered the content of Kangxi's testament at the night when Kangxi passed away), a charge for which there is little evidence. In fact, his father had trusted him with delicate political issues and discussed state policy with him. When Yongzheng came to power at the age of 45, he felt a sense of urgency about the problems which had accumulated in his father's later years and did not need instruction in how to exercise power. In the words of one recent historian, he was \"severe, suspicious, and jealous, but extremely capable and resourceful,\" and in the words of another, turned out to be an \"early modern state-maker of the first order.\"\n<Assistant>Thanks for letting me know. I'll keep track of this.", "[Dialogue between User and Assistant on 2024-01-05 00:00]\n<User>There are some important details I learned:\nHe moved rapidly. First, he promoted Confucian orthodoxy and reversed what he saw as his father's laxness by cracking down on unorthodox sects and by decapitating an anti-Manchu writer his father had pardoned. In 1723 he outlawed Christianity and expelled Christian missionaries, though some were allowed to remain in the capital. Next, he moved to control the government. He expanded his father's system of Palace Memorials which brought frank and detailed reports on local conditions directly to the throne without being intercepted by the bureaucracy, and created a small Grand Council of personal advisors which eventually grew into the emperor's de facto cabinet for the rest of the dynasty. He shrewdly filled key positions with Manchu and Han Chinese officials who depended on his patronage. When he began to realize that the financial crisis was even greater than he had thought, Yongzheng rejected his father's lenient approach to local landowning elites and mounted a campaign to enforce collection of the land tax. The increased revenues were to be used for \"money to nourish honesty\" among local officials and for local irrigation, schools, roads, and charity. Although these reforms were effective in the north, in the south and lower Yangzi valley, where Kangxi had wooed the elites, there were long established networks of officials and landowners. Yongzheng dispatched experienced Manchu commissioners to penetrate the thickets of falsified land registers and coded account books, but they were met with tricks, passivity, and even violence. The fiscal crisis persisted.\n<Assistant>Excellent. I've documented all of this information.", "[Dialogue between User and Assistant on 2024-01-06 00:00]\n<User>There are some important details I learned:\nIn 1725 Yongzheng bestowed the hereditary title of Marquis on a descendant of the Ming dynasty Imperial family, Zhu Zhiliang, who received a salary from the Qing government and whose duty was to perform rituals at the Ming tombs, and was also inducted the Chinese Plain White Banner in the Eight Banners. Later the Qianlong Emperor bestowed the title Marquis of Extended Grace posthumously on Zhu Zhuliang in 1750, and the title passed on through twelve generations of Ming descendants until the end of the Qing dynasty.\n\nYongzheng also inherited diplomatic and strategic problems. A team made up entirely of Manchus drew up the Treaty of Kyakhta (1727) to solidify the diplomatic understanding with Russia. In exchange for territory and trading rights, the Qing would have a free hand dealing with the situation in Mongolia. Yongzheng then turned to that situation, where the Zunghars threatened to re-emerge, and to the southwest, where local Miao chieftains resisted Qing expansion. These campaigns drained the treasury but established the emperor's control of the military and military finance.\n\nQianlong's reign saw the launch of several ambitious cultural projects, including the compilation of the Siku Quanshu, or Complete Repository of the Four Branches of Literature. With a total of over 3,400 books, 79,000 chapters, and 36,304 volumes, the Siku Quanshu is the largest collection of books in Chinese history. Nevertheless, Qianlong used Literary Inquisition to silence opposition. The accusation of individuals began with the emperor's own interpretation of the true meaning of the corresponding words. If the emperor decided these were derogatory or cynical towards the dynasty, persecution would begin. Literary inquisition began with isolated cases at the time of Shunzhi and Kangxi, but became a pattern under Qianlong's rule, during which there were 53 cases of literary persecution.\n\nChina also began suffering from mounting overpopulation during this period. Population growth was stagnant for the first half of the 17th century due to civil wars and epidemics, but prosperity and internal stability gradually reversed this trend. The introduction of new crops from the Americas such as the potato and peanut allowed an improved food supply as well, so that the total population of China during the 18th century ballooned from 100 million to 300 million people. Soon all available farmland was used up, forcing peasants to work ever-smaller and more intensely worked plots. The Qianlong Emperor once bemoaned the country's situation by remarking \"The population continues to grow, but the land does not.\" The only remaining part of the empire that had arable farmland was Manchuria, where the provinces of Jilin and Heilongjiang had been walled off as a Manchu homeland. The emperor decreed for the first time that Han Chinese civilians were forbidden to settle. Mongols were forbidden by the Qing from crossing the borders of their banners, even into other Mongol Banners and from crossing into neidi (the Han Chinese 18 provinces) and were given serious punishments if they did in order to keep the Mongols divided against each other to benefit the Qing.\n\nHowever Qing rule saw an massively increasing amount of Han Chinese both illegally and legally streaming into Manchuria and settling down to cultivate land as Manchu landlords desired Han Chinese peasants to rent on their land and grow grain, most Han Chinese migrants were not evicted as they went over the Great Wall and Willow Palisade, during the eighteenth century Han Chinese farmed 500,000 hectares of privately owned land in Manchuria and 203,583 hectares of lands which were part of coutrier stations, noble estates, and Banner lands, in garrisons and towns in Manchuria Han Chinese made up 80% of the population.\n\nHan Chinese farmers were resettled from north China by the Qing to the area along the Liao River in order to restore the land to cultivation. Wasteland was reclaimed by Han Chinese squatters in addition to other Han who rented land from Manchu landlords. Despite officially prohibiting Han Chinese settlement on the Manchu and Mongol lands, by the 18th century the Qing decided to settle Han refugees from northern China who were suffering from famine, floods, and drought into Manchuria and Inner Mongolia so that Han Chinese farmed 500,000 hectares in Manchuria and tens of thousands of hectares in Inner Mongolia by the 1780s. Qianlong allowed Han Chinese peasants suffering from drought to move into Manchuria despite him issuing edicts in favor of banning them from 1740\u20131776. Chinese tenant farmers rented or even claimed title to land from the \"imperial estates\" and Manchu Bannerlands in the area. Besides moving into the Liao area in southern Manchuria, the path linking Jinzhou, Fengtian, Tieling, Changchun, Hulun, and Ningguta was settled by Han Chinese during the Qianlong Emperor's rule, and Han Chinese were the majority in urban areas of Manchuria by 1800. To increase the Imperial Treasury's revenue, the Qing sold formerly Manchu only lands along the Sungari to Han Chinese at the beginning of the Daoguang Emperor's reign, and Han Chinese filled up most of Manchuria's towns by the 1840s according to Abbe Huc.\n\nHowever, the 18th century saw the European empires gradually expand across the world, as European states developed economies built on maritime trade. The dynasty was confronted with newly developing concepts of the international system and state to state relations. European trading posts expanded into territorial control in nearby India and on the islands that are now Indonesia. The Qing response, successful for a time, was in 1756 to establish the Canton System, which restricted maritime trade to that city and gave monopoly trading rights to private Chinese merchants. The British East India Company and the Dutch East India Company had long before been granted similar monopoly rights by their governments.\n\nDemand in Europe for Chinese goods such as silk, tea, and ceramics could only be met if European companies funneled their limited supplies of silver into China. In the late 1700s, the governments of Britain and France were deeply concerned about the imbalance of trade and the drain of silver. To meet the growing Chinese demand for opium, the British East India Company greatly expanded its production in Bengal. Since China's economy was essentially self-sufficient, the country had little need to import goods or raw materials from the Europeans, so the usual way of payment was through silver. The Daoguang Emperor, concerned both over the outflow of silver and the damage that opium smoking was causing to his subjects, ordered Lin Zexu to end the opium trade. Lin confiscated the stocks of opium without compensation in 1839, leading Britain to send a military expedition the following year.\n<Assistant>Sure I will remember them.", "[Dialogue between User and Assistant on 2024-01-07 00:00]\n<User>I want to share some knowledge I just acquired:\nThe First Opium War revealed the outdated state of the Chinese military. The Qing navy, composed entirely of wooden sailing junks, was severely outclassed by the modern tactics and firepower of the British Royal Navy. British soldiers, using advanced muskets and artillery, easily outmaneuvered and outgunned Qing forces in ground battles. The Qing surrender in 1842 marked a decisive, humiliating blow to China. The Treaty of Nanjing, the first of the unequal treaties, demanded war reparations, forced China to open up the five ports of Canton, Amoy, Fuchow, Ningpo and Shanghai to western trade and missionaries, and to cede Hong Kong Island to Britain. It revealed many inadequacies in the Qing government and provoked widespread rebellions against the already hugely unpopular regime.\n\nThe Taiping Rebellion in the mid-19th century was the first major instance of anti-Manchu sentiment threatening the stability of the dynasty. Hong Xiuquan, a failed civil service candidate, led the Taiping Rebellion, amid widespread social unrest and worsening famine. In 1851 Hong Xiuquan and others launched an uprising in Guizhou province, established the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom with Hong himself as king, claiming he often had visions of God and that he was the brother of Jesus Christ. Slavery, concubinage, arranged marriage, opium smoking, footbinding, judicial torture, and the worship of idols were all banned. However, success and subsequent authority and power led to internal feuds, defections and corruption. In addition, British and French troops, equipped with modern weapons, had come to the assistance of the Qing imperial army. It was not until 1864 that Qing armies under Zeng Guofan succeeded in crushing the revolt. The rebellion not only posed the most serious threat towards Qing rulers; it was also \"bloodiest civil war of all time.\" Between 20 and 30 million people died during its fourteen-year course from 1850 to 1864. After the outbreak of this rebellion, there were also revolts by the Muslims and Miao people of China against the Qing dynasty, most notably in the Dungan Revolt (1862\u201377) in the northwest and the Panthay Rebellion (1856\u20131873) in Yunnan.\n\nThe Western powers, largely unsatisfied with the Treaty of Nanjing, gave grudging support to the Qing government during the Taiping and Nian Rebellions. China's income fell sharply during the wars as vast areas of farmland were destroyed, millions of lives were lost, and countless armies were raised and equipped to fight the rebels. In 1854, Britain tried to re-negotiate the Treaty of Nanjing, inserting clauses allowing British commercial access to Chinese rivers and the creation of a permanent British embassy at Beijing.\n<Assistant>Noted. I'll remember these details.", "[Dialogue between User and Assistant on 2024-01-08 00:00]\n<User>Here are some new facts I learnt just now:\nRatification of the treaty the following year led to resumption of hostilities and in 1860, with Anglo-French forces marching on Beijing, the emperor and his court fled the capital for the imperial hunting lodge at Rehe. Once in Beijing, the Anglo-French forces looted the Old Summer Palace, and in an act of revenge for the arrest of several Englishmen, burnt it to the ground. Prince Gong, a younger half-brother of the emperor, who had been left as his brother's proxy in the capital, was forced to sign the Convention of Beijing. Meanwhile, the humiliated emperor died the following year at Rehe.\n\nChinese generals and officials such as Zuo Zongtang led the suppression of rebellions and stood behind the Manchus. When the Tongzhi Emperor came to the throne at the age of five in 1861, these officials rallied around him in what was called the Tongzhi Restoration. Their aim was to adopt western military technology in order to preserve Confucian values. Zeng Guofan, in alliance with Prince Gong, sponsored the rise of younger officials such as Li Hongzhang, who put the dynasty back on its feet financially and instituted the Self-Strengthening Movement. The reformers then proceeded with institutional reforms, including China's first unified ministry of foreign affairs, the Zongli Yamen; allowing foreign diplomats to reside in the capital; establishment of the Imperial Maritime Customs Service; the formation of modernized armies, such as the Beiyang Army, as well as a navy; and the purchase from Europeans of armament factories.\n<Assistant>Got it. I will remember them.", "[Dialogue between User and Assistant on 2024-01-09 00:00]\n<User>Here's some more information I came across:\nThe dynasty lost control of peripheral territories bit by bit. In return for promises of support against the British and the French, the Russian Empire took large chunks of territory in the Northeast in 1860. The period of cooperation between the reformers and the European powers ended with the Tientsin Massacre of 1870, which was incited by the murder of French nuns set off by the belligerence of local French diplomats. Starting with the Cochinchina Campaign in 1858, France expanded control of Indochina. By 1883, France was in full control of the region and had reached the Chinese border. The Sino-French War began with a surprise attack by the French on the Chinese southern fleet at Fuzhou. After that the Chinese declared war on the French. A French invasion of Taiwan was halted and the French were defeated on land in Tonkin at the Battle of Bang Bo. However Japan threatened to enter the war against China due to the Gapsin Coup and China chose to end the war with negotiations. The war ended in 1885 with the Treaty of Tientsin (1885) and the Chinese recognition of the French protectorate in Vietnam.\n<Assistant>I've processed this information and will remember it.", "[Dialogue between User and Assistant on 2024-01-10 00:00]\n<User>I want to share some knowledge I just acquired:\nHistorians have judged the Qing dynasty's vulnerability and weakness to foreign imperialism in the 19th century to be based mainly on its maritime naval weakness while it achieved military success against westerners on land, the historian Edward L. Dreyer said that \"China\u2019s nineteenth-century humiliations were strongly related to her weakness and failure at sea. At the start of the Opium War, China had no unified navy and no sense of how vulnerable she was to attack from the sea; British forces sailed and steamed wherever they wanted to go......In the Arrow War (1856\u201360), the Chinese had no way to prevent the Anglo-French expedition of 1860 from sailing into the Gulf of Zhili and landing as near as possible to Beijing. Meanwhile, new but not exactly modern Chinese armies suppressed the midcentury rebellions, bluffed Russia into a peaceful settlement of disputed frontiers in Central Asia, and defeated the French forces on land in the Sino-French War (1884\u201385). But the defeat of the fleet, and the resulting threat to steamship traffic to Taiwan, forced China to conclude peace on unfavorable terms.\"\n\nIn 1884, pro-Japanese Koreans in Seoul led the Gapsin Coup. Tensions between China and Japan rose after China intervened to suppress the uprising. Japanese Prime Minister It\u014d Hirobumi and Li Hongzhang signed the Convention of Tientsin, an agreement to withdraw troops simultaneously, but the First Sino-Japanese War of 1895 was a military humiliation. The Treaty of Shimonoseki recognized Korean independence and ceded Taiwan and the Pescadores to Japan. The terms might have been harsher, but when Japanese citizen attacked and wounded Li Hongzhang, an international outcry shamed the Japanese into revising them. The original agreement stipulated the cession of Liaodong Peninsula to Japan, but Russia, with its own designs on the territory, along with Germany and France, in what was known as the Triple Intervention, successfully put pressure on the Japanese to abandon the peninsula.\n\nThese years saw an evolution in the participation of Empress Dowager Cixi (Wade\u2013Giles: Tz'u-Hsi) in state affairs. She entered the imperial palace in the 1850s as a concubine to the Xianfeng Emperor (r. 1850\u20131861) and came to power in 1861 after her five-year-old son, the Tongzhi Emperor ascended the throne. She, the Empress Dowager Ci'an (who had been Xianfeng's empress), and Prince Gong (a son of the Daoguang Emperor), staged a coup that ousted several regents for the boy emperor. Between 1861 and 1873, she and Ci'an served as regents, choosing the reign title \"Tongzhi\" (ruling together). Following the emperor's death in 1875, Cixi's nephew, the Guangxu Emperor, took the throne, in violation of the dynastic custom that the new emperor be of the next generation, and another regency began. In the spring of 1881, Ci'an suddenly died, aged only forty-three, leaving Cixi as sole regent. \n\nFrom 1889, when Guangxu began to rule in his own right, to 1898, the Empress Dowager lived in semi-retirement, spending the majority of the year at the Summer Palace. On November 1, 1897, two German Roman Catholic missionaries were murdered in the southern part of Shandong Province (the Juye Incident). In response, Germany used the murders as a pretext for a naval occupation of Jiaozhou Bay. The occupation prompted a \"scramble for concessions\" in 1898, which included the German lease of Jiazhou Bay, the Russian acquisition of Liaodong, and the British lease of the New Territories of Hong Kong.\n\nIn the wake of these external defeats, the Guangxu Emperor initiated the Hundred Days' Reform of 1898. Newer, more radical advisers such as Kang Youwei were given positions of influence. The emperor issued a series of edicts and plans were made to reorganize the bureaucracy, restructure the school system, and appoint new officials. Opposition from the bureaucracy was immediate and intense. Although she had been involved in the initial reforms, the empress dowager stepped in to call them off, arrested and executed several reformers, and took over day-to-day control of policy. Yet many of the plans stayed in place, and the goals of reform were implanted.\n\nWidespread drought in North China, combined with the imperialist designs of European powers and the instability of the Qing government, created conditions that led to the emergence of the Righteous and Harmonious Fists, or \"Boxers.\" In 1900, local groups of Boxers proclaiming support for the Qing dynasty murdered foreign missionaries and large numbers of Chinese Christians, then converged on Beijing to besiege the Foreign Legation Quarter. A coalition of European, Japanese, and Russian armies (the Eight-Nation Alliance) then entered China without diplomatic notice, much less permission. Cixi declared war on all of these nations, only to lose control of Beijing after a short, but hard-fought campaign. She fled to Xi'an. The victorious allies drew up scores of demands on the Qing government, including compensation for their expenses in invading China and execution of complicit officials.\n\nBy the early 20th century, mass civil disorder had begun in China, and it was growing continuously. To overcome such problems, Empress Dowager Cixi issued an imperial edict in 1901 calling for reform proposals from the governors-general and governors and initiated the era of the dynasty's \"New Policies\", also known as the \"Late Qing Reform\". The edict paved the way for the most far-reaching reforms in terms of their social consequences, including the creation of a national education system and the abolition of the imperial examinations in 1905.\n<Assistant>Noted. I'll remember these details."]
[{"question": "How did the Ming's typically wear their hair>", "answer": "top-knot"}, {"question": "What city was massacred for not wearing the proper haircut?", "answer": "Jiading"}, {"question": "Who was a threat to Shunzhi's throne?", "answer": "Dorgon"}, {"question": "What was Dorgon known as after death?", "answer": "Emperor Yi"}, {"question": "When did Shunzhi's death?", "answer": "1661"}, {"question": "Who was Shunzhi's oldest brother?", "answer": "Hooge"}, {"question": "How old was Shunzhi at his death?", "answer": "twenty-four"}, {"question": "Who did the Manchus send to battle Koxinga's troops?", "answer": "Han Bannermen"}, {"question": "What were the Manchus accused of being afraid of?", "answer": "water"}, {"question": "How long was Kangxi Emperor in power?", "answer": "sixty-one year"}, {"question": "What era did Kanxi's rule kick off?", "answer": "High Qing"}, {"question": "How old was Kangxi when he took over?", "answer": "eight"}, {"question": "Who ruled while Kangxi was young?", "answer": "Oboi"}, {"question": "Who was the most important Ming general?", "answer": "Wu Sangui"}, {"question": "When did Kexi retire?", "answer": "1673"}, {"question": "Who did Kexi thing should take over for him?", "answer": "his son"}, {"question": "How long did the Revolt of the Three Feudatories last?", "answer": "eight years"}, {"question": "Who declared himself emperor?", "answer": "Wu"}, {"question": "When did the Qing regain power over southern China?", "answer": "1681"}, {"question": "Who did the Qing think were the better soldiers to battle Han Chinese?", "answer": "other Han people"}, {"question": "How many Green Standard Army soldiers  were on the Qing side?", "answer": "400,000"}, {"question": "How many soldiers did the Qing fight back with?", "answer": "900,000"}, {"question": "Who did Kangxi fight?", "answer": "Dzungars"}, {"question": "Where did Kangxi lead an army?", "answer": "Outer Mongolia"}, {"question": "When did Taiwan fall?", "answer": "1683"}, {"question": "Who took Kangxi's place?", "answer": "Prince Yong"}, {"question": "How old was Yongzheng when he took over?", "answer": "45"}, {"question": "Who did Yongzheng behead?", "answer": "anti-Manchu writer"}, {"question": "What religion did Yongzheng ban?", "answer": "Christianity"}, {"question": "When did Yongzheng give this title?", "answer": "1725"}, {"question": "What was Zhu's job?", "answer": "perform rituals"}, {"question": "What did the Qing get from the Treaty of Kyakhta?", "answer": "Mongolia"}, {"question": "How many books were in the Siku Quanshu?", "answer": "3,400 books"}, {"question": "How many volumes were in the Siku Quanshu?", "answer": "36,304 volumes"}, {"question": "How many literary persecutions were there under Qianlongs reign?", "answer": "53"}, {"question": "What crops helped the Chinese?", "answer": "potato and peanut"}, {"question": "How many people lived in China at the end of the 20th century?", "answer": "300 million"}, {"question": "What was the last part of China with farmland left?", "answer": "Manchuria"}, {"question": "Where did Hans go to to find land?", "answer": "Manchuria"}, {"question": "How much land did the Han cultivate?", "answer": "500,000 hectares"}, {"question": "What percent of the population in Manchuria was Han?", "answer": "80%"}, {"question": "Which empires grew during the 18th century?", "answer": "European states"}, {"question": "What country near China did the Europeans first control?", "answer": "India"}, {"question": "What were the economies of the European empires built on?", "answer": "maritime trade"}, {"question": "What did the Chinese want in return?", "answer": "silver"}, {"question": "Where was opium made?", "answer": "Bengal"}, {"question": "Who fought the Qing in the First Opium War?", "answer": "British"}, {"question": "What island was given to the British?", "answer": "Hong Kong Island"}, {"question": "Who led the Rebellion?", "answer": "Hong Xiuquan"}, {"question": "When did the Rebellion start?", "answer": "1851"}, {"question": "What entity was established in Guizhou province?", "answer": "Taiping Heavenly Kingdom"}, {"question": "Were the European empires satisfied or unsatisfied by the Treaty of Nanjing?", "answer": "unsatisfied"}, {"question": "Who did the Europeans support during the Rebellions?", "answer": "Qing government"}, {"question": "When did the British try to redo the Treaty of Nanjing?", "answer": "1854"}, {"question": "Where did the emperor go?", "answer": "Rehe"}, {"question": "What did Prince Gong sign?", "answer": "Convention of Beijing"}, {"question": "Who did the Chinese lose territory to in exchange for help?", "answer": "Russian"}, {"question": "When was the Tientsin Massacre?", "answer": "1870"}, {"question": "What was the main problem the Qing had in preventing invasion from Europe?", "answer": "naval weakness"}, {"question": "What coup happened in 1884?", "answer": "Gapsin Coup"}, {"question": "Where did the Empress Dowager spend most of her time?", "answer": "Summer Palace"}, {"question": "Where were the missionaries killed?", "answer": "Shandong Province"}, {"question": "What was the murders of the missionaries called?", "answer": "Juye Incident"}, {"question": "Who took over the policy of China?", "answer": "empress dowager"}, {"question": "Where was there a drought?", "answer": "North China"}]