More than 100 years ago, in the Shaanxi and Gansu regions, there was a war that nearly wiped out the Han people in Guanzhong, and it took the Qing government five years and a lot of manpower and material resources to quell the turmoil.
This is the Shaanxi-Gansu Hui Uprising, and some scholars call it the Shaanxi-Gansu Hui Rebellion, but no matter how you call it, it is undeniable that this is a painful memory shared by the Han people and the Hui people in the northwest.
After hundreds of years of migration, the number of Hui living in the Shaanxi and Gansu regions of the Qing Dynasty increased day by day. During the Tongzhi period of the Qing Dynasty, Yu Shuchou, a staff member of Zhang Zhaodong, the governor of Tongzhi Fengxiang, wrote the book "Qin Longhui Chronicle", in which he wrote:
"In the first year of Tongzhi, the summer and April of the year, the Hui people in Shaanxi were in turmoil. According to the old legend, the Shaanxi-Gansu Hui people were those who stayed in China after Tang Guo Fenyang borrowed the Great Food Soldiers to conquer the two capitals, and it has been more than 1,000 years so far. Shaanxi Zemin returned to three for seven, and Gan Zemin returned to seven for three. In the Ming Yongle, the migration of the Jianghuai is from the Huamen clan, several times the world. ”
According to the population of nearly 14 million in Shaanxi during the same period, the Hui people living in Shaanxi and Gansu have reached one million. Although this statement is not entirely accurate, it shows that the number of Hui people in Shaanxi and Gansu provinces had become quite large before the Shaanxi and Gansu reformations.
Because of the differences in customs and habits, there are often frictions between Han Chinese and Hui people over land or economic issues, and because there has been a tradition of clan fighting in the Guanzhong region since ancient times, these frictions can escalate into armed fights involving thousands of people. Whenever there is a conflict or fight, the two sides often do not matter right or wrong, whether it is a Hui or a Han Chinese. In addition, because the local officials at that time were generally Han Chinese, they would more or less favor the Han people on some issues, and because the Han people were the dominant ethnic group at that time, which caused the widespread phenomenon of discrimination against the Hui people at that time, and the ethnic contradictions between the Hui and Han became increasingly acute.
In the first month of 1862, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom had experienced continuous internal strife and defeat after the decline had been revealed, in the face of the Qing army led by Duolonga continued approaching, Fuwang Chen Decai united with the four kings of Zunwang Lai Wenguang, King Liang Chengfu of Qi, and Lan Chengchun of Hu King as the Western Route Army, leading the elite of the Taiping army of more than 30,000 people, "to Henan, Shaanxi and other places to fight the country". On February 27, 1862, the Taiping army invaded the territory of Shaanxi, and the Qing government organized the "Hui Yong" to encircle and suppress, and Chen Decai was defeated, and these Hui Yong broke away from the Qing army, and these Hui Yong also became the main force that later slaughtered the Han people.
As rebel armies such as the Taiping Army and the Twist Army entered Shaanxi to fight against the Qing army, the northwest region at this time was like a huge powder keg, and only a little spark was enough to trigger a disturbance that swept the whole territory.
There are many theories about the origin of the Hui rebellion, the most widely circulated of which is that in April 1862, the Hui people in a certain place in Weinan approached the local Han people to buy bamboo poles, but in the process of trading, the Han people temporarily increased the price, and the Hui people refused to accept it, and a conflict broke out between the two sides, in which both sides were killed and wounded. After the end of the conflict, the Hui approached the government to ask for severe punishment of the Han Chinese, but were ignored and reprimanded by the local magistrate for nothing, and then the local gentry in Weinan executed more than a dozen Hui in the name of catching Taiping spies, and led a regiment to burn down the houses in the Hui settlement the next night, after which a large-scale armed fight broke out between the Hui and Han people, and a catastrophe that killed more than 12 million people began.
Although the origin of the Hui rebellion is also impossible to verify, the general view is that the turmoil was indeed the fault of the Han people at first, Zuo Zongtang once said that the disaster of Shaanxi Hui was due to the Han Hui grievances for a long time, and the provocation was actually caused by the Han people.
After the Hui rebellion began, the village of Ba Nüjing in Dali County, which is adjacent to the Hui settlement, was first attacked, and more than 10,000 people in the whole village were slaughtered. Within days of the outbreak of the Hui rebellion, several Han Chinese settlements in Weinan County were slaughtered by the Hui army, which did not come to loot property or seize the world, but only for the purpose of killing all Han Chinese.
The Hui army was frantically venting their hatred in the killing, and on the other hand, the Qing government urgently dispatched Sheng Bao and Duolong A as ministers to Shaanxi to suppress the Hui rebellion. One of the reasons why Dolonga has a good reputation in folk records is that he was ruthless in killing the Hui people, regardless of whether they were men, women, young or old, whether they participated in the rebellion or not, as long as the Hui people were executed. After Duolonga led the Qing army to break through Wang Ketun and Qiangbai Town, the arson slaughtered without sealing the sword, and executed all the tens of thousands of Hui people in the town.
In August 1863, the Hui army that had plagued Shaanxi was driven out of Shaanxi by the Qing army and forced to flee to Gansu.
When the Shaanxi Hui Rebellion broke out, the Hui people in neighboring Gansu responded quickly by training troops and attacking government offices and Han Chinese villages. Since the number of Qing troops in Gansu was far less than that in Shaanxi, in just a few years, Gansu was occupied by the Hui army, except for the provincial capital Lanzhou and a few other cities. Wherever the Hui army went, they carried out a heinous policy of massacre against the Han Chinese, executing them every time they captured a locality, regardless of men, women, children, officials, soldiers, and civilians.
In 1866, the Hui army that retreated to Dong Zhiyuan in eastern Gansu began to unite with the Hui rebels in Gansu, and they reorganized the Hui army into 18 battalions according to their camps to fight against the Qing army.
In 1867, the Hui rebels took advantage of the Qing government to pursue the Twist army back to Shaanxi, but they were soon defeated by the Qing army and then retreated to Gansu.
In 1868, Zuo Zongtang entered Gansu to quell the rebellion, and for six years from 1862 to 1868, the Hui army in Gansu carried out organized and premeditated massacres of Han Chinese in Gansu, and many cities became empty dead cities. For example, a Muslim army spent a year besieging Lingzhou, and after capturing the city in December 1863, it is said to have slaughtered 100,000 Han Chinese.
For example, in 1863, a report reported that Guyuan County was breached by the Hui army, and "the Han people were wiped out."
According to the Gansu Xintongzhi at the end of the Qing Dynasty, "Guyuan rebelled...... More than 200,000 men and women died in the city." According to the same "Gansu Xintongzhi", in August of the 2nd year of Tongzhi, the Hui people captured the city of Didaozhou, and more than 100,000 residents were slaughtered; In the 5th year of Tongzhi, the Shaanxi Hui army and the Jingyuan Hui people jointly attacked Jingyuan County, and more than 100,000 Han people in the city were killed, and only about one-tenth of those escaped.
Because Zuo Zongtang entered Gansu later than Shaanxi, the death toll of the Han people in Gansu was much higher than that in Shaanxi, and the war in Gansu lasted for 12 years, and the war spread throughout the province, and the number of deaths was much higher than that in Shaanxi. According to the analysis of "History of the Chinese Population: Volume V of the Qing Period", the population of Pingliang Province was 2.812 million in 1861, and in 1880 the population was only 321,000, a decrease of 2.491 million. The population of Qingyang Prefecture was 1.41 million in 1861 and 123,000 in 1880, a decrease of 1,287,000, and the population of Ningxia Prefecture was 1,669,000 in 1861 and 170,000 in 1880, a decrease of 1,499,000. The population of Gansu as a whole was 19.459 million in 1861 and 4.955 million in 1880, a decrease of 14.555 million, and the population loss of the province was as high as 74.5%.
Shirahiko Tiger
In the later stage of the rebellion, Bai Yanhu, the leader of the Hui rebels, colluded with Agubai and foreign forces in a vain attempt to split the territory and establish a religious state with the Hui people as the main body in the northwest region. Proceeding from its political needs, the Russian Empire refused to extradite Bai Yanhu to the Qing government, and allowed the rest of Bai Yanhu to enter Russia without paying grain for 5 years and not smoking for 20 years. Bai Yanhu and his descendants multiplied in Central Asia and became the current Dungan people.
Now many people glorify Bai Yanhu as the leader of the peasant uprising, and describe this human tragedy, which caused 20 million casualties, as a peasant uprising, which is contrary to objective facts, and the purpose of the Shaanxi-Gansu Rebellion from the beginning was not to overthrow the decadent Qing Dynasty, but to take revenge and massacre against the Han people in the northwest region. In order to quell this Hui rebellion, the Qing government spent five years, and only allocated Zuo Zongtang's military expenditure as high as 110 million taels of silver, and in the later period, it even had to borrow from foreign banks as collateral for customs duties.
Finally, it was summed up with a sentence from Zuo Zongtang, "Regardless of the Han Dynasty, only good bandits are divided." Any form of atrocities against humanity and acts of secession will be nailed to the pillar of shame in history.