Viceroys in China
'Overall Supervisor'; Manchu: ᠤᠾᠡᠷᠢᠺᠠᠯᠠᠳᠠᠷᠠᠠᠮᠪᠠᠨ; usually translated as Governor-General or Viceroy) were high-level officials responsible for overseeing the governors of several provinces in Ming and Qing China.
One viceroy usually administered several provinces and was in charge of all affairs of military, food, wages, rivers, and provincial governors within their region of jurisdiction.
In the 8th year of Zhengde emperor (1510 AD), the viceroy of Xuanda was appointed to defend the Great Wall against annual Northern Yuan Mongol invasions.
[6] In order to suppress the peasant uprising, the Ming government set up the viceroy of five provinces including Henan, Shanxi, Shaanxi, Huguang and Sichuan, Lu Xiangsheng was appointed to it and soon defeated Gao Yingxiang and his 300,000 troopys with just an army of 20,000.
[7] Before Lu could suppress all the remains of peasant uprising, he was appointed to be the viceroy of Xuanda to protect the north border of the empire to defend against the Manchus.
The Qing dynasty effectively inherited the late Ming system, wherein viceroys combined both military and civilian powers over one or more provinces.
While the regularly-appointed Ming viceroys were concentrated on the northern border, against the military threat of the Mongols and Manchus, the Qing dynasty extended the system into other regions in China as well.
After Qing eliminating the remain of Ming dynasty on mainland China, the central government wanted to reduce their power of the Three Feudatories.
Qing's navy failed to Confront with the British steam warship and British army marched towards Nanjing and forced the viceroy of Liangjiang Keying to sign Treaty of Nanking, in this treaty, Qing paid six million silver dollars to Britain, open other four trading points and ceding Hong Kong to Britain (Fairbank, John K., and Kwang-Ching Liu, 1980).
Due to the defeat of the first Opium war, conflict between Manchu and Han and population of Qing dynasty has reached its peak, leading to the increase of the Taiping Rebellion based on Christian belief in the year 1850.
Zuo Zongtang, another founder of Xiang army, together with Zeng Guoquan, the younger brother of Zeng Guofan and the viceroy of Liangjiang finally took the capital of Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Nanjing and captured Hong Tianguifu, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom's adolescent emperor son of Hong Xiuquan, putting an end to the uprising (Michael and Zhang, 1971).
According to Fairbank&Jokn King (1978), another founder of Western Affairs Movement is the viceroy of Zhili, Li Hongzhang, who created Huai army to support the role of Qing government during the Taiping rebellion he was also the student of Zeng Guofan.
In the 1900s, when army of eight foreign countries marched Beijing, the Han viceroys of southeast China remain neutral and still protest against the Empress Dowager (New York Times, 1900).
In 1904, the viceroy of Liangjiang, Zhang Zhidong, planned to build the yellow river conservancy by himself and cast aside the central government (New York Times, 1904).
