If there is a national hero who is seriously underestimated in modern Chinese history, it is Zuo Zongtang, a famous minister in the late Qing Dynasty. His contribution to modern China was not only to carry the coffin out of Xinjiang and recover Xinjiang, but also to recover the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningbo region and other northwest regions. If there was no Lord Zuo Zongtang, the Han people in Shaanxi, Gansu, and Ningxia would basically be killed. At that time, China lost not only 1.66 million square meters of Xinjiang territory, but also 3.5 million square meters of territory in the entire northwest region, including Shaanxi, Gansu and Ningxia.
We often know about the Agubai Rebellion in Xinjiang in the late Qing Dynasty, but we don't know about the Shaanxi-Gansu Rebellion in 1862. In the late Qing Dynasty, due to the corruption and incompetence of the government, the heavy taxation and miscellaneous taxes finally hatched the vendetta between the Hui and Han people in Shaanxi, Gansu and Ningxia in 1862.
The Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningbo rebellion lasted for more than ten years, involving Shaanxi, Gansu, Ningxia, Qinghai, Xinjiang and other regions, and was brewing as a rebellion and independence event of the Hui people in the northwest region. In the end, in 1866, the Qing court appointed Zuo Zongtang as the governor of Shaanxi and Gansu, and Zuo Zongtang finally lived up to expectations and led the Hunan army and Duolong'a troops to suppress the rebellion.
This war caused great damage to the northwest region, with the loss of more than 20 million people. Without Zuo Zongtang's iron-blooded suppression, the Han people in the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ning region would have been killed.
Now, let's look at how it happened.
The number of Hui people in Shaanxi, Gansu and Ningbo has increased
We know that the Hui are descendants of Persians and Arabs who believe in Islam and migrate to China. Due to the connection between ancient China and Central Asia and Europe, it was mainly the Silk Road by land. Therefore, many Hui people who came to China from West and Central Asia basically settled in the Silk Road area in the northwest region.
After the migration of the Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties, the number of Hui people in northwest China gradually increased. According to the analysis of the "Analysis of the Peak Population of Hui in Shaanxi and Gansu in the Qing Dynasty" written by Associate Professor Lu Weidong of Fudan University, in the first year of Tongzhi, that is, in 1862, the Hui people in Shaanxi were estimated to be about 2 million, accounting for more than 14% of the total population of Shaanxi.
There are 2 million Hui people in Shaanxi, which is a huge number, you must know that more than 100 years later, in 1990, the total number of Hui people in Shaanxi was only 132,000. (Data from the Fourth National Population Census.) ）
The Hui people who migrated to the northwest initially formed Hui settlements centered in Gansu and Ningxia, and then continued to expand eastward to infiltrate the Han predominantly Shaanxi region. In the early years of the Qing Dynasty, there were not many people in Shaanxi, and there was a lot of land that could be distributed, and there was no direct conflict of interests between the Hui and Han people, and the relationship was relatively harmonious.
The contradictions between the Hui and the Han people are acute
However, after the middle of the late Qing Dynasty, the increase in the number of Hui people led to conflicts with the Han people who often fought for land and food. Coupled with the differences in religious beliefs and living habits between the Hui and Han people, the contradictions and conflicts brought about by economic interests have been further intensified, and the escalation of the contradictions is the gathering of crowds to fight and brawl.
According to some documents, in Dali, Huazhou, Lintong and other counties where there are a large number of Hui people, there are often armed fights between Hui and Han people, and these armed fights often cause sharp contradictions between Hui and Han people, as well as unnecessary casualties. When the local government dealt with the aftermath, many of the officials were Han Chinese and favored the Han Chinese, which also aroused the resentment of the Hui people, increased the dissatisfaction of the Hui people, and exacerbated the conflict between the Han and the Hui.
During the Tongzhi period of the late Qing Dynasty, the Qing government increased the intensity of taxes and miscellaneous taxes on the people at the bottom of the society due to the war reparations, which also made the Hui people in the northwest very dissatisfied with the local Han bureaucratic rule.
The outbreak of the Northwest Rebellion
In 1862, in order to redeem the defeat of Yangzhou and Anqing, the Taiping Army and the Twist Army and other rebel armies decided to launch the Northern Expedition, the purpose of which was to drag down the Qing army in the north and reduce the burden of Tianjing, that is, Nanjing.
On February 27, 1862, the Taiping army invaded Shaanxi, and the Qing government organized Hui soldiers to encircle and suppress the "Hui Yong". But some Hui soldiers did not want to go to the front to serve the Qing government, so they quietly slipped away. While passing through Huayin, a Hui soldier split the bamboo forest in the home of a Han man and cooked rice, causing resentment among the local Han people. So the Han people gathered the local villagers and killed all these Hui soldiers.
The Hui people who heard this incident were furious that their compatriots were killed, so they went to the county yamen to seek justice. However, the county order rejected the Hui lawsuit on the charge of "disturbing the court."
Enraged, the Hui took up arms and fought the Han Chinese. The county order believed that the Hui people had gathered to riot, so they ordered the Han villagers to suppress it. In this way, the villagers collectively took up arms, drove the Hui people out of the village, and burned the village.
When the Hui people in Weinan, Shaanxi Province, learned of this, they were furious and called on their fellow villagers to rebel together. After that, the Hui people in Huayin also responded, and the Hui people in Guanzhong and Gansu also responded...... In this way, the Hui people in Shaanxi, Gansu, Ningxia, Xinjiang, and other parts of the great northwest region rose up to rebel, forming a riotous force.
The expansion of the backlash
The main leaders of the Hui rebellion were Ma Zhaoyuan and Ma Hualong, who led the Hui people to form a powerful rebel force, taking advantage of the opportunity of the Qing army to deal with the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, and took the opportunity to conquer the central Shaanxi region, and established themselves as a base here.
When Ma Zhaoyuan and Ma Hualong led the Hui rebels, they frantically killed Han people. Wherever the Hui army went, they carried out a heinous policy of massacre against the Han Chinese, and every place they captured, regardless of men, women, children, officials, or civilians, as long as they were Han Chinese, they were all executed, which was very cruel!
The Hui rebellion led by Ma Zhaoyuan became stronger and stronger, and at the end of June 1862, while the Qing government was pursuing the Twist army, they besieged Xi'an.
At this time, the Qing government urgently dispatched Shengbao and Duolonga as ministers to Shaanxi to suppress the rebellion. Due to Dolonga's iron-blooded policy, in August 1863, the Hui army was driven out of Shaanxi by the Qing army and fled to Gansu. Thus, the first phase of the Shaanxi rebellion ended, but the second stage, which was even more tragic, began.
Zuo Zongtang calmed down the chaos
After the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was wiped out, Zuo Zongtang began to lead the Hunan army to quell the rebellion in Shaanxi and Shanxi. He knew that the Hui people, because of their religious beliefs, had a strong sense of unity and collectivism, so he naturally proposed his own strategic housing exhibition to the Qing government. If the Twist Army is annihilated first and then the Hui Army is dealt with, the most important thing is that the Twist Army and the Hui Army must not be united.
Therefore, Zuo Zongtang first suppressed the rebellion of the Twist Army, and then after the Twist Army was broken, he attacked the Hui Army in Shaanxi. With a strong military force, the rebellious Hui army could only retreat to Gansu. In 1869, Zuo Zongtang sent his subordinate Liu Songshan to attack the Hui army led by Ma Hualong in Ningxia. Later, Ma Hualong was finally defeated and killed.
In 1871, Zuo Zongtang was stationed in Gansu, and the local Hui army leader Ma Zhanao and the rebels recruited An, and Zuo Zongtang was incorporated into the Qing army and allowed to work in Gansu Yamen. Ma Zhanao's troops thus formed the famous "Ma Family Army", which also made the Red Army suffer a lot during the Republic of China.
As for the Hui army led by Bai Yanhu, after the defeat, they were forced to withdraw from Qinghai in 1872, retreat to Xinjiang in 1873, and then flee to Russia.
In this way, the Shaanxi-Gansu Rebellion, which had been maintained for 11 years, came to an end. Bai Yanhu, the leader of the rebels who fled to Tsarist Russia, after defecting to Tsarist Russia, Cixi asked Tsarist Russia to hand over Bai Yanhu, but Tsarist Russia refused. In this way, Bai Yanhu and the remnants of the descendants of the Hui rebels, living in the territory of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, in today's Central Asian countries, became today's Dungan people.
The nature of the backlash
Looking at the Shaanxi-Gansu rebellion, it was only a rebellion to split the territory of the motherland. The goal of the Taiping Rebellion and the Twist Army Rebellion was to overthrow the decaying Qing Dynasty and establish a new Chinese dynasty with great unification. Moreover, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Rebel Army and the Twist Army Rebel Army mainly fought against the Qing army and would not kill innocent people indiscriminately.
However, the purpose of the Hui army in the Shaanxi-Gansu rebellion was to occupy the territory of Shaanxi and Gansu provinces and then establish a Muslim state, and the purpose was to split the motherland, which was a rebel who split the territory of the motherland. At the same time, the massacre of innocent Han Chinese people in the course of the rebellion did not have the nature of justice and uprising.
The Shaanxi and Gansu rebellion was, to put it bluntly, a catastrophe. In this rebellion, no less than 12 million innocent Han civilians died in the massacre of the Hui people, and at least more than 5 million of the original 6 million to 8 million Hui people in Shaanxi and Gansu provinces died in the war, and many of them were innocent civilians, all of whom died under the butcher's knives of officers and soldiers or the Han people who took revenge. The remaining Hui people after the Shaanxi-Gansu Rebellion are said to be 450,000.
In order to suppress this rebellion, it also cost the state funds, which can be described as a waste of money and money. For example, Zuo Zongtang's army spent as much as 110 million taels of silver (of which 60 million taels were spent on pacifying Shaanxi and Gansu, and 52 million taels were spent on recovering Xinjiang), which consumed China's national strength. At that time, the Qing government's investment in railway construction and naval construction was insufficient, which was also related to the consumption of too much money in the Northwest Battlefield.
Zuo Zongtang's credit
The biggest contributor to this rebellion was Zuo Zongtang and the Hunan army troops he led. If it were not for Zuo Zongtang's contribution to quelling the rebellion, it may be that today's Gansu, Xinjiang, Qinghai, and Ningxia are not within China's territory, and you must know that the Hongfu Khanate established by Agubai, who rebelled in Xinjiang, was also recognized by the three major empires of Britain, Russia, and Ottoman at that time.
At the end of the Ming Dynasty, the mainland had a land area of only 3.5 million square kilometers. After the Qing Dynasty destroyed the Ming Dynasty, the land area was 13.16 million square kilometers at its peak, and it still had 11.35 million square kilometers by the end of the Qing Dynasty. Here, to maintain the territory of China, Zuo Zongtang has the greatest credit. Therefore, many people list Zuo Zongtang as the greatest military general in China since the Tang Dynasty.
Some historians believe that the Hui rebellion during the Tongzhi period changed the original appearance of the ethnic composition of the Shaanxi people in history. After the Hui Rebellion, the Hui people lived in Shaanxi on a large scale. However, after the rebellion in Shaanxi, the rulers of the Qing Dynasty lost the original Hui people in all parts of Shaanxi, except for the Hui people in Xi'an, and the rest of the Hui people were gone, and they were basically the territory of the Han people.
Zuo Zongtang's tolerant ethnic policy
In the process of suppressing the rebellion, Zuo Zongtang adopted an inclusive ethnic policy to resolve ethnic contradictions. For example, after Zuo Zongtang entered Shaanxi, he repeatedly stated that the criteria for confirming the enemy had nothing to do with whether he was a Hui or not, but only related to whether he participated in the rebellion. Those who participated in the rebellion were willing to surrender their weapons, horses, and food, and were willing to recruit and serve in government departments.
Zuo Zongtang also opposed the extremist ethnic policies of the previous Duolong'a, and he pointed out in his recital to the imperial court that the Hui people had survived in Chinese territory for hundreds or thousands of years, and that the right to exist should be respected and that there should be no need to massacre. Therefore, he adopted a policy of migration and settled the Hui people who were willing to accept surrender to live in Gansu and Ningxia, which saved the lives of many Hui compatriots.
At the same time, Zuo Zongtang set up factories in Ningxia and Gansu, where the Hui people lived, to develop industries, so as to promote the development of the local economy and bring employment opportunities to the local people. In this way, by allowing the Hui people to obtain economic benefits, the contradictions between the Hui and the Han will be eased, and the signs of rebellion will be prevented from happening again.
epilogue
It can be seen that the Shaanxi-Gansu rebellion was originally due to the corruption of Qing officials, which turned small problems between ethnic groups into big problems. This also tells us that when dealing with ethnic contradictions, we should safeguard each other's economic interests and actively coordinate each other's conflicts, so that all nationalities can seek common ground while reserving differences and develop together.