生平

冯桂芬出生在富贵家庭，敏而好学，文名极盛。早年为生员。道光二十年（1840年）高中一甲第二名进士（榜眼），授翰林院编修，是林则徐门生。道光二十四年充广西乡试正考官，二十五年教习庶吉士。李鸿章深「服其学问精洽」。

咸丰三年（1853年），太平天国于南京建都，冯桂芬奉命在南京附近的苏州组织团练，与太平军对抗，升右中允。咸丰十年（1860年），太平军攻克苏州，冯桂芬逃往上海，继续参加组织由江浙官绅与英、法、美等国领事组成的全防局，1862年以后参与李鸿章的湘军以协助镇压太平天国运动，以英美兵器经验自创淮军。晚年曾先后在金陵、上海、苏州等书院讲学，从事著述。同治十三年四月十三日，冯桂芬病死里第。光绪二年，入祀名宦乡贤祠。

思想

他提出「采西学、制洋器、筹国用、改科举」的新建议，主张「以中国之伦常名教为原本，辅以诸国富强之术」，即「中体西用」，为洋务运动的拥护者。著有《校邠庐抗议》（1861年）、《显志堂集》。

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.