In 1839, French chemist Daguerre invented the world's first daguerreotype camera, which started the history of human photography.
It was the 19th year of Daoguang's reign, so a large number of photos from the Qing Dynasty have been handed down, providing a lot of information for modern people's research.
Now let’s take a look at a set of old photos from the Qing Dynasty to see what the Qing Dynasty was like at that time.
The content of the first photo below is Cixi . In the photo, Cixi rarely smiles.
As the most powerful woman in the late Manchu period, Cixi often had a very serious expression in order to show her majesty when taking photos.
Moreover, when Cixi came into contact with photos in the early days, there was a legend in the capital that photos could suck people's souls in, so Cixi disliked photography at that time. If Cixi hadn't gradually fallen in love with photography, she wouldn't have left so many photos.
The content of the second photo is of a woman with bound feet. Judging from her attire, she is very wealthy. She is probably a family member of a descendant of one of the Eight Banners.
In fact, bound feet has been recorded as early as the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period. It gradually became popular during the and Ming Dynasties and reached its peak in the Qing Dynasty.
This is a kind of oppression of women in the ancient patriarchal society. It is a deformed aesthetic derived from women's complete loss of mobility. Women with bound feet cannot even walk around in their old age.
Fortunately, this bad habit has been abolished, and I hope that this kind of abnormal aesthetic will not appear again in the future.
The third photo is a market in the Qing Dynasty.
In the feudal society stage, the Qing Dynasty was a period when commerce was relatively developed.
However, the world at this time has gradually begun to globalize, and the technologies of various countries have gradually begun to exchange with business, so the business of the Qing Dynasty seemed a bit underwhelming in the entire world at that time.
In addition, sugar cane appears in this photo. During the Qing Dynasty, sugar cane could not be transported to the north and inland, so the background of this photo is most likely to be coastal cities such as Fujian and Guangdong and Guangxi.
The content of the fourth photo is the British Huayong Camp .
Huayong Battalion is a Chinese force specially recruited by the British. It is famous for its hard work and strict discipline.
At that time, the British had high hopes for this force. They would be given the most advanced weapons at the time, and their salaries would be sufficient, so this group of people was also devoted to Britain.
This unit performed well in suppressing colonial uprisings and when the Eight-Nation Allied Forces invaded China, and was highly praised by the British.
Later, as the conflict between Britain and Japan eased, and the Manchus signed a large number of unequal treaties, Britain's interests in China stabilized. Huayong Camp lost its use and was immediately disbanded.
The fifth photo is of a lama from the Qing Dynasty.
A lama is a monk in Tibetan Buddhism, meaning master, and has a very high status . The Manchu Qing Dynasty attached great importance to Tibetan Buddhism, because it was through this religious system that the Manchu Qing Dynasty achieved appeasement of the Mongolian nobles and thus controlled the Mongolian region.
The Manchu nobles' own beliefs were quite complicated.
According to later research on Cixi's funeral, it was found that the Manchu nobles would invite Taoist priests, monks, Tibetan Buddhist lamas, and Manchu their own shaman practices after death. The scene can be said to be quite chaotic.
The sixth photo is of opium smoking.
We all know what opium is. Its raw material poppy was introduced to China in the Han Dynasty . It was not until the Ming Dynasty that the Chinese learned the technology of refining opium .
This thing had a profound impact on China. Later, in order to fight a trade war with the West, the Manchus began to grow their own poppy. From then on, the poppy became a shadow that China could not get rid of.
It was not until the founding of New China that poppy cultivation and opium smoking were curbed under our country's vigorous crackdown.
The content of the seventh photo is of ordinary women during the Qing Dynasty.
The gap between rich and poor is a problem that has occurred in every dynasty in every country, and this problem became more obvious towards the end of the dynasty.
Several women in the photo are simply dressed and have their feet bound, basically losing the ability to do heavy physical labor. It was probably their first time facing the camera, and their eyes looked curious and cautious.
The content of the eighth photo is of Muzhen Girls' School, which was taken in 1920.
In fact, the Manchu Qing Dynasty had been destroyed for 8 years at this time, and the new culture movement was in full swing.
We can see that the female students in the photos are fashionable and charming, and they are studying geometry. This shows that new knowledge, new culture and new ideas have begun to sprout in China.
The content of the ninth photo is the Northeast in the late Manchu Qing Dynasty.
Northeast China and Siberia have always been barbaric lands in ancient times. Only a small number of people lived a life of fishing and hunting here, and their lifestyle was more primitive than that of nomads.
Until the end of the Manchu Qing Dynasty, our country did not carry out large-scale development of the Northeast region. In order to seize the Northeast, Tsarist Russia also began to import a large number of people into the Northeast.
So from the end of the Manchu Qing Dynasty to before Japan occupied the three northeastern provinces, the Northeast had always been a mixed state of Hans , Manchus , and Russians.
