K'ANGHSI. - English spelling of a term (in Italian "Ccamsci") that designates the period 1661-1722, during which the second emperor of the Manchu dynasty reigned; in practice it is taken as the name itself of this emperor (4 May 1654-20 Dec. 1722), the greatest China has ever had.
Having ascended the throne at the age of 7, at 13 he declared himself of age and, abolishing the Regency Council, took the reins of government into his own hands. Over eight years
(1673-81) he subdued four great generals who had made themselves more or less independent in the provinces of the southeast, the south and the southwest. In 1683 he reunited Formosa with China. On 7 Sept. 1689 he settled with Peter the Great the border difficulties on the Amur by the Treaty of Nerchinsk, China's first international treaty, at which two Jesuit missionaries were present on the Chinese side, as interpreters and practically as negotiators. Toward the northwest, in what is now Outer Mongolia, he defeated the Eleuths in 1690 and 1697; and through one of his sons, in 1719-20 he annexed Kukunor and Tibet to China.
K. was a great patron of letters, sciences and arts. He surrounded himself with learned men, architects, mechanics, painters and artists. Under him three great dictionaries were published, of subjects (1710), of phrases (1713) and of characters (1716); the last bears his name. Several of these learned men and artists were Jesuits; for example, F. Verbiest, J. F. Gerbillon, J. Bouvet, who taught him mathematics and the applied sciences. More than once he was cured by the Jesuit infirmarians, who also had him test the efficacy of quinine, then recently (1639) imported into Europe from America. When going to Manchuria in summer, he often had the Jesuits accompany him, eight times Gerbillon, twice Verbiest and twice F. Grimaldi. The latter in 1686 was sent by K. 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 respectively. He also charged about ten Jesuits with drawing for the first time the scientific map of the whole Empire, which they did in the brief span of less than ten years (1708-16); the first (1717) and second edition (1719) comprised 28 maps; the third (1721) and the fourth (1943) contain 32.
All this great favor authorized the fairest hopes also from the Christian standpoint. As early as 1671, urged by Verbiest, he recalled the missionaries exiled by the regents. Grateful for the effective work of Fathers Gerbillon and A. Pereira at the Treaty of Nerchinsk, and already moved by reading Ricci's celebrated treatise on God, on 22 March 1692 he promulgated the decree of religious freedom in his Empire. Later he wrote with his own hand four celebrated inscriptions extolling the God of the Christians, which he presented as gifts to the Jesuit churches in Peking. For a moment the missionaries thought that K. himself was on the point of becoming a Christian, which, humanly speaking, would have led to the conversion of all China and the neighboring countries within a few generations. But the painful question of the Chinese rites (v.), which culminated in the arrival in Peking of two pontifical legates in 1705-1707 and in 1720, irritated the powerful monarch and estranged him ever more from the Christian religion.
Bibliography6 works
Pasquale M. D'Elia