Qing Conquest of the Ming

The Qing conquest of the Ming was the decades-long military campaign by which the Manchu-led Qing dynasty overthrew China's Ming dynasty and established Qing rule over the whole of China, fought in phases from the Manchu leader Nurhaci's initial rebellion against Ming authority in 1618 through the final suppression of Ming loyalist resistance in 1683. The Ming dynasty, already weakened by internal peasant rebellions including Li Zicheng's revolt that captured Beijing and toppled the Ming emperor in 1644, fell to Qing forces after the Ming general Wu Sangui opened the strategic Shanhai Pass to allow Manchu armies into China proper against the rebel occupiers. Qing forces then spent nearly four more decades subduing remaining Ming loyalist regimes in southern China, the Southern Ming, and finally the Ming loyalist stronghold on Taiwan under the Zheng family, which surrendered in 1683. The conquest installed the Qing as China's last imperial dynasty, ruling until 1912, and imposed lasting Manchu cultural policies including the queue hairstyle requirement on the conquered Han population.