Facts and Details

QING (MANCHU) DYNASTY (1644-1911)

Empress Guo Zong The Qing (Manchu) Dynasty (1644-1912) was China's last dynasty. The Manchu emperors were unpopular because they were non-Han Chinese and they descended from horsemen from the north and opened up China to exploitation from the West. Even so they made many improvements in the lives of ordinary Chinese and expanded China to its present size.

The Manchus were Mongol-like horsemen turned merchants from Manchuria who were centered in the city of Shenyang. They were of mixed Mongolian, Korean, Chinese and Jurchen stock. Qing (pronounced ching and also spelled Ching or Ch'ing) means “pure.” Although the Manchus were not Han Chinese and were strongly resisted, especially in the south, they had assimilated a great deal of Chinese culture before conquering China Proper. Realizing that to dominate the empire they would have to do things the Chinese way, the Manchus retained many institutions of Ming and earlier Chinese derivation. They continued the Confucian court practices and temple rituals, over which the emperors had traditionally presided. According to myth the Manchu race descended from a beautiful maiden who was impregnated by a magic magpie who placed a magic red berry in the maiden's stomach while she waded in the crater lake on top of Tianchi mountain on the what is now the North Korean and Chinese border. The origins of the Manchu have been traced back 2000 years to forest and mountain-dwelling people who lived between the Ussuri and Heilongjiang rivers in northeast China. Originally called the Sushen and Mohe people, they evolved into the Jurchen, who established the Bohai State in the A.D. 8th century and later the Liao Empire (A.D. 947-1125). The Jurchen ended the Chinese Song Dynasty when they imprisoned the Song Emperor and captured the Song capital of Bianjing. The Jurchen established the Chin Empire (1115-1234), which briefly ruled northern China until they were the conquered by another group of horsemen, the Mongols. Manchu tribesmen only organized into a confederation in the 17th century. Under the leader Nurhachi, they began calling themselves Manchus and expanding southwards and northwards and making advances into China.

Book: The Last Emperors: A Social History of the Qing Imperial Institutions by Evelyn S. Rawski (University of California Press, 1999). Good Websites and Sources: Wikipedia ; Qing Art cosmopolis.ch ; Qing Dynasty Explained drben.net/ChinaReport ; Recording of Grandeur of Qing learn.columbia.edu

Links in this Website: IMPERIAL CHINA factsanddetails.com ; CHINESE ART FROM THE GREAT DYNASTIES factsanddetails.com/china ; CHINESE DYNASTIES Factsanddetails.com/China ; COURT LIFE AND EMPERORS Factsanddetails.com/China ; MANDARINS IN CHINA Factsanddetails.com/China ; EUNUCHS IN CHINA Factsanddetails.com/China ; TANG DYNASTY (A.D. 690-907) Factsanddetails.com/China ; SONG DYNASTY (960-1279) Factsanddetails.com/China ; YUAN (MONGOL) DYNASTY (1215-1368) ; MING DYNASTY (1368-1644) Factsanddetails.com/China ; QING (MANCHU) DYNASTY (1644-1911) Factsanddetails.com/China ; THEMES IN CHINESE HISTORY Factsanddetails.com/China ; OPIUM WARS PERIOD factsanddetails.com/china ; FOREIGNERS AND CHINESE IN THE 19TH AND 20TH CENTURIES factsanddetails.com/china ; factsanddetails.com/china ; EMIGRATION, BOXER REBELLIONS AND WARS IN CHINA factsanddetails.com/china ; EMPRESS DOWAGER CIXI, LAST EMPEROR AND ATTEMPTED REFORMS factsanddetails.com/china ; SUN YAT-SEN AND ATTEMPTS AT CHINESE DEMOCRACYfactsanddetails.com/china ; WARLORDISM AND CHIANG KAI-SHEK factsanddetails.com/china ; MINORITIES IN NORTHERN CHINA Factsanddetails.com/China

Good Chinese History Websites: 1) Chaos Group of University of Maryland chaos.umd.edu/history/toc ; 2) Brooklyn College site academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu ; 3) Wikipedia article on the History of China Wikipedia 4) China Knowledge chinaknowledge.de ; 5) China History Forum chinahistoryforum.com ; 6) Gutenberg.org e-book gutenberg.org/files ; 7 ) WWW VL: History China vlib.iue.it/history/asia

Manchu's Rise to Power

Manchu success against their Asian adversaries was due to their ability to marry Mongol military technique with Chinese administrative government. They had less success against the European invaders. In the 19th century, Manchu archers were mowed down by European guns and canons.

Manchu began invading China from the northeast in 1618. They were initially held back by the Great Wall of China. In 1644, when rebels stormed Beijing and the Ming Emperor committed suicide, Ming generals saw their only hope of survival was forming an alliance with the Manchus. In an act of desperation a military commander in the northeast opened a major gate in the Great Wall to Manchus in hope they would help restore the royal family. After the peasant were easily defeated, the Manchus turned their weapons on the Ming and marched into Beijing in June 1644 and declared a new dynasty, the Qing.

In 1644 when the Manchus invaded China and first established the Qing dynasty, Ming loyalists fled to Japan, where the Tokugawa shogunate gave them sanctuary in Nagasaki. Both shogunate and the loyalists, convinced that China was in the corrupting hands of foreigners, viewed Japan as the potential heir of Chinese Confucian civilization. Indeed, for Japan until the modern era China had always embodied the highest values of civilization. [Source: Christal Whelan, Daily Yomiuri, December 4, 2011]

Manchu Rule

The Manchurians Qings were not as civilized as the Mings but they quickly adopted Chinese culture and the Ming form of government and retained Ming officials but made sure most of the important positions were filled by Manchus. The Qings had no clear line of succession. Rulers chose their successors on the basis of merit and sisters and daughters had imperial status.

The Manchus continued the Confucian civil service system. Although Chinese were barred from the highest offices, Chinese officials predominated over Manchu officeholders outside the capital, except in military positions. The Neo-Confucian philosophy, emphasizing the obedience of subject to ruler, was enforced as the state creed. The Manchu emperors also supported Chinese literary and historical projects of enormous scope; the survival of much of China's ancient literature is attributed to these projects. [Source: The Library of Congress]

“Ever suspicious of Han Chinese, the Qing rulers put into effect measures aimed at preventing the absorption of the Manchus into the dominant Han Chinese population. Han Chinese were prohibited from migrating into the Manchu homeland, and Manchus were forbidden to engage in trade or manual labor. Intermarriage between the two groups was forbidden. In many government positions a system of dual appointments was used--the Chinese appointee was required to do the substantive work and the Manchu to ensure Han loyalty to Qing rule.

Manchu Conquests and Threats Against Them

“The Qing regime was determined to protect itself not only from internal rebellion but also from foreign invasion. After China Proper had been subdued, the Manchus conquered Outer Mongolia (now the Mongolian People's Republic) in the late seventeenth century. In the eighteenth century they gained control of Central Asia as far as the Pamir Mountains and established a protectorate over the area the Chinese call Xizang but commonly known in the West as Tibet. The Qing thus became the first dynasty to eliminate successfully all danger to China Proper from across its land borders. Under Manchu rule the empire grew to include a larger area than before or since; Taiwan, the last outpost of anti-Manchu resistance, was also incorporated into China for the first time. In addition, Qing emperors received tribute from the various border states. [Source: The Library of Congress]

“The chief threat to China's integrity did not come overland, as it had so often in the past, but by sea, reaching the southern coastal area first. Western traders, missionaries, and soldiers of fortune began to arrive in large numbers even before the Qing, in the sixteenth century. The empire's inability to evaluate correctly the nature of the new challenge or to respond flexibly to it resulted in the demise of the Qing and the collapse of the entire millennia-old framework of dynastic rule. [Ibid]

Shi Lang, Pirate or Hero?

Shi Lang (1621-1696) was a Ming general regarded by some as a traitorous pirate and by others as a genius in naval warfare. He defected to the Manchu-Qing Dynasty, when it had conquered all China except Taiwan, and led an amphibious operation with 300 warships and 20,000 troops against Taiwan in 1683, eventually forcing Qing rule on the island, which until then had been governed by a ruler loyal to the Ming. According to some accounts Shi Lang seized much of southern Taiwan for his own profit, extorted the islanders and instituted policies that deliberately aimed to isolate Taiwan from the rest of the Qing empire. [Source: Jens Kastner, Asia Times, April 13 2011]

The Chinese government is slated to name its first aircraft carrier after Shi Lang. Jens Kastner wrote in the Asia Times that Shi has provided the “Chinese with a useful historical narrative of late.” It is not surprise that “Shi Lang isn't held in particular high regard by Taiwanese locals. And the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has long refrained from painting him as ‘the’ national hero who deserves to be worshipped for having unified the divided motherland. After all, the general was a defector. For China, ‘the’ national hero, whose role it is to morally instruct and install patriotism into Chinese youth, is the legendary Zheng He (1371-1435), also known in English as Cheng Ho, who commanded the Ming Dynasty's "treasure fleet", visiting Arabia, Brunei, East Africa, India, Malay Archipelago and Thailand.” [Ibid]

“The recent rehabilitation of Shi Lang, the conqueror of Taiwan, was not an idea of the Chinese government, but the country's scholarship and movie industry. Shi Lang has become the subject of a growing number of popular TV novellas, the long-dead general increasingly making en vogue the perception that the use of force to reach China's sacred national goal of cross-strait unification is not only just but also ripe with precedence.” [Ibid]

Manchu Language and Religion

The Manchus speak an Altaic language similar to Mongolian. They have their own writing system developed in the 17th century and based on Mongolian but which can also be written with Chinese characters. Many modern Manchus can not read or speak their language.

Shamanism has long been a fixture of Manchu spirituality among both the elite and the common people. Villages typically had a shaman. The Qing dynasty had its own court shaman, who chanted scripture and performed religious dances at imperial services. Villages shaman came in two types: full time ones that specialized in treating illnesses and part time ones that presided over ceremonies and sacrificial rites to spirits and ancestors. When performing his duties, a Manchu shaman typically wore a smock, bronze bells at the waist, a mirror on his chest and a pointed cap with colored strips that hung in front of the face.

The Manchu adopted many Buddhist and Taoist religious beliefs of the Han Chinese. They made offerings to ancestors in small shrines on the west side of their sleeping rooms and believed the dead traveled to another world that coexists with the world of the living. Ground burials were the norm. Corpses traditionally were removed through windows—doorways are only for the living. People were not allowed to die on the west or north side of a kang.

Qing emperors were devout followers of Tibetan Buddhism. Imperial votive offering were fashioned from copper or bronze and then gilded and inlaid with gemstones, glass, jade or enamels. The objects were made at the Imperial Workshops in the Imperial Palace by craftsmen from Manchuria, Mongolia, Tibet and China.

Manchu Life

Manchu women Traditionally, the Manchu were organized on the basis of paternal clans; marriages were arranged by parents; couples were wed when they were 16 or 17; and babies were kept in suspended cradles. The latter customs dates back to a time when the Manchu hunted regularly on horseback and suspended the cradles from tree branches so that wild animals would not get the babies while the parents were out hunting.

Manchu fashions included riding boots and royal robes with flared cuffs and narrow sleeves (not wide Chinese-style sleeves) and slits for riding horses even though they often weren't worn on horseback. Manchu men have traditionally worn a long gown and mandarin jacket. The cheongsam, a women’s dress associated with the Chinese, originated with the Manchus. The Manchu cheongsam was loose and reached to the ankle (See Clothes). In the old days female members of the Manchu elite didn't cut their hair, their feet remained unbound and the nails of their third and forth fingers were allowed to grow, sometimes to a length of over four inches.

Qing princes studied from 5:00am to 4:00pm. Their curriculum included lessons in Manchu, Mongolian and Chinese as well as riding, archery and martial arts. Sometimes they continued their studies until they were in their 30s.

Improvements Under Qing Rule

The early years of Qing rule was a period of peace and prosperity. National strength was at its peak and the arts flourished. The emperors collected painting, calligraphy, ancient bronze vessels and craftsmen carved decorative pieces form bamboo, wood, ivory, gold, sliver, rock-srystan and jade.

Under their able but unpopular leadership, the Manchu emperors introduced new crops (sweet potato, maize, peanuts), developed better flood control, reduced taxes and allowed economic and political growth. Traditional arts and literature became more sophisticated.

Women's right improved under the Qings. Women were allowed to walk freely in public places, ride horses, practice archery, participate in hunts and even fight beside men on the battlefield. Under Manchu rule Machu women were forbidden from having their feet bound and all men—Manchu and Chinese—were required to wear the Manchu-style pigtail haircut—the queue.

In the late 1700s and early 1800s, China accounted for a third of the world’s total value of goods and services. As late as 1820, China accounted for 29 percent of the world's gross domestic product.

Qing Expansion and Repression

The Manchus expanded Chinese control to it greatest extent in Central and Southeast Asia and also brought Tibet and Mongolia under Chinese control. Conquests in the 18th century in western and southern China nearly doubled China's size.

Manchu expansion into the West started in 1760, dramatically increasing the population of the empire and providing a "buffer for the heartland." In less than 70 years (between 1762 and 1830) the population of China nearly doubled, from 200 million people to 395 million people. The empire was expanded to the west and south by granting trade concessions to Islamic rulers in Central Asia and monarchs in Southeast Asia.

The non-Han Manchu emperors were vulnerable to criticism from their Han subjects. They struck back by brutally repressing the Chinese peasantry by enslaving them in debt and severely punishing them for small offenses.

Qing Emperors

Emperor Kangxi The first Manchu Emperor Shun-chih (1644-1661) had his body mummified and lacquered in gold. His body is still kept at the monastery of Tien Taisu where he spent the last years of his life.

Emperor Kangxi (1662-1722), the second Qing ruler, is sometimes referred to as the Louis XIV of China. He ascended to the throne as a child and ruled for 60 years. He was a patron of the arts, a scholar, a philosopher, and an accomplished mathematicians. He was the chief compiler of the 100-volume The Origins of the Calendric System, Music and Mathematics. His greatest treasure was his library.

Kangxi liked to hunt. A record of his hunts at Chengde recorded 135 bears, 93 boars, 14 wolves and 318 deer. He was able to achieve such high numbers with the help of hundreds of soldiers that flushed out game to where he was standing.

The Yongzheng Emperor (1732-35) was known for his cruelty. A typical a Yongzheng punishment, one Ming-era scholar wrote, was a "lingering execution by slicing for the traitor himself, with summary execution by beheading or strangulation for all his close male relatives aged sixteen or over, and exile or enslavement for all the women and minor males in the criminal's family."

Book: Emperor of China: Self Portrait of Kang Xi by Jonathon Spence.

Qianlong Emperor

Emperor Qianlong (1711-99, ruled 1736-1796) is regarded as China’s last great emperor. He was a superb military tactician and lover of the arts. He ruled for 63 years, the longest of any Chinese ruler, and gave up the throne to his son at the age of 65 and lived as an retired emperor, ruling behind the scenes, until his death at the age of 88. The Qing dynasty reached its peak under his rule.

The Qianlong Emperor reduced rents, cut taxes, encouraged new agriculture methods, implemented flood-control measures on rivers, secured China’s borders, maintained peace and traveled widely. His approach to foreign policy was to lavishly welcome foreign diplomats and turn down all their requests.

In 1793, the British diplomat Lord Macartney came to the Forbidden City to discuss a trade treaty with the Qianlong Emperor. He brought gifts such as air guns, a 25-foot clock, hot air balloons, telescopes and a planetarium but the Emperor refused to talk to him because the lord refused to kowtow to him, feeling that do so would demean Britain’s King George III. The Emperor gave him a note that read: “We have never valued indigenous articles, nor do we have the slightest need of your country’s manufactures. Our Celestial Empire possesses all thing in prolific abundance and lacks no product with in its own borders. There is therefore no need to import the manufactures of outside barbarians in exchange for our own produce.”

As he became older the Qianglong Emperor became more repressive and corrupt. He surrounded himself with advisors of dubious quality and presided over episodes of book burning and set the tone for the Qing dynasty’s decline.

The Qianlong Emperor held a triennial inspection of xuinu (beautiful women) to find suitable brides for himself and his princes. When the Qianglong Emperor took the throne at the age of 25 he already had eight wives and several children.

Qianlong Emperor and the Arts

The Qianglong Emperor loved the arts and presided over a period when the arts flourished. He painted and did calligraphy, collected jades, porcelain and bronzes, played a zitherlike instrument called the qin and wrote 44,000 poems and thousands of essays. In between that he found time to make 150 lengthy public relations tours of China and sign off on every edict issued by his government.

The Qianlong Emperor ordered scholars to organize, collect and categorize paintings, calligraphy, and books. He commissioned porcelain vessels decorated with his poems surrounded by flowers. His art collection contained hundreds of thousands of paintings. sculptures and object of art, many of which have his commentary and poems scribbled on them. His tastes leaned towards the understated. He loathed ostentatious skill

The Qianlong Emperor collected 1,000 dramas and novels from around the country and sponsored projects to catalogue and copy all surviving Chinese writing, a task that took 300 scholars and 3,600 scribes 10 year to complete and contained 4.2 million pages. But at the same time he destroyed almost as many books as he saved by banning and ordering the burning of books deemed anti-imperialist or morally or politically unfit.

The largest Qing tomb belongs to the Qianlong Emperor. The tomb covers half a square kilometer and contains beamless stone chambers adorned with bodhisattvas and Tibetan and Sanskrit sutras. Construction started when he was he 30 (he died when he was 88) and 90 tons of silver was spent on it.

Qianlong died at last in February 1799, leaving the kingdom apparently prosperous, but in fact riddled with contradictions and problems that had never been properly solved.

Rebellions Against the Qing Dynasty

Qing soldiers After the Ming Dynasty collapsed, the emperor and his court fled to southern China, where they hoped to regroup and drive the barbarian Manchus from the country. One of the most successful rebellions against the Manchus was led by a half-Japanese warrior pirate named Koxinga who had befriended a Ming prince.

Koxinga commanded a fighting force of 8,000 war junks, 240,000 Ming warriors and 500,000 South China Sea pirates. His warriors—who reportedly had to lift a 600 pound stone lion before they were recruited—fought with iron masks and used long swords to maim cavalry horses. Although he failed to overthrow the Manchus, he was successful in driving the Dutch from Taiwan, and for this he is regarded as a national hero.

Mafia-like Chinese triads, which now rule much of the heroin trade out of east Asia and control organized crime in Hong Kong, descend from secret societies established to fight he Manchus.

Qing Period Arts and Crafts

Art produced during the Qing period was particularly ornate. Incorporating Tibetan, Middle Eastern, Indian and European influences, it included elaborately carved wood, baroque ceramics, heavily embroidered garments, and intricately worked gold and rhinoceros horn.

Holland Cotter wrote in the New York Times: “What the Qing wanted in court art was more: more ingenuity, more virtuosity, more bells and whistles, extra everything. When it came to scale, they went for extremes, the teensy and the colossal, cups the size of thimbles, jades the size of boulders. The Confucian middle way was not their way.”

Among the more extravagant pieces of Qing art are silk costumes made with applique embroidery; a royal hat made of sable, silk floss, gold, pearls and feathers; and a five-foot-high cloisonne elephant with a lamp on its back.

Jade Pieces from the Qing Dynasties

Jade pieces from the Qing imperial court were characterized by their impressive size, neatness and symmetry. Common motifs included dragons, emblems of the emperor, various auspicious symbols, and imperial inscriptions and marks. These jade pieces were often put on sandalwood pedestals or kept in special cases and boxes.

During the early Qing Dynasty, jade from Xianjiang was carved into elaborate floral designs, shallow reliefs the thickness of paper and ornaments inlaid with colored glass or gold and silver thread.

Jadeite carving really took off under the Qianlong Emperor, who preferred the varied translucent colors of jadeite to the opaque "chicken bone" jade and "mutton-fat" nephrite that was prized before him. Jadeite from the Yunnan Province and northern Burma were imported into China in large quantities in the 19th century and became prized above all other kinds of jade.

Qing Dynasty Painting and Porcelain

Qing jade piece Large wall-size portraits of ancestors were produced for the aristocracy and ruling class during the Qing dynasty. They feature realistic seated renderings of individual painted in bright colors. They were often placed over family altars.

The paintings were regarded as mediums for communications to deceased relatives. The Chinese have traditionally believed the dead didn't die they just went to a different world where they could be contacted by the living. The dead were believed to want to hear news and receive offerings and sacrifices from time to time by living relatives.

The Shanghai School was an influential painting movement founded in the mid-19th century that is credited with combining traditional Chinese ink paintings with modernist trends. Incorporating heavy black strokes to outline figure and bring attention to details, it influenced Japanese wood block printing and early manga art among other things. Important Shanghai School artists included Qin Zuyong (1825-1884) and Qian Huian (1833-1911).

Describing a work called Kingyo-zu by the artist named Xugu Christoph Mark wrote in the Daily Yomiuri: “Light touches diluted ink to create reflections on water as abstract goldfish swim beneath...The scant use of color—a reddish orange for the fish—is characteristic of...paintings that rely heavily on inking skills to convey what color would be used for in other styles."

Qing Porcelain

Qing dynasty porcelain was famous for its polychrome decorations, delicately painted landscapes, and bird and flower and multicolored enamel designs. Many of the subjects had symbolic meanings. The work of craftsmen reached a high point during the reign of Emperor Kangxi (1662-1722)

During a rebellion in 1853, the imperial factory was burned. Rebels sacked the town and killed some potters. The factory was rebuilt in 1864 but never regained its former stature. With the end of the Qing dynasty in 1912, the long history of Chinese porcelain making drew to a close.

Late Qing Dynasty

See Other Sections in China in the 17th, 18th and 19th Century

Manchus Today

Qianlong TV series Manchu are also known as Jurchen, Nuzhen and Qiren. According to the 1990 census, there were 9.8 million Manchus in China, making them one of the larger minorities in China. They live mostly in northwestern China. The largest number of them is in Liaoning Province, followed by Jilin and Heilongjiang Province and smaller numbers in Hebei, Gansu, Shandong, Ningxia and Inner Mongolia. There are also significant numbers in the cities of Beijing, Chengdu, Xian and Guangzhou. Many of the Manchus that live outside the Manchu homeland are descendants of Manchu administrators and military colonists.

The Manchus now are one of the most assimilated ethnic minorities, yet they still retain a strong sense of their own identity.

Image Sources: 1) Empress Gui Zhong, China Page; 2) Qing map, St. Martins edu; 3) Manchu women, Ohio State University; 4) Kanxi, China Page; 5) Qianlong Emperor, Columbia University; 6) Qing soldiers, Columbia University; 7) Jade, Palace Museum, Tapei

Text Sources: New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Times of London, National Geographic, The New Yorker, Time, Newsweek, Reuters, AP, Lonely Planet Guides, Compton’s Encyclopedia and various books and other publications.

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© 2008 Jeffrey Hays

Last updated November 2012