Qing Dynasty Conquers China

In 1644 the Manchu-led Qing dynasty took control of Beijing and began a conquest that made it the last imperial dynasty of China. It ruled until 1911, when revolution ended more than two thousand years of imperial government. The Qing built one of the largest states in Chinese history, roughly doubling the territory under Beijing's control, and its legacy still shapes China's borders and its debates about ethnicity and national identity.

The Manchus were a people of northeastern Asia, descended largely from Jurchen groups, who were organized under the leader Nurhaci in the early seventeenth century. He created the banner system, a military and social structure that grouped households into units of soldiers and their dependents. His successor, Hong Taiji, adopted the name Qing in 1636 and brought Mongol and Chinese allies into the fold. Meanwhile the Ming dynasty was weakening from fiscal strain, famine, official factionalism, and widespread rebellion.

The decisive moment came in 1644, when the rebel leader Li Zicheng captured Beijing and the last Ming emperor, the Chongzhen Emperor, died by suicide. Wu Sangui, a Ming general guarding the pass at Shanhaiguan, then made terms with the Manchus rather than submit to Li. Qing forces, acting under the regent Dorgon for the young Shunzhi Emperor, entered the capital and declared a new dynasty. Taking the rest of the country was slow and violent. Ming loyalist regimes in the south held out for years, and the Qing imposed the order that Han Chinese men adopt the Manchu queue hairstyle, which provoked resistance. Large-scale fighting ended in the 1680s, with the suppression of the Revolt of the Three Feudatories and the capture of Taiwan in 1683.

Qing rulers governed largely through existing Chinese institutions, including the examination system and the bureaucracy, while keeping Manchu privileges in the military and at the top of government. Under the Kangxi, Yongzheng, and Qianlong emperors, the dynasty expanded into Mongolia, Tibet, and Xinjiang. The population grew substantially and the economy flourished, though historians continue to debate how far the Qing should be seen as a conquest dynasty versus a Chinese one. Recent scholarship often stresses its Inner Asian character.

In the nineteenth century the dynasty faced the Opium Wars, unequal treaties with foreign powers, and the devastating Taiping Rebellion. Reform efforts came too late to restore its authority. The Wuchang Uprising of October 1911 set off the revolution that led to the abdication of the child emperor Puyi in early 1912, closing the imperial era.