The history of the Qing dynasty began in the first half of the 17th century, when the Qing dynasty was established and became the last imperial dynasty of China, succeeding the Ming dynasty (1368–1644). The Manchu leader Hong Taiji (Emperor Taizong) renamed the Later Jin established by his father Nurhaci to "Great Qing" in 1636, sometimes referred to as the Predynastic Qing in historiography. By 1644 the Shunzhi Emperor and his prince regent seized control of the Ming capital Beijing, and the year 1644 is generally considered the start of the dynasty's rule. The Qing dynasty lasted until 1912, when Puyi (Xuantong Emperor) abdicated the throne in response to the 1911 Revolution. As the final imperial dynasty in Chinese history, the Qing dynasty reached heights of power unlike any of the Chinese dynasties which preceded it, engaging in large-scale territorial expansion which ended with embarrassing defeat and humiliation to the foreign powers whom they believe to be inferior to them. The Qing dynasty's inability to successfully counter Western and Japanese imperialism ultimately led to its downfall, and the instability which emerged in China during the final years of the dynasty ultimately paved the way for the Warlord Era.
Though he did not officially found the Qing dynasty, Later Jin ruler Nurhaci, originally a Ming vassal who officially considered himself a local representative of imperial Ming power,The Cambridge History of China: Volume 9, The Ch'ing Empire to 1800, Part 1, by Willard J. Peterson, p. 29 laid the foundation for its emergence through his policies of uniting various Jurchen tribes, consolidating the Eight Banners military system and conquering territory from the Ming after he openly renounced the Ming overlordship with the Seven Grievances in 1618. His son, Hong Taiji, who officially proclaimed the Qing dynasty, consolidated the territories that he had inherited control over from Nurhaci and laid the groundwork for the conquest of the Ming dynasty, although he died before this was accomplished. As Ming control disintegrated, peasant rebels led by Li Zicheng captured the Ming capital Beijing in 1644 and founded the short-lived Shun dynasty, but the Ming general Wu Sangui opened the Shanhai Pass to the armies of the Qing regent Prince Dorgon, who defeated the rebels, seized the capital, and took over the government, although he also implemented the infamous queue decree to force the Han Chinese to adopt the hairstyle. Under the rule of the Shunzhi Emperor, the Qing dynasty conquered most of the territory of the Ming dynasty, chasing loyalist remnants into the southwestern provinces, and establishing the basis of Qing rule over China proper. The Kangxi Emperor ascended to the throne in 1662, ruling for 61 years until 1722. During his reign, the Qing dynasty entered into an era of prosperity known as the High Qing era. The Revolt of the Three Feudatories was suppressed under his reign, and various border conflicts were resolved. Succeeding him was the Yongzheng Emperor, who proved to be an able reformer. Under the reign of him and his son, the Qianlong Emperor, the Qing military engaged in the Ten Great Campaigns on the Chinese frontier. During this period, the Qing dynasty, through its military conquests, reached a territorial extent never seen before in Chinese history.
However, the large size of the Qing empire and its stagnating economy would soon start to take its toll. Corruption became an increasingly widespread issue, as Chinese officials such as Heshen regularly stole tax revenue and public funds, leading to widespread starvation among the Chinese public. The Jiaqing Emperor attempted to stamp out corruption, and suppressed the White Lotus and Miao rebellions. His successor, the Daoguang Emperor, attempted to suppress the opium trade in China, which brought the Qing dynasty into conflict with the British in the First Opium War. The war resulted in a Chinese defeat and the Treaty of Nanjing, an "unequal treaty" which ceded Hong Kong Island to the British and opened several ports to foreign trade. In 1856, further tensions between the Qing dynasty and foreign powers led to the outbreak of the Second Opium War, which resulted in further "unequal treaties" being signed by the Chinese government. Amidst a backdrop of rising economic issues, sectarian tension and foreign interventions, the Taiping Rebellion broke out in 1850. Led by Christian revolutionary Hong Xiuquan, the rebels established the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. The rebellion ultimately became one of the bloodiest conflicts in history, killing roughly 20 to 30 million people, and proved to be a pyrrhic victory at best for the Qing dynasty, as it would collapse less than 50 years after the rebellion. The rebellion resulted in increased sectarian tension and accelerated regionalism, in what would prove to be a foreshadowing of the Warlord Era that would come after the fall of the Qing.
Despite these issues, the Qing dynasty carried on after the rebellion, with Empress Dowager Cixi as its effective head from 1861 to 1908. She was a moderate reformer, overseeing the Tongzhi Restoration. The turn of the century Boxer Rebellion exemplified popular discontent, and led to an international coalition invading China to protect foreign citizens and interests. Cixi sided with the rebels, and was dealt a decisive defeat by the combined forces of the coalition. Cixi's death in 1908 left the country in deep trouble and without an effective leader. The emperor, Puyi, was a toddler, and the control of his regency was fiercely contested. Yuan Shikai maneuvered himself into power as president of an ineffectual Republic, and forced the abdication of Puyi, the last emperor, in 1912. This brought an end to the Qing dynasty, and over 2,000 years of imperial rule in China. Shikai briefly ruled as a dictator, but proved incapable of ruling all China, and the country splintered apart, not to be fully reunited until 1928 under Chiang Kai-shek. A brief and ineffective restoration of the dynasty occurred in 1917 with Puyi at its head, emblematic of the chaotic and inconclusive conflicts that would wrack China until Kuomintang rule.
Formation of the Manchu state
Overview
The Qing dynasty was founded not by Han Chinese, who constitute the majority of the Chinese population, but by the Manchu, descendants of a sedentary farming people known as the Jurchen, a Tungusic people who lived around the region now comprising the Chinese provinces of Jilin and Heilongjiang. The Manchus are sometimes mistaken for a nomadic people, which they were not. Early European writers had used the term "Tartar" indiscriminately for all the peoples of Northern Eurasia but in the 17th century Catholic missionary writings established "Tartar" to refer only to the Manchus and "Tartary" for the lands they ruled, that is, Manchuria and adjacent parts of Inner Asia as ruled by the Qing before the Ming-Qing transition (see also Chinese Tartary).
Nurhaci
What was to become the Manchu state was founded by Nurhaci, the chieftain of a minor Jurchen tribethe Aisin Gioroin Jianzhou in the early 17th century. Nurhaci may have spent time in a Chinese household in his youth, and became fluent in Chinese as well as Mongol, and read the Chinese novels Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Water Margin. As a vassal of the Ming emperors who officially considered himself a guardian of the Ming border and a local representative of imperial power of the Ming dynasty, Nurhaci embarked on an intertribal feud in 1582 that escalated into a campaign to unify the nearby tribes. By 1616, however, he had sufficiently consolidated Jianzhou so as to be able to proclaim himself Khan of the Great Jin in reference to the previous Jurchen Jin dynasty.
Two years later, Nurhaci announced the "Seven Grievances" and openly renounced the sovereignty of Ming overlordship in order to complete the unification of those Jurchen tribes still allied with the Ming emperor. After a series of successful battles, he relocated his capital from Hetu Ala to successively bigger captured Ming cities in Liaodong: first Liaoyang in 1621, then Shenyang (Manchu: Mukden) in 1625.
When the Jurchens were reorganized by Nurhaci into the Eight Banners, many Manchu clans were artificially created as a group of unrelated people founded a new Manchu clan (Manchu: mukūn) using a geographic origin name such as a toponym for their hala (clan name). The irregularities over Jurchen and Manchu clan origin led the Qing to document and systematize the creation of histories for Manchu clans, including manufacturing an entire legend around the origin of the Aisin Gioro clan by taking mythology from the northeast.
Relocating his court from Jianzhou to Liaodong provided Nurhaci access to more resources; it also brought him in close contact with the Khorchin Mongol domains on the plains of Mongolia. Although by this time the once-united Mongol nation had long since fragmented into individual and hostile tribes, these tribes still presented a serious security threat to the Ming borders. Nurhaci's policy towards the Khorchins was to seek their friendship and cooperation against the Ming, securing his western border from a powerful potential enemy.Bernard Hung-Kay Luk, Amir Harrak-Contacts between cultures, Volume 4, p.25
Furthermore, the Khorchin proved a useful ally in the war, lending the Jurchens their expertise as cavalry archers. To guarantee this new alliance, Nurhaci initiated a policy of inter-marriages between the Jurchen and Khorchin nobilities, while those who resisted were met with military action. This is a typical example of Nurhaci's initiatives that eventually became official Qing government policy. During most of the Qing period, the Mongols gave military assistance to the Manchus.
Some other important contributions by Nurhaci include ordering the creation of a written Manchu script, based on Mongolian script, after the earlier Jurchen script was forgotten (it had been derived from Khitan and Chinese). Nurhaci also created the civil and military administrative system that eventually evolved into the Eight Banners, the defining element of Manchu identity and the foundation for transforming the loosely knitted Jurchen tribes into a single nation.
There were too few ethnic Manchus to conquer China proper, so they gained strength by defeating and absorbing Mongols. More importantly, they added Han Chinese to the Eight Banners. The Manchus had to create an entire "Jiu Han jun" (Old Han Army) due to the massive number of Han Chinese soldiers who were absorbed into the Eight Banners by both capture and defection. Ming artillery was responsible for many victories against the Manchus, so the Manchus established an artillery corps made out of Han Chinese soldiers in 1641, and the swelling of Han Chinese numbers in the Eight Banners led in 1642 to all Eight Han Banners being created. Armies of defected Ming Han Chinese conquered southern China for the Qing.
Han Chinese played a massive role in the Qing conquest of China proper. Han Chinese Generals who defected to the Manchu were often given women from the Imperial Aisin Gioro family in marriage while the ordinary soldiers who surrendered were often given non-royal Manchu women as wives. Jurchen (Manchu) women married Han Chinese in Liaodong. Manchu Aisin Gioro princesses were also given in marriage to Han Chinese officials' sons.
Hong Taiji