Qing (Manchus) Dynasty

Reference

Excerpts from Books and Wikipedia

"After the Manchus, or Qing dynasty, took control in the mid-1600s, China enjoyed prosperity for nearly two centuries. . . . By the late 1700s, peasant revolts shook the country, including a major rebellion by the secret White Lotus society as the 18th century drew to a close. . . . they shut off most contact with outsiders. . . All foreign maritime trade was restricted to the single port of Guangzhou (Canton). . . . Then the British began selling a product that created its own demand. . . . Opium sales were so large that the balance of trade shifted; now silver flowed out of China instead of in. [National Geographic Almanac, p. 258-9] "The Ming-to-Qing dynastic transition in the first half of the 1600s coincided with the arrival of Europeans in East Asia by sea. . . . Like Khubilai Khan in the thirteenth century, the Manchu emperors used religions for political purposes: Russian Orthodox Christianity for Russians in Beijing, Catholic Christians for European contact at the court, and Yellow sect Lamaism in Tibet and Mongolia. . . . Order was imposed on the Muslim population by appointing local chieftains as governors (begs). As Muslims, the begs left legal cases to be settled by Islamic law" [Fairbank: China, p. 143-53]