User:Madalibi/History of the Qing dynasty

Running themes: relations with the Mongols (allies and enemies); Manchu-Han relations; territorial expansion (both outer and inner); awareness of the world and contacts with western countries; population growth, etc.

Origin of the Manchus
The Jurchens had been a people along the northeastern borders of Ming China. Jurchen unification and alliance with Mongols under Nurhaci. Early banner system. Declared himself ruler in 1616, with a reign title and a dynastic name: Jin. Meant a break with the Ming. Conquest of Liaodong peninsula. Seven Grievances. Conquests. Hung Taiji's military campaigns (Korea, Hong Chengchou). Institution building, economy and trade.

Liaodong frontier society
More on Liaodong society and Ming frontier defense.

Financial and political crises
In the early seventeenth century, an economic crisis developed that was centered on a sudden and widespread lack of the empire's chief medium of exchange: silver. Philip IV of Spain (ruled in 1621–65) began cracking down on illegal smuggling of silver from Mexico and Peru across the Pacific towards China, in favor of shipping American-mined silver directly from Spain to Manila. In 1639, the new Tokugawa regime in Japan shut down most of its foreign trade, halting yet another source of silver for China. These simultaneous events caused a dramatic spike in the value of silver, forcing the ratio of copper to silver value into a steep decline. In the 1630s, a string of 1,000 copper coins was worth an ounce of silver; by 1640 it was only worth half an ounce; by 1643 it had declined to roughly one-third of an ounce. For peasants this was an economic disaster, because they conducted local trade and sold their crops in copper, but paid their taxes in silver.

Rising defense costs against northern marauders (the Jurchens/Manchus). Faced with impending bankruptcy, the Ming government introduced new taxes throughout the realm, but even the extra revenues brought by these surtaxes could not keep up with rising expenses.

Famines and epidemics
At the same time, famines became common in northern China because of unusual dry and cold weather that shortened the growing season; these were effects of a larger ecological event now known as the Little Ice Age. Famine, alongside tax increases, widespread military desertions, a declining relief system, natural disasters, and the government's inability to manage irrigation and flood-control projects properly, caused widespread loss of life and normal civility. Starved of resources, the central government could do little to mitigate the effects of these calamities. Making matters worse, a widespread epidemic spread across China from Zhejiang to Henan, killing a large but unknown number of people.

Taking Beijing
A peasant soldier named Li Zicheng (1606–45) mutinied with his fellow soldiers in western Shaanxi in the early 1630s after the Ming government failed to ship much-needed supplies. After various clashes with Ming forces, during one of which Li was captured and then released on promise of returning to service, by 1635, Li's forces were leading an open rebellion based in Rongyang, central Henan province. By the 1640s, an ex-soldier and rival to Li — Zhang Xianzhong (1606–47) — had created a firm rebel base in Chengdu, Sichuan, while Li's center of power was in Hubei with extended influence over Shaanxi and Henan.

In 1640, masses of starving peasants, unable to pay their taxes and no longer fearing the frequently defeated Ming army, began to form huge rebellious bands. The Chinese military, caught between fruitless efforts to defeat Manchu raiders in the north and large-scale peasant revolts in the provinces, fell apart. On May 26, 1644, Beijing fell to a rebel army led by Li when the city gates were treacherously opened from within. During the turmoil, the last Ming emperor hanged himself on a tree in the imperial garden outside the Forbidden City.

Knowing that Beijing had fallen and that an army sent by Li Zicheng was marching towards him, Ming border general Wu Sangui (1612–1678) decided to side with the Manchus. He let them cross the Great Wall at Shanhai Pass. A few days later, the Qing army under Prince Dorgon (1612–50) and Wu Sangui destroyed Li's army at Shanhaiguan; the Prince of Shun's army fled the capital on June 4, the day after Li Zicheng declared himself Emperor of the Shun Dynasty. On June 6, the Manchus and Wu entered the capital and proclaimed the young Fulin Emperor of China. Pursued throughout several provinces by Manchu armies, Li Zicheng died near the northern border of Jiangxi province in the summer of 1645. One report says his death was a suicide; another states that he was beaten to death by peasants after he was caught stealing their food.

Despite the loss of Beijing and the death of the emperor, strongholds of Ming resistance continued to hold on in Nanjing, Fujian, Guangdong, Shanxi, and Yunnan. Each bastion of resistance was individually defeated by the Qing until 1662, when the last hopes of a Ming revival died with the Yongli emperor, Zhu Youlang.

Conquest and resistance
Queue order; conquest of Jiangnan; Southern Ming; Jirgalang, Deliberative Council

Self-strenghtening
Soon before his death in 1861, the Xianfeng Emperor named a committee of eight regents led by Manchu nobleman Sushun to supervise the reign of his young and only son the Tongzhi Emperor. Soon after the succession, however, the new emperor's mother, Empress Dowager Cixi, overthrew the regents and took control of the imperial government with the help of Prince Gong.

Prince Gong, who had negotiated the peace settlement with France and England after the Second Opium War, led the court's effort to modernize its diplomatic institutions. Under his regency (in common with Cixi), the Zongli Yamen, Superintendents of Trade, and Maritime Customs Service were founded, and the Qing court began to accept international law.

Also: Jiangnan Arsenal, Translation Bureau.

The reign of Cixi
The Empress Dowager Cixi, concubine to the Xianfeng Emperor (r. 1850–1861) came to power in 1861 during the Xinyou coup, when, with the help of Prince Gong, she ousted eight regents (led by Sushun) whom the Xianfeng emperor had appointed on his deathbed to rule for the child emperor Tongzhi, Cixi's son. For 47 years in the Tongzhi era (1862-1874) and during the reign of her nephew the Guangxu Emperor (1875-1908), Cixi was the de facto ruler of China and the Qing empire. She was known for "ruling from behind the curtain" (垂簾聽政).