Qing Dynasty

• Dates: 1644-1911
• Chinese/Japanese: 清 (Qīng / Shin)

The Qing Dynasty was the last dynasty of Imperial China. Ruled by Manchu emperors, it began with the fall of the Ming Dynasty in 1644, and ended with the Xinhai Revolution in 1911. Though not a Han Chinese dynasty like the Ming which preceded it, due to its time, interactions with the West, and the overwhelming proportion of Qing period buildings, documents, and objects which have survived compared to those from earlier periods, it is the Qing which, perhaps, has most influenced or constituted the image of Imperial China, and of traditional Chinese culture; to name just a few examples of this phenomenon, men wearing their hair in queues, and men and women both wearing robes or dresses with off-center clasps (e.g. the cheongsam or qipao, commonly known in the West simply as a "Chinese dress") both derive from Manchu culture, and not from Ming or earlier "native" Chinese traditions.

The Ming and Qing Dynasties together comprise the period of "Late Imperial China," a term which has come to be most standard among English-language scholars of China who reject terms such as "medieval" or "early modern" as judging China against European standards of development. In China, it is common to use the term gǔdài (古代, J: kodai) to refer to all of Chinese history up until the late Qing; however, this refers more to the current post-Communist Revolution attitude of Imperial China as "the olden times," and should not be confused for the English-language historians' term "ancient."

Though nearly three hundred years in length, and seeing numerous considerable economic, political, social, and cultural developments over the course of those centuries, the Qing Dynasty is perhaps most strongly associated with the circumstances surrounding its decline and fall in the 19th to early 20th centuries, from the Opium War of the 1840s and the first of the Unequal Treaties which resulted, to the Taiping Rebellion of 1850-1864, failed attempts at reform and modernization, the First Sino-Japanese War in 1895-1896, the Boxer Rebellion of 1899-1901, and the final fall of the dynasty in 1911.

Manchu Takeover

The Qing Dynasty has its origins in 1616, when Nurhachi, a steppes warlord based to the northeast of China, declared the establishment of the Later Jin Dynasty, a reference to the Jurchen Jin Dynasty which conquered the Northern Song Dynasty in 1127.

Nurhachi then established in 1634 a system of civil exams in Manchu, Mongol, and Chinese languages, based on the Ming Dynasty model of Chinese imperial examinations. Two years later, in 1636, he formally declared the renaming of the Later Jin as the Qing Dynasty, establishing Mukden as the formal capital. The Manchus invaded Korea that same year, and secured a treaty the following year reestablishing Korean tributary obligations to the Chinese Court.

Beijing fell to the Manchus in 1644. This marks the formal fall of the Ming Dynasty. Chinese merchants informed Tokugawa authorities in Nagasaki before the year was out; their requests for Japanese aid against the Manchu invaders come to naught. Following the fall of the Ming, many Chinese fled elsewhere in the region, or else continued to fight. The remainder of mainland China fell to the Manchus by 1659, but many Ming loyalists fled to Taiwan and continued the fight, holding out for forty years. Led by Zheng Zhilong and his son Zheng Chenggong (aka Coxinga), they harassed Chinese shipping and coastal communities to such an extent that in 1657 the Qing ordered a halt to maritime and coastal activities, and that coastal residents move further inland, in a policy known as qiānjiè. Meanwhile, many in Korea, Japan, and Ryûkyû saw the Chinese center as having fallen to barbarian rule, and saw their own lands or peoples as therefore representing the only surviving outposts of Ming - or true high Chinese - culture.

Three feudatories in southern China rose up in rebellion against the Qing in 1673, a rebellion which was not finally suppressed until 1680. The battle with the Ming loyalists finally came to an end in 1684, as Qing forces took Taiwan. This represents the first time the central Chinese "state" ever controlled the island. They lifted coastal and maritime restrictions shortly afterwards.

In 1668, the Qing built a willow palisade across a section of Manchuria, and banned Han Chinese from crossing into that region.

The Qing began to impose new cultural mandates upon the Chinese in 1645, the year after they took Beijing. All men were now required to wear their hair in long ponytails, known as queues. Though initially strongly resisted as a barbarian custom, and as wholly different from Chinese tradition, within a few generations, Han Chinese came to cherish this as part of their own customs and identity. Most if not all Chinese who emigrated to the United States (and elsewhere) in the 19th century wore such queues, as well as adhering to other Manchu-imposed cultural norms, and many found difficulty in abandoning these practices.

Footbinding, meanwhile, was not practiced by the Manchus (at least not initially), and in fact one Qing Emperor attempted to ban the practice, but was unsuccessful, as the custom was widely practiced and well-ingrained among the Han Chinese since the Song Dynasty.

• cultural changes - queue, etc.
• governmental structures - exams, banners, ethnic division
• survival of the Ming / destruction of Ming loyalists

Demographic & Economic Expansion

The population of China roughly tripled over the course of the Qing Dynasty, going from roughly 125-150 million at the beginning of the period, to around 400-450 million in the 19th century. By the 19th century, there were roughly six times as many farming families in China as in the 14th century. This dramatic population growth was supported in large part, as it was through the Ming Dynasty, by considerable increases in the food supply. In the Qing Dynasty, this came chiefly from expansion of the amount of land under cultivation, and from improvements in fertilizer, irrigation, and strains of plants. The introduction in the late Ming of new crops from the Americas, including maize, sweet potatoes, and peanuts, also contributed to the expansion of the food supply.

The Jiangnan region (south of the Yangzi, and including the cities of Hangzhou, Suzhou, and Shanghai) continued to grow increasingly densely populated and urbanized over the course of the period. The vast majority of the agricultural land in the region was used for growing cash crops such as silk and cotton, and by the beginning of the 19th century, the region needed to import food in considerable quantities in order to support itself.

Throughout much of the Qing Dynasty, Chinese tea, silk, and porcelain were in high demand both within East Asia and among European markets. Europeans did not discover the techniques for producing porcelain themselves until the 18th century. Tea + silk constituted at least 50% of Chinese exports throughout the 19th century, peaking as high as 92% in 1842 and 93.5% in 1868, though this figure fell to 64.5% in 1890, just before the turn of the century. At least 40% of tea production in China was for export, and 50-70% of silk production, all the way to the 1920s. Jumping ahead to the 20th century, the loss of foreign markets in the 1930s through 1940s (and into the PRC era) thus deprived "countless thousands of Chinese peasants" of their livelihoods.

However, in return, the Chinese demanded chiefly precious metals as payment, insisting they had little need or desire for European goods. The Chinese had their own silver mines in Guizhou and Yunnan provinces, and opened new copper mines in the 18th century, but still demanded influxes of precious metals from overseas in order to fuel their still-growing economy. With the chief sources of precious metals in the New World controlled by the Spanish & Portuguese, and Japanese mines - the most significant other source of silver in the world at the time - running dry midway through the 18th century, European powers sought alternative ways to access Chinese goods. The British East India Company turned to pushing opium upon Chinese merchants at Canton (Guangzhou) as an alternative to payment in silver or gold. This quickly turned into a serious problem for the Chinese government, and society, as opium addiction ran rampant. The efforts of Canton Imperial Port Commissioner Lin Zexu to stem the tide, by collecting and destroying several million pounds of opium in the port, led to the outbreak of the Opium War in 1840, which is often cited as marking the beginning of the end for the Qing Dynasty. The war ended in a decisive British victory, and in the Qing Court being forced to grant numerous concessions to the British, including opening more ports to trade, granting rights of extraterritoriality to British subjects in China, paying the British Crown several million silver dollars in reparations, and ceding Hong Kong to the United Kingdom entirely. A Second Opium War would follow, in 1856-1860. As late as 1870, opium still constituted 43% of China's imports, and until 1890, it remained the largest single import product in China.

By the 19th century, China was quite likely one of the most commercialized parts of the world, alongside Japan. Organizations known as Shanxi piaohao, originating in Shanxi province, emerged during the early Qing Dynasty, a very significant development representing the creation of an early banking system. These piaohao operated branches in various parts of China, extending lines of credit, and allowing funds to be transferred across long distances. The piaohao survived into the modern period, eventually opening branches in Japan, Russia, and Singapore.

Arts & Culture

Western styles of painting and architecture were embraced by the Qianlong Emperor (r. 1735-1796), who hired Jesuits such as Giuseppe Castiglione into his court. He commissioned Castiglione to produce a number of oil paintings, as well as designs for Western-style pavilions at the Forbidden City, and Western-style structures which comprised the Yuánmíngyuán (also known as the Old Summer Palace).

Foreign Relations, Decline, and Fall

The Qing reestablished relations with the Ryûkyû Kingdom, Korea, and other tributaries quite quickly after the fall of the Ming disrupted them. The Qing received tribute from Korea annually, from Ryûkyû once every two years, from Siam every three years, Annam every four years, and from Laos and Burma once in a decade. Though all of these tributary relationships had de facto ended by the mid-to-late 19th century, an 1899 document still lists all of those polities as tributaries. Formal relations with Japan, severed in the 16th century, were not restored until the late 19th century.

Korea sent at least 435 missions to Qing China between 1637 and 1881, bringing goods such as deer and leopard skins, ox horns, gold, silver, tea, paper, various types of textiles, and rice, along with goods obtained from Southeast Asia or elsewhere, such as sappanwood, pepper, and swords and knives.

Qiānjiè policies were instituted in 1657 forcing coastal residents to move further inland, in response to maritime harassment by Ming loyalists; all maritime trade was officially banned in 1662, though in truth it continued, illicitly. These policies were lifted following the conquest of Taiwan in 1684, but the Court continued to enforce various maritime prohibitions over the course of the period. Beginning in 1717, the Court banned Chinese ships from traveling to Southeast Asia (with the exception of Annam) as part of continued efforts to ensure the coastal security of Fujian province.

The 1689 Treaty of Nerchinsk established agreements as to a key stretch of the Chinese-Russian border; in 1727, the Treaty of Kiakhta arranged for trade without tribute across that border.

Following a series of successful conquests in the west, the Qing consolidated a number of these areas into a "new territory" (Xinjiang) in 1768. Some of these lands had not been controlled by China since the Tang Dynasty, while others had never previously come under Chinese control. Border disputes between China and Russia over areas of Xinjiang would be settled by a Treaty of St. Petersburg in 1881.

Under the Qianlong Emperor, the Qing Empire engaged in Ten Great Campaigns, including intervention in a succession dispute in Vietnam in 1789; this ended in the expulsion of Chinese (Manchu) military force & civil control from Vietnam. The Chinese would fight for Vietnam again in 1884, this time against the French.

Siam's final tribute mission to China took place in 1853.

The Taiping Rebellion ended in 1864, and the Imperial Court set in motion the Tongzhi Restoration, a series of reforms aimed at slowing or reversing the dynasty's decline.

Japan's emergence into the world of modern nation-states began to have significant impacts on China's foreign relations as early as the 1870s. The 1876 Treaty of Ganghwa, concluded between Meiji period Japan and Joseon Dynasty Korea, acknowledged Korea as an independent nation-state, creating difficulties for China, which still saw Korea as a tributary state. Disputes between China and Japan over claims to Ryûkyû and Taiwan lasted throughout much of the 1870s, finally culminating in the Japanese abolition of the Ryûkyû Kingdom and annexation of its territory in 1879. Japan would then gain control of Taiwan in 1895, in the Treaty of Shimonoseki which ended the Sino-Japanese War. In addition to Taiwan, the Japanese exacted other considerable indemnities from the Chinese; Japan also gained control of the Liaodong peninsula in northeastern China, though Japan was forced to return the peninsula after Russia, France, and Germany objected (an incident known as the Triple Intervention). China was also obligated to pay sizable monetary reparations to the Japanese government.

Emperors of the Qing

• Nurhachi (1616-1626)
• Shunzhi Emperor (1644-1661)
• Kangxi Emperor (1661-1722)
• Yongzheng Emperor (1722-1735)
• Qianlong Emperor (1735-1796)
• Jiaqing Emperor (1796- )

...

• Puyi (-1911)