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Yi Kuang
Qing prince who ran foreign affairs for a quarter century, negotiated the Boxer settlement with Li Hongzhang and headed the short-lived 1911 cabinet
In a council hall, a long table holds an unrolled map scroll, a brass-cornered chest and a brush pot, with tall-backed chairs around it and a bronze lamp at the left; a figure stands with their back turned on the balcony at the right, with palace roofs beyond.
Also known as Qingqin Wang · Shi Mi
Yikuang, of the Aisin Gioro clan, was a grandson of Yonglin, Prince Qingxi and seventeenth son of the Qianlong emperor; born in 1838, he inherited a minor title and rose through the ranks of imperial nobility. In 1884 he was put in charge of the Zongli Yamen, the foreign affairs office, and made Prince Qing of the second rank, rising to the first rank in 1894. After the allied armies took Beijing in 1900 he stayed behind with Li Hongzhang to negotiate with the powers, and the next year signed the Boxer Protocol. From 1903 he led the Grand Council and the new Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and in May 1911 he became premier of the first cabinet, dubbed the princes' cabinet because so many of its members were imperial clansmen; in November Yuan Shikai replaced him. He moved to Tianjin after the dynasty fell and died in 1917, when the court of the abdicated emperor gave him the unflattering posthumous name Mi.
Life and times
Dates 1838 CE–1917 CE