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The Qing Dynasty
The nature and structure of imperialist rule under the Qing dynasty
The Qing Dynasty
They were the last dynasty of China, ruling from 1644 to 1912
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The Queue
A traditional Manchu hairstyle for men
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Not wearing it was punishable by death
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Middle Kingdom
China considered itself to be the center of the universe and world, all maps were drawn with
China in the middle
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China saw all countries as inferior and hence if they wished to trade with China they had to
pay tribute to the emperor for the privilege
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Anyone who left the country or communicated with foreigners received death by strangling
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Principle of Circulation, to
reduce the possibility of them abusing their power
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Public administration
2
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Military
4
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Justice
6
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In order to become a Mandarinate or part of the Scholar Gentry class, one had to undertake
the examinations system
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Believed they deserved more
(after hard work put into passing examinations) so took bribes
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There were 7 Grand Councilors and they were backed by 250 secretarial staffs, who were in
rotation so the offices were never empty
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Under Qianlong’s reign its scope and
personnel had expanded vastly, as well as its power in the government
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Had power over the 6 ministries and even the Grand Secretariat
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Qianlong
Emperor from 1736-99, from aged 25
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Saw himself as the ruler of a multicultural Asian empire and added new religious, linguistic
and racial elements to the nature of his rule
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By doing so he doubled the territorial extent of China
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Led an army that eventually captured cities of Kashgar and Yarkand in 1759
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The region was not thrown open to Chinese colonization and settlement, but was maintained
as a strategic frontier zone
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Qianlong’s nature as an Emperor
Qianlong was very tolerant of the fact the majority of the New Territories were Muslim
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Read the documents submitted to him
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Coordinate military campaigns
Issued numerous edicts on important policy matters
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Previous two emperors had been very dynamic leaders, Qianlong allowed this to fade away
as he was much more indifferent
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Wealthy provinces that had surplus tax revenue were forced to hand it over to the poorer
peasants
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Magistrates began to keep the tax collected to themselves, corruption began to creep back in
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This led to an avalanche of paper work and an absurd system in which trivial matters were
held up for years and important ones never got done at all
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Safeguarding of cultures and traditions
Filial piety
- Qianlong made a public show of this by his ritualized treatment of his mother the
dowager empress
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- Claiming filial loyalty to his insulted father, he reversed Yongzheng's edict of clemency
and ordered the unfortunate Zeng Jing - that inept popularizer of Lu Liuliang's ideas
back in 1728 - sliced to pieces in the market square of Peking
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- Order to compilation of important works: genealogies, histories, accounts of rituals that would accurately preserve and enshrine the Manchu heritage
- Ordered a massive compilation to be made of the most famous literary and historical
works of the past
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It is one of the great
achievements of Chinese bibliography
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Population Growth
- Huge population growth from 300 million in 1750 to 400 million in 1850
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Population Growth
- Huge population growth from 300 million in 1750 to 400 million in 1850
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- In one especially mountainous region of Hubei province known as the Han River
Highlands, new migrants had multiplied the local population six times over during the
course of the eighteenth century
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- These transplants made their livings as hired labourers, charcoal-makers, and tenant
farmers
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Qing government institutions began to falter
- The emergency granaries were often empty
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- Regular banner troops behaved with incompetence or brutality
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- Bureaucracy was faction-ridden and corruption ran deep
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- Moreover, the intense pressure for jobs meant that those who had finally obtained office
sought a swift return for all their waiting and anxiety, pressing local peasants in their
jurisdictions for speedy tax payments and for supplementary charges
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Many officials did not relay the true nature of the situation to
the Emperor
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- The White Lotus was a new form of an old religion, a strand of millennial Buddhism
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- Those who helped to bring about the revolution were told they would be rewarded in the
new world; those who did not would be swept away in the apocalypse
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- At the time, most of the local Qing military forces in the Han River Highlands had been
transferred south to neighbouring Hunan province to fight a separate uprising of the
Miao minority group
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- The uprising consisted of individual cells acting in almost complete independence of
one another, typically numbering in the hundreds or low thousands, looting villages
and setting up blockades on the roadways
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Defeating the rebellion
- Most counties in the province had no more than a few dozen soldiers on hand to stop
them
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- Qianlong refused to send the elite banner troops from the Beijing region, insisting
instead that local military leaders must suppress the White Lotus with local forces
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- The systematic corruption hindered the ability of the imperial forces to do anything
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- By pursuing the rebels tenaciously and establishing tighter control of the manpower and
food supply of the area the Manchu generals eventually put down the rebellion
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- By pursuing the rebels tenaciously and establishing tighter control of the manpower and
food supply of the area the Manchu generals eventually put down the rebellion
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- These walled villages were then protected from the rebels by newly organized local
militia, who could by this time be enrolled more easily because the devastation of the
countryside had seriously hindered their farming and sustenance
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- Rebellion died in 1804
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It had cost
them nearly 5 years of revenue
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- The militia troops had been properly trained and were dangerous so an effort had to be
made to take away their weaponry
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Essay Questions
"The successes of Qianlong's reign (1736-1796) masked significant weaknesses in the
imperial system"
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Introduction: In many ways, Qianlong was seen as a very successful emperor
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- Some weaknesses were masked by successes in military and cultural
- Other weaknesses were overt
BP1 – success of Qianlong’s reign
Military
- His military obtainment of the ‘New territories’ in 1759
- With the leadership of General Zhaohui the Qing army took control of the cities of
Kashgar and Yarkand
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- Expanded China’s land size by double
- Ended Zhungar problem
- Fixed borders with Russia in the West
- Transformed the Grand Council
Cultural
- Protected Chinese art and literature: the Four Treasuries 3,450 works of art
- Respected and adhered to filial piety and the Confucian beliefs
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- Saw himself as emperor of multicultural Asian empire
- Tolerant to Muslims
People saw him as an extremely powerful and respectable leader
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BP2 – weaknesses: population growth NOT MASKED
1750—1800 population more than doubled 300 million people in China
Refugees and mass immigration
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In border towns there was landlessness and unemployment
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Led to White Lotus Rebellion
- People felt abandoned by the government and Emperor
- The people were struggling and suffering
- Hence why they were key targets to join the White Lotus Rebels and thus out broke a
Was not addressed effectively by the government who was preoccupied with attending to
other issues, moreover lack of government officials meant the issues were not sorted
sufficiently
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- Restricting their ability to invest in local initiatives and causing the poor to lose
incentive to reform their tax system and economic base
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Government corruption
- Funding wasn’t going where it was needed; ‘the squeeze’
- Qianlong’s impersonal approach meant that he had nobody in the government that he
could trust
- Officials were able to continue with their corruption and Qianlong remained largely
oblivious to the problems that ensued China
- Number of officials only ever rose above 30,000-40,000
The government corruption meant that they were unable to deal with issues correctly, issues
pursued and developed becoming worse
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Thus the successes of the government masked
what was going on underneath the surface, empire was so strong and emperor so popular
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Introduction:
Towards the second half the 18th century a large amount of internal unrest in China was
brewing, which eventually led the outbreak of uprisings such as the White Lotus Rebellion
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It lasted from 1796 to 1804, resulting in 16 million deaths
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The uprising went onto have serious economic
consequences for the Qing government and damaged the government’s popularity
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- Vulnerable to further uprisings such as the uprising of the Eight Trigrams in 1813 near
Shangdong Provinces

BP4 – Qing government popularity
- Manchu forces no longer seen as invincible
- Proved that Qing’s could be challenged by numerous simultaneous uprisings (White
Lotus operated in small cells)
- Qianlong refused to send government troops – relied on local militia units à
incompetence of govt
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Hence they had to work extremely hard to gain
and maintain public popularity and their mandate from heaven
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Moreover, by the end of the 18th century there was a steep decline in social
welfare as the population soared
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However, the Qing
dynasty still had certain strengths such as Qianlong’s efforts in Chinese cultural preservation
th

authority was seriously weakening as well as their mandate from heaven
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Hence why, despite the weaknesses and challenges to Qing Authority,
the Qing dynasty reigned until 1912, with two emperors following Qianlong
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of civil service officials above 40,000 (insufficient revenue, could
not control population or tax collection)
BP2: change: violent unrest
1
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Taiwan rebellion 1780
3
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white lotus rebellion à chaos and unrest
o Thousands participated in an uprising against the Qing dynasty
o Lasted from 1796-1804
o 16 million deaths
- weakened Qing authority as people were so disappointed with them that they fought for
their overthrow
- threat to the mandate from heaven
BP3: continuity: merits of the Qing
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- Secure borders
- China began to be a world leader in technical and innovative discovery
- Advances in culture and the arts: the four treasuries
- Qing reigned until 1912, can’t have been extreme threats to authority as they were able
to defeat and rise again
- A decline was taking place, but the degree of steepness was not as severe as may have
been indicated due to the fact that they were able to quickly recover



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