I'm trying to research more about Dowager Cixi and the role she played during and after the Taiping Rebellion, looking at a timeframe of around 1850-70. However, there are a lot of conflicting sources on her life, and I'm not sure which source to trust. Would anyone here happen to be familiar with the Qing Dynasty, particularly during the mid-19th Century?
Unfortunately, you will find it hard to locate much good info on the Dowager Empress. Her hagiographic treatment by Jung Chang was (in my view rightfully) excoriated by Qing specialist Pamela Crossley in this review, and it is only one – if the most popular – of a number of sensationalist treatments aimed at a broad lay audience. Perhaps the best look at Cixi I have read – but unfortunately a partial one – is Edward Rhoads' Manchus and Han (2000), which spends a couple of chapters on Cixi's attitudes to ethnic relations and the effects thereof on the Qing state. Luke Kwong's A Mosaic of the Hundred Days (1984) is a good study of the 1898 reform period in particular and discusses Cixi's role in it in a reasonably contextualised way. But good writing on sound academic footing that is specifically on Cixi is certainly hard to come by, and I will not claim to be a particularly good bibliographic guide.
As for the Taiping specifically, Cixi's role was limited at best. The key reforms that enabled the suppression of the Taiping, particularly the authorisation of provincial officials to organise consolidated militia forces, and the creation of a new transport tax to fund them, had taken place since 1853, a full eight years before the coup against her son's regents in 1861 that gave her control of the imperial seal. But the post-coup government, while dominated by Cixi and Ci'an, nevertheless (as it was for emperors) relied on the specific expertise of key courtiers as well, including Prince Gong, who was the main Qing negotiator with foreign powers, and whose diplomacy contributed towards what would eventually be a period of Anglo-French military intervention in support of the Qing. Moreover, the power of that central government was limited, with the main military commanders, Zeng Guofan, Li Hongzhang and Zuo Zongtang, operating with very limited central oversight. Cixi would be quite powerful in Beijing and over its metropolitan institutions, and she did embark on a programme of consolidation of Manchu authority (for more on which I do recommend having a look at Rhoads' book, which is open-access on JSTOR), but her influence on the provinces, particularly in the time of the Taiping revolt, was limited.
You may also like to check out a few past answers: