-
Beginning of the Manchus (1582-1644)
Beginning of the Manchus (1582-1644)
The Manchus was starting to stretch their territory hen a Jurchen tribal ruled named Nurchai started to conquer other Jurchen tribes in November, 1582. The Jurchens were divided into rival tribes after the Ming army had defeated the Yuan Empire. In December, 1625, Nurchai conquered the Ming city of Shenyang and he made it his capital. Nurchai ended up dying though from battle wounds in 1626. -
Beginning of the Manchus (1582-1644)
Beginning of the Manchus (1582-1644)By 1600, the superiority of European technology was evident in the weaponry. So he employed Ming technicians to cast cannon for him modeled after European cannon, and he created his own artillery corps in 1634. He ended up not conquering Beijing and died in 1634. -
Beginning of the Manchus (1582-1644)
By 1643, rebel groups had taken over most of the Ming Empire. Li Zicheng was the leader of the whole rebel army after winning wars against his rivals. In 1644, when his army went to Beijing, someone opened the city gate for him. He then sent an army to attack a Ming general named Wu Sangui and his army who were guarding the Great Wall against the Manchus at Shanhaiguan Pass. The general sided with the Manchus and let them through the gate of the Great Wall. Then the Manchus conquered Beijing. -
Beginning of the Qing Empire (1644–1722)
Emperor Shunzhi was the first emperor of the dynasty. A man named Dorgon was the regent for the emperor. One of his actions that helped the empire to quickly stabilize and prosper was that he largely reappointed Ming officials to their imperial posts. -
Beginning of the Qing Empire (1644–1722)
The Manchus did not destroy Beijing and decimate the population as was commonly done. Perhaps this was because Wu Sangui and many other Ming officials had already sided with him. In this way, he persuaded other Ming officials and military leaders to surrender to him. -
Beginning of the Qing Empire (1644–1722)
In a test of loyalty, in 1645 Dorgon decreed that Ming men must shave their hair in the front and make a long pigtail in the back. This started the hairstyle that is seen in movies about the Qing Empire. He said, "To keep the hair, you lose the head; to keep your head, you cut the hair." Tens of thousands of people who resisted the Ming were massacred. Dorgon died soon after this, and then Emperor Shunzhi died in 1661. -
Period: to
The Qing Dynasty
-
Emperor Kangxi (1661-1722)
After his death, the Emperor Kangxi became the ruler. He had one of the longest reigns in dynastic history. Like Kublai Khan at the beginning of the Yuan Dynasty, and Zhu Yuanzhang in the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, during his long rule he set the policy direction for the empire and stabilized it. He had a somewhat stable court. They learned how to make better guns and cannons. During his reign, the economy improved and the population started to grow. -
Emperor Kangxi (1661-1722)
These rebellions, wars, and other conflicts killed a large number of people and damaged the economy. In their campaign to put the empire under their control, they killed millions of people. They destroyed the cities along the southern coast and drove the people inland to stop an invasion by Koxinga. But the empire improved by the time Emperor Kangxi died. There was a time of relative peace and the population grew quickly. -
Emperor Kangxi (1661-1722)
The Kangxi Emperor was seven years old when he became an emperor, but regents ruled the empire in his place. When he was 15, he had a regent named Oboi imprisoned. In this way, he started ruling himself when he was 15. He was known as a very hardworking emperor. He had a secret message system involving locked boxes that he used to send messages directly to people. -
After his death, the Emperor Kangxi (1654-1722)
A crisis for his empire began when he was 15 when Wu Sangui who earlier had helped the Qing conquer the empire rebelled in 1673. As a reward, Wu Sangui was given Guizhou and Yunnan as a fiefdom. Two other generals were also given fiefdoms in the south. Wu Sangui rebelled together with the rulers of the other two fiefdoms and took control of the south. After Qing armies defeated this rebellion, Taiwan was also conquered by Qing forces in 1683. -
Middle of the Dynastic Era (1723-1796)
Emperor Kangxi had a lot of sons by different women. The man who emerged as the next emperor is called Emperor Yongzheng, and his son is called the Qianlong Emperor. The Qianlong Emperor also reigned for 61 years as Kangxi did. During this seventy-three year period, the Qing Dynasty prospered the most and the population grew quickly. Through foreign trade, the court and the merchants gained wealth. -
Middle of the Dynastic Era (1723-1796)
The empire was big because they subdued Tibet and the Xinjiang regions, and they inherited Mongolia from the empire's founders. The land area of the empire was second only to that of the Yuan Empire in size. The population reached about 300 million during this time. -
End of the Qing Empire (1796-1913)
In 1796, a rebellion against the Qing court was led by the White Lotus Society. This rebellion lasted eight years until 1804. Then the Taiping Rebellion lasted for 13 years from 1851-1854. The leader of the Taiping was Hong Xiuquan who had been influenced by a missionary, but not a Christian. -
End of the Qing Empire (1796-1913)
During the 19th century, the Qing court also had conflicts with Europeans and Japanese. The First Opium War between Britain and the empire started in 1838. The British wanted to have greater access to the Qing Empire for trade, and the Qing court wanted to keep out British opium and maybe to keep out British influence. Britain gained Hong Kong in 1842 under the Treaty of Nanking. -
End of the Qing Empire (1796-1913)
The Qing court was inept. The Empress Dowager Cixi (1835-1908) who was a concubine of an emperor came to power in 1861 and ruled behind the scenes. Her son reigned from 1862 to 1874, and her nephew ruled from 1875 to 1908. But it is said that she was the real ruler during this long period of time from 1861 until 1908 at the end of the empire. -
End of the Qing Empire (1796-1913)
After all the rebellions and exterminations in the 1800s, there were many natural disasters in the late 1800s. Due to modernization and imports, a lot of people lost their work. So the poor died and faced starvation, and the population became poorer overall. However, better health care and Western medicines provided by missionary doctors saved thousands of lives. -
End of the Qing Empire (1796-1913)
Like the Yuan and Ming Empires, the Qing Empire ended in rebellions, wars, natural disasters, famines, and invasions. In the 1800s, Europeans easily defeated the Qing army and navy, and they forced the Qing to give them trading ports. During the 1800s, the dynasty seemed successful because the population kept growing, the territory stayed intact, and the empire slowly modernized, but, the ruling court was inept to deal with a rapidly changing world and numerous uprisings and natural disasters. -
End of the Qing Empire (1796-1913)
In 1900, another rebellion started among the poor and unemployed. It was led by people who studied martial arts. It was called the Boxer Rebellion. At first their goal was to overthrow the government and expel or kill foreigners. But Cixi supported the movement secretly, and then the leaders wanted to support the Qing. It became an anti-Christian movement. Tens of thousands of converts were killed and tortured. -
End of the Qing Empire (1796-1913)
In the early 1900s, Sun Yatsen who was educated in Hawaii and in a Christian college in Hong Kong traveled around the world to organize a revolution. He espoused both Christianity and the need for a new government. In 1908, Cixi and the emperor died. The empire's official ruler was a regent named Zaifeng. The new emperor who was named Puyi was only two year old. -
End of the Qing Empire (1796-1913)
The Wuchang Uprising succeeded relatively bloodlessly, and Sun Yatsen became the first president. The capital of the new government was in Nanjing. Sun Yatsen wanted to implement a republican constitution, but this never happened. Sun Yatsen stepped down to allow a Qing general named Yuan to be president. The Qing Empire ended in 1912.
