ABSTRACT
Established in 1644 through the Manchu conquest, then toppled by the revolution of 1911, the Qing was the last of the imperial dynasties of traditional China. My perspective in this chapter is not chronological; rather, I focus on China’s social system during Qing, and its connections with the institutions of the Chinese state. During the traditional period covered by this chapter Chinese society indeed underwent changes but these largely were quantitative, and importantly different from the qualitative changes which, beginning during the latter half of the nineteenth century, were directly linked to the defeat and penetration of that country by the Western powers.
