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Zuo Zongtang (左宗棠, Xiang Chinese: ; Wade-Giles spelling: Tso Tsung-t'ang; November 10, 1812 – September 5, 1885), sometimes referred to as General Tso, was a Chinese statesman and army officer of the late Qing dynasty.
Born in Xiangyin County, Hunan, Zuo started his career in the Qing military by participating in the campaign against the Taiping Rebellion in 1851. After capturing Hangzhou from the Taiping rebels in 1864, he was enfeoffed as a first class count. In 1866, Zuo oversaw the construction of the Foochow Arsenal and naval academy. That same year, he was reassigned to serve as the Viceroy of Shaan-Gan, where he oversaw industrialization in Gansu. In 1867, he was appointed as an Imperial Commissioner in charge of military affairs in Gansu.
During his term as Imperial Commissioner in Gansu, he participated in the suppression of the Nian Rebellion. By the late 1870s, he had crushed the Dungan Revolt and recaptured Xinjiang Province from rebel forces. In 1878, because of his achievements, Zuo was promoted from a first class count to a second class marquis. He was appointed to the Grand Council in 1884, before being made an Imperial Commissioner again to oversee naval affairs. He died in 1885 in Fuzhou, Fujian, and was given the posthumous name Wenxiang.
Zuo is mostly acknowledged outside China for his military exploits, however, he also contributed to Chinese agricultural science and education. In particular, he promoted cotton cultivation to northwestern China as a replacement for cash crop opium and established a large modern press in Shaanxi and Gansu provinces, which published Confucian classics and newer works on agricultural science.
The titles of nobility he held were First Class Count Kejing () from 1864 to 1878, and Second Class Marquis Kejing () from 1878 to his death in 1885. Zuo's posthumous name, granted by the Qing imperial court, was Wenxiang ().
Zuo was nicknamed " Zuo Luozi" () ("Zuo the mule") for his stubbornness.
Zuo's career got an inauspicious start when, in his youth, he failed the imperial examination seven times (ca. 1822–1835). He decided to abandon his plans to become an official and returned to his home by the Xiang River to farm silkworms, read, and drink tea. It was during this period that he first directed his attention to the study of Western sciences, in the early days of the eastward spread of Western learning.
In August 1864, Zuo, together with Zeng Guofan, dethroned the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom's teenage ruler, Hong Tianguifu, and brought an end to the rebellion. He was created "First Class Count Kejing" for his part in suppressing the rebellion. He, Zeng Guofan and Li Hongzhang were called Zeng, Zuo, Li, the leaders in suppressing the rebellion.
In 1865, Zuo was appointed Zongdu of Fujian and Zhejiang. As Commissioner of Naval Industries, Zuo founded China's Foochow Arsenal in Fuzhou the following year.
In these capacities, Zuo succeeded in putting down another uprising, the Nian Rebellion, in 1868.
After this military success, Zuo marched west with his army of 120,000, winning many victories with advanced Western weapons in the Dungan Revolt in northwestern China (Shaanxi, Ningxia, Gansu, Qinghai and Xinjiang provinces) in the 1870s. Several Hui people generals, such as Ma Zhan'ao, Ma Anliang, Ma Qianling, Dong Fuxiang, and Ma Haiyan from Hezhou, who had defected to Zuo's army, helped him crush the "Muslim rebels". Zuo rewarded them by relocating the Han Chinese from the suburbs of Hezhou to another place and allowing their troops to stay in the Hezhou suburbs as long as they did not live in the city itself.
In 1878, Zuo successfully suppressed Yakub Beg's uprising and helped to negotiate an end to Russian occupation of the border city of Yining City. He was vocal in the debate at the Qing imperial court over what to do with the Xinjiang situation, advocating for Xinjiang to become a province, in opposition to Li Hongzhang, who wanted to abandon what he called "useless Xinjiang" and concentrate on defending China's coastal areas. However, Zuo won the debate, Xinjiang was made a province, and many administrative functions were staffed by his Hunan officers.
Zuo was outspoken in calling for war against the Russian Empire, hoping to settle the matter by attacking Russian forces in Xinjiang with his Xiang Army. In 1878, when tension increased in Xinjiang, Zuo massed Qing forces toward the Russian-occupied Kuldja. The Canadian Spectator stated in 1878, "News from Turkestan says the Chinese are concentrating against Kuldja, a post in Kashgar occupied by the Russians... It is reported that a Russian expedition from Yart Vernaic has been fired upon by Chinese troops and forced to return." The Russians were afraid of the Qing forces, thousands of whom were armed with modern weapons and trained by European officers. Because the Russian forces near the Qing Empire's border were under-manned and under-equipped, they agreed to negotiate.
Zuo's troops were armed with modern German Dreyse needle rifles and Krupp artillery as well as experimental weapons.
For his contributions to his nation and monarch, Zuo was appointed a Grand Secretary to the Grand Secretariat in 1874 and elevated to "Second Class Marquis Kejing" in 1878.
While Zuo is best known for his military acumen, he believed that the key to peace and stability lay in an educated, prosperous citizenry. He sometimes referred to himself by his art name, "peasant from Hunan", and was keenly interested in agriculture. He advocated the scientific reform of commercial agriculture both as a way to strengthen China's economic self-sufficiency and also as a way to manage civilian populations by improving their standard of living and controlling the kinds of crops they grew. During the 12 years he spent in northwestern China, he undertook extensive agricultural research on different crops and methods. Comparing the benefits and indications of two ancient agricultural methods, the more established long field, crop rotation method (代田法) and the less common intensive, small-field method (區田法), Zuo believed that the latter method, cultivating small fields of densely-planted monocultures, was more suitable to the dry, extreme climate of the northwest region. To promote this method, he authored two pamphlets explaining the method which were then distributed freely to local farming communities. Zuo also recognised the threat of opium to the nation's stability and economic health and advocated replacing opium poppies with cotton as the major cash crop in Gansu and Shaanxi provinces. He authorised the large scale distribution of cotton seeds and published pamphlets on its cultivation and processing. In 1878, he also oversaw the establishment of a large weaving factory in present-day Mulan County, Gansu Province, with the aim of creating a new textile industry in the region and providing socially-acceptable employment to women.
In addition to managing the peasantry by improving their economic circumstances, Zuo also believed that increasing access to traditional Chinese philosophy would help to pacify areas experiencing unrest and ultimately create a more contented and unified populace. To this end, Zuo set up a printing press in northwestern China which printed Chinese classics, as well as agricultural pamphlets. When Zuo first arrived in the region, a decade of constant warfare had virtually stopped all publishing in the region. Zuo prioritised reestablishing the printing industry a priority and thousands of copies of the publications he authorised were distributed in Ningxia, Qinghai, Gansu, Shaanxi and Xinjiang. Printing appears to have stopped when Zuo returned to Beijing, but the endeavour is credited with inspiring later printing presses.
Zuo had two elder brothers: Zuo Zongyu (左宗棫; 1799–1823) and Zuo Zongzhi (左宗植; 1804–1872).
In 1832, Zuo married Zhou Yiduan (周詒端; 1812–1870), a woman from Paitou Township, Xiangtan County in Hunan Province. Zhou's courtesy name was "Junxin" (筠心). They had four daughters and four sons as follows:
One apocryphal story, for which no evidence is offered, credits the Chinese and Southeast Asian stuffed pancake Apam balik to the general. He is said to have invented it as a way to use local products and save his men from more expensive ingredients.
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