The Qing dynasty, officially the Great Qing, was a Manchu-led imperial dynasty of China and the last imperial dynasty in Chinese history (not counting the puppet state of Manchukuo or Yuan Shikai's short-lived Empire of China in 1917).
It emerged from the Later Jin dynasty founded by a Tungusic-speaking ethnic group who became known as the Manchus. The dynasty was officially proclaimed in 1636 in Mukden (modern-day Shenyang), and following the Battle of Shanhai Pass it seized control of Beijing in 1644, which is often considered the start of the dynasty's rule in China. Within decades the Qing had consolidated its control over the whole of China proper and Taiwan, and by the mid-18th century it had expanded its rule into Inner Asia.
During the 19th century to the early 20th century, the Qing suffered from numerous defeat and setback as a result of intervention from various European colonial powers (primarily the United Kingdom and the Russian Empire) and later with the recently modernized Empire of Japan, which resulted into a power struggle between the reformist and reactionary. This, combined with surge in anti-Manchu dissent among the Han Chinese, resulted into the downfall of the dynasty when it was overthrown in the Xinhai Revolution in 1912.
In Chinese historiography, the Qing dynasty was preceded by the Ming dynasty and succeeded by the Republic of China. The multiethnic Qing dynasty assembled the territorial base for modern China. During its peak, it was the largest imperial dynasty in the history of China and in 1790 the fourth-largest empire in world history in terms of territorial size. With 419,264,000 citizens in 1907, it was the most populous country in the world at the time.
