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The Qing chose a name tied to water to extinguish the Ming, whose name was tied to fire. Nurhaci, a Jurchen chieftain and Ming vassal who read Romance of the Three Kingdoms, fused rival tribes into the Eight Banners and declared war in 1616 with the Seven Grievances. His son Hong Taiji renamed his people the Manchus, founded the Great Qing in 1636 and recruited Han defectors who could cast cannon. In 1644, after rebels took Beijing and the last Ming emperor took his own life, general Wu Sangui opened the Shanhai Pass and let the Manchus in.

The Kangxi Emperor, reigning 61 years from 1661, courted Han scholars with Confucian patronage and the Kangxi Dictionary while pairing a Manchu and a Han official in every top post of the Six Boards. The Qianlong Emperor’s Ten Great Campaigns brought Xinjiang, Tibet and Mongolia under Qing rule. Defeat in the Opium Wars, Hong Xiuquan’s Taiping Rebellion, the 1894 loss to Japan and the Boxer Rebellion hollowed out the dynasty, and after the 1911 Wuchang mutiny the child emperor Puyi abdicated on February 12, 1912.

• By the early 20th century the Qing ruled roughly 426 million people.
• Wu Sangui’s father was being held hostage by the rebel leader who had seized Beijing.
• The Taiping Rebellion killed an estimated 20 to 30 million people and forced the court to let Han governors raise regional armies.
• Japan destroyed the Beiyang Fleet, built under the Self-Strengthening Movement.
• In 1905 the court abolished the imperial examination system.