Life and career

Feng was born to a family of wealthy Suzhou landowners in Wuxian in China's Jainsu Province in 1809. After finishing a degree in jinshi, he started working as a compiler at the Hanlin Academy in 1840 and later became the civil service examination supervisor in Guangxi Province. He also finally served as a private secretary to the Viceroy of Liangjiang, Li Hongzhang.

During the Taiping Rebellion, Feng organized a local militia to fight the rebels. He fled to Shanghai when the rebels occupied Suzhou. Later in his life, Feng became the leader of the jingshi school during the Tongzhi Restoration (1862-1874). He also had an established intellectual relationship with Sun Yat-sen.

On Chinese reform

When Feng Fled to Shanghai, he came in contact with Westerners who were defending the city. He developed his ideas on modernization based from this interaction. Like other intellectuals and Qing officials such as Wenxiang, Zeng Guofan, and Zuo Zongtang, Feng argued for self-strengthening and industrialization by borrowing western technology and military systems, while retaining core Neo-Confucian principles. After the disasters experienced by China following Wei Yuan's death in 1857, he proposed wide-ranging reforms in a collection of works called Jiaobinlu kangyi or Essays of Protest. In his essay, On The Manufacture of Foreign Weapons, he was famously quoted as saying: "what we have to learn from the barbarians is only the one thing - solid ships and effective guns", though in reality his proposals were a little more extensive.

The essays, which numbered 40 in total, outlined two measures. The first involved the technical improvements in the bureaucracy from the engineering initiatives in the Yellow River to fiscal reform such as the reform of the traditional salt gabelle. The second proposed constitutional changes, particularly the reallocation of political power and status. Although many of his reforms were never fully enacted, they were circulated for later generations of political reformers. It is also considered one of the earliest reformist agenda of modern China and would contribute to the Hundred Days Reform of 1898. His ideas also became the basis for the Self-Strengthening Movement that emerged in 1861 and lasted until 1895.

生平

馮桂芬出生在富貴家庭，敏而好學，文名極盛。早年為生員。道光二十年（1840年）高中一甲第二名進士（榜眼），授翰林院編修，是林則徐門生。道光二十四年充廣西鄉試正考官，二十五年教習庶吉士。李鴻章深「服其學問精洽」。

咸豐三年（1853年），太平天國於南京建都，馮桂芬奉命在南京附近的蘇州組織團練，與太平軍對抗，升右中允。咸豐十年（1860年），太平軍攻克蘇州，馮桂芬逃往上海，繼續參加組織由江浙官紳與英、法、美等國領事組成的全防局，1862年以後參與李鴻章的湘軍以協助鎮壓太平天國運動，以英美兵器經驗自創淮軍。晚年曾先後在金陵、上海、蘇州等書院講學，從事著述。同治十三年四月十三日，馮桂芬病死里第。光緒二年，入祀名宦鄉賢祠。

思想

他提出「採西學、制洋器、籌國用、改科舉」的新建議，主張「以中國之倫常名教為原本，輔以諸國富強之術」，即「中體西用」，為洋務運動的擁護者。著有《校邠廬抗議》（1861年）、《顯志堂集》。