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Manchus: A Brief Summary And Analysis

Decent Essays

Manchus, a minority group from northeastern China started the last imperial dynasty, Qing (1644 – 1911 C.E.) dynasty (Chinasage, 2015). Their conquest started with Mongolia and Korea and afterwards took advantage of the weakened state of the Ming (1368-1644 C.E.) dynasty and conquered Norther China. Later ventured further south, overthrew the reminder of the Ming dynasty and occupied Beijing.
The Manchus incorporated lessons learned and best practices from preceding empires and conquers and because of that were able to conquer a much larger empire. One of the contributing success factor was the incorporation of the Han Chinese into the leadership. As stated by Haw, “…unlike the Mongols, relied heavily on the Chinese in the administration of their empire” and gave preference to those who joined them before the conquest (66).
The Manchus had a very diverse ethnic demographic; however, their governmental organization was organized on military lines, which they referred to as “banners”. Because of the diverse ethnicities within their ranks, they had no issue with incorporating Chinese into their banners. “Chinese in the north-east, outside the Great Wall, who had submitted to them voluntarily, or been brought into their state by conquest, were incorporated into the banner system” (Haw, 66). The bannermen were the elites of the dynasty. …show more content…

Even though power and property was shared with the bannermen, some of which were Chinese, the Manchus were not allowed to marry Chinese. As the conquers, the Manchus did not embrace the Chinese culture nor did they push their our cultural beliefs to the Chinese; however, they did introduce a new hair style to the Chinese. To have a recognizable signal of submission, the Manchus “…shaven forehead and long pigtail…” (Haw 67). Cutting off the long pigtail also served as a sign of

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