• Nurhaci (1559-1626): founder of the Manchu nation and great leader whose Jurchen title was
Geren Gurun Be Ujire
Genggiyen ("Brilliant
Emperor Who Benefits All
Nations").
• Qing : “pure” and
Manchu : “people of great fortune”
• Dorgon (1612-50); the
Shunzhi emperor, who directed the final conquest of China in
1644.

• Li Zicheng (ca. 1605-45): Chinese rebel leader who deposed the last emperor of the Ming dynasty (1368-1644).
• Wu Sangui (1612-78): Chinese general who invited the Manchus into China and helped them establish the Qing dynasty.
• Three Feudatories (1673-1681): three semiautonomous dominions in SW China given by the Manchu to Chinese military defectors, eventually crushed by the Qing in 1681.

• Banner system: developed during the pre-Qing
Manchu consolidation with troops associated with particular colored banners.
• Learned from Mongol experience; doubled every high-level position in the bureaucracy; one
Manchu for every Chinese official, developing a dyarchy .
• There was common belief among early Manchu rulers that they had saved Chinese culture from being destroyed by the Chinese; took their position as rulers of Chinese empire very seriously.

• Kangxi (r. 1662-1722): who subsequently made the greatest efforts to obtain the loyalty of the
Confucian official class.
• Yongzheng (r. 1662-1722): famously paranoid ruler, who replaced the Grand Secretariat with the highly secretive Grand Council .
• Qianlong (1735-96) : reign was one of the longest in Chinese history. Qianlong oversaw the
Siku quanshu (The Emperor’ s Four Treasuries) project, which employed 361 scholars to examine 10,000 manuscripts to include 3,641 texts (eliminating 3,000 supposedly anti-Manchu works).

• Social values and obligations are not external forces, but are contained in our minds.
• Confucian
Individualism:
"everyone can be a sage."

• Official class now comprised of scholars without secure family prestige or military training. Unemployed local gentry as an "estate" in Ming society
• Rise of private academies (Donglin
Academy, 1620-60's).
• The further rise of merchants and longdistance trade: wealth was out there to be acquired, but the path to social success was still through the exams.