K'ANGHSI. - English transliteration of a term (in Italian «Camsci») designating the period 1661-1722, during which the second emperor of the Manchu dynasty reigned; in practice it is taken to mean the name of this emperor himself (4 May 1654-20 Dec. 1722), the greatest China has ever had.
He ascended the throne at the age of seven, declared himself of age at thirteen, abolished the Council of Regency, and took the reins of government into his own hands. For eight years (1673-81) he subdued four great generals who had made themselves more or less independent in the south-eastern, southern and south-western provinces. In 1683 he reunited Formosa with China. On 7 Sept. 1689 he settled frontier difficulties with Peter the Great on the Amur by the Treaty of Nertchinsk, China’s first international treaty, at which two Jesuit missionaries were present on the Chinese side as interpreters and practically as negotiators. To the north-west, in what is now Outer Mongolia, he defeated the Eleuths in 1690 and 1697; and by means of one of his sons, in 1719-20 he annexed to China the Kukunor and Tibet.
K’anghsi was a great patron of letters, the sciences and the arts. He surrounded himself with learned men, architects, mechanicians, painters and artists. Under his direction three great dictionaries were published: of subjects (1710), of phrases (1713) and of characters (1716); the last bears his name. Many of these scholars and artists were Jesuits; for example, F. Verbiest, J. F. Gerbillon, J. Bouvet, who taught him mathematics and applied sciences. More than once he was cured by the Jesuit physicians, who also enabled him to test the efficacy of quinine, recently (1639) imported into Europe from America. When travelling to Manchuria in summer he was often accompanied by Jesuits—eight times by Gerbillon, twice by Verbiest and twice by F. Grimaldi. The latter in 1686 was sent by K’anghsi on a special mission to Peter the Great. Five other Jesuits were sent to Rome by the Pope in the years 1706, 1708 and 1721. He also commissioned a group of Jesuits to draw up for the first time a scientific map of the whole Empire, which they accomplished within less than ten years (1708-16); the first (1717) and second editions (1719) comprised 28 maps; the third (1721) and fourth (1943) contain 32.
All this great favour gave rise to the fairest hopes even from the Christian point of view. As early as 1671, at the entreaty of Verbiest, he recalled the missionaries exiled by the regents. Grateful for the effective work of Fathers Gerbillon and A. Pereira at the Treaty of Nertchinsk, and already shaken by reading Ricci’s *Treatise on the one True God*, on 22 March 1692 he issued the decree of religious liberty throughout his Empire. Later he wrote with his own hand four celebrated inscriptions in praise of the God of the Christians, which he presented to the churches of the Jesuits in Peking. For a time the missionaries thought that K’anghsi himself was on the point of becoming a Christian, which, humanly speaking, would have led to the conversion of all China and the neighbouring countries within a few generations. But the painful question of the Chinese Rites (v.), which came to a head with the arrival in Peking of two papal legates in 1705-1707 and in 1720, irritated the powerful monarch and drew him ever further away from the Christian religion.