A Qing dynasty embroidered panel with a dragon
Panel with dragon, 17th century
Marked Beijing

SubjectIn outline · lessons being written

Qing China

Manchus from the north-east took Beijing in 1644 and founded the Qing, China’s last dynasty. Under the Kangxi and Qianlong emperors, China grew to its largest; in the 1800s it faced wars, rebellions and foreign powers, and in 1912 the last emperor gave up the throne.

Place
Beijing · Chengde · Canton (Guangzhou)Asia
Laid out as
An empireOne power across a long stretch of time: how it grew, held together, and came apart.
Lessons
7 planned, none written yet

The lessons we plan

Titles may change as they are written

  1. IThe Manchus take Beijing
  2. IIKangxi and Qianlong
  3. IIITea and porcelain for the world
  4. IVThe Opium Wars
  5. VThe Taiping rebellion
  6. VICixi
  7. VIIThe last emperor

Still to come

The people and objects these lessons will cover

People

  • Kangxi Emperor
  • Qianlong Emperor
  • Empress Dowager Cixi
  • Puyi

Objects

  • Qing porcelain
  • Court portraits
  • The Old Summer Palace ruins

Where it sits

All of human history, era by era

Early human ancestryOur species and the Old Stone AgeFarming and the New Stone AgeFirst cities and the Bronze AgeThe Iron Age and growing statesThe classical worldAfter the empiresMedieval networks and empiresOceans crossedRevolutions and the first factoriesIndustry, empire and world warThe world since 1945

1644 to 1912. Each era is drawn the same width, so the earliest are squeezed: era II alone is over 300,000 years.

Nearby in time and place

This page is an outline. The summary above is a starting point; each lesson, when it is written, will give its sources, its pictures and where historians disagree. Spotted a mistake?