Qianlong Emperor
The Qianlong Emperor ruled China for sixty years and presided over both its greatest extent and the beginning of its decline. Born in 1711, he was a favourite grandson of the Kangxi Emperor and succeeded his father in 1735, and abdicated in 1796 so as not to reign longer than his grandfather — while continuing to hold power until his death. He doubled the empire's territory. Ten campaigns extended Qing control over Xinjiang, Tibet, Burma, Nepal and Taiwan. The conquest of the Dzungar Khanate between 1755 and 1758 involved the deliberate destruction of the Dzungar people, and modern historians describe it as genocide; several hundred thousand died of massacre and smallpox, and the territory was resettled. The population roughly doubled during his reign, to perhaps three hundred million, on New World crops and internal peace. He was a serious patron. He commissioned the Siku Quanshu, a compilation of some 3,500 works in over 36,000 volumes, and used the project simultaneously as a literary inquisition, destroying or altering thousands of texts judged offensive to the Manchus. He wrote over forty thousand poems of uneven quality and collected art on an enormous scale. He rebuilt the Old Summer Palace with European-style buildings designed by Jesuits. His later years brought the corruption of Heshen, a guard officer he promoted extraordinarily fast, who accumulated a fortune estimated at years of state revenue and rotted the administration. He received the Macartney embassy in 1793 and told George III that China had no need of British manufactures. He died in 1799, and the White Lotus rebellion was already under way.
- Lived: 1711 CE – 1799 CE
- Nationality: Chinese
- Roles: statesman, military_leader
