Topic summary
Yishan (official)
(courtesy name)
Yishan, Zhenguo Jiangjun (Manchu: I Šan; 13 June 1790 – 30 June 1878), courtesy nameJingxuan, was a Manchu nobleman and official of the Qing dynasty. He was of Manchu and Aisin-Gioro descent, his family was of the Bordered Red Banner of the Manchu Eight Banners, and he lived during the reigns of the Qianlong, Jiaqing, Daoguang, Xianfeng, Tongzhi, and Guangxu emperors. He served as the Imperial Commissioner of the Qing Dynasty, the second-highest ranking position in the Qing government, only below that of emperor, during the later half of the First Opium War, and signed the Treaty of Kulja on behalf of the Qing Dynasty alongside Buyantai with the Russian Empire in 1851 and the Treaty of Aigun on behalf of the Qing in 1858, also with the russians.
Yishan was born in Beijing or Mukden (modern-day Shenyang), Qing Dynasty, on 13 June 1790. Being a distant relative of the Qing Dynasty Royal Family, he entered the Qing bureaucracy without taking the Imperial examination at the age of 20, in 1810. In 1821, after the Daoguang Emperor inherited the throne from the Jiaqing Emperor, Yishan was promoted to the emperor's bodyguard. He served in several more positions in the following decade. Yishan governed Ili from 1838 to 1840, and from 1845 to 1854.
He was chosen to be a military general in 1839 for the First Opium War, and was promoted to Imperial Commissioner and Viceroy of Liangguang in 1841. Mismanagement in Guangzhou and Humen led to his defence failures, and he was forced to sign a convention and surrender to the British. He was sentenced to death (later commuted to imprisonment) in late 1841, but was released in 1842. In 1843, he once again became the Daoguang Emperor's bodyguard. After finishing his Ili governance term in 1854, he governed Liaoning, Heilongjiang, and Jilin as Viceroy of the Three Eastern Provinces from 1855 to 1860, signing the Treaty of Aigun with the Russian Empire regarding the Qing's northeastern borders in 1858. He participated in the Second Opium War as a general from 1857 to 1860. Yishan died on 30 June 1878.