Author Sterling Seagrave was an “investigative journalist” who grew up in Burma (before it was Myanmar). “Investigative journalist” puts my back up, as they always seem to be selling a story rather than actually investigating anything. In Dragon Lady, Seagrave is in fact selling a story, but the documentation he provides suggests the story is one I will buy.

Although the ostensible subject is Tzu Hsi, known in the West as the “Dowager Empress”, Seagrave’s story actually concerns the history of relations between China and the West in the 19th and early 20th century, mythbusting as he goes. His basic theme is the Western powers treated China with profound injustice; but the Chinese themselves (including the last rulers, the Qing Dynasty, who were Manchu and not ethnic Chinese) contributed by being hopelessly corrupt. The injustice theme gets off to a rousing start with Seagrave’s explication of the Opium Wars; I think everybody agrees these were one of the more sordid acts in Western history so no further “mythbusting” is necessary. Now that he’s got his stride, Seagrave continues with the Taiping Rebellion. Here my own myths get busted; my previous impression was the Taiping Rebellion was stopped by “Chinese” Gordon and his “Ever-Victorious Army”; however Seagrave argues that the “Ever-Victorious Army” was ineffectual and the rebellion was broken by the Chinese themselves.

Interspersed with these accounts, Seagrave follows the career of Tzu Hsi. Since actual documentation of her life is so scanty, Seagrave discusses general aspects of court life. This was extremely constrained and ritualized, with the imperial diet, activities, and sex life all subject to precise protocol. Tzu Hsi eventually becomes the “Dowager Empress” to her son, the Emperor Kuang Hsu. Keeping track of what’s going on gets very complicated; there are multiple factions – both Manchu and ethnic Chinese – in the Qing government; the most prominent was the “Ironhats”; conservative Manchu who wanted foreigners expelled. Eventually a popular anti-Christian and anti-foreign movement, the “Boxers”, arises, leading to the “Boxer Rebellion”.

Seagrave jumps on conventional wisdom about the Boxer rebellion with both feet. That story is generally that the Dowager Empress was an evil woman who controlled the Chinese government; that the Boxers were controlled by the Empress and sent to attack foreigners; that the various legations held out bravely against the Boxers and organized Chinese troops until help arrived. Seagrave sorts through what documentation is available and presents the following:

• Very few of the Western diplomats and news reporters in China spoke Chinese; therefore they were dependent on various informants, Western or Chinese, who did.
• The informants had interests of their own; ethnic Chinese wanted to overthrow the Manchu dynasty and Manchu wanted to strengthen their own positions and adjusted the information they gave westerners accordingly.
• One of the Chinese-speaking westerners, Edmund Backhouse, perpetrated fraud on a high level, claiming to have access to various Chinese sources, including the diary of a high Qing official. Backhouse also claimed to have had sexual affairs with many prominent men and women, both western and Chinese, and documented these in his memoirs; he was instrumental in convincing various contacts that the Empress was sort of an evil eminence; these contacts passed that appreciation on to their governments and newspapers.
• The events leading to the “Boxer Rebellion” were largely fomented by westerners. The rumor that a “rebellion” was in the offing reached the embassies long before anything actually happened; embassy personal were involved in some unprovoked shootings of Chinese under the pretext that they were “Boxers”. The actual siege of the legation quarter was undramatic; embassy personnel were never in any danger, the Chinese never made an organized attack, casualties were caused by stray bullets or ricochets, and the relief expedition was poorly managed.
• The Chinese military had the capability to take the legations, but the Chinese commanders involved were hedging their bets, trying to preserve relations with the west and preserve their military units for possible internecine conflict later.
• The Dowager Empress was never in control of anything; she was essentially a prisoner in the palace, under control of various ministerial factions in the Chinese government. Edicts and instructions supposedly issued by her actually came from her ministers.
• The western powers took advantage of the event (just as they had in the aftermath of the Opium Wars) to engage in large scale looting.
• Although most of the events that would qualify as “atrocities” were perpetrated on Chinese by the west, there was a wholesale slaughter of missionaries – including wives and children – in one Chinese province.

One of the results of the “rebellion” was western insistence on more access to the imperial government; as a result some western women – diplomat’s wives and daughters – met with the Dowager Empress and Emperor. They generally reported she was amiable and pleasant. They were denounced as “stupid” and “deceived” by those who had an interest in defaming the Empress Dowager.
Seagrave presents his case in a convincing fashion; he has access to a lot of documentation, both western and Chinese, backing his arguments. However, I’m always a little suspect of journalists writing histories, and there’s one little comment – in an endnote – that makes me uneasy. In discussing an abortive attempt to reform the Chinese government from the top down – the “Hundred Days”- Seagrave says the following:

“…after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson immediately rescinded most of Kennedy’s radical foreign policy initiatives, including moves to reach détente with Russia and Cuba and to withdraw all U.S. troops from Vietnam. There are many interesting parallels between the two palace coups.”

The apparent assertion that the Kennedy assassination was a “palace coup” calls into question all of Seagrave’s case. If he’s fallen off the edge into conspiracy theory in this case, there’s no reason to believe any of the rest is reliable, no matter how logically it’s presented.

That being said, this is worthwhile as an alternative to the “conventional wisdom” on Chinese history of the period. Extensive references and bibliography; endnotes, useful maps. ( )

Fascinating alternate take on the life and power of Cixi, the last Empress of China, who is usually presumed to have been very powerful during the closing years of the Qing Dynasty. Seagrave portrays her as a tool manipulated by more powerful members of the government. He presents a pretty powerful case, but whether he is right or not, the story is riveting. ( )

As good as it gets....: Like many other reviewers pointed out, this book deals with general 19th century Chinese History instead of being a pure biographical account of Empress Tzu-Hsi.Carefully researched, it explores the events and myths that surounded this utterly mysterious figure.Futhermore, Seagrave explains how The Empress Dowager has been vilified by racist,looting, lying mediocre pseudo "writters"; Edmund Backhouse and George Morrison.They forever destroyed Tzu-Hsi's image with false accounts of her life, influenced by their own ignorance and Victorian hypocrecy.
Very little is known about Tzu-Hsi's actual role in the Chinese government since the English, in their endless stupidity, burned the Manchu Court Archives.Indeed, Seagrave describes the disgraceful and shameful role the British had in China, from the destruction of the priceless Han Libraby,the completely unjustified Opium Wars, the looting and destruction of the Summer Palace, the looting of the Forbiden City, to the killing of thousands of innocent Chinese civilians, victims of racist Imperial bigotry.
Seagrave spends too much time giving biographical information on secondary characters which makes the book tedious at times.Other than that, his book is very interesting and brings light to certain myths about the last years of the Manchu Emperors of China.I wish the Hardcover edition of this book was not out of print, Vintage uses horrible paper quality and this book deserves a better editorial treatment...

I wanted to read more about Tzu Hsi after reading Empress Orchid. I found this book at the library, but it was so big I went past my allowable renews and finally just bought it to finish it. I really, really loved this book. It is not what I expected - I expected to hear all the terrible things, and instead it gave a much different look at the empress and her life. Very interesting and a book I will keep. ( )

The life story of the Dowager Empress Tzu Hsi (or Cixi) seems destined to remain shrouded in the fog that surrounds the history of the Forbidden City in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. She has been portrayed as a single-minded ruthless ruler who murdered her son in order to retain power, engaged in sexual escapades with her "eunuchs", and wasted precious military resources on personal luxuries. Sterling Seagrave presents a revisionist view of her as being on the edges of power, barely surviving court intrigues, and an almost unwilling political actor.

The first view was perpetrated by Edmund Backhouse and held from the early 1900's until Backhouse was exposed as a forger and con man by Hugh Trevor-Roper in his 1976 book Hermit of Peking: The Hidden Life of Sir Edmund Backhouse (History & Politics). Backhouse had forged a purportedly Chinese diary. In his own memoirs Backhouse revealed himself to be delusional as well as pornographic. He claimed to have sexual liaisons with a parade of famous people including prime minister Lord Rosebery, Oscar Wilde, and Tzu Hsi herself (some 150 to 200 times by his account). Backhouse also is reported to have fabricated thousands of corroborating documents that he donated to eminent libraries in England.

Seagrave takes Trevor-Roper's work as a starting point and then launches into his own history that soon bogs down in minute details of court intrigue. While it seems clear that Backhouse's accounts have no credibility, it is not so clear that Seagrave's account is a fair, full, and true account either.

Trevor-Roper and Seagrave have their own credibility issues. Trevor-Roper initially authenticated the false `Hitler diaries' in 1983, which benefited his employer the Times of London. He later withdrew this opinion when scientific tests proved the documents were fakes. As for Seagrave he wrote the book Yellow Rain: A Journey Through the Terror of Chemical Warfarein 1981 endorsing the claim that the Soviets engaged in chemical warfare against the Hmong peoples. That dispute has never been resolved.

The recent novels by Anchee Min (Empress Orchid and The Last Empress: A Novel) have expressed a view similar to the one presented by Seagrave. Tzu Hsi is presented as more of a victim of political intrigue than a perpetrator of murderous plots. A version of the older view was set forth in George MacDonald Fraser's Flashman and the Dragon Lady.

On the whole I have found the attempt to understand who Tzu Hsi really was, how much power she possessed, and how she exercised that power to be incredibly frustrating. The Chinese imperial court was so absurdly isolated for so long that it appears impossible to ever determine the truth of the matter. My guess, for what it's worth, is that Seagrave and Min version is likely more true and that the portrayal of her as the evil dragon lady conveniently fed into the justification of British imperial aggression.

This review has strayed farther from discussing the merits of this book than I like to do. Seagrave performed a service in exploding Backhouse's false history, but his writing is not particularly good, he loses the reader (this one anyway) in a maze of details, and he asserts facts with far more certitude than appears warranted. I can not recommend reading the book unless you really want to immerse yourself in the mystery of Tzu Hsi's life. This book tells part of the story, but can not be relied upon to tell it all. ( )