K'ANGHSI. — English spelling of a term (in Italian « Ccamsci ») denoting the period 1661–1722, during which the second emperor of the Manchu dynasty reigned; in practice, it is taken as the name of this emperor himself (4 May 1654–20 Dec. 1722), the greatest China has ever had.
Having ascended the throne at the age of seven, at thirteen he declared himself of age and, abolishing the Regency Council, took the reins of government into his own hands. During eight years
(1673–81) he subdued four great generals who had become more or less independent in the provinces of the south-east, south and south-west. In 1683 he reunited Formosa with China. On 7 Sept. 1689 he settled with Peter the Great the border disputes on the Amur by the Treaty of Nercinsk, China’s first international treaty, at which two Jesuit missionaries were present on the Chinese side, as interpreters and, in practice, negotiators.
Towards the north-west, in present-day Outer Mongolia, he defeated the Eleuts 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, the sciences and the arts. He surrounded himself with learned men, architects, mechanics, painters and artists. Under him three great dictionaries were published: of subjects (1710), phrases (1713) and characters (1716); the latter bears his name. Several of these scholars and artists were Jesuits; for example, F. Verbiest, J. F. Girbillon and J. Bouvet, who taught him mathematics and the applied sciences. More than once he was cured by Jesuit nurses, who also enabled him to experience the efficacy of quinine, then recently (1639) imported into Europe from America. When travelling to Manchuria in summer, he often had himself accompanied by Jesuits: eight times by Gerbillon, twice by Verbiest and twice by F. Grimaldi. In 1686 the latter 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 commissioned about ten Jesuits to draw, for the first time, a scientific map of the entire Empire; they completed it in the brief space of 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 justified the finest hopes also from the Christian point of view. As early as 1671, at Verbiest’s request, he recalled the missionaries exiled by the regents. Grateful for the effective work of Frs. Gerbillon and A. Pereira in the Treaty of Nercinsk, and already moved by reading Ricci’s Salido 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 to the Jesuit churches in Peking. For a time 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 neighbouring countries within a few generations. But the Chinese rites (v.), which culminated in the arrival
