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Qing Dynasty

The Qing Dynasty was the last imperial dynasty of China, ruling from 1644 to 1912 with a brief, abortive restoration in 1917. It was preceded by the ming dynasty and followed by the Republic of China.

The dynasty was founded by the Jurchen Aisin Gioro clan in contemporary Northeastern China. The Aisin Gioro leader, Nurhachi, who was originally a vassal of the Ming emperors, began unifying the Jurchen clans in the late sixteenth century. By 1635, Nurhachi's son Hong Taiji could claim they constituted a single and united Manchu people and began forcing the Ming out of Liaoning in southern Manchuria. In 1644, the Ming capital Beijing was sacked by a peasant revolt led by Li Zicheng, a former minor Ming official who became the leader of the peasant revolt, who then proclaimed the Shun dynasty. The last Ming ruler, the Chongzhen Emperor, committed suicide when the city fell.

When Li Zicheng moved against Ming general Wu Sangui, the latter made an alliance with the Manchus and opened the Shanhai Pass to the Manchurian army. Under Prince Dorgon, they seized control of Beijing and overthrew Li Zicheng's short-lived Shun Dynasty. Complete pacification of China was accomplished around 1683 under the Kangxi Emperor.

Over the course of its reign, the Qing became highly integrated with Chinese culture. The imperial examinations continued and Han civil servants administered the empire alongside Manchu ones. The Qing reached its height under the Qianlong Emperor in the eighteenth century, expanding beyond China's prior and later boundaries. Imperial corruption exemplified by the minister Heshen and a series of rebellions, natural disasters, and defeats in wars against European powers gravely weakened the Qing during the nineteenth century. "Unequal Treaties" provided for extraterritoriality and removed large areas of treaty ports from Chinese sovereignty.

The government attempts to modernize during the Self-Strengthening Movement in the late 19th century yielded little lasting results. Losing the First Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895 was a watershed for the Qing government and the result demonstrated that reform had modernized Japan significantly since the Meiji Restoration in 1867, especially as compared with the Self-Strengthening Movement in China.

The 1911 Wuchang Uprising of the New Army ended with the overthrow of the Empress Dowager Longyu and the infant Puyi on February 12, 1912. Despite the declaration of the Republic of China, the generals would continue to fight amongst themselves for the next several decades during the Warlord Era. Puyi was briefly restored to power in Beijing by Zhang Xun in July 1917, and in Manchukuo by the Japanese between 1932 – 1945.

Name

Both in honor of the earlier Jurchen jin dynasty in the 12-13th century and his Aisin Gioro clan, Nurhachi originally named his state the Great Jin (lit "Gold") dynasty, since called the Later jin dynasty by historians. His son Hong Taiji renamed the dynasty Great Qing (lit "Clarity") in 1636. It was also known as the Manchu Dynasty.

The state was known internationally as China or the Chinese Empire and considered to comprise China proper or the Eighteen provinces, Chinese Tartary, Chinese Turkestan, and Tibet. For diplomatic purposes, it was sometimes also known as the Ta Tsing Empire from the Chinese for "Empire of the Great Qing" (大清帝国, p Dà Qīng Dìguó).

History

Formation of the Manchu state

The Qing Dynasty was founded not by Han Chinese, who form the majority of the Chinese population, but by a semi-sedentary people known as the Jurchen, a Tungusic people who lived around the region now comprising the Chinese provinces of Jilin and Heilongjiang . What was to become the Manchu state was founded by Nurhachi, the chieftain of a minor Jurchen tribe – the Aisin Gioro – in Jianzhou in the early 17th century. Originally a vassal of the Ming emperors, Nurhachi embarked on an inter-tribal feud in 1582 that escalated into a campaign to unify the nearby tribes. By 1616, he had sufficiently consolidated Jianzhou so as to be able to proclaim himself Khan of the Great Jin in reference to the previous Jurchen dynasty.

Two years later, Nurhachi 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 Province: first Liaoyang in 1621, then Shenyang (Mukden) in 1625.

Relocating his court from Jianzhou to Liaodong provided Nurhachi access to more resources; it also brought him in close contact with the 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. Nurhachi's policy towards the Mongols was to seek their friendship and cooperation against the Ming, securing his western border from a powerful potential enemy.

Furthermore, the Mongols proved a useful ally in the war, lending the Jurchens their expertise as cavalry archers. To cement this new alliance, Nurhachi initiated a policy of inter-marriages between the Jurchen and Mongol nobilities, while those who resisted were met with military action. This is a typical example of Nurhachi's initiatives that eventually became official Qing government policy. During most of the Qing Dynasty time, the Mongols gave military assistance to the Manchus.

Some of Nurhachi's other important contributions include ordering the creation of a written Manchu script based on the Mongolian so as to avoid the earlier Jurchen script which had been derived from Khitan and Chinese and the creation of the civil and military administrative system which eventually evolved into the Eight Banners, the defining element of Manchu identity and the foundation for transforming the loosely knitted Jurchen tribes into a nation.

Nurhachi's unbroken series of military successes came to an end in January 1626 when he was defeated by Yuan Chonghuan while laying siege to Ningyuan. He died a few months later and was succeeded by his eighth son, Hong Taiji, who emerged after a short political struggle amongst other potential contenders as the new Khan.

Although Hong Taiji was an experienced leader and the commander of two Banners at the time of his succession, his reign did not start well on the military front. The Jurchens suffered yet another defeat in 1627 at the hands of Yuan Chonghuan. As before, this defeat was the result of the Ming's newly acquired Portuguese cannons.

To redress the technological and numerical disparity, Hong Taiji in 1634 created his own artillery corps, the ujen chooha, from among his existing Han troops who cast their own cannons in the European design with the help of captured Chinese metallurgists. In 1635, the Manchus' Mongol allies were fully incorporated into a separate Banner hierarchy under direct Manchu command. Hong Taiji then proceeded in 1636 to invade Korea again.

This was followed by the creation of the first two Han Banners in 1637 (increasing to eight in 1642). Together these military reforms enabled Hong Taiji to resoundingly defeat Ming forces in a series of battles from 1640 to 1642 for the territories of Songshan and Jingzhou. This final victory resulted in the surrender of many of the ming dynasty's most battle-hardened troops, the enlistment of Yuan Chonghuan to the Manchu cause, and the complete and permanent withdrawal of the remaining Ming forces north of the Great Wall .

Meanwhile, Hong Taiji set up a rudimentary bureaucratic system based on the Ming model. He established six boards or executive level ministries in 1631 to oversee finance, personnel, rites, military, punishments, and public works. However, these administrative organs had very little role initially, and it was not until the eve of completing the conquest some ten years later that they filled out their government roles.

Hong Taiji's bureaucracy was staffed with many Han Chinese, including many newly surrendered Ming officials. The Manchus' continued dominance was ensured by an ethnic quota for top bureaucratic appointments. Hong Taiji's reign also saw a fundamental change of policy towards his Han Chinese subjects. Whereas under Nurhachi all captured Han Chinese were seen as potential fifth columnists for the Ming and treated as chattel – including those who eventually held important government posts – Hong Taiji instead incorporated them into the Jurchen "nation" as full (if not first-class) citizens, obligated to provide military service. By 1648, less than one-sixth of the bannermen were of Manchu ancestry.

This change of policy not only increased Hong Taiji's manpower and reduced his military dependence on banners not under his personal control, it also greatly encouraged other Han Chinese subjects of the ming dynasty to surrender and accept Jurchen rule when they were defeated militarily. Through these and other measures Hong Taiji was able to centralize power unto the office of the Khan, which in the long run prevented the Jurchen federation from fragmenting after his death.

One of the defining events of Hong Taiji's reign was the official adoption of the name "Manchu" for the united Jurchen people in November, 1635. The next year, when he is said to be presented with the imperial seal of the yuan dynasty after the defeat of the last Khagan of the Mongols, Hong Taiji renamed his state from "Great Jin" to "Great Qing" and elevated his position from Khan to Emperor, suggesting imperial ambitions beyond unifying the Manchu territories.

Some sources suggested that the name "Qing" was selected as a reaction to the name of the ming dynasty (明) which consists of the characters for "sun" (日) and "moon" (月), both associated with the fire element. The character Qing (清) is composed of "water" (氵) and "azure" (青), both associated with the water element. Others suggested that the new name helped rehabilitate the Manchu in the eyes of the Han, whose historians regarded the earlier Jin as foreign invaders.

The Kangxi Emperor's reign and consolidation

At sixty one years, the reign of Kangxi was the longest of any Chinese emperor. But more importantly, apart from its length, Kangxi's reign is also celebrated as the beginning of an era called "Kang-Qian Golden Age" (Chinese: 康乾盛世), also known as "High Qing", during which the Qing Dynasty reached the zenith of its social, economic and military power. Kangxi's long reign started when he was eight years old upon the untimely demise of his father. To prevent a repeat of Dorgon's dictatorial monopolizing of state power during the period of regency, the Shunzhi Emperor, on his deathbed, hastily appointed four senior cabinet ministers to govern on behalf of his young son. The four ministers Sonin, Ebilun, Suksaha, and Oboi were chosen for their long service to the emperor, but also to counteract each others' influences.

Most importantly, the four were not closely related to the imperial family and laid no claim to the throne. However as time passed, through chance and machination, Oboi, the most junior of the four ministers, was able to achieve political dominance to such an extent as to become a potential threat to the crown. Even though Oboi's loyalty was never an issue, his personal arrogance and political conservatism led him to come into ever escalating conflict with the young Kangxi Emperor. In 1669 Kangxi, through trickery, disarmed and imprisoned Oboi — a not insignificant victory for the fifteen-year-old emperor, as Oboi was not only a wily old politician but also an experienced military commander.

The Manchus found controlling the "Mandate of Heaven" a daunting task. The vastness of China's territory meant that there were only enough banner troops to garrison key cities forming the backbone of a defence network that relied heavily on surrendered Ming soldiers. In addition, three surrendered Ming generals were singled out for their contributions to the establishment of the Qing Dynasty, ennobled as feudal princes (藩王), and given governorships over vast territories in Southern China. The chief of these was Wu Sangui, who was given the provinces of Yunnan and Guiyang, while generals Shang Kexi (尚可喜) and Geng Jingzhong (耿精忠) were given Guangdong and Fujian provinces respectively.

As the years went by, the three feudal lords and their territories inevitably became increasingly autonomous. Finally, in 1673, Shang Kexi petitioned the Kangxi Emperor, stating his desire to retire to his hometown in Liaodong province and nominating his son as his successor. The young emperor granted his retirement, but denied the heredity of his fief. In reaction, the two other generals decided to petition for their own retirements to test Kangxi's resolve, thinking that he would not risk offending them. The move backfired as the young emperor called their bluff by accepting their requests and ordering all three fiefdoms to be reverted back to the crown.

Faced with the stripping of their powers, Wu Sangui felt he had no choice but to rise up in revolt. He was joined by Geng Zhongming and by Shang Kexi's son Shang Zhixin (尚之信). The ensuing rebellion lasted for eight years. At the peak of the rebels' fortunes, they managed to extend their control as far north as the Yangtze River. Ultimately, though, the Qing government was able to put down the rebellion and exert control over all of southern China. The rebellion would be known in Chinese history as the Revolt of the Three Feudatories.

To consolidate the dynasty, the Kangxi Emperor personally led a series of military campaigns against the Dzungars, and later the Russian Empire. He arranged the marriage of his daughter to the Mongol leader Galdan Boshugtu Khan to avoid a military conflict. Galdan's military campaign against the Qing Empire failed, further strengthening the power of the dynasty. During Kangxi's reign, Outer Mongolia and Tibet were invaded by the Dzungars and asked for help from China. The Kangxi Emperor was able to successfully expel Galdan's invading forces from these regions, which were then incorporated into the empire. Taiwan was also conquered by Qing forces in 1683 from Zheng Keshuang, grandson of Koxinga. Koxinga had conquered Taiwan from the Dutch colonists to use it as a base against the Qing Dynasty. By the end of the 17th century, China was at its greatest height of power since the ming dynasty.

The Kangxi Emperor also handled many Jesuit missionaries that came to China. A series of missionaries, including Tomás Pereira, Martino Martini, Johann Adam Schall von Bell, Ferdinand Verbiest and Antoine Thomas, also held significant positions as mathematicians, astronomers and advisers to the emperor.