An edict is a decree or announcement of a law, often associated with monarchies, but it can be under any official authority. Synonyms include "dictum" and "pronouncement". Edict derives from the Latin edictum. [1]
The Qing dynasty, officially the Great Qing, was a Manchu-led imperial dynasty of China and an early modern empire in East Asia. The last imperial dynasty in Chinese history, the Qing dynasty was preceded by the Ming dynasty and succeeded by the Republic of China. At its height of power, the empire stretched from the Sea of Japan in the east to the Pamir Mountains in the west, and from the Mongolian Plateau in the north to the South China Sea in the south. Originally emerging from the Later Jin dynasty founded in 1616 and proclaimed in Shenyang in 1636, the dynasty seized control of the Ming capital Beijing and North China in 1644, traditionally considered the start of the dynasty's rule. The dynasty lasted until the Xinhai Revolution of October 1911 led to the abdication of the last emperor in February 1912. The multi-ethnic Qing dynasty assembled the territorial base for modern China. The Qing controlled the most territory of any dynasty in Chinese history, and in 1790 represented the fourth-largest empire in world history to that point. With over 426 million citizens in 1907, it was the most populous country in the world at the time.
Throughout Chinese history, "Emperor" was the superlative title held by the monarchs who ruled various imperial dynasties or Chinese empires. In traditional Chinese political theory, the emperor was the "Son of Heaven", an autocrat with the divine mandate right to rule all under Heaven. Emperors were worshiped posthumously under an imperial cult. The lineage of emperors descended from a paternal family line constituted a dynasty, and succession in most cases theoretically followed agnatic primogeniture. The emperor of China was an absolute monarch.
The Guangxu Emperor, also known by his temple name Emperor Dezong of Qing, personal name Zaitian, was the eleventh emperor of the Qing dynasty, and the ninth Qing emperor to rule over China proper, from 1875 to 1908. His reign was largely dominated by his maternal aunt Empress Dowager Cixi, who was his regent for much of his nominal rule except in the time from 1889 to 1898. He initiated the radical Hundred Days' Reform in the summer of 1898 but was abruptly stopped when the Empress Dowager launched a coup on 21 September, after which he was held under virtual house arrest until his death one decade later.
Tokugawa Iemitsu was the third shōgun of the Tokugawa dynasty. He was the eldest son of Tokugawa Hidetada with Oeyo, and the grandson of Tokugawa Ieyasu. Lady Kasuga was his wet nurse, who acted as his political adviser and was at the forefront of shogunate negotiations with the Imperial court. Iemitsu ruled from 1623 to 1651; during this period he crucified Christians, expelled all Europeans from Japan and closed the borders of the country, a foreign politics policy that continued for over 200 years after its institution.
The Edict of Milan was the February, AD 313 agreement to treat Christians benevolently within the Roman Empire. Western Roman Emperor Constantine I and Emperor Licinius, who controlled the Balkans, met in Mediolanum and, among other things, agreed to change policies towards Christians following the edict of toleration issued by Emperor Galerius two years earlier in Serdica. The Edict of Milan gave Christianity legal status and a reprieve from persecution but did not make it the state church of the Roman Empire, which occurred in AD 380 with the Edict of Thessalonica, when Nicene Christianity received normative status.
An edict of toleration is a declaration, made by a government or ruler, and states that members of a given religion will not suffer religious persecution for engaging in their traditions' practices. Edicts may imply tacit acceptance of a state religion.
For most of its history, China was organized into various dynastic states under the rule of hereditary monarchs. Beginning with the establishment of dynastic rule by Yu the Great c. 2070 BC, and ending with the abdication of the Xuantong Emperor in AD 1912, Chinese historiography came to organize itself around the succession of monarchical dynasties. Besides those established by the dominant Han ethnic group or its spiritual Huaxia predecessors, dynasties throughout Chinese history were also founded by non-Han peoples.
The Edict of Restitution was proclaimed by Ferdinand II, Holy Roman Emperor in Vienna, on 6 March 1629, eleven years into the Thirty Years' War. Following Catholic military successes, Ferdinand hoped to restore control of land to that specified in the Peace of Augsburg (1555). That treaty's "Ecclesiastical Reservation" had prohibited further secularization of lands held by the Catholic church after 1555, disallowing any transfer of such lands to Protestant control. However, as the Holy Roman Empire descended into the Thirty Years' War, weak emperors had been unable to enforce this provision against Protestant encroachments.
The Heirloom Seal of the Realm, also known in English as the Imperial Seal of China, was a Chinese jade seal allegedly carved out of the Heshibi, a sacred piece of jade. The Seal was created in 221 BC, shortly after Qin Shi Huang unified China and established the Qin dynasty, China's first imperial dynasty. The Heirloom Seal served as the imperial Chinese seal throughout the next millennium of Chinese history, and its possession was seen as a physical symbol of the Mandate of Heaven.
The Diet of Speyer or the Diet of Spires was an Imperial Diet of the Holy Roman Empire in 1526 in the Imperial City of Speyer in present-day Germany. The Diet's ambiguous edict resulted in a temporary suspension of the Edict of Worms and aided the expansion of Protestantism. Those results were repudiated in the Diet of Speyer (1529).
The European wars of religion were a series of wars waged in Europe during the 16th, 17th and early 18th centuries. Fought after the Protestant Reformation began in 1517, the wars disrupted the religious and political order in the Catholic countries of Europe, or Christendom. Other motives during the wars involved revolt, territorial ambitions and great power conflicts. By the end of the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648), Catholic France had allied with the Protestant forces against the Catholic Habsburg monarchy. The wars were largely ended by the Peace of Westphalia (1648), which established a new political order that is now known as Westphalian sovereignty.
China–Mongolia relations refer to the bilateral relations between Mongolia and China. These relations have long been determined by the relations between China and the Soviet Union, Mongolia's other neighbour and main ally until early 1990. With the rapprochement between the USSR and China in the late 1980s, Chinese-Mongolian relations also began to improve. Since the 1990s, China has become Mongolia's biggest trading partner, and a number of Chinese businesses operate in Mongolia.
A conquest dynasty in the history of China refers to a Chinese dynasty established by non-Han ethnicities which ruled parts or all of China proper, the traditional heartland of the Han people, and whose rulers may or may not have fully assimilated into the dominant Han culture. Four major dynasties have been considered "conquest dynasties": the Liao (916–1125), the Jin (1115–1234), Yuan (1271–1368), and Qing (1644–1912).
The history of the Qing dynasty began in the first half of the 17th century, when the Qing dynasty was established and became the last imperial dynasty of China, succeeding the Ming dynasty (1368–1644). The Manchu leader Hong Taiji renamed the Later Jin established by his father Nurhaci to "Great Qing" in 1636, sometimes referred to as the Predynastic Qing in historiography. By 1644 the Shunzhi Emperor and his prince regent seized control of the Ming capital Beijing, and the year 1644 is generally considered the start of the dynasty's rule. The Qing dynasty lasted until 1912, when Puyi abdicated the throne in response to the 1911 Revolution. As the final imperial dynasty in Chinese history, the Qing dynasty reached heights of power unlike any of the Chinese dynasties which preceded it, engaging in large-scale territorial expansion which ended with embarrassing defeat and humiliation to the foreign powers whom they believe to be inferior to them. The Qing dynasty's inability to successfully counter Western and Japanese imperialism ultimately led to its downfall, and the instability which emerged in China during the final years of the dynasty ultimately paved the way for the Warlord Era.
The Mutual Defense Pact of the Southeastern Provinces was an agreement reached in the summer of 1900 during the Boxer Rebellion by Qing dynasty governors of the provinces in southern, eastern and central China when the Eight-Nation Alliance invaded northern China. The governors, including Li Hongzhang, Xu Yingkui, Liu Kunyi, Zhang Zhidong and Yuan Shikai, refused to carry out the imperial decree promulgated by the Qing imperial court to declare war on 11 foreign states, with the aim of preserving peace in their own provinces.
The Later Jin, officially known as Jin or the Great Jin, was a Jurchen-led royal dynasty of China and a khanate ruled by the House of Aisin-Gioro in Manchuria, as the precursor to the Qing dynasty. Established in 1616 by the Jianzhou Jurchen chieftain Nurhaci upon his reunification of the Jurchen tribes, its name was derived from the earlier Jin dynasty founded by the Wanyan clan which had ruled northern China in the 12th and 13th centuries.
The political systems of Imperial China can be divided into a state administrative body, provincial administrations, and a system for official selection. The three notable tendencies in the history of Chinese politics includes, the convergence of unity, the capital priority of absolute monarchy, and the standardization of official selection. Moreover, there were early supervisory systems that were originated by local factions, as well as other political systems worthy of mention.
China was a monarchy from prehistoric times up to 1912, when a republic was established. The succession of legendary monarchs of China were non-hereditary. Dynastic rule began c. 2070 BC when Yu the Great established the Xia dynasty, and monarchy lasted until 1912 when dynastic rule collapsed together with the monarchical government. Various attempts at preserving and restoring the Chinese monarchy occurred during and following the Xinhai Revolution, but these regimes were short-lived and lacked widespread recognition.
The Imperial Edict of the Abdication of the Qing Emperor was an official decree issued by the Empress Dowager Longyu on behalf of the six-year-old Xuantong Emperor, the last emperor of the Qing dynasty of China, on 12 February 1912, as a response to the Xinhai Revolution. The revolution led to the self-declared independence of 13 southern Chinese provinces and the subsequent peace negotiation between the rest of Qing China and the collective of the southern provinces.
The debate on the "Chineseness" of the Yuan and Qing dynasties is concerned with whether the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty (1271–1368) and the Manchu-led Qing dynasty (1644–1912) can be considered "Chinese dynasties", and whether they were representative of "China" during their respective historical periods. The debate, although historiographical in nature, has political implications. Mainstream academia and successive governments of China, including the imperial governments of the Yuan and Qing dynasties, have maintained the view that they were "Chinese" and representative of "China". The debate stemmed from differing opinions on whether regimes founded by ethnic minorities could be representative of "China", where the Han Chinese were and remain the main people.