Many foreign scholars hold the opinion that Huang Taiji's acquisition of the so-called Lin Danhan imperial seal in 1635 symbolized the inheritance of the political legacy of the Mongolian Yuan Empire. In fact, Hong Taiji's manipulation and use of the imperial seal was mainly focused on the need to deal with internal affairs and to begin the process of transforming the khanate government into the centralized imperial system. Thus, Hong Taiji’s possession of the imperial seal did not contribute to attracting the Mongol or Han allegiance to the Manchus.

In Emperor Qianlong’s famous poem “Ode to Shengjing”, which was written during his first imperial tour of the ancestral tombs at Shengjing in 1743, the emperor associates“Shengjing”with three features of the Qing imperial political culture: God’s blessing for the advantageous natural environment, Manchu moral kindness from the pure local customs and etiquette, and the historical memory of the inception of Qing state. Through the publication and circulation of the poem among officials and literati through administrative and cultural channels, the Qianlong emperor succeeded in disseminating the ideology beyond literary circles and thus had political implications as well. This micro case reveals that the High Qing state’s approaches and ability to influence elite consciousness.

This essay introduces a major new database, based on the Jinshenlu, for the study of Chinese officialdom and Chinese society during the last imperial dynasty, the Qing, who ruled from 1644 to 1911. For almost two centuries, the Qing government and private publishers published a Jinshenlu every three months with the names and particulars of all civil, and sometimes military，officials. We are transcribing 400 of these quarterly editions dating from 1661 to 1917 into a database，beginning with 206 containing approximately 2 800 000 records of 400 000 officials republished by the Tsinghua University Library as the《清代缙绅录集成》. Based on our initial transcription of 652 984 records of 145 770 officials from 47 editions, we demonstrate the potential of these data for the study of official careers. We contrast bannermen, who had their own appointment system，with civil officials who passed the civil service examinations ,and other officials who purchased their appointments. Moreover, we demonstrate that these Jinshenlu records can be linked to records in other systematic sources on the Qing imperial lineage, on examination degree holders , and on office purchasers. The resulting combined data provide an important opportunity to understand Qing political and social elites.

Since the late Qing Dynasty，the Imperial Examination System has always been narrowly regarded as an examination system distinguished by the Eight-legged essay. Therefore，the Imperial Examination System was fiercely criticized and demonized. In fact，there was a rich content to the ImperialExamination System，such as official selection，mobility for talented individuals，optimized allocation of personnel，local justice，and so on. The content of the examination，not only tested the scholars’familiarity with classical knowledge，but policy questions also dealt with the actual business of governing.The abolishment of the Imperial Examination System resulted in the end of official selection based oneducation，the destruction of optimized allocation of personnel，as well as the disappearance of gentry society and the Chinese style system of representation.

There are five hundred and ninety-nine biographies of women who were considered heroines, martyrs, chaste women and chaste widows in the Draft of Qing Dynasty, Biographies of Chaste Females. The two hundred and ninety-four of these women ended their own lives are the subject of this article. The author analyzes the true reasons for their suicides are discussed, and from these extreme cases, attempts to understand the circumstances of women’s lives in the period.

During the First Opium War, there were no substantive differences between the firing rate, range, precision, of Chinese and British muzzle-loader and smooth-bore cannons.However, the British army’s theory of artillery, material used to make the cannons, quality of their ammunition, casting technology, carronade’s performance, mobility and firing rate of its canons, were superior to Chinese army.Meanwhile, the quantity, quality, tactics, and organization of the Qing army, as well as its intelligence, training, and quality of the commanding officers were inferior to British army.These factors influenced the effective kill rate of Chinese and British cannons, magnified the limited gap between two countries’artillery, and created enormous differences in fighting capacity between the two armies.

After the failure of the Reform of 1898, Gang Yi and Zai Yi formed a clique within the highest ruling circles of the Qing dynasty and conspired to “establish a Crown Prince and abolish the Emperor Guangxu”. After the plot failed, the clique adopted a policy of patronizing the Boxers. Their support facilitated the Boxers' occupation of Beijing that led to foreign invasion and the suppression of the movement. Finally, under pressure from the foreign powers the Qing government was forced to “punish the culprits”and the clique was destroyed. The article concludes that this disaster was a product of the exceptional political interests of the ruling class.

Based on abundant historical evidence, the author examines the management of towns in the Qing from a variety of angles and draws she following conclusions:1)the town played a pivotal role between city and countryside and between upper and lower classes;2)town management of the Qing government had two important components, defense and tax revenue;3)the town management of the Qing was restricted by many factors;4)the official management system of towns maintained close links with the non-government management system.

At the end of the third year of the Xuantong reign, prior to the emperor’s abdication, the Empress Dowager Longyu,proclaimed to all subjects, that“it is the sincere hope that all the people will enjoy a settled life, peace will reign through out the land, the integrated territory, including the five nationalities of Manchu, Mongol, Han, Hui, and Tibetan, will still combine to form a great Chinese nation state.”Through several thousands years’of historical sediment, the notion of“China”and“Chinese nationality”, which had gone through many hardships and revisions, was given the final word by Qing dynasty. From this perspective, the Qing dynasty not only bequeathed the present Chinese territory and the material wealth of united multi-nationalities country, but also the precious spiritual legacy of the content and denotation of“China”and  “Chinese nationality.”

As the last dynasty of imperial China, the Qing not only surpassed the previous dynasties in the economic aspect, but also claimed a significant progress in the building of law system. Through examining the academic value, historical significance, and development of Qing’s law system in its different stages, this article intends to describe the rise and decline of Qing’s law system.