|Portrait of General Tso, by Piassetsky, 1875|
|Viceroy of Liangjiang|
|Preceded by||Peng Yulin|
|Governor General of Shaanxi and Gansu|
|Governor General of Fujian, Taiwan, and Zhejiang|
|Succeeded by||Ma Xinyi|
|Governor of Zhejiang|
1863 – ----
November 10, 1812|
Xiangyin County, Hunan
|Died||September 5, 1885
|Occupation||Statesman, military leader|
|Commands||Commander of the Xiang Army|
|Battles/wars||Taiping Rebellion, Nien Rebellion, Dungan revolt (1862–1877)|
Zuo Zongtang (Chinese: 左宗棠; pinyin: Zuǒ Zōngtáng, pronounced [tswɔ̀ tsʊ́ŋtʰɑ̌ŋ]; Courtesy name: Chinese: 季高; pinyin: Jìgāo) (November 10, 1812 – September 5, 1885), spelled Tso Tsung-t'ang in Wade-Giles and known simply as General Tso in the West, was a Chinese statesman and military leader in the late Qing Dynasty.
He was born in Xiangyin County, north of Changsha in Hunan province. He served in China's northwestern regions, quelling the Dungan revolt and various other disturbances. He served with distinction during the Qing Empire's civil war against the Taiping Rebellion, in which it is estimated 20 million people died.
Zuo's career got an inauspicious start when, as a young man, he failed the official court exams seven times (ca. 1822-1835). He decided to abandon his plans to become a civil servant and returned to his home by the Xiang River in Hunan to farm silkworms, read, and drink tea. It was during this period that he first directed his attention to the study of Western sciences and political economy.
When the Taiping Rebellion broke out in 1850, Zuo, then 38 years old, was hired as an advisor to Zeng Guofan, the governor of Hunan. In 1856, he was formally offered a position in the provincial government of Hunan. In 1860, Zuo was given command of a force of 5,000 volunteers, the Xiang Army (later known as "Chu Army"), and by September of that year, he drove the Taiping rebels out of Hunan and Guangxi provinces, into coastal Zhejiang. Zuo captured the city of Shaoxing and, from there, pushed south into Fujian and Guangdong provinces, where the revolt had first begun. In 1863, Zuo was appointed Governor of Zhejiang and an Undersecretary of War.
In August 1864, Zuo, together with Zeng Guofan, dethroned the Taiping teenage king, Hong Tianguifu, and brought an end to the rebellion. He was created Earl Kejing of the 1st Class for his part in suppressing the rebellion. He, Zeng Guofan and Li Hongzhang were called Zeng, Zuo, Li, the leaders in suppressing the rebellion.
In 1865, Zuo was appointed Viceroy and Governor-General of Fujian and Zhejiang. As Commissioner of Naval Industries, Zuo founded China's first modern shipyard and naval academy in Fuzhou the following year.
Success and appointments
Zuo's successes would continue. In 1867, he became Viceroy and Governor General of Shaanxi and Gansu and Imperial Commissioner of the Army in Shaanxi. In 1884, his fellow Hunanese Xiang army officer, Liu Jintang (Liu Chin-t'ang), was appointed as the first Governor of Xinjiang province. The Governor of Xinjiang was the subordinate to the Governor General of Shaanxi and Gansu.
In these capacities, he succeeded in putting down another uprising, the Nian Rebellion (捻軍起義), in 1868.
After this military success, he marched west with his army of 120,000 people, winning many victories with advanced Western weapons in the Dungan revolt of Northwestern China, including today's Shaanxi, Ningxia, Gansu and Qinghai provinces and Xinjiang, in the 1870s.
Several Muslim generals, such as Ma Zhan'ao, Ma Anliang, Ma Qianling, Dong Fuxiang, and Ma Haiyan from Hezhou, who had defected to General Zuo's army, helped him crush the "Muslim rebels". General Zuo rewarded them by relocating the Han Chinese from the suburbs of Hezhou to another place and allowing their troops to stay in the Hezhou suburbs as long as they did not live in the city itself.
In 1878, he successfully suppressed the Yakub Beg's uprising and helped to negotiate an end to Russian occupation of the border city of Ili. He was vocal in the debate at the Qing Imperial court over what to do with the Xinjiang situation, advocating for Xinjiang to become a province, in opposition to Li Hongzhang, who wanted to abandon what he called "Useless Xinjiang" and concentrate on defending China's coastal areas. However, Zuo won the debate, Xinjiang was made a province, and many administrative functions were staffed by his Hunan officers.
Zuo was outspoken in calling for war against Russia, hoping to settle the matter by attacking Russian forces in Xinjiang with his Xiang army. In 1878, when tension increased in Xinjiang, Zuo massed Chinese troops toward the Russian-occupied Kuldja. The Canadian Spectator stated in 1878, "News from Turkestan says the Chinese are concentrating against Kuldja, a post in Kashgar occupied by the Russians.... It is reported that a Russian expedition from Yart Vernaic has been fired upon by Chinese troops and forced to return." The Russians were afraid of the Chinese forces, thousands of whom were armed with modern weapons and trained by European officers, because the Russian forces near the Chinese border were under-manned and under-equipped, so they agreed to negotiate.
Later life and death
Zuo was appointed to the Grand Council, the cabinet of the Qing Empire at the time, in 1880. Uneasy with bureaucratic politics, Zuo asked to be relieved of his duties and was appointed Viceroy of Liangjiang in 1881. In 1884, upon the outbreak of the Sino-French War, Zuo received his fourth and last commission as commander-in-chief and Imperial Commissioner of the Army and Inspector General overseeing coastal defense in Fujian. He died shortly after a truce was signed between the two nations, in Fuzhou in 1885.
Zuo Zongtang was admired by many generals who came after him. The Muslim General Bai Chongxi wanted to reconquer Xinjiang for the Kuomintang central government, in Zuo Zongtang's style, and expelled Russian influence from the area. Zuo Zongtang was also referred to by Muslim General Ma Zhongying (a descendant of a Salar noble) as one of his models, as Ma led the KMT 36th Division (National Revolutionary Army) to reconquer Xinjiang for the Kuomintang from the pro-Soviet governor Jin Shuren during the Kumul Rebellion.
General Tso's chicken
- Leung, Pak-Wah (2002). Political Leaders of Modern China: A Biographical Dictionary (Illustrated ed.). Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 221. ISBN 0-313-30216-2.
- William Leslie Bales (1937). Tso Tsungt'ang, soldier and statesman of old China. Kelly and Walsh, Limited. p. 436. Retrieved 2010-06-28.
- Michael Dillon (1999). China's Muslim Hui community: migration, settlement and sects. Richmond: Curzon Press. pp. 68, 136. ISBN 0-7007-1026-4. Retrieved 2010-06-28.
- Jonathan Neaman Lipman (2004). Familiar strangers: a history of Muslims in Northwest China. Seattle: University of Washington Press. pp. 127, 140. ISBN 0-295-97644-6. Retrieved 2010-06-28.
- The Canadian spectator, Volume 1. 1878. p. 462. Retrieved 2010-06-28.
- Diana Lary (1974). Region and nation: the Kwangsi clique in Chinese politics, 1925-1937. Cambridge University Press. p. 124. ISBN 0-521-20204-3. Retrieved 2010-06-28.
- Christian Tyler (2004). Wild West China: the taming of Xinjiang. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press. p. 109. ISBN 0-8135-3533-6. Retrieved 2010-06-28.
- Coe, Andrew. Chop Suey: A Cultural History of Chinese Food in the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 241-242
|Wikiquote has quotations related to: Zuo Zongtang|
- Hsü, Immanuel C. Y. (1965). The Ili Crisis: A Study of Sino-Russian Diplomacy, 1871-1881. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
- Arthur W. Hummel, Sr., ed. (1943). Eminent Chinese of the Ch'ing Period (1644–1912). Washington: United States Government Printing Office.
||Viceroy of MinZhe
||Viceroy of ShaanGan
|Viceroy of Liangjiang