Fall of the Ming and Manchu Conquest
By the 1640s the Ming state had been hollowed out by a self-reinforcing fiscal-administrative collapse: the silver-based single-whip tax system was starved by disrupted Manila galleon inflows, the Wanli emperor's decades of withdrawal had paralysed government, Donglin-eunuch factionalism crippled crisis response, and Little Ice Age droughts and harvest failures produced mass famine. These pressures generated huge peasant rebellions. In April 1644 the rebel leader Li Zicheng captured Beijing; the Chongzhen emperor hanged himself on Coal Hill, ending the Ming dynasty. The Ming general Wu Sangui, guarding the northern frontier, then allied with the Manchu and opened the passes. The Manchu Eight Banner armies under the Qing seized Beijing, defeated Li Zicheng, and over the following decades conquered the rest of China. The collapse of 1644 was simultaneously a fiscal-environmental state disintegration and an external conquest, replacing a 276-year native dynasty with a foreign Manchu ruling house.
- Year: 1644 CE
- Category: Political
