Tseng Kuo-Fan

Tseng Kuo-fan (dzŭng gwô-fän), 1811–72, Chinese general and statesman of the Ch'ing dynasty. He organized (1853) the Hunan army, the first of the great regional armies that were raised to suppress the Taiping Rebellion. Appointed governor-general of Jiangsu, Anhui, and Jiangxi provs. (1860), Tseng coordinated the military campaign that crushed the Taiping main forces and took the rebel capital at Nanjing in 1864. He advocated a policy of conciliation with the Western powers and military self-strengthening. Under his sponsorship the Jiangnan Arsenal was established at Shanghai in 1865. In addition to producing the first modern weapons and ships, the arsenal's translation bureau played a major role in introducing Western technology and thought to China. Tseng was appointed a grand secretary (1867) and was made (1868) governor-general of Zhili (Hebei) prov. With the death of Tseng and the involvement of Tso Tsung-t'ang in suppressing the Muslim rebellion in NW China, Li Hung-chang became the leader of the self-strengthening movement.

Bibliography

See study by W. J. Hail (1927, repr. 1964).

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Zeng Guofan

 or Tseng Kuo-fan

(born Nov. 26, 1811, Xiangxiang, Hunan province, China—died March 12, 1872, Nanjing) Chinese military leader most responsible for suppressing the Taiping Rebellion, thus staving off the collapse of the Qing dynasty. Having passed the highest examinations in the Chinese examination system, Zeng entered the Hanlin Academy and worked successfully as a bureaucrat. In 1852 he was asked to help combat the Taiping rebels, who had reached the Yangtze River (Chang Jiang) valley and were threatening the dynasty's survival. The imperial troops being weak, Zeng and other members of the scholar-gentry organized local militias. His army seized the rebels' supply areas along the upper Yangtze and besieged and captured their capital, Nanjing, in 1864. In 1865 he was called on to help suppress the Nian Rebellion; a year later he asked that Li Hongzhang take over the campaign. See also Zhang Zhidong.

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Tseng Kuo-Fan 

Born Nov. 26, 1811, in Hsianghsiang District, Hunan Province; died Mar. 12, 1872, in Nanking. Chinese political and military figure.

At the government’s behest, Tseng Kuo-fan created the Hunan Army in late 1852. The army, which he commanded, was composed of local landowners and their feudal military bands. It soon became the most important strike force of the feudal reactionaries in their struggle against such popular uprisings as the Taiping Rebellion.

Tseng Kuo-fan was governor in Nanking from 1860 to 1865, again from 1866 to 1868, and a third time in 1871 and 1872. In 1865 he was designated imperial plenipotentiary for the suppression of the Nien Rebellion. Between 1868 and 1871, Tseng Kuofan served as governor of Chihli (now Hopeh), the province in which China’s capital was located.