The Early Qing

 The Early Qing

• The Manchus descended from the Jurchen tribes who had founded in Jin Dynast in 1122.
• The Jianzhou Jurchin adopted the name Manchu in 1635.
• By the 16th century theJianzhou Jurchin were living near the Changbai mountains.
• This is in  the east of present-day Jilin.
• There they hunted, practiced agriculture & traded exclusively with the Chinese.Chanbai Jurchin
• The area occupied by the Changhai Jurchin was designated a "commanderie"
• This implied tat it had been incorporated into the frontier defence system.
• The control of the area was superficial.
• The Changhai territory became a Manchu state.
• This was largely the work of Nurachi (1559-1626)
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• He unified the Jurchen tribes of his region.
• He did it by aggression & marriage alliances.
• After he cultivated relations with the Chinese.
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• In 1589 he was granted a title by the Wanli emperor
• The following year he headed a tribute mission to Beijing
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• In the 1590s he traded profitably in ginseng & horses.
• He took advantage of the chaos caused by Hideyoshi's attempted invasion of China.
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• In 1599 he began to organize the entire Jurchen population into banners.
• This was groups of 300 households designated as a company.
• And 50 companies formed a "banner."
• It was the name referring to the pattern of each flag of each group.
• First there were 4 banners
• Later the number increased to 8 Manchu banners
• There were 8 Mongol banners & 8 Chinese banners

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• In times of peace the banners served as administrative units.
• In times of war, the banners formed the cavalry forces of the Manchus.
• In 1603 Nurachi's quick rise to power had alarmed the Chinese.
• A boundary was defined between his lands and those of Chinese settlers.
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• He employed  Chinese officials and adopted  bureaucratic methods of government.
• Nurachi transformed his confederation of Jurchen tribes into a Manchu state.
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• He also obtained the allegiance of the Jurchen tribes 
• The Jurchen had yet to place themselves under Chinese protection.
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• In 1616 he announced the foundation of the Later Jin Dynasty.
• He justified his actions in a document entitled the Seven Great Vexations..
• Two years later he seized the important trading post and garrison town of Fushun
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• Nurachi  awarded the Chinese commander of the town a high military rank.
• He also married him to his granddaughter.
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• A large Chinese force was dispatched to recover the town but it was routed.
• By the end of 1621 Nurachi had gained control of the whole Liaodong.
• By then he was appealing  to Chinese officials and settlers to come to his side.
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• The Manchu advance then stalled for eight years.
• After the occupation of Liaodong, the Manchus were ruling perhaps one million Chinese.
• Some important Chinese families switched over to the Manchu side.
• Many Chinese were treated as slaves.
• Many were forced to accept Manchu banner men into their households.

• In 1623 there was a Chinese attempt to poison the Manchus' food & water supplies.
• The punishment was harsh.
• Two years later the Chinese revolted.
• Nurachi concluded that he could not rely on the population as a whole to support him.
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• At the same time the Ming strengthened thfences.
• They did this by deploying cannons supplied by the Portuguese 
• This was to defend their garrisons beyond the Great Wall.
• The Manchus did not yet possess firearms.
• This present a major obstacle to their advance.
• When Nurhaci died in 1626 the Chinese negotiated peace terms.

Abahai

• The new ruler Abahai managed to placate the Liaodong Chinese.
• The Manchus advance resumed.
• In 1629 in a spectacular raid, Abahai crossed the Great Wall.
• He captured four Chinese cities and reached the walls of Beijing.
• This raid disrupted the pacification campaign against the peasants rebellions in Shaanxi.
• In 1634-35 Abahai subdued the Chair Mongols.
• This allowed him  to claim the succession to Chinggis Khan & the Yuan Dynasty.
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• In 1638 Abahai sent a force which defeated the Korean Yi Dynasty.
• He forced it to send tribute tot the Manchus.
• Abahai realized that the Chinese could not be subjugated by military force alone.
• From 1631 he began to adopt features of the Chinese government.
• This included the Six Boards and the Censorate, alongside Manchus institutions.
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• He introduced the examination system.
• He made increasing use of Chinese collaborators in government & Chinese troops.
• The troops were now organized  in banners.
• From the Chinese  artillery  experts he obtained the technology for casting cannons.
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• In 1636 he dropped the dynastic name of Jin in favour of Qing, signifying "clear" or "pure."
• This was a challenge to the Ming, or "bright" dynasty.

Dorgon: The New Regency

• By the middle ofthe 1630s Abahai had become uneasy of excessive sinicization.
• He began to insist on the maintenance of Manchu values & tribal values.
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• In 1643 Abahai died.
• It was agreed that the throne  should go to his  five year old son.
• The new emperor's  uncles Dorgon & Jirgalang would act as regents.
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• By now the Ming Dynasty was faced with uncontrollable peasant rebellions.
• It was  now on the verge of collapse.

• The two regents had several options.
• a) to continue Abahai's policy agreeing with the aristocratic tribal traditions of the Manchu.
• b) to remain in the Manchu homelands and raiding China when it pleased them.
• c) to abandon that strategy and occupy China.
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• Dorgon, ambitious to increase his power, favoured occupying China.
• It was at this point that the issue of Chinese collaborations became a  crucial factor.
• The most powerful Chinese commander on the north-east frontier was Wu Sangui.

Li Zicheng

• The rebel leader Li Zicheng captured Beijing & tried to get Wu Sangui to join him.
• According to a story Li Zicheng had already seized and violated Wu Sangui's  concubine.
• This was the  famous  courtesan Yuanyuan.
• for this reason Wu Sangui decided to reject Li's overtures & to negotiate with the Manchus
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• In fact Wu Sangui failed to respond promptly to Li's invitation.
• It led Li Zicheng to suspect that the general was not to be trusted.
• He ordered the slaughter of all members of Wu Sangui's facility to be found in Beijing.
• It was that reason  that the general turned to the Manchus.
• Dorgon probably  calculated that he could not defeat their combined forces.
• With Wu Sangui on his side he could inflict a defeat on te rebel leader's forces.

• In June 1644, Dorgon entered Beijing.chus.
• He reassured the population  that the Manchus had avenged the overthrow of the Ming.
• The Manchus forces quickly drove Li Zicheng's troops out of north China.
• Before the end of 1645, both rebellions had been defeated.
• The Ming court had made Nanjing its capital. 
• It attempted to negotiate a settlement with the Manchus.
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• The Manchu response was to launch an attack on the Yangzi provinces.
• Here we witnessed the most spirited Chinese resistance & fiercest Manchu reprisals.
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• At Yangzhou, opposition to the Manchu advance was headed by Shi Kefa.
• After their first attack had been repelled, the invaders used cannons to break the city walls.
• Then they ordered the city to be sacked as a deterrent to further defiance.
• This was a ten-day  massacre at Yangzhou as proof of Manchu ruthlessness.
• Scholars have regarded Shi Kefa as the model of patriotic Chinese resistance.
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• At Jiangyin, the initial reaction of the elite to the Manchu advance was to comply with them.
• The Manchu demanded  that the tax and population registers should be handed over.

Manchu Lifestyle

• In June 1645 news reached the city that the Manchu were imposing the regulation.
• this required men to wear their hair in the Manchu style, that is, with their shaved with a tail at the back.
• This gave rise to a resisitance movement
• Elite & popular elements came together in a brief alliance.
• The Manchu response was actually  perpetuated by Chinese troops.
• The Manchu response was to stamp out  opposition ruthlessly.
• At Jiangyin the elite was divided in its resistance.
• The slaughter was actually perpetrated by Chinese troops.
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• Nanjing fell to the Manchus in June 1645 & the Ming court fled south.
• The Manchus than paused to stop a rebellion among their supporters.
• They also consolidated their position in the Yangzi valley.
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Invasion South

• There invasion of the south began in 1649.
• In the following year Guangzhou was captures & sacked by Shang Kexi.
• Shang Kexi was a Chinese Bannerman who had switched  to the Manchu side in 1634.
• Resistance in mainland China had now effectively ended.
• The last Ming emperor fled to Burma and was captures and executed in 1662.
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• At this time a challenge to the Manchus had come from Zheng Chenggong.
• He was known in the West as Koxinga, he was both a pirate and a patriotic.
• He had established a base near Xiamen.
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• Zheng Chenggong commanded a large naval force.
• He used it in 1659 to go up the Yangzi and besieged Nanjing.
• A Manchu attack on his forces besieging the city forced him to withdraw.
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• Despite his defeat, Zheng remained serious threat
• The Manchus denied him economic support.
• To do this they ordered the coastal population to move several miles  inland.
• This was Guangdong, Fujian, and Zhejiang.
• Zheng Chenggong died  in Taiwan in 1662.
• Resistance from his family & supporters continued for a further  twenty years.
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Consolidation of Manchu Rule

• Once Dorgon had committed to the conquest of China, the question arose:
• As rulers, how should the Manchu behave?
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• Dorgon had read the the history of the Jin Dynasty.
• He was aware of the tension between the two groups.
• a) a sanitized emperor supported by a Chinese bureaucracy.
• b) a non-Chinese nobility accustomed to the use of military power.
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• He knew that the Chines bureaucracy itself was split between the two groups.
• This was between those who accepted the Manchu presence & those who did not.
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• Dorgon's response was to perform a balancing act between the two.
• This was to reassure the Chinese while retaining the confidence of the Manchus.
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• He entered Beijing and ordered a mourning service and funeral for the last Ming emperor.
• The heavy taxes of the late Ming period was reduced.
• Tax concession were given to war-torn areas.
• He declared "The empire is a single whole. There are no distinctions between Manchus & Hans."
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• He then initiated a Manchu-Chinese diarchy.
• He did this by inviting all Ming metropolitan officials to remain in their posts.
• They had too perform their duties alongside Manchus appointees.
• An extensive programme of reforms proposed by Ming officials was adopted.
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• The examination  system was continued.
• This was advantageous to northerners who suspected that it favoured men from the south.
• Care was taken to assert Manchu dominance.
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• The requirement that the Chinese should adopt the queue as a symbol of subordination.
• The top metropolitan posts were held by Manchus.
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• Of the Chinese who were appointed were bannermen.
• They had submitted to the Manchus before the conquest.
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• Some tax relief were offered to the Chinese population.
• This economic gain was outweighed by the need for land on which to settle banner troops.
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• Up to one million acres of land was confiscated from Chinese farmers in Zhili.
• These farmers were forced to move to the parts of north China.
• His measure did not  benefit the Manchu bannermen
• This was because they lacked knowledge of agricultural techniques.
• Soon, many became poor & homeless.
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• Dorgon had been an ambitious and scheming ruler.
• After his death in 1650 te Manchu court was beset by a period of intense factional rivalry.
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• At first Jirgalang became influential
• By now, the emperor was old enough to play a role in government.
• From 1653 a dominant faction grouped itself around the Shunzhi emperor.
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Emperor Shunzhi

• Shunzhi died in 1661, probably of smallpox.
• He left a will which is now recognized as a partial forgery.
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• The remarks in the will  show that he aroused the opposition of the Manchu conquest elite.
• This was for activities which they regarded as too favourable. 
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• He admitted that he reversed Dorgon's policy of limiting the political influence of the eunuchs.
• This was by creating the Thirteen Offices, a personal bureaucracy of eunuch advisers

• The purpose may have been to assert his authority against his Manchu opponents.

• He confessed to a number of things:
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• a) he spent too much time with Buddhist monks.
• b) He allowed the German jesuit Adam Schall to exercise too much influence at court.
• c) He favoured Chinese officials & Ming institutions.
• d) He disregarded the Manchu advisers and bondservants.
• e) He showed greater devotion to his consort than to his mother.
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• The will named his seven year old son as his heir, who would reign as the Kangxi emperor.
• He prescribed that power was to be exercised by a regency.
• This regency was to be composed of four Manchus from the imperial bodyguard. 
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• The four regents, of whom the best known is Obloi, held power until 1669.
• In that period they reversed some of the legacies of Shunzhi's reign.
• They attempted to reassert Manchu dominance.
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• a) the Thirteen Offices were abolished.
• b) the late emperor's Buddhist advisers were expelled.
• c) a persecution of Jesuit missionaries was started.
• In the metropolitan gov't, Manchu institutions were given responsibilities.
• The Council  of Deliberative Officials was one such institution.
• The members included the commanders of the Manchus and Mongol banners.
• The Manchu and Mongol presidents of the Six Boards were some others given preference.
• They were given greater responsibility than the Grand Secretariate.
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• In the provinces the task of enforcing Manchu dominance was more difficult to complete.
• Few Manchus were proficient enough in Chinese.
• They were not experienced enough in administration.
• For example, to discharge the duties of a provincial appointment.
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• As a result the regents continued Dorgon's policy of appointing many Chinese bannermen. 
• Thee appointments were to senior provincial positions.
• But first they replaced many of those already in post.
• Later in the regency some Manchus were appointed as governors and governor-generals.
• these appointments went to Obloi's close associates.
• Thus they were resented byother Manchus.
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• A problem was  the relationship between the Manchus conquerers & the Chinese ritual elite.
• Especially those who lived in the great commercial & cultural centres.
• This was along the southern stretch of the Grand Canal.
• Their initial acquiescence to Manchus rule concealed a persistent Ming loyalism.
• It also hid a resentment over what they perceived to be unfair treatment on matters.
• These referred to official appointments and taxation.

• In 1661 a protest took place outside the Confucian temple in Suzho
• This was over the ruthless collection of taxes.
• It resulted;ted in 
• a) the trial & execution of 18 members of the gentry on charges of treason.
• b) to the subsequent deprivation of many gentry of their degrees.
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• Two years later  at Hangzhou others were violently persecuted.
• They were suspected of being involved in the production of a history of the Ming dynasty.
• this production contained phrases which might be critical of the Manchus.
• The regency suffered from persistent factionalism.
• Obloi eventually emerged the winner.
• He continued to dominate the government after 1667 when Kangxi reached his majority.
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• Two years later the emperor ordered the arrest of Obloi.
• He had him arraigned and his supporters on charges of usurping his authority & other faults.Obloi was imprisoned and died soon afterwards.
• Kangxi thereupon assumed full responsibility for government.
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• then te Qing faced the most severe threat of the period of consolidation.
• This was  the tension between centralization & regionalism - control vs. autonomy.
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• At the end of the Han, the Tang, & the Qing, China had become fragmented.
• They fragmented into independent states or warlord regimes.
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• A similar fragmentation threatened the Qing in the 1660s.
• The origin of the threat was the reliance that the Manchus had placed on the Chinese.
• These were collaborators & turncoats at the time of the conquest.
• Four collaborators, all of whom came from Liaodong were of particular note.
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• Shang Kexi, Kong You and Geng Zhongming had joined the Manchu side in the 1630s.
• The fourth, Wu Sangui, had famously changed his allegiance in 1644.
• For their services they had been granted the title of prince.
• They had then been commissioned to pacify the south. 
• King Youdi had been cut off by Ming forces at Guilin in 1652 & had committed suicide.
• The others completed the pacification & got for themselves semi-independent fiefdoms.
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• These were:
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• Wu Sangui in Yunnan & Guizhou 
• Shang Kexi in Guangdong
• Geng Bingzhong in Fuijan.
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• Such was the power of these three "feudatories" - as they are called.
• In 1673, Shang Kexi requested permission to retire & to pass control to his son.
• The Council of Deliberative Officials accepted his retirement.
• But they refused to make the appointment, effectively abolishing the feudatory.
• This put pressure onto the other feudatories to resign.
• Both Geng Jingzhong & Wu Sangui resigned.
• The Council did not expect Wu Sangui's resignation to be taken seriously.
• They thought it would be a good idea to refuse the resignation.
• Instead the Kangxi Emperor decided to accept it.
• He also disbanded the three feudatories.
• He knew that it would bring about a civil war.
• In December 1673 Wu Sangui did the following:
• a) he ordered the murder of the governor of Yunnan
• b) he decreed the revival of Ming customs.
• c) he claimed the Zhou dynasty.
• He obtained the support of four provinces very quickly.
• The rumour went around Beijing that the Manchus were about to withdraw to the north-east.
• Kangxi put down unrest in the capital.
• He ordered the suicide of Wu Sanghui's son who had been kept in Beijing as a hostage.
• But the rebellion continued to spread.
• By the end of 1674 virtually all the south & west of the country was in rebel hands.
• Only Shang Kexi in Guangdong remaining loyal.
• Kangxi personally directed the military campaign against the rebels.
• He increasingly relied on Chinese rather than Manchu commanders.
• In many cases, the Manchu commanders proved to be incompetent.
• The rebellion was slowly confined.
• After Wu Sangui's death, the rebellion  was gradually extinguished.
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• After there defeat of the rebellion, one further task remained to be completed.
• This was the subjugation of Taiwan.
• Until 1681 Taiwan had been held by the son of Zheng Chenggong
• His son had joined the rebellion of the Three Feudatories.
• For six years he had established an enclave on the mainland.
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• In 1683 a large Manchu fleet captured the Penghu (Pescadores) islands.
• It then occupied Taiwan incorporated into the empire as a prefecture of Fujian.
• The policy of removing  the coastal population was finally rescinded.