Qing dynasty

"Qing" redirects here. For other uses, see Qing (disambiguation).

Not to be confused with the Qin dynasty, the first dynasty of imperial China.

The Qing dynasty (/tʃɪŋ/ ching), officially the Great Qing,^{[lower-alpha 4]} was a Manchu-led imperial dynasty of China and the last imperial dynasty in Chinese history. The dynasty, proclaimed in Shenyang in 1636,^[8] seized control of Beijing in 1644, which is considered the start of the dynasty's rule.^{[2][1][9][10][11][12]} The dynasty lasted until 1912, when it was overthrown in the Xinhai Revolution. In Chinese historiography, the Qing dynasty was preceded by the Ming dynasty and succeeded by the Republic of China. The multi-ethnic Qing dynasty assembled the territorial base for modern China. It was the largest imperial dynasty in the history of China and in 1790 the fourth-largest empire in world history in terms of territorial size. With over 426 million citizens in 1907,^[7] it was the most populous country in the world at the time.

Great Qing 大清 (Chinese) ᡩᠠᡳ᠌ᠴᡳᠩ ᡤᡠᡵᡠᠨ (Manchu)
1644[1][2]–1912
Flag (1889–1912)
Anthem:  鞏金甌 "Cup of Solid Gold" (1911–1912)
Imperial seal: 大清帝國之璽
The Qing dynasty at its greatest extent in 1760, with modern borders shown for the rest of the world. Claimed territory that was not under its control is shown in light green.
Capital	Shenyang (1636–1644)[lower-alpha 1] Beijing (1644–1912)[lower-alpha 2]
Largest city	Beijing
Official languages	Manchu[3] Mandarin Chinese[4]
Ethnic groups	Han Hmong Manchus Mongols Tibetans Uyghurs others
Religion	Confucianism Buddhism Chinese Mongolian Tibetan Taoism Chinese folk religion Shamanism Hmong Manchu Mongolian Christianity Islam others
Demonym(s)	Chinese
Government	Absolute monarchy[lower-alpha 3]
Emperor
• 1636–1643 (proclaimed in Shenyang)	Chongde Emperor
• 1644–1661 (first in Beijing)	Shunzhi Emperor
• 1908–1912 (last)	Xuantong Emperor
Regent
• 1643–1650	Dorgon, Prince Rui
• 1908–1911	Zaifeng, Prince Chun
Prime Minister
• 1911	Yikuang, Prince Qing
• 1911–1912	Yuan Shikai
Legislature	Deliberative Council (1636–1733) Advisory Council (1910–1912)
Historical era	Late modern
• Proclaimed	1636
• Transition from Ming to Qing	1644–1662
• Conquest of Tibet, Mongolia, Xinjiang	1687–1758
• Ten Great Campaigns	1747–1792
• 1st Opium War	1839–1842
• Taiping Rebellion	1850–1864
• 2nd Opium War	1856–1860
• Westernization Movement	1861–1895
• 1st Sino-Japanese War	1894–1895
• 100 Days Reform	1898
• Boxer Rebellion	1900–1901
• Late Qing reforms	1901–1911
• Xinhai Revolution	1911–1912
• End of monarchy	12 February 1912
Area
1700[5]	8,800,000 km2 (3,400,000 sq mi)
1790[5]	14,700,000 km2 (5,700,000 sq mi)
1860[5]	13,400,000 km2 (5,200,000 sq mi)
1908[6]	11,350,000 km2 (4,380,000 sq mi)
Population
• 1907 estimate	426,000,000[7]
Currency	Cash Tael Paper money
Preceded by Succeeded by Later Jin Ming dynasty Dzungar Khanate Kingdom of Tungning Republic of China Bogd Khanate Uryankhay Republic Tibet

Qing dynasty
Chinese name
Chinese	清朝
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Qīng cháo Bopomofo ㄑㄧㄥ ㄔㄠˊ Wade–Giles Ch'ing1 ch'ao2 Tongyong Pinyin Cing cháo IPA [tɕʰíŋ ʈʂʰǎʊ] Wu Suzhounese Tshin záu Yue: Cantonese Yale Romanization Chīng Chìuh Jyutping cing1 ciu4 IPA [tsʰɪŋ˥ tsʰiw˩] Southern Min Hokkien POJ Chheng tiâu Tâi-lô Tshing tiâu
Dynastic name
Chinese	大清
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Dà Qīng Bopomofo ㄉㄚˋ ㄑㄧㄥ Wade–Giles Ta4 Ch'ing1 Tongyong Pinyin Dà Cing IPA [tâ tɕʰíŋ] Yue: Cantonese Yale Romanization Daaih Chīng Jyutping daai6 cing1 IPA [taj˨ tsʰɪŋ˥] Southern Min Hokkien POJ Tāi-chheng Tâi-lô Tāi-tshing
Mongolian name
Mongolian Cyrillic	Дайчин Улс
Mongolian script	ᠳᠠᠢᠢᠴᠢᠩ ᠤᠯᠤᠰ
Transcriptions SASM/GNC Daiqing ulus
Manchu name
Manchu script	ᡩᠠᡳ᠌ᠴᡳᠩ ᡤᡠᡵᡠᠨ
Abkai	Daiqing gurun
Möllendorff	Daicing gurun

Nurhaci, leader of the House of Aisin-Gioro and vassal of the Ming dynasty,^[13][14] unified Jurchen clans (known later as Manchus) and founded the Later Jin dynasty in 1616, renouncing the Ming overlordship. His son Hong Taiji was declared Emperor of the Great Qing in 1636. As Ming control disintegrated, peasant rebels captured the Ming capital Beijing, but a Ming general opened the Shanhai Pass to the Qing army, which defeated the rebels, seized the capital, and took over the government in 1644 under the Shunzhi Emperor and his prince regent. Resistance from Ming rump regimes and the Revolt of the Three Feudatories delayed the complete conquest until 1683. As a Manchu emperor, the Kangxi Emperor (1661–1722) consolidated control, relished the role of a Confucian ruler, patronised Buddhism (including Tibetan Buddhism), encouraged scholarship, population and economic growth.^[15] Han officials worked under or in parallel with Manchu officials. To maintain prominence over its neighbors, the Qing leveraged and adapted the tributary system employed by previous dynasties, enabling their continued predominance in diplomatic affairs with countries on its periphery like Joseon Korea and the Lê dynasty in Vietnam, while extending its control over Inner Asia including Tibet, Mongolia, and Xinjiang.

The High Qing era reached its apex during the reign of the Qianlong Emperor (1735–1796), who led Ten Great Campaigns of conquest, and personally supervised Confucian cultural projects. After his death, the dynasty faced internal revolts, economic disruption, official corruption, foreign intrusion, and the reluctance of Confucian elites to change their mindset. With peace and prosperity, the population rose to 400 million, but taxes and government revenues were fixed at a low rate, soon leading to a fiscal crisis. Following China's defeat in the Opium Wars, Western colonial powers forced the Qing government to sign unequal treaties, granting them trading privileges, extraterritoriality and treaty ports under their control. The Taiping Rebellion (1850–1864) and the Dungan Revolt (1862–1877) in western China led to the deaths of over 20 million people, from famine, disease, and war. The Tongzhi Restoration in the 1860s brought vigorous reforms and the introduction of foreign military technology in the Self-Strengthening Movement. Defeat in the First Sino-Japanese War in 1895 led to loss of suzerainty over Korea and cession of Taiwan to Japan. The ambitious Hundred Days' Reform in 1898 proposed fundamental change, but the Empress Dowager Cixi (1835–1908) turned it back in a coup.

In 1900 anti-foreign "Boxers" killed many Chinese Christians and foreign missionaries; in retaliation, the foreign powers invaded China and imposed a punitive indemnity. In response, the government initiated unprecedented fiscal and administrative reforms, including elections, a new legal code, and the abolition of the examination system. Sun Yat-sen and revolutionaries debated reform officials and constitutional monarchists such as Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao over how to transform the Manchu-ruled empire into a modernised Han state. After the deaths of the Guangxu Emperor and Cixi in 1908, Manchu conservatives at court blocked reforms and alienated reformers and local elites alike. The Wuchang Uprising on 10 October 1911 led to the Xinhai Revolution. The abdication of the Xuantong Emperor on 12 February 1912 brought the dynasty to an end. In 1917, it was briefly restored in an episode known as the Manchu Restoration, but this was neither recognized by the Beiyang government (1912–1928) of the Republic of China nor the international community.

Main article: Names of the Qing dynasty

See also: Names of China

Hong Taiji proclaimed the Great Qing dynasty in 1636.^[16] There are competing explanations as to the meaning of the Chinese character Qīng (清; 'clear', ' pure') in this context. One theory posits a purposeful contrast with the Ming: the character Míng (明; 'bright') is associated with fire within the Chinese zodiacal system, while Qīng (清) is associated with water, illustrating the triumph of the Qing as the conquest of fire by water. The name possibly also possessed Buddhist implications of perspicacity and enlightenment, as well as connection with the bodhisattva Manjusri.^[17] Early European writers used the term "Tartar" indiscriminately for all the peoples of Northern Eurasia but in the 17th century Catholic missionary writings established "Tartar" to refer only to the Manchus and "Tartary" for the lands they ruled—i.e. Manchuria and the adjacent parts of Inner Asia,^[18][19] as ruled by the Qing before the Ming–Qing transition.

After conquering China proper, the Manchus identified their state as "China", equivalently as Zhōngguó (中國; 'middle kingdom') in Chinese and Dulimbai Gurun in Manchu.^{[lower-alpha 5]} The emperors equated the lands of the Qing state (including, among other areas, present-day Northeast China, Xinjiang, Mongolia, and Tibet) as "China" in both the Chinese and Manchu languages, defining China as a multi-ethnic state, and rejecting the idea that only Han areas were properly part of "China". The government used "China" and "Qing" interchangeably to refer to their state in official documents,^[20] including the Chinese-language versions of treaties and maps of the world.^[21] The term 'Chinese people' (中國人; Zhōngguórén; Manchu: ᡩᡠᠯᡳᠮᠪᠠᡳ
ᡤᡠᡵᡠᠨ ‍ᡳ
ᠨᡳᠶᠠᠯᠮᠠ Dulimbai gurun-i niyalma) referred to all the Han, Manchu, and Mongol subjects of the Qing Empire.^[22] When the Qing conquered Dzungaria in 1759, it proclaimed within a Manchu-language memorial that the new land had been absorbed into "China".^[23]: 77 The Qing government expounded an ideology that it was bringing the "outer" non-Han peoples—such as various populations of Mongolians, as well as the Tibetans—together with the "inner" Han Chinese into "one family", united within the Qing state. Phraseology like Zhōngwài yījiā (中外一家) and nèiwài yījiā (內外一家)—both translatable as 'home and abroad as one family'—was employed to convey this idea of Qing-mediated trans-cultural unity.^{[23]: 76–77}

In English, the Qing dynasty is sometimes known as the Manchu dynasty,^[24] or transliterated as the Ch'ing dynasty using the Wade–Giles system.

Main article: History of the Qing dynasty

For a chronological guide, see Timeline of the Qing dynasty.

Formation

Further information: Manchuria under Ming rule, Jurchen unification, and Timeline of the Jurchens § 17th century

The Qing dynasty was founded not by the Han people, who constitute the majority of the Chinese population, but by the Manchus, descendants of a sedentary farming people known as the Jurchens, a Tungusic people who lived around the region now comprising the Chinese provinces of Jilin and Heilongjiang.^[25] The Manchus are sometimes mistaken for a nomadic people,^[26] which they were not.^[27][28]

Nurhaci

The early form of the Manchu state was founded by Nurhaci, the chieftain of a minor Jurchen tribe – the Aisin-Gioro – in Jianzhou in the early 17th century. Nurhaci may have spent time in a Han household in his youth, and became fluent in Chinese and Mongolian languages and read the Chinese novels Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Water Margin.^[29][30] As a vassal of the Ming emperors, he officially considered himself a guardian of the Ming border and a local representative of the Ming dynasty.^[13] Nurhaci embarked on an intertribal feud in 1582 that escalated into a campaign to unify the nearby tribes. By 1616, however, he had sufficiently consolidated Jianzhou so as to be able to proclaim himself Khan of the Later Jin dynasty in reference to the previous Jurchen-ruled Jin dynasty.^[31]

Italian 1682 map showing the "Kingdom of the Nüzhen" or the "Jin Tartars"

Two years later, Nurhaci announced the "Seven Grievances" and openly renounced the sovereignty of Ming overlordship in order to complete the unification of those Jurchen tribes still allied with the Ming emperor. After a series of successful battles, he relocated his capital from Hetu Ala to successively bigger captured Ming cities in Liaodong: first Liaoyang in 1621, then Mukden (Shenyang) in 1625.^[31] Furthermore, the Khorchin proved a useful ally in the war, lending the Jurchens their expertise as cavalry archers. To guarantee this new alliance, Nurhaci initiated a policy of inter-marriages between the Jurchen and Khorchin nobilities, while those who resisted were met with military action. This is a typical example of Nurhaci's initiatives that eventually became official Qing government policy. During most of the Qing period, the Mongols gave military assistance to the Manchus.^[32]

Manchu cavalry charging Ming infantry battle of Sarhu in 1619

Hong Taiji

Nurhaci died in 1626, and was succeeded by his eighth son, Hong Taiji. Although Hong Taiji was an experienced leader and the commander of two Banners, the Jurchens suffered defeat in 1627, in part due to the Ming's newly acquired Portuguese cannons. To redress the technological and numerical disparity, Hong Taiji in 1634 created his own artillery corps, who cast their own cannons in the European design with the help of defector Chinese metallurgists. One of the defining events of Hong Taiji's reign was the official adoption of the name "Manchu" for the united Jurchen people in November 1635. In 1635, the Manchus' Mongol allies were fully incorporated into a separate Banner hierarchy under direct Manchu command. In April 1636, Mongol nobility of Inner Mongolia, Manchu nobility and the Han mandarin recommended that Hong as the khan of Later Jin should be the emperor of the Great Qing.^[33][34] When he was presented with the imperial seal of the Yuan dynasty after the defeat of the last Khagan of the Mongols, Hong Taiji renamed his state from "Great Jin" to "Great Qing" and elevated his position from Khan to Emperor, suggesting imperial ambitions beyond unifying the Manchu territories. Hong Taiji then proceeded to invade Korea again in 1636.

Sura han ni chiha (Coins of Tiancong Khan) in Manchu alphabet

Meanwhile, Hong Taiji set up a rudimentary bureaucratic system based on the Ming model. He established six boards or executive level ministries in 1631 to oversee finance, personnel, rites, military, punishments, and public works. However, these administrative organs had very little role initially, and it was not until the eve of completing the conquest ten years later that they fulfilled their government roles.^[35]

Hong Taiji staffed his bureaucracy with many Han Chinese, including newly surrendered Ming officials, but ensured Manchu dominance by an ethnic quota for top appointments. Hong Taiji's reign also saw a fundamental change of policy towards his Han Chinese subjects. Nurhaci had treated Han in Liaodong according to how much grain they had: those with less than 5 to 7 sin were treated badly, while those with more were rewarded with property. Due to a Han revolt in 1623, Nurhaci turned against them and enacted discriminatory policies and killings against them. He ordered that Han who assimilated to the Jurchen (in Jilin) before 1619 be treated equally with Jurchens, not like the conquered Han in Liaodong. Hong Taiji recognized the need to attract Han Chinese, explaining to reluctant Manchus why he needed to treat the Ming defector General Hong Chengchou leniently.^[36] Hong Taiji incorporated Han into the Jurchen "nation" as full (if not first-class) citizens, obligated to provide military service. By 1648, less than one-sixth of the bannermen were of Manchu ancestry.^[37]

Claiming the Mandate of Heaven

See also: Transition from Ming to Qing

Dorgon (1612–1650)

Hong Taiji died suddenly in September 1643. As the Jurchens had traditionally "elected" their leader through a council of nobles, the Qing state did not have a clear succession system. The leading contenders for power were Hong Taiji's oldest son Hooge and Hong Taiji's half brother Dorgon. A compromise installed Hong Taiji's five-year-old son, Fulin, as the Shunzhi Emperor, with Dorgon as regent and de facto leader of the Manchu nation.

Meanwhile, Ming government officials fought against each other, against fiscal collapse, and against a series of peasant rebellions. They were unable to capitalise on the Manchu succession dispute and the presence of a minor as emperor. In April 1644, the capital, Beijing, was sacked by a coalition of rebel forces led by Li Zicheng, a former minor Ming official, who established a short-lived Shun dynasty. The last Ming ruler, the Chongzhen Emperor, committed suicide when the city fell to the rebels, marking the official end of the dynasty.

Li Zicheng then led rebel forces numbering some 200,000^[38] to confront Wu Sangui, at Shanhai Pass, a key pass of the Great Wall, which defended the capital. Wu Sangui, caught between a Chinese rebel army twice his size and a foreign enemy he had fought for years, cast his lot with the familiar Manchus. Wu Sangui may have been influenced by Li Zicheng's mistreatment of wealthy and cultured officials, including Li's own family; it was said that Li took Wu's concubine Chen Yuanyuan for himself. Wu and Dorgon allied in the name of avenging the death of the Chongzhen Emperor. Together, the two former enemies met and defeated Li Zicheng's rebel forces in battle on May 27, 1644.^[39]

The newly allied armies captured Beijing on 6 June. The Shunzhi Emperor was invested as the "Son of Heaven" on 30 October. The Manchus, who had positioned themselves as political heirs to the Ming emperor by defeating Li Zicheng, completed the symbolic transition by holding a formal funeral for the Chongzhen Emperor. However, conquering the rest of China Proper took another seventeen years of battling Ming loyalists, pretenders and rebels. The last Ming pretender, Prince Gui, sought refuge with the King of Burma, Pindale Min, but was turned over to a Qing expeditionary army commanded by Wu Sangui, who had him brought back to Yunnan province and executed in early 1662.

The Qing had taken shrewd advantage of Ming civilian government discrimination against the military and encouraged the Ming military to defect by spreading the message that the Manchus valued their skills.^[40] Banners made up of Han Chinese who defected before 1644 were classed among the Eight Banners, giving them social and legal privileges. Han defectors swelled the ranks of the Eight Banners so greatly that ethnic Manchus became a minority – only 16% in 1648, with Han Bannermen dominating at 75% and Mongol Bannermen making up the rest.^[41] Gunpowder weapons like muskets and artillery were wielded by the Chinese Banners.^[42] Normally, Han Chinese defector troops were deployed as the vanguard, while Manchu Bannermen were used predominantly for quick strikes with maximum impact, so as to minimize ethnic Manchu losses.^[43]

This multi-ethnic force conquered Ming China for the Qing.^[44] The three Liaodong Han Bannermen officers who played key roles in the conquest of southern China were Shang Kexi, Geng Zhongming, and Kong Youde, who governed southern China autonomously as viceroys for the Qing after the conquest.^[45] Han Chinese Bannermen made up the majority of governors in the early Qing, stabilizing Qing rule.^[46] To promote ethnic harmony, a 1648 decree allowed Han Chinese civilian men to marry Manchu women from the Banners with the permission of the Board of Revenue if they were registered daughters of officials or commoners, or with the permission of their banner company captain if they were unregistered commoners. Later in the dynasty the policies allowing intermarriage were done away with.^[47]

Qing Empire in 1636

The first seven years of the young Shunzhi Emperor's reign were dominated by Dorgon's regency. Because of his own political insecurity, Dorgon followed Hong Taiji's example by ruling in the name of the emperor at the expense of rival Manchu princes, many of whom he demoted or imprisoned. Dorgon's precedents and example cast a long shadow. First, the Manchus had entered "South of the Wall" because Dorgon had responded decisively to Wu Sangui's appeal, then, instead of sacking Beijing as the rebels had done, Dorgon insisted, over the protests of other Manchu princes, on making it the dynastic capital and reappointing most Ming officials. No major Chinese dynasty had directly taken over its immediate predecessor's capital, but keeping the Ming capital and bureaucracy intact helped quickly stabilize the regime and sped up the conquest of the rest of the country. Dorgon then drastically reduced the influence of the eunuchs and directed Manchu women not to bind their feet in the Chinese style.^[48]

However, not all of Dorgon's policies were equally popular or as easy to implement. The controversial July 1645 edict (the "haircutting order") forced adult Han Chinese men to shave the front of their heads and comb the remaining hair into the queue hairstyle which was worn by Manchu men, on pain of death.^[49] The popular description of the order was: "To keep the hair, you lose the head; To keep your head, you cut the hair."^[48] To the Manchus, this policy was a test of loyalty and an aid in distinguishing friend from foe. For the Han Chinese, however, it was a humiliating reminder of Qing authority that challenged traditional Confucian values.^[50] The order triggered strong resistance in Jiangnan.^[51] In the ensuing unrest, some 100,000 Han were slaughtered.^[52][53][54]

The Qing conquest of the Ming and expansion of the empire

On 31 December 1650, Dorgon died suddenly, marking the start of the Shunzhi Emperor's personal rule. Because the emperor was only 12 years old at that time, most decisions were made on his behalf by his mother, Empress Dowager Xiaozhuang, who turned out to be a skilled political operator. Although his support had been essential to Shunzhi's ascent, Dorgon had centralised so much power in his hands as to become a direct threat to the throne. So much so that upon his death he was bestowed the extraordinary posthumous title of Emperor Yi (義皇帝), the only instance in Qing history in which a Manchu "prince of the blood" (親王) was so honored. Two months into Shunzhi's personal rule, however, Dorgon was not only stripped of his titles, but his corpse was disinterred and mutilated.^[55] Dorgon's fall from grace also led to the purge of his family and associates at court. Shunzhi's promising start was cut short by his early death in 1661 at the age of 24 from smallpox. He was succeeded by his third son Xuanye, who reigned as the Kangxi Emperor.

The Manchus sent Han Bannermen to fight against Koxinga's Ming loyalists in Fujian.^[56] They removed the population from coastal areas in order to deprive Koxinga's Ming loyalists of resources. This led to a misunderstanding that Manchus were "afraid of water". Han Bannermen carried out the fighting and killing, casting doubt on the claim that fear of the water led to the coastal evacuation and ban on maritime activities.^[57] Even though a poem refers to the soldiers carrying out massacres in Fujian as "barbarians", both Han Green Standard Army and Han Bannermen were involved and carried out the worst slaughter.^[58] 400,000 Green Standard Army soldiers were used against the Three Feudatories in addition to the 200,000 Bannermen.^[59]

Kangxi Emperor's reign and consolidation

See also: Revolt of the Three Feudatories and High Qing era

The Kangxi Emperor (r. 1661–1722)

The 61-year reign of the Kangxi Emperor was the longest of any emperor of China and marked the beginning of the "High Qing" era, the zenith of the dynasty's social, economic and military power. The early Manchu rulers established two foundations of legitimacy that help to explain the stability of their dynasty. The first was the bureaucratic institutions and the neo-Confucian culture that they adopted from earlier dynasties.^[60] Manchu rulers and Han Chinese scholar-official elites gradually came to terms with each other. The examination system offered a path for ethnic Han to become officials. Imperial patronage of Kangxi Dictionary demonstrated respect for Confucian learning, while the Sacred Edict of 1670 effectively extolled Confucian family values. His attempts to discourage Chinese women from foot binding, however, were unsuccessful.

The second major source of stability was the Inner Asian aspect of their Manchu identity, which allowed them to appeal to the Mongol, Tibetan and Muslim subjects.^[61] The Qing used the title of Emperor (Huangdi or hūwangdi) in Chinese and Manchu (along with titles like the Son of Heaven and Ejen), and among Tibetans the Qing emperor was referred to as the "Emperor of China" (or "Chinese Emperor") and "the Great Emperor" (or "Great Emperor Manjushri"), such as in the 1856 Treaty of Thapathali,^[62][63][64] while among Mongols the Qing monarch was referred to as Bogda Khan^[65] or "(Manchu) Emperor", and among Muslim subjects in Inner Asia the Qing ruler was referred to as the "Khagan of China" (or "Chinese khagan").^[66] The Qianlong Emperor portrayed the image of himself as a Buddhist sage ruler, a patron of Tibetan Buddhism^[67] in the hope to appease the Mongols and Tibetans.^[68] The Kangxi Emperor also welcomed to his court Jesuit missionaries, who had first come to China under the Ming.

Kangxi's reign started when he was seven years old. To prevent a repeat of Dorgon's monopolizing of power, on his deathbed his father hastily appointed four regents who were not closely related to the imperial family and had no claim to the throne. However, through chance and machination, Oboi, the most junior of the four, gradually achieved such dominance as to be a potential threat. In 1669 Kangxi, through trickery, disarmed and imprisoned Oboi – a significant victory for a fifteen-year-old emperor.

The young emperor faced challenges in maintaining control of his kingdom, as well. Three Ming generals singled out for their contributions to the establishment of the dynasty had been granted governorships in Southern China. They became increasingly autonomous, leading to the Revolt of the Three Feudatories, which lasted for eight years. Kangxi was able to unify his forces for a counterattack led by a new generation of Manchu generals. By 1681, the Qing government had established control over a ravaged southern China, which took several decades to recover.^[69]

Emperor with Manchu army in Khalkha 1688

To extend and consolidate the dynasty's control in Central Asia, the Kangxi Emperor personally led a series of military campaigns against the Dzungars in Outer Mongolia. The Kangxi Emperor expelled