Welcome to Tuesday Trivia!
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this thread is for you ALL!
Come share the cool stuff you love about the past!
We do not allow posts based on personal or relatives' anecdotes. Brief and short answers are allowed but MUST be properly sourced to respectable literature. All other rules also apply—no bigotry, current events, and so forth.
For this round, let’s look at: Women leaders! For this round of Tuesday Trivia, the call is open for all things related to Women Leaders in history. Women who held formal or informal leadership roles, those who were given or took power, and those who challenge the idea of what it means to be a leader. You take the lead and we'll fall in line in this week's thread!
In counterpoint to the other, very well-written, lengthy responses, I'm just going to natter on for a bit about historical queenship ...
(If you do want to read something longer, here's my profile's section on Royalty.)
There is a particular website about historical women, typically but not always royal women, that bothers me. It takes historical events and biographies and reinterprets them as children's books, which is a good way to educate, but it necessarily flattens the nuanced picture into clear Villains and Heroines. In some more martial cases, it will present the same actions undertaken by the Villain and Heroine as entirely different in morality simply because the Heroine has been designated the Heroine; for instance, if the Villain kills a family it's because they're (the Villain is) evil, while the Heroine killing a family is either justified revenge or ah-well-it-was-a-different-time. Overall, I think it does a disservice to the study of historical women because it doesn't teach its readers to think of women as simply historical actors, but as Kickass Awesome Ladies.
At the same time, there's a common complaint that I see about that sort of thing in general - reimagining or revising history to present women, again particularly royal women, as individuals with agency who can or could succeed. The pithy term is "girlbossification". "Girlboss" came into the vernacular in 2014 with Sophia Amoruso's book, #Girlboss, which was about her success in the generally masculine business world. Since then, it's come to have a number of different shades of nuance, both positive and negative, but in the history context I usually see it as in this NYTimes piece, "Catherine Was Great. But Was She a Girl Boss?" - making historical women seem cool, relatable, and idealized; maybe still flawed, but in a "don't we all?" way. And I get that! I don't like it either, I would much prefer that we stop coding embroidery as a rote skill for boring people rather than artistic expression, religious devotion and patronage as inherently oppressive conformism, etc. and learn to appreciate historical women for who they actually were. But it feels like a trap, where focusing on the conventionality of a historical queen or princess will be taken as endorsing the patriarchal norms they conformed to, while doing the reverse gets a production or story derided as "yassifying" a historical figure. There is no way to win!
Meanwhile, movies, tv shows, and book are constantly coming out that go relatively uncritiqued in how they present male royals/military leaders, who can be as cool and relatable and aspirational as they want to be. I think we should start calling The King "the boybossification of Henry V", who's with me?
Sometimes constructed languages are built to achieve some specific objective: bridge together people from different backgrounds, be more logical or less ambiguous, facilitate scientific discourse, etc. Sometimes they are designed for worldbuilding by creating the languages of the people inhabiting a fictional universe.
And sometimes, they are both. Today I'd like to introduce you to Suzette Haden Elgin who created Láadan, the feminist language.
Elgin (born Patricia Anne Suzette Wilkins, 1936, died in 2015) was a linguist and science fiction writer. She was an ardent feminist who believed that science fiction was an important genre to women as it gives them the opportunity to explore what life could be like without patriarchal oppression. In the 1980s, she decided to marry her interests of linguistics, feminism, and science fiction, which resulted in the Native Tongue series.
The books (which I frequently see compared to The Handmaid's Tale) take place several hundred years in the future, in a society where most women's rights have been repealed and they have little purpose in life beyond catering to men's needs, though some are raised to be linguists and interstellar translators; secretly, though, a group of these women build a female-centric language called Láadan to help them escape their oppression. Elgin explains the philosophy behind such a language:
I saw two major problems -- for women -- with English and its close linguistic relatives. (1) Those languages lacked vocabulary for many things that are extremely important to women, making it cumbersome and inconvenient to talk about them. (2) They lacked ways to express emotional information conveniently, so that -- especially in English -- much of that information had to be carried by body language and was almost entirely missing from written language. This characteristic (which makes English so well suited for business) left women vulnerable to hostile language followed by the ancient "But all I said was...." excuse; and it restricted women to the largely useless "It wasn't what you said, it was the way you said it!" defense against such hostility. In constructing Láadan, I focused on giving it features intended to repair those two deficiencies.
You can learn about the rules of Láadan here to see how it actually rectifies those problems. Our good friend Arika Okrent points out that sometimes it's simply having a more robust vocabulary to frame female anatomical experiences, while "Other words cover a range of situations that could conceivably be experienced by men, but are nonetheless designed to make you want to nod your head and go, 'Uh-huh. Tell it, sister." Such vocabulary includes áazh ("love for one sexually desired at one time, but not now"), rathóo ("nonguest, someone who comes to visit knowing perfectly well that he or she is intruding and causing difficulty"), and perhaps most famously, ásháana, "to menstruate joyfully."
On some level, Láadan does lean on the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which suggests that language's structure can limit how one thinks. While Elgin supported the hypothesis, linguists usually reject that interpretation in favor of the weaker linguistic relativity theory, arguing that language can influence how we think, but doesn't necessarily restrict it. Láadan in turn doesn't express things that can't be expressed in English, but it does make it easier to do so, and having these features and ideas baked into the fundamentals of the language facilitates communication that might be more uncomfortable in natural languages.
But Elgin's goal with the language wasn't simply to create a language for her fictional characters. Láadan was part of an experiment, which hypothesized that if exposed to the idea and given the opportunity, real-life women would latch onto a language centered around a female perspective and use it in the real world, or instead develop an even better one. She produced materials about the language both in the Native Tongue books and in separate published dictionaries, and let this test run for 10 years. In the end, to her disappointment and intrigue… well, ladies, how many of you are speaking Láadan now? It did pick up in small pockets, but suffice to say it wasn't tremendously popular. (It didn't help, Okrent notes, how Láadan overlooks the lesbian experience, which Elgin didn't mean to do and regretted when she realized that. I did a quick search to see if any transgender woman have commented on the language and found nothing, but I imagine any who have encountered the project have had their problems as well.)
Elgin was also sure to note that, while her feminine language didn't catch on, of course the warrior (read: masculine) language Klingon did.
Láadan is intriguing for several reasons. It is simultaneously an artistic language, designed for fiction, as well as an engineered/experimental language, intended for people to use in the real world. Usually, developers of media languages might have some intention of letting fans learn the language to further their enjoyment of the franchise, but that's not a priority; in this case, it was important for the characters and the readers to know the language. Láadan is also a rare example of a language constructed for fiction to be a conlang within the universe, as they are usually the natural language associated with an in-universe culture. Off the top of my head, Newspeak is the only prominent conlang that serves such a purpose, and it's dubious if it even qualifies as a proper conlang anyway.
As this week's theme is "Woman Leaders" (though perhaps I'm blurring the lines between this theme and "Women's Rights" a couple weeks ago), it's also worth placing Láadan into conlang history. The first known conlang is Lingua Ignota, developed by the German abbess Hildegard von Bingen in the 12th century. The first conlang developed to flesh out a fictional world—Pakuni, in Land of the Lost (1974)—was built by Victoria Fromkin. In the heyday of the CONLANG Listserv in the 90s and early 2000s, women made a small fraction of the community (supposedly around 30 amongst hundreds of men), but it was from this era that Sylvia Sotomayor created Kēlen, a language without verbs, for which she was later awarded the esteemed Smiley Award by Dothraki-creator David J. Peterson in 2009 (kinda similar to how I described Láadan, Peterson described Kēlen as "an engineered language with the soul of an artistic language"). And while Láadan and Native Tongue weren't as popular Klingon, it's worth acknowledging that they were in development before the first materials about the Klingon language came out, and predates the influx of public conlanging that emerged in the decades since. Conlangs are a niche artform, often dominated by men, but a lot of important and compelling work in the field has been done by women.
Further Reading:
Always a good time to bring up Rabbi Regina Jonas again!
Regina Jonas was the first ordained female rabbi. Other women before her had embraced rabbinic roles, such as Asenath Barzani, who was the head of a yeshiva in Iraq and whose marriage contract with her husband stipulated that she not be made to do housework so as not to distract her from her studies, or such as Chana Rochel Werbermacher, known as the Maiden of Ludmir, a chassidic spiritual leader. However, none of them pursued rabbinic ordination in a formal setting.
Jonas was born in Berlin to an Orthodox Jewish family, and was educated at the Jewish girls' school connected to the somewhat progressive Orthodox synagogue her family attended; her classmates noted that even at that point, she expressed a desire to become a rabbi. When the time came for her to begin that training, while she would have preferred to attend an Orthodox institution, none would accept women and so, after receiving a teacher's degree, she attended the Hochschule fur die Wissenschaft des Judentums, an institution for higher Jewish education with a more liberal bent. She faced a good deal of opposition at the Hochschule, with some students and faculty members antagonistic to the idea of a woman as a rabbi; while Rabbi Eduard Baneth, the ordaining rabbi at the Hochschule, encouraged her in her journey, upon his sudden death in 1930, shortly before Jonas finished her training, Baneth died and his successor, Rabbi Hanoch Albeck, refused to ordain a woman. Throughout her journey, she believed that there was no reason for any opposition to ordination for women from the perspective of Jewish law, not just among the more liberal rabbis with whom she studied but also on the part of the more traditionalist Orthodox community from which she came; in her thesis at the Hochschule, she wrote that "aside from prejudice and unfamiliarity, there is almost nothing halachically [from the point of view of Jewish law] opposed to the woman taking on the rabbinical role.”
Despite her efforts and her convictions, it took her another five years until she could find a rabbi to ordain her, and in the end she was ordained in 1935, by Rabbi Max Dienemann. At that point, her services as a rabbi were greatly needed. With the Nazi regime, the Jewish community in Germany was in incredible distress, and pastoral services were in high demand. While initially communities would not hire her to work in synagogues, she worked instead at old age homes and as a teacher, providing support to vulnerable people both young and old, and became a chaplain in a women's prison. Once more and more rabbis began to escape or be sent to concentration camps, Jonas was hired by an organization which sent traveling rabbis to communities without Jewish leadership. Throughout extraordinarily difficult times, she provided whatever services were needed; and especially emphasized the need for sermons and inspiration.
This talent for sermons, lectures, and inspiring those who needed it became most important when she was deported in 1942 to Theresienstadt (Terezin), a concentration camp/ghetto where the elderly, young, and prominent were often brought, and which was used as a show camp to demonstrate the good living conditions which Jews had in Nazi camps; while, in fact, things were often better for Jews there than elsewhere, conditions were still dismal and dangerous. However, Jewish leaders, such as the leading liberal rabbinical figure Rabbi Leo Baeck, were able to take advantage of the opportunity to offer support and services to the Jews who found themselves in Theresienstadt, and Jonas became a key player in these efforts, greeting Jews as they disembarked at the camp and offering them words of encouragement as well as participating in a lecture circuit, where her lectures were advertised as being by "the only female rabbi." We only have scraps of her words, such as this:
"Our work in Theresienstadt, serious and full of trials as it is, also serves this end: to be God’s servants and as such to move from earthly spheres to eternal ones. May all our work be a blessing for Israel’s future (and the future of humanity)…. Upright ‘Jewish men’ and ‘brave, noble women’ were always the sustainers of our people. May we be found worthy by God to be numbered in the circle of these women and men… The reward of a mitzvah is the recognition of the great deed by God. Rabbi Regina Jonas, formerly of Berlin.”
Unfortunately, in 1944, Jonas was deported to Auschwitz, where she was murdered in the gas chambers.
Shockingly, Jonas remained largely unremembered for decades after her murder, even though Baeck and other figures, such as Victor Frankl, encountered her in Theresienstadt. In fact, the first female ordained rabbi was widely considered to be Sally Priesand, who was ordained by the American Reform movement in 1972*. It wasn't until the 1990s, when an archive of Jonas's papers was found in a formerly-East German archive, that knowledge and interest in her surged. It's difficult to understand why she fell out of the spotlight that she richly deserved- perhaps it was gender bias, perhaps controversy over the circumstances of her ordination, perhaps her lack of affiliation with a specific Jewish movement, perhaps the postwar years seeming too stressful and traumatic for the newly rebuilt Jewish communities to be thrown for a loop by the radical concept of female ordination. However, now that she is remembered, she can be given the recognition she deserves for her accomplishments.
*Shortly after her ordination, Priesand acknowledged in writing that while she was the first female rabbi who was ordained in a rabbinical seminary, Jonas was in fact the first female rabbi; however, this doesn't seem to have prevented people from recognizing Priesand as first for decades after.
Canibalizing from an earlier write-up I did to present one of our Snoos, I give you the story of Juana Azurduy, heroine of the Argentinian and Bolivian independence movements.
Doña Juana Azurduy de Padilla, best known as Juana Azurduy, was born in 1780 in Toroca, Intendency of Potosí, in the Viceroyalty of Río de la Plata (current day Bolivia). She was the daughter of a wealthy white man who owned a number of properties in the area of La Plata (which is the city of Sucre nowadays), and a chola, a Bolivian term for mestizo women. While very little is known about her childhood, we do know that, in spite of having been raised in wealth and luxury, her mestizo origins and her eventual marriage to independentist activist Manuel Asencio de Padilla, led her to believe firmly in the need for independence from the Spanish monarchy.
Since 1809, Azurduy and her husband joined several revolutions in Bolivia against the already unstable crown, then under the control of Napoleon’s brother Joseph, spending years fighting side by side against the royalist army, the Spanish armed forces stationed in the Viceroyalties of Perú and Río de la Plata. In 1812, she was instrumental in aiding and guarding the rear of the civilian column that marched from Jujuy to Tucumán, in the Northern area of the United Provinces of Río de La Plata, in a massive exodus of the civilian population of the area, in preparation of the royalist advance in the area. During the event known as the Jujuy Exodus, and under the guidance of Argentine generals Manuel Belgrano and Eustoquio Díaz Vélez, she helped more than 1500 people escape from the royalist advancement.
On August 13, 1816, after numerous important victories, and in recognition for her valor in combat, Juana was ascended to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel by the Supreme Director of the Untied Provinces, Juan Martín de Pueyrredón. Just one month later, her and her husband's guerrilla army, called La Republiqueta de La Laguna, were surrounded and defeated in the battle of La Laguna. Azurduy had held back inside the town of La Laguna with a small garrison in order to defend their supplies, ammunition and money, but their encampment was ambushed by a splinter royalist squadron. She was shot twice, once in the leg and once in the chest, but she kept fighting, refusing to give in to pain in order to keep morale high. Her husband was defeated and beheaded, and she was barely able to escape, almost bleeding out from her wounds.
After the defeat, now lieutenant colonel Azurduy, had to face insubordination, betrayal and mutiny from many of her subordinates, because she was a woman. However, she prevailed, as she had proven herself to be a fierce and brave commander, and was able to retain control of her troops. In time, she established a strong friendship with Argentine caudillo Martín Miguel de Güemes, and moved to Salta, Güemes' province. After his death in 1820, she asked the new government of Salta for financial aid to return to Bolivia, but they refused to give her a considerable sum, giving her instead a few mules and 50 pesos (an insufficient amount for such a long trip). It took her seven years to gather enough funds to return to Bolivia, and upon returning to her home country, she found herself forgotten, ignored and disowned by the new authorities, who gave her an arguably laughable yearly pension for two years. Her inherited properties, which she had left behind under care of her sister, had either been confiscated, or given away by her sibling.
She was abandoned by her government, her deeds forgotten and tarnished by falsehoods and myths, her honor reduced to living in extreme poverty. After her only surviving daughter got married, she was left completely alone. In her final years, she adopted a physically disabled boy (the particularities of his disability are still a matter of debate), a distant relative, called Indalecio Salvi. He later recalled that she spent more of her nearly non-existent income in sustaining him than she ever did on herself.
Juana Azurduy died on May 25th, 1862, on the 52nd anniversary of Argentina's revolution. A distinguished military commander, a warrior who fought for the liberty and sovereignty of her and all of South America's peoples, was abandoned and forgotten by the same nations she helped become nations in the first place.
At least, today we remember her. Bolivia honors her as one of its mightiest heroes, as does Argentina. It’s interesting to note, however, that Azurduy continues to be remembered as a fierce warrior, understood to be “akin” to a man when it came to bravery and military cunning. Heather Hennes, a professor of Spanish literature, culture and language at Saint Joseph’s University, explains that from the get-go, Azurduy was mythologized as an ‘amazon’. From a letter sent by Argentine revolutionary Antonio Beruti to General Belgrano, praising the “manlike efforts and gallantry of that amazon doña Juana Azurduy”, all the way to the late 20th Century, with most of the biographies and historical works written about her distinguishing her fierce combat attitude and predisposition over her tactical skill and leadership capabilities, the construction of the ‘azurduyan’ legend, instead of recognizing her as a historical figure on her own merits, has tended to forge her historical presence based on her performing masculinity instead of her own gender identity. However, recent decades have seen the emergence of a sociological, historiographical and cultural movement that has revitalized her image according to her own merits as a woman, a strategist and a tactician, not just as a fighter. Arguably, the beginning of this movement can be set in 1980, when interim president Lidia Gueiler, the first woman to serve as president of Bolivia, determined that 1980 would be “the Year of the Popular Heroine Juana Azurduy de Padilla”, declaring July 12th as a public holiday. Thus began a tendency to associate Azurduy with the ideal, essential spirit of Bolivian women, a tendency that subscribes to the philosophical ideals of Latin American feminism. Since then, several public and non-governmental organizations alike have taken Azurduy’s memory and name as their ideological and cultural flag, including the Juana Azurduy Centre, a non-profit organization created to provide empowerment to Bolivian women both in Sucre and in the rest of the country. Founded in 1989, the Juana Azurduy Centre aims to “change the way social interaction functions in order to eliminate hierarchies and inequalities based in sexual and cultural asymmetries and oppression in detriment of all women, caused by the patriarchal system and its dialectical connection with capitalist and colonial systems, which produce nothing but exploitation and exclusion.” One of the primary goals of the Juana Azurduy Centre is, in essence, to foment initiatives that encourage political, cultural and workplace empowerment for all Bolivian women.
In my period of the late Qing, Dowager Empress Cixi probably stands out as the big case of a woman in a position of power. I've written about her a few times before and I'll throw some links in here, but I also want to specifically repost the mini biography post on her I wrote last May as part of our new Snoo unveilings. Unfortunately, as that was rather a long post, I've had to cut out the recommended reading section here, but the original post (which will be linked as well) will still have it for those interested.
Can the victory and aftermath of the Taiping Rebellion be attributed to the Empress Dowager Cixi?
Why are there no photographs of 19th Century Chinese Emperors? Was there a rule against it?
Say Hello to Our Little Friends! Introducing William Snoollace and the Empress Dowager Snooxi!
Empress Xiaoqin 孝欽, known for most of her life as the Dowager Empress Cixi 慈禧 (Tsysi ᡮᡟᠰᡳ), is perhaps one of the most iconic political figures of the late imperial era in China, though the extent and nature of her role in the period’s history is still debated. Entering the imperial family in 1851, she came to hold varying degrees of power at court until her death in 1908, shortly before the collapse of the Qing state.
As with most Manchu women in the Qing period, Cixi’s personal name was unfortunately never recorded. We do know that she was born into the Yehe Nara ᠶᡝᡥᡝ ᠨᠠᡵᠠ clan in November 1835, the daughter of a relatively junior civil servant named Huizheng 惠徵. In 1851, aged seventeen, she was selected to be a junior concubine to Yizhu 奕詝 (I Ju ᡳ ᠵᡠ,) the recently-enthroned Xianfeng 咸豐 Emperor (Gubci Elgiyengge ᡤᡠᠪᠴᡳ ᡝᠯᡤᡳᠶᡝᠩᡤᡝ), and rose rapidly through the court hierarchy, especially after having his only male heir, Zaichun 載淳 (Dzai Šun ᡯᠠᡳ ᡧᡠᠨ), in 1856. When the Xianfeng Emperor died in 1861, she received the title of Dowager Empress Cixi, and along with the former chief consort Dowager Empress Ci’an 慈安, oversaw a board of regents appointed by the late emperor. However, this board was soon deposed in a coup orchestrated between the dowager empresses and the late emperor’s brother Yixin 奕訢 (I Hin ᡳ ᡥᡳᠨ), styled Prince Gong 恭. The new emperor’s reign title, Tongzhi 同治 (Yooningga Dasan ᠶᠣᠣᠨᡳᠩᡤᠠ ᡩᠠᠰᠠᠨ), which may be translated literally as ‘joint rule’, perhaps hints at the power-sharing that was involved from there on out.
As regent to the Tongzhi Emperor, Cixi, Ci’an and Prince Gong presided over a period of major recovery for the Qing Empire, which traditional historiography has called the ‘Tongzhi Restoration’. The various anti-Manchu rebellions that had sprung up since early 1851 were suppressed – albeit typically with great bloodshed – by a reinvigorated Qing military; international relations became normalised through the establishment of a regular foreign office; and the reconstruction of devastated regions proceeded rapidly. The extent of her role in this has been debated, and it is probably reasonable to say that much of the impetus for reform came from the provinces and not the court; at the same time there is little to no evidence to suggest significant resistance to these reforms from the centre, either. The death of the Tongzhi Emperor in 1875 saw Cixi retaining power at court nonetheless, as she sought to resolve the childless emperor’s succession by adopting her nephew, the four-year-old Zaitian 載湉 (Dzai Tiyan ᡯᠠᡳ ᡨᡳᠶᠠᠨ), as a second successor to the Xianfeng Emperor. After the death of Ci’an in 1882, she presided as sole regent over the Guangxu 光緒 (Badarangga Doro ᠪᠠᡩᠠᡵᠠᠩᡤᠠ ᡩᠣᡵᠣ) Emperor, leading eventually to perhaps her most controversial series of actions.
The Qing resurgence that had begun in the Tongzhi period came to a screeching halt in 1894, when a series of military defeats to Japan prompted a wave of radical reformist sentiment among Chinese intellectuals that also drew in the Guangxu Emperor. In the summer of 1898, in conjunction with the radicals, he began what became known as the Hundred Days’ Reforms, to which, initially, Cixi assented. However, one particular set of reforms particularly alarmed the Dowager Empress, and those were the proposals to do away with the Banner system. Since the 1750s, the Banners, in which all Manchu households were enrolled and through which they had been entitled to government stipends and legal protections, had been the cornerstone of Manchu status and identity. The emperor’s apparently positive response to the proposal to eliminate these privileges, if not the Banner system outright, led Cixi to see him and the reformers as a political enemy, and on 22 September generals loyal to Cixi marched into Beijing and rounded up the reformers, many of whom were later executed. The Guangxu Emperor was placed under house arrest, and would remain as emperor in name only until his death. The crackdown against the 1898 reforms alienated most of the growing liberal movement, while the emperor’s arrest created great uncertainty about the status of the imperial court. Amid this uncertainty, Cixi attempted to cement her position by appointing Pujun 溥儁, the son of one of her favoured nobles, Zaiyi 載漪 (Dzai I ᡯᠠᡳ ᡳ), as crown prince in 1900, which was retracted after protests by supporters of the imprisoned emperor. Following this, Cixi attempted another power-play by co-opting the Yihetuan 義和團, also known as Boxers, an anti-foreign mass religious movement which called for the expulsion of Christian missionaries and their converts. The international military response to the Boxer uprising proved disastrous for the Qing court, which was deserted by many of its generals during the crisis, and subsequently forced to pay a vast indemnity to the foreign powers.
Yet Cixi was not by any means a dyed-in-the-wool conservative. From 1901 onward, she issued a series of edicts and proclamations promising wide-ranging reforms. These reforms, known as the New Policies, revitalised the Qing state, reforming its education and law enforcement, and opening opportunities for economic investment. In an attempt to reconcile with the reformist tendencies, 1904 saw Cixi issue pardons (albeit, in many cases, posthumously) to most of those involved in the ‘1898 affair’. In 1905, she sent missions to foreign countries to investigate forms of constitutional government, in preparation for eventual plans to introduce parliamentary bodies – the first provincial assemblies would be elected in 1909, the year after Cixi’s death. And perhaps most notably from a women’s history standpoint, the Qing state formally outlawed foot binding in 1902, having aborted their first attempts to do so all the way back in the 17th century. Unlike 1898, these reforms did not attempt to make major changes to the Banner system, but this produced significant problems: anti-Manchu sentiment among Han Chinese was not appeased, and there was also little effort to ameliorate economic distress among the Banners, whose stipends were not enough to live on without taking on additional employment. On the other hand, the continued assertion of the Banners as the locus of Manchu identity helped to solidify the sense of identity held by the Manchus, not just during the remainder of Qing rule, but into the post-imperial period and down to the present.
In 1908, Cixi died less than 24 hours after the Guangxu Emperor, leading many to suggest she had him poisoned. Whatever the case, her final major act was to select Puyi 溥儀 (Pu Yi ᡦᡠ ᠶᡳ) as heir apparent, and his father Zaifeng 載灃 (Dzai Feng ᡯᠠᡳ ᡶᡝᠩ) as his regent. This proved to be a rather unfortunate choice, as Zaifeng seemed to have a knack for making exactly the wrong choice at every turn, and the empire was dissolved in February 1912 following a series of military mutinies and popular revolts in late 1911.
Cixi’s popular image has largely gravitated between two extremes: that of a power-hungry, Manchu-centric, reactionary despot; and that of a pan-Chinese, anti-foreign, feminist hero. Both are stereotypes that fail to capture the complex series of choices that she made amid a constantly changing backdrop of court authority within the Qing Empire and its place in international politics. Cixi was, without a doubt, often ruthless in how she handled her rivals, and her efforts were unable to prevent the collapse of the Qing state soon after her death. The extent of her direct authority over Qing policy was also limited, and so for the most part she exercised influence, rather than control. Yet under her auspices, the Qing underwent two periods of major recovery, and the Manchus as a minority developed a coherent group identity that survived the fall of the state that had created it. Cixi was, ultimately, only human: deeply flawed, yet not defined solely by those flaws.
When people talk of key leaders in the southern Empire of Wu during the three kingdoms, they talk of Emperors and warlords (also Sun Jian who was not a warlord), they talk of the chief commanders of Sun Quan like Zhou Yu, the male regents like Zhuge Ke. Yet it was also an Empire with some extraordinary women and in Lady Wu, mother of the founding Emperor Sun Quan, there is one that perhaps gets overlooked as a leader during a time when the new warlord state was vulnerable.
Born to a noted family in the south, her parents died when she was young so she lived with her brother Wu Jing and his family. Growing up to be an attractive woman and known for having talent, she gained the attention of local notables. Around 174, she also gained the attention of Sun Jian, a man from a minor background and with relatives questioning his character, her relatives refused. Sun Jian, however, was a rising military figure and his unhappiness became known, concerned Sun Jian might react with violence, she told her family it would not be worth the trouble of a fight and married him.
We don't know much about their marriage other than they had four sons and her scary spy of a daughter. As the land collapsed into civil war in 190, her husband became a leading general under Yuan Shu and she would move around with the family. Her husband died in battle in 191 with the Sun and Wu family prominence under Yuan Shu declining. Her eldest son Sun Ce would, in 196, establish himself in Danyang and she would go to be with the rising young warlord.
Her son would soon free himself from Yuan Shu, he become an independent warlord and a power in the south in his own right. While her son was a generous and charismatic man, he could have a temper and twice she stepped in to save others. When Sun Ce captured her old suitor Wang Sheng, he was going to execute Wang Sheng but she played on their past history and that the man no longer had any family, there was no need to kill him. When Sun Ce got in a row with his Officer of Merit Wei Teng, from one of the prominent families in the south, and planned to kill him, Lady Wu stood by a deep well and warned (translation Rafe De Crespigny)
You are building up the south of the Yangzi, and the work is not complete. This is the time to treat your worthy men well and be polite to your officers, forget their faults but note their good work. Merit Officer Wei was simply doing his duty. If you kill him today, people will turn from you tomorrow. Before I see such disaster come I would first jump into this well
Both men were spared though claims she sought to protect the mystic Gan Ji as a helper of the army would prove not so successful, Sun Ce executing a figure he saw as a charlatan and a possible threat to his power. The stories of her role for Sun Ce are of this sort, Lady Wu acting as a voice of restraint when Sun Ce's temper frayed.
In 200 after five years of conquest in the south, Sun Ce was assassinated at the age of twenty-six sui, Sun Ce lingered long enough to be able to arrange his succession after being attacked while hunting. His son Sun Shao was either a very new baby or not yet born so it went to Ce's eldest brother Sun Quan at the age of 18. What could possibly go wrong?
Because the southern warlord state would survive and Sun Quan became an assertive Emperor, how fragile things were at the time can be overlooked. There were rival candidates within the family and among the senior officers, officers who had joined due to conquests or due to Sun Ce could have turned. Lady Wu summoned senior officers to her chambers, even questioned if their enterprise could survive but was reassured by the valiant Dong Xi that they could indeed survive.
Sun Quan at this stage of life achievements had been to be on Sun Ce's councils and nearly got himself killed by failing to set a proper guard, Zhou Tai badly wounded fighting to get him out. Not that this would stop a streak of recklessness that would constantly endanger Sun Quan. The young ruler had been very distressed by the death of his brother, the stern official Zhang Zhao had to personally put him on a horse to inspect the army so Sun Quan could be seen in public. Unsurprisingly, the next few years were about stabilizing lands that were still only recent conquered and not fully under control.
Sun Quan was active in recruiting talent and winning support but while Zhang Zhao acted as an unofficial regent Lady Wu seems to have not entirely trusted her young son given his age. She wrote to officers herself to encourage them to remain loyal, took part in the administration for which the records acknowledge she was a help but unhelpfully gives no details of her role in that. Over the few remaining years of her life, she also pushed figures onto Sun Quan that... Sun Quan perhaps didn't always appreciate but would provide valuable service.
Zhang Hong had been a family friend, even looking after the family in the pre-warlord days, one of Sun family best scholars and had shared chief administrative work with Zhang Zhao, leading to the phrase two Zhang's. Awkwardly, however, he was away when Sun Ce died at the Han court and the Han controller Cao Cao sought to spread doubt, giving Zhang Hong a position that risked challenging Sun Quan's authority in Kuaiji. When Zhang Hong returned after eighteen months away, there were doubts about Zhang Hong's loyalty but Lady Wu had Zhang Hong join Zhang Zhao in supervising the administration. Zhang Hong was sensibly discreet and would write a history of Sun Jian and Sun Ce (thought to be the basis upon the records that survive today) to appeal to Sun Quan and to help reassure of his loyalty.
In 202, Cao Cao who was now the dominant figure in the north after his defeat of his former patron Yuan Shao in 200, tried his luck in asking for hostages. Sun Quan's council was uncertain, Sun Quan was reluctant and Zhou Yu, a close childhood friend of Sun Ce and military chief of staff for Sun Quan, strongly opposed sending hostages. Sun Quan and Zhou Yu went to Lady Wu and there Zhou Yu set his case: the lands were strong, easily protected and if they gave hostages then Sun Quan would never be out from under the thumb of Cao Cao. Lady Wu backed Zhou Yu's plan and urged Sun Quan to treat Zhou Yu, who she considered as a son (Zhou family had hosted the Sun family at one point and he had paid her respects) as an elder brother. So no hostages were sent.
In 202 (probably), Lady Wu became mortally ill and summoned Zhang Zhao to her chambers where he assigned Sun Quan to his care. We don't know what exactly was said but Zhang Zhao would later, during an apology after his blunt manner had caused a rift (not the only time) sometime after Sun Quan had become Emperor in 229, still recalled the charge placed upon him.
Part 1 of 2.
I'm going to go in a little different direction, and discuss the first female executive, and the first woman on the Stanley Cup, Marguerite Norris:
Norris was the daughter of James E. Norris, who bought the Detroit Red Wings in 1932 (technically he bought the Detroit Falcons and renamed them, but that's not important here). He also developed significant ownership interests in the Chicago Black Hawks and New York Rangers, and in the era of a six-team NHL, the league was informally known as the "Norris House League" due to his oversized influence.
Anyways, Norris died in 1952, and despite having two sons (James D. "Jimmy" and Bruce), Marguerite was named president of the Red Wings. This stems directly from the Norris control of half the league: it wasn't exactly above board, as Jimmy was the de facto owner of Chicago (through an anonymous ownership structure to keep up appearances), and Bruce was a vice-president of the team. While Jimmy was the heir apparent, he didn't want to lose control of Chicago, which included the Chicago Stadium, a major centre for boxing (which the Norris' also had a significant interest in), and Bruce was less than trustworthy.
Thus 24 year old Marguerite Norris became president and managing partner of the Detroit Red Wings. This likely made her the first female owner in professional sports (I don't know MLB, NFL, or the NBA that well, so apologies if I'm wrong here), and the first female executive in the NHL.
Expected to be a puppet figure, Marguerite showed that she was indeed her own person, and indeed took after her father: brash, unafraid to say what's on her mind, and willing to do what was needed to win. This only angered her brothers (technically half-brothers), who wanted to control things from behind the scenes.
Marguerite ran the Red Wings for 3 years, and in those 3 years they finished first in the NHL each time (they would 7 years in a row, a league record not equaled). They also won the Stanley Cup twice, in 1954 and 1955, and as president Marguerite has her name engraved, the first woman to do so (and still one of a handful; I'd be surprised if there's more than 15 or 20). However by 1955 the Norris family had sorted out James E.'s will and assets, and the brothers worked out an agreement: Bruce would go and take over Detroit, forcing Marguerite out. She took on a reduced role as a vice-president, which was a token role, and soon faded out of the picture entirely.
The Red Wings continued to be a strong team for a few more years, but the change in ownership was felt pretty quickly. Bruce was pretty much incompetent, and allowed the aging Jack Adams to continue managing the team (Marguerite wanted to replace him, as he had been running the team since her father bought the team in 1926; he would stay until 1962). In 1957 a few players tried to launch a player's union; this was led by Red Wings captain Ted Lindsay, and as retribution for that he was traded to Chicago (considered a form of exile at the time). The Red Wings made the Stanley Cup Final five times in the next 11 seasons, but lost every time, and by 1966 started a massive decline in which they would miss the playoffs 16 of 18 years, earning the nickname "Dead Things." Their fortunes only started to rise after 1982, when Bruce died and the team was sold to Mike Illich (who ran it with his wife Marian, another woman on the Stanley Cup, plus their daughter Denise), who invested money into the team and saw them rise again to become a premier team, winning the Cup in 1997, 1998, 2002, and 2009, and make the playoffs for 25 consecutive years (not coincidently around the time Mike died, and ownership transferred to his son Christopher).
Marguerite Norris died in 1994, so saw the team's fortunes decline under her brother, and rise again under someone who was competent. However had she been able to keep control, the Red Wings could have remained a serious contender throughout the 1960s, and beyond.
Hey, I had this answer about the awesome Manuelita Saenz in another similar thread. Reposting it here because it fits the topic.
I feel that more people should know about Manuela Saenz, a legendary and brave South American woman who led an exceptional life that ended on a tragic note.
Manuela Saenz is one of the national heroes of Ecuador. Born in Quito, in 1795, she was barely a teenager when a revolutionary wave swept the continent, starting at Quito itself. There, a group of notable people, including the equally interesting Manuela Cañizares, declared the formation of a Junta that would rule in the name of Fernando VII, recently deposed by Napoleon. The Junta was broken and its members arrested; one year later, they would be massacred.
Saenz did not take part in this events. As a creole lady, that is, white people born in the Spanish colonies, she received a through but strict education. In 1815, even as Venezuela was engulfed in bloodshed, Quito remained in peace under Royalist rule. Apparently seduced by a Spanish officer, she fled the convent where she was being educated. In 1817, she married an English merchant, Thorne, but never really loved him. They moved to Lima, Peru, just in time for San Martin's Patriot army to invade and take the city.
Saenz, affectionately called "Manuelita" by most, was known for being a free-spirit, who spoke up and was not secretive about her patriot sympathies, something that horrified the conservative societies of Quito and Lima. During San Martin's brief rule, she acted as a good patriot and earned the appreciations and high stem of the Argentinian, who even condecorated her. In 1822 she returned to Quito, leaving her husband behind, just in time to receive another liberator, this time El Libertador in the flesh, Simon Bolivar.
After a grueling campaign against the Royalist insurgency in Pasto, Bolivar had finally triumphantly entered Quito. The city had actually been taken by his second in command, the future Marshall Sucre, but most of the big celebrations were held in Bolivar's honor. They met in one of this galas, and started a love affair.
It seems like one out of a romance: Bolivar had been married only once, and the death of that wife had profoundly affected him and perhaps led him to the path of being a patriot. He had had numerous mistresses, but he never had really loved anyone again. Manuelita was married to a man whom she didn't love as a result of the strict, paternalistic system of the age. A system she often challenged openly. And now here comes the man who was bringing down that system. They fell madly in love, and spend several idyllic days together, until duty called for Bolivar.
Even as Bolivar's health and dreams crumbled around him, Manuela Saenz remained a constant presence in his life and a loyal supporter, sometimes against his wishes. He adored her, but she scandalized the people of high society with her opinionated and spirited behaviour. She rode around town in men's clothes, lived with Bolivar while in Lima despite the fact that her husband was in the same city not far away, tried to poke her nose in politics such as the legendary and bitter conflict between Bolivar and his vice-president, Santander. When Colombian troops in Lima mutinied, she went down in person with a pistol to try and quell this revolt.
The most dramatic episode in Manuela's life was when she stopped one of the various plots to assassinate Bolivar. In a desperate attempt to stop the dissolution of Gran Colombia, Bolivar declared himself Dictator, despite the fact that any political or social support for the union had already disappeared. A group of men, believing that tranquility, democracy and independence would not be achieved until Bolivar died, started a conspiration which finally took place in September - hence, "Conspiración Septembrina."
More than thirty men forced their way into the Presidential Palace. Saenz was there, and she awakened Bolivar. Ever reckless and brave, he jumped to action with his pistol and sabre, but she convinced him to leave for his own safety. After that, she personally confronted the would-be assassins, being pistol whipped for her trouble. But she saved Bolivar's life that night.
The general had hidden under a bridge until regular and loyal troops could be called. In the cold of the night, you get the sense of a man whose dreams and aspirations have miserably crumbled around him. Something broke in Bolivar that night, and the spirit that had led him through almost two decades of tireless work for independence left him. In his final, pathetic moments, which hardly befitted the hero of six nations, Bolivar would sadly declare that all of his work had been for naught: "I have plowed the sea, and sowed in the wind."
Bolivar and Gran Colombia would survive for three more years, but by then everything was a foregone conclusion. His friends were dead, or had turned into bitter enemies. With nothing left to do, Bolivar said his final goodbye to Saenz, and took a boat up the Magdalena. Like the other disgraced Libertador, San Martin, Bolivar planned to retire to Europe. He had had to sold his silverware to finance the trip. But he ended stuck in a small island, waiting for an English boat that came too late. Destitute, sick and depressed, Bolivar died there, hated by the people he had liberated. And with him, Gran Colombia died too.
What about Manuela Saenz? She did not accompany Bolivar in this final trip, and the why must remain a mystery. It's possible that he did not want her to, and for once she listened. Then Santander, whom she hated virulently, triumphantly came back from the exile he had been condemned to due to his supposed participation in the plot to assassinate Bolivar. Saenz was soon exiled herself. She could not return to her home, to Quito, because Bolivar's enemies were in power there too.
So she settled in Peru, as close to Ecuador as she could, though she would refuse to come back even after a new Ecuadorian government allowed her to. There she lived in solitary poverty, refusing to go back to her husband in Lima. Her only company were some dogs, whom she named Santander, Paez and Padilla, the names of Bolivar's enemies.
Like with most protagonists of the Independence of Spanish America, Manuela Saenz's story ends in tragedy. Her memory was reinvindicated in the later half of the XXth century, when feminism led to a resurgence of female characters of this time, and a reevaluation of their role. Now, she is seen as a heroine, and widely known for the nickname Bolivar bestowed upon her: "La Libertadora del Libertador." She could also be considered a precedent to the many hardy and brave women that appear in the history of Latin America, such as the soldadetas of the Mexican Revolution. Indomable, bold, brilliant, her life can be summarized as a romantic tale with a sad ending.
